Full Transcript for FALL HACKS!! S2 E2

oat station. Toppings can be laid out beside the rice cooker, and you're set for the morning. What levels this hack up for fall is if you swap it out right after that breakfast rush. For rice on a delay timer. It can be long grain, could be wild rice, could be jasmine, whatever you have planned to go with your protein and your veg for that evening. Get it swapped out, staged up with water, pinch of salt, ready to go on the timer so that six o'clock, seven o'clock, five o'clock if you're lucky, whatever that in between work, sports, activities, evening wine down zone looks like. You've got freshly cooked, meticulously prepared. Rice waiting for you as the main support role for your dinner. These two techniques combined using one piece of hardware can truly be game-changing for the fall. And this qualifies as an autopilot, an autumn autopilot. It sounds basic, it's completely different than the slow cooker, which is always a good standby and Actually goes hand in hand with the rice pretty well for evening meals. But do this if you haven't already and thank me later. Alright, this next fall hack is called the gear basket. And it's actually two gear baskets. And what I like to do is lay out a mesh drawer, either right beside your bed or down in the kitchen by the coffee or by the door that you leave your house from. And you're gonna do something the night before, which sounds really basic, but it's an incredible fall hack. You're gonna take the gear that you're gonna use for your workout or your run, and that includes your water bottle, your smartwatch if you're not wearing it to bed, headphones, shoes, any outerwear, whatever you need for an indoor workout if you're doing it at home or in the home gym, hydration materials, nutrition, and it's all gonna be there prepped and ready to go, including a pre workout if it needs to be mixed. The other basket is gonna be stuff that you need just To leave might be your work bag again, outerwear for the day. The container that your meal prep's gonna go in if there's something in the fridge. And basics like keys and wallet. And it might sound overly simplistic to think that doing this the night before and having it in a basket in the right place is even worth the time. But believe me when I say that. Not having to use that executive function day of is huge. Executive function resources in the morning, especially, for me and for anyone else, can be limited. So if you can set those things to autopilot by having these baskets ready the night before, I can guarantee you that you'll experience less friction during the day. Set yourself up for success. And again, have an autopilot that from my perspective is one of the ultimate fall hacks. So it's the gear basket. It's very simple. It's a night before thing. It's probably two baskets. And it's, you know, something that you can just see right there visually in front of you, Alright, this next autumn autopilot fall hack probably carries a little extra weight, given all

the recent hype about the fact that AI might kill us soon. But if we don't have much time left on this planet, we might as well use AI to get us some free time to enjoy doing the stuff we want to do. So I call this the the AI calendar sweep. And you can do this a few different ways, but take the AAI tool of your choice. For me, it's Anthropic Cloud. Link it to your Google Calendar and your Gmail using a connector. And then get creative with the prompts. We will add some information in the show notes so you can reach out to me directly, Nick at roadmiles.live for my personal prompt. But I can show you how you can ask your AI agents once you set them up. To do regular sweeps of your inbox and scour that inbox for every email you get from a coach, a teacher, a school, one of your kids' sports teams. It doesn't matter if that's a calendar that's shared and online, an Excel sheet, a PDF, something in the body of the email. And it doesn't matter if that changes every day or gets emailed out every week. That AI agent is going to do the work for you to scan your inbox. create new calendar entries in your Google Calendar. And if your family members also have Google Calendars, it's going to share and invite them to that event automatically. And then when that event time changes, Your calendar entries update automatically too. I can say from my own personal experience, this has saved hours, hours of data entry that, you know, normally I'd be sitting in the coffee shop, god forbid, at a red light in traffic. Or in the few minutes that I have consciousness left before I fall asleep at the end of the day doing. And realistically, it's not even me doing it half the time. It's It's others in the family, the kids are doing it themselves now. But when you add up the amount of time that we have spent calendaring outside of work, it's it's unbelievable. So if you can harness the power of AI and set up a basic agent that's connected to your own Gmail, let's say, works with other email services as well, and then connect it to your shared calendar. Use some good prompting to get these things happening automatically. Then as those inbox updates pile up, your calendar evolves like a beautiful living tree. That's another fall hack, an autumn autopilot, courtesy of road miles. Counterintuitively, you would think that fall is a good time to sleep more because it's dark, especially in the morning. Morning darkness and early rising as the days get shorter could never be more important. So fall hack number four is preserve the first hour of your day. Make it five AM if you can. It's not gonna work every time. And I know from my own experience that travel, other activities can disrupt this. But I really do try most days to be up by five. And I use the first hour for fitness and wellness most of the time. Sometimes it's working on a project, sometimes it's working on road miles, sometimes it's a day job. And then get to wellness and a workout just a little bit later, depending on that day. But starting your day, preserving that 5 a.m. time with something that is just for you. That's more important than ever, as those days get shorter. So my fall hack for this one is just not only set an alarm and do the other stuff we talked about earlier in the episode, the gear basket, the rice cooker, your calendar, which by the way you're gonna use to block this five AM time. But make it a habit. Make it so that you preserve that time as your time. No one else's. There's been a lot of influencer talk, wellness industry writing. Even Robert Sharma has his famous book, The Five AM Club, which I've read and really enjoyed. but I think it's popular for a reason. It works. And even if you're not a morning person, you can you can become one. Training yourself, coaching yourself to just get up at 5 a.m. and do something that's only for you becomes its own dopamine hit. It becomes its own reward because you get an instant return on that investment. You get to start the rest of your day knowing that you did something for yourself first. You paid yourself first at 5 a.m. And for me personally, I find that the energy I get moving through the rest of the day, the sense of accomplishment. The executive function bump just by having gotten up at five, doing my wellness, doing my fitness, working on a project, all three. That's something I don't get any other way. And on the rare occasion where that's not happening or it can't happen, I feel it. I notice it. I I I miss it. So my my fourth fall hack is to Wake up at five. Join the five AM club with me and let me know how it's going. My next fall hack is building on the theme of that 5 a.m. wake up, and it's about getting light in your eyes. Daylight helps regulate our entire circadian rhythm, but it also helps our immune system, our digestive system, parasopathetic nervous system. Everything in our body and our brain responds to kickstarting our day with daylight. And so my personal hack is to make sure that I get at least thirty minutes of direct, intense light in the eyes. And where I live at the northern latitude this time of year, five AM doesn't cut it for sunlight. So even if I'm lucky to get that outdoor run in first thing, it's probably gonna be in the dark. So as I'm prepping for that run, having some coffee, getting the breakfast going, dealing with that rice cooker hack that I told you about earlier, or the gear basket. I'm trying to get myself exposed to about thirty minutes of intense light. You can get light boxes now that are actually portable. No kidding. They snap on to almost like a headband style system. And so you can get that light around your eyes as you're doing something, no matter where you are in the house, what you're doing. You can get more compact versions that sit on the counter or your desk if you're taking some time to journal, do some work. You can get a a a light that clips on to your Peloton or your treadmill, just in your home gym, yoga, workout area. So do what

you can to expose yourself to at least 30 minutes of daylight. The kicker here is that it'll have a knock on effect later in the day. So when things naturally darken around three thirty, four o'clock in the afternoon and work their way to full dark at let's say six or seven at night by the time you're in late fall. The fact that you've had the opportunity to get that daylight first thing is going to give you a tremendous amount of energy, but it's also gonna help you slow down at the end of the night. And it's gonna lead to a much deeper and more rewarding sleep. So again, it sounds simple, but it's an incredible fall hack. Get the daylight in, get it in early, use technology to do it, and thank me later when you have a great sleep. This next fall hack has to do with something I struggle with, and it's called transition friction. Say that twice, transition friction. But it's the idea that switching tasks or switching activities is often harder than doing the hard thing. The task switching or the initiating. Getting out the door, leaving the office, getting into the studio, leaving the studio, finishing the run. Sometimes these are harder than doing the run, doing the work. And I don't really know why. I'm not an expert in psychology, but from what I've learned about ADHD, other approaches to neurodiversity, a lot of it is because when we get locked in on something with our brain type, we're locked in. And honestly, that's a good thing most of the time. I don't think I'd be able to finish a lot of what I've done. in corporate law or in life or in fitness and wellness or even here with road miles if I wasn't an obsessive type that gets locked in. And so it's it's kinda like that suction cup on the window, right? It's it's just hard to get it off. But once you do, there's a sense of relief and you can actually move right into the next thing. My practical hack on transition friction. is again overly simplistic and when you hear it you might think, That's it. Sure, that sounds easy. But the hack is just to start moving your body to do the thing before you have time to even think about what you should be doing or in what order. And it works kinda like this. Like let's say the difficulty is leaving the office. And I I've had this where I'm I'm locked in on something. I've been in meetings all day, maybe I'm catching up on email at my desk, and I know I need to get going, get someone to a practice, get back for a family dinner, and there's nothing urgent happening, but I physically have trouble just rounding stuff up and leaving. And so the hack is to just Do a burst of sudden movement and start moving around. Grab your phone and stick it your pocket. You know, I'll I'll take my laptop and quickly throw it in my bag and just move around quickly and start walking out at the risk of leaving something behind. And fifty percent of the time I do end up walking back and realizing, I I don't have my keys. Or I've or I've left the remnants of my lunch sitting on

the desk. And I need to get it. That's okay. Coming back for something while you're already in motion and onto the next thing is a win. And that's still a thousand times better than sitting there in a freeze state, paralyzed, not knowing what to do next. So that's just one example of the hack. you know, honestly the same thing applies for for getting out of bed. I try to harness that cortisol hit that happens. Sure, when the alarm goes off and when I know what's happening and I've had enough rest. But when I follow my other hacks like the gear basket and provisioning breakfast the night before and just having things pre placed where I need them, it's a lot easier to just do that sudden burst of motion, literally physically leap out of bed. Thank God for the temperatic mattress. I don't launch Stacy off the other side of the mattress. But it's it's just a matter of doing a quick sudden burst emotion. You know, some people have trouble getting into the shower, you know, and they'll they'll postpone that for an entire day. Jump in there. Even if half your clothes are on, you take off wet. It's it's a way to reset the nervous system and get to action. I've talked to friends that have you know, family members and children that have anxiety around, let's say, eating. or joining a family meal. One way to kill the transition friction with with that is just to reduce the stakes. Not everything has to be, you know, a a formal high stakes dinner. where everyone's invited to a a banquet and there's all eyes on the participants. Family meals are very important in our house and we we value the time that it takes to sit and not just eat together and fuel our bodies, but also to share some of the highs and lows from the day. And so if we reduce the stakes around the actual food, hey, come join us as soon as you can and take a few bites. And if if it's not your favorite item in the world, maybe you'll come back to it later. Maybe you'll make yourself an omelet. Both those things can be okay. but the transition friction around starting a meal together as a family is a real challenge that I know I've I've heard from families about. So Again, the encouragement is just to reduce the stakes and ask people to do something simpler than eating the big meal. Just sit together. If the food around looks interesting and you want to try it, go for it. I can have similar transition friction when it comes to Starting a workout or starting a run. I have spent personally more time sucking around with water bottles, headphones, hydration packs, powder layers and shoes. And then taking multiple trips to the bathroom in terms of time duration than the actual run many times. So something I tried this summer that actually worked is stripping it all down. I had a really light pair of running shorts, had my shoes ready, tried to have the water bottle the w I guess the hydration pack ready the night before and ready by the door, but I didn't I just stopped. Doing everything else. Sometimes I remembered headphones, sometimes I didn't. Threw on a tank top, threw on these shorts and just ran freely. And I said to myself, Well, if I get halfway through the run and I'm missing something like, you know, water, music, well. Maybe I'll keep going, maybe I'll come back. I you know, fifty percent of the time I just kept going, came back and ended up having a longer, better, faster run than the ones where I spent more time than the run itself. Messing around trying to get everything ready. So there's no highly scientific process or work here. The theme is just quickly jolt your body into action. Almost think of it like an AED that resuscitates a heart. Do something that shocks you so quickly in a positive way that you don't have time to think. You don't have time to overthink. And I I can guarantee you it won't solve it perfectly, but it'll it'll really help. with transition friction. That's a a good fall hack. This next fall hack is really specific to my favorite thing in the world. Email. and I think anyone that works, whether it's for themselves, for someone else, on a project or to support their family, will tell you that email is the worst thing on the planet. Spending time in your inbox isn't about what you could do with the email the first time you're in front of it. It's about the time you waste every time you revisit that email. or the anxiety that you feel when you stare at it three weeks later, knowing it needs your attention. Or worse, the time that you waste trying to find it, combing through the archives, from three weeks ago when you first could have dealt with it. So I have a simple hack that I've definitely stolen from other thought leaders in the space, but it works. And I'm just recycling it because you gotta share the wealth. And it's a four-step process that I try to do twice a day. It's not always twice a day. I'm often distracted during a meeting or a call and I'll creep into my inbox and do the same thing. But formally I try to set aside a block of time two times in a day, once in the morning, once late in the day, or sometimes at night. And I go into the inbox and then I top to bottom work through it. And I spend very little time, less than two minutes on each email, and I do one of four things. My favorite thing to do is delete it without reading it. And I do this a lot. If the subject line or the sender annoys me or it looks like it's garbage or someone else, you know, it could be someone else's problem or it's my problem for you know, too long ago, I'll just delete it. And nine times out of ten, if it's really important and it does need a follow up, it's coming back to me somehow. That the right person will forward it back to me on behalf of the other person and say You need to deal with this. Or the person who sent it the first time will remind me in a different way on a different channel by text by teams in person. So this is a great filter and it it sounds harsh, but it it works. And you know, all

joking aside, most of this filtering you're doing yourself because you know it's either a a group CC or something that's not relevant. So delete, delete, delete, delete. Number two is delegate. Quickly forward it to a trusted colleague, someone you work with, someone that supports your work. Forward it to someone else who's a subject matter expert in your organization or your family, a tech support resource. Now there's an incredible forwarding option, and it's called the AI tool of your choice. Forward it to Cloud, forward it to OpenAI, ChatGPT, forward it to an agent you've set up using. Zapier or any of the other AI tools. Forward it to AI with you know the words help me figure this out. And that tool will take it from there. It will give you examples, it'll give you script, it'll give you next steps. But you won't be lost in freeze mode. So delegate is my favorite number two. Number three is actually do the reply. If it's something you can read and respond to in under you know, in under two minutes. Probably it shouldn't actually have been an email. That should have been a quick text or a conversation. But reply. If if you know if someone's asking you a basic question, they need some information, they need a document back from you, attach it, send it back. If that's a quick response, it's done and it's gone. Delete it after you've replied or archive it. The great thing about AI tools now as well is that they're taking care of all that filing for you. There's no more categorizing and manually filing. I I always aspired to do that. when I I had a good filing system set up, but it was more work than the actual email. Now that that's happening on an automated agentic basis, I'm never worried about going back and finding something in the right file because I know it's there. And the last and probably the most important action in that that two minute window is calendar it. So if it's something that needs to capture your attention for a sustained amount of time. work that you need to do for a few hours. And again, this is recycled from many other experts in productivity, but it works. Then then put it in your calendar. Ask your AI agent to block two hours today, tomorrow, no later than the end of the week. Order future date if you know exactly when that has to happen and it can't be in the near term. And then have that deep work time where you don't do email during that time. You work on the task that that email needs you to work on. And you finish it. So, you know, between those delete delegate reply and calendar actions, I think you're gonna find that email kind of goes away. But stick with number one, stick with the delete. Delete, delete, delete. And it's an incredible way to get the cream rising to the top. People that actually really need your attention, they'll find you. a proviso there is if you've got reminders coming in, bills you gotta pay, things you gotta do. If you've set up most of those on auto pay, you know, a default position where

it gets attended to automatically, and the worst case is that you just miss some information, then it's then it's in a you're in a better place. If you don't have your bills on autoplay, auto pay, and you're getting a reminder about something that's overdue, and you just delete it. you will end up in a situation that you don't like. So my only other practical hack as a companion piece here is put every possible bill you can on autopay so that the worst case is, you know, there's no money left in your bank account, but you're not in trouble with the service provider. these are just, you know, email productivity, fall hacks, but they play into the theme of autopilot for your life and not only do they save you some time, but in my experience they free up so much brain space. You know, that you can do something like this. You know, take a a side hobby and have fun with it and and get some hours back. One of the next all hacks and autumn autopilots I want to emphasize is it's this concept of upstream versus downstream. You know the old expression pay me now, pay me later. Stuff that you do or can do at the start of the week. upstream from everything else and I'm gonna suggest Sunday night if you're in a traditional kind of work week zone, family zone. Fifteen or twenty minutes on a Sunday night will save you hours, not just Monday morning but the rest of the week. Now how many times have you done this? I I know it's something I still do, regrettably. Monday morning before you've even done that five AM pay yourself first time. Or just after as you're scrambling to get ready. You open the calendar. shit. That's today? That's tomorrow? Where where is the the stuff I need for this thing? This meeting? That file? That drop off. This it's my carpool day. And it's you know, on the one hand I try to avoid looking at work stuff in the calendar on, you know, a Sunday afternoon or Sunday evening because I want to be able to sleep. And I don't want my brain, you know, stuck in a triage mode. But I try to set aside about fifteen or twenty minutes later in the day on a Sunday. And I do open the calendar, the work calendar, the home family stuff. And if you followed my earlier fall hack about helping populate those calendars with all the data you need using AI, then this is a lot easier to do. And I just look ahead. What's the busiest day? What's my carpool day? Where do I have so many back to back meetings that it's actually not going to be physically possible to either move between them if they're in person? Or switch between them if they're virtual? And how do I debottleneck that? Have I planned the workouts so that they match, you know, where I'm gonna be physically? Home, gym, outdoors, traveling? Do I actually have the gear ready? Like Washing machine type stuff? Food that I need for meal prep. Are those gear baskets and rice cookers gonna be something I can actually fill up later tonight? Or do I now have to go get some stuff for those? And and then finally,

you know, taking some time to actually do some deleting just like with the email. What stuff have I committed to this week that looks Unnecessary. Rather than be a no-show, what can I gracefully cancel out of tonight? I'm not gonna be able to make this on Wednesday. No explanation required in every case. Some cases you need to explain to someone why. 90% of the time you don't. This this doesn't work. I've got a conflict. Doing that weeding out quickly on the Sunday. And then syncing up with your spouse, your life partners, or your family members, doing a bit of the same thing. It's a chance to avoid the pain and the extra time that that takes to do it in the moment, day of, hour before. So I just call it the Sunday night sync session. Triple S. Sunday night sync session. You sync your brain with your calendar, you sync your calendar with your goals. And most importantly, you sync that whole package with your heart, your vibes, your energy. If you had a good recovery weekend, you're gonna feel really energized. But remember that by Tuesday night, you might already be exhausted. So your your decision making headspace is a lot more reliable during that Sunday night sync session than it's going to be on the Tuesday night or by Thursday morning. Trust me on this. And pull the tools out and just do it. Do it before you have your your last meal of the day. Do it before you go off and do something relaxing, winding down or Fun, the show, the book, the sauna. That way when you go and do that thing, it's gonna be unreservedly and intentionally, and you'll be ready for sleep without this stuff on your mind, and you'll actually sleep better. And lo and behold, the other hacks that I've been sharing with you, like the 5 a.m. wake up, are gonna flow naturally as a result. How many of you love New Year's? And I don't mean New Year's Eve and whatever partying you're gonna go and do, but All the stuff that surrounds New Year's with that whole sketch out some resolutions, start a new year, clean slate, showing up to the gym for a while, new routines. I'm gonna do this for a while. Feel good about it. Blank slate. It's that blank slate energy. B S E, I'm gonna call it. I don't think that's a thing yet. Blank slate energy. Like B D E, I think you all know what that is. I can't can't get into that now. Blank Slate Energy is one of the last fall hacks I'm gonna share with you. And I'm stealing it from New Year's and I'm bringing it into September for a very good reason. September is the new New Year's. In fact, it's the original New Year's. It's the OG New Year's for a reason, I think. But think about it for a second. What what's starting up? If you're Canadian school, if you're American, I don't know, when did you start school? July. You know, most of your fall sports, a lot of the busier routines in your professional careers. A lot of the white space that might have been a privilege, a relief to see on your calendar in August or July, that gets filled in, colored in

starting September or earlier. And that's why if you treat September as the new New Year's, and I'm not talking about just making resolutions and starting new routines, but trying to bring that blank slate energy into The fall instead of January, you'll have some more success. And I I can speak from my own experience on this again. You know, January, especially here in Canada, it's a cold time, it's dark. You're actually usually worn down from a busy holiday season and a a full calendar year having elapsed. It if you think about it, it's actually probably the worst time to really commit to a new routine. Audit yourself, audit your life, audit your finances, your fitness. you're gonna feel, you know, short on time, short on money, outside your fitness comfort zone. And although you might be motivated in the short term to kick start something and do some some new routines out of guilt, your odds of sticking with them, the likelihood that you're gonna persist and create habits that actually, you know, last the year are slim and and maybe they're at their lowest point because of the timing. Whereas if you do it in the fall when you're picking up on some busyness, right on the heels of what hopefully was at least some opportunity to kind of relax and take a bit of time off in the summer, you probably are setting yourself up for much more success and have the best prospect of sticking with those new routines, those new habits. Because you're coming in a bit rested, a bit recharged. And guess what? You're you're actually starting all those new things. And they're going to continue along as guideposts and and cues for you. You know, that sports commitment that you have or that your child has, that club that you're in, or that your spouse has engaged with, or the work assignment that you've taken on or been voluntold to take on, those things are going to happen without you or with you. So you might as well grab the the routine vibe to go with it. The resolution, you might want to call it. So that's that's you know, that's a time shift. Do those new routine, new habit sketching out activities in September instead of January and try to bring that blank slate energy because it is. It is a blank slate, truly. The second piece of it is what I call the fall audit. And it's probably what you should do first before you decide where you're gonna reprioritize or the stuff that you're gonna put more or less energy into. And I I really wanna emphasize the less. Because that's that's where the audit comes in. So for me, a fall audit is pretty basic. It can have three or four pillars. You can start with financial. Look at your bank accounts, look at your savings plans, investments, talk to financial professionals and advisors, figure out where you need to clean things up financially. Much better than doing it in January when you've already spent the money. on the holidays. You're gonna spend it anyways, but at least now you've got a plan. take a look at your your fitness and decide what you're gonna do for a fall routine that is gonna adapt to your changing schedule rather than something that comes out of nowhere when you've been sitting around for a two week Christmas break. Get that gym membership going without fall home fitness routine, that outdoor training schedule that needs to adapt as winter sets in. Give yourself the runway and the time to do that now, not in January when it's already too cold. So finances and fitness, you know, I'd put the other two F's in there, friends and family. Pick a couple of friends that you just haven't spent the time with and reach out now. Schedule just one meetup. Not five. Not let's do a weekly dog walk. Just Just one. You know, say to yourself or your friend, hey, I want to see you once before Christmas. And that might sound a little crazy when you're reaching out in September, but you and I both know that that's a realistic and b if it happens, probably will be the only time that you're gonna see that person between now and Christmas. And that you know, maybe that's sad, but it's realistic, it's practical. When you set those goals in January about let's meet up all the time, it's more likely than not that nothing will happen for a little while and then you'll gain momentum in the nothing happening. And by the time September actually rolls around, you will have met zero times. Or at least here if you set the one meetup goal, I'm gonna meet up for you with you for a coffee once between now and Christmas, you you'll actually do it. And and with family goals, I I try to do something similar. What's one thing that I've really wanted to do with this family member that I haven't done this summer or all year? And you know, guess what? I'm not gonna feel FOMO yet because the FOMO is for you know, the fear of missing out, because I've got three months left or four months left in the year to do it. And I'm Picking up on that in September when I still have momentum and I still have a chance to do the thing. So do that fall audit and identify those things that you want to change, those new routines you want to start with, the blank slate energy, but also those people, friends and family that you want to reach out to and spend some time with or do something with, even once before the actual calendar year ends. And then by the time you're actually sitting there on New Year's Eve or waking up on New Year's Day looking at the actual start to the new year. You're already like four months ahead of everybody else. You know your routines are established. You can be secure in that. You've made those connections with friends and family members that others are just now trying to do. Your finances are looking okay 'cause you had somewhat of a plan and you're not starting fresh in a panicky kind of way. Try it, see if it works. Let me know if you've actually done this before. I'm only just getting into it. I haven't done it really more than once and even formally. So I gotta work on it and

see how it see how it goes. But don't forget that blank slate energy. Do your fall audit and make September the new New Year's. Okay, my last fall hack is actually not at all about automation or personal productivity. I guess you could say it's about mental wellness because it's about fun. And having fun in an impromptu kind of scheduled but unscheduled unorthodox kind of way. And the idea is to have a Tuesday night game night or a Thursday night movie night. And what I mean here is is take some time, try to try to get people in your household if you can, or just you if it's only you, corralled and away from evening routines early. You know, skip one of the sports practices. Leave work thirty minutes early. Get a takeout dinner that may or may not be good for you health wise. Skip all that time and effort that might go into an otherwise you know how it's supposed to be kind of weeknight. And go straight to something fun and do, you know, the one board game that your family loves to play and hasn't played since Christmas. Do it on the Tuesday night. Pick the one movie that you've been trying to watch with your partner for you know six Friday nights in a row, but you haven't because you're too tired. And do it on the Thursday night at six o'clock with the takeout. You know, do this not necessarily every week, but pick a week or two in the month. And when you're doing that Sunday night sink session, circle that day in red. And burn it into your brain. Pre order the skip the dishes on the app while you're doing the sync session, because you can. Find out what streaming service has the moonie movie dust off the board game from your closet. Put it on the table with a sign that says Tuesday exclamation point. Do those things. Sounds hokey, but it It's gonna give you something in the fall where you're otherwise l you know, staring down the barrel of a a dark evening, unfinished homework, emails in the inbox, and it's gonna give you something fun and out of the ordinary that's not weekend fun. Because let's let's be real about something. I think if people are having fun on a Friday or Saturday night. And they claim to be, you know, full of energy. They're either lying to you and distorting reality on social media, or they're twenty-seven years old. If you're middle aged like me, and or if you have family commitments that combined with your career, leave you in a place on a Friday or a Saturday where you're a little more depleted than not. then those aren't necessarily gonna be the times when you wanna go straight into a fun board game. But you'll benefit from having that fun on a Tuesday because it's gonna fuel you the rest of the week. And the time is there for you. You just gotta plan ahead. So I don't have a catchy name for this fall hack that I can think of other than Tuesday treat day. but You can probably come up with one. And if you do co-brand it with me, reach out Nick at Road Miles.live or any of the at Road Miles Live on social media channels, Facebook, Instagram, Road Miles Podcast on YouTube. And let me know what you've coined it. If you're willing to share photos from your setup, I'd love to see those. Okay, so that's that's it. Those are those are all my fall hacks, my autumn autopilots. just to recap a little bit, you you probably notice that none of these are super impressive or high you know high tech really. There's the AI part of it. But that's everywhere. Easy to get to. You know, there's there's no supplement, there aren't any gadgets except for I guess the rice cooker. There's no 4am cold pludge. But the common theme with all of these, whether it's the basket by the door, 30 minutes in front of a lamp, 15 minutes on a Sunday for your Sunday sink. What each of these fall hacks hopefully has in common, and the idea of autopilot, is that it's It's taking a decision or an action that you'd otherwise need to make in your weaker moments, your more fatigued moments, and it's moving them Forward or back, however you want to call it, it's moving them to a moment in time when you're strong. You know, it's taking that point of weakness where the friction is going to be enough that you don't do the thing. And moving it back to a moment of strength where the friction doesn't matter and you do it. And so that's the whole idea of autopilot. It's not that you're not in control, you're you're fully in control. You're just gonna set the course when you're thinking clearly and then you go fly it. That's why fall hacks work. They're there's something you plan and there's something you do. And they happen early, five A. early, September early instead of January, Sunday instead of Monday. They're your choices, your habits, and your future. And there's some fun woven in there too. Who doesn't want to play a game on a Tuesday night? Watch a fun movie on a Thursday. Doesn't matter what day of the week your actual personal life revolves around. You might be a shift worker, you might travel for a living. These are transferable. You know, start it when you start your rotation, your turnaround, your next pairing. And encourage your family members to try this with you. They don't have to, but if they do, maybe they can help you refine them. I'm really interested to know how it works out if you try any of these. Tag me in your own feedback post about it. Road Miles Live on Instagram, Road Miles Podcast on YouTube, like and subscribe. If you're listening or watching this. On Spotify, Apple Podcasts, any of the platforms, leave some comments below. but reach out, please. Send me an email and I'll try you know deleting it before I reply. Thanks for joining me on Fall Hacks, Autumn Autopilot. I'm Nick Peters. And this is Road Miles, reminding you to live every mile.