2025 Habits

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I’ve personally been an avid supporter of Superpower since I first joined a year ago and have recommended it to dozens of my closest friends and family.

Luckily for you, if you reply to this email with a screenshot of your membership purchase, I’ll send you a $50 gift card to the Superpower marketplace.

This will be the last newsletter of the year, as I plan to spend the next few weekends with family and enjoying some much needed time off the grid.

I’m not a New Year’s resolutions guy, but I do find a lot of inspiration around this time of year to reflect and plan for what’s ahead. Given that others may be doing the same, I figured I would share some new habits that I developed this year that have totally transformed my life.

And I mean that sincerely.

Back when I was in college, I was burnt out between majoring in engineering and launching a startup of my own, all while trying to maintain some resemblance of a normal social life. When that company failed, I jumped right back into the chaos of early startup life becoming the second employee at Morning Brew.

After Morning Brew, I joined YouTube and spent every night and weekend tirelessly building beehiiv in parallel. And since launching beehiiv, I’ve experienced four years of sleepless nights and have totally normalized living with the insurmountable pressure of scaling a high growth startup.

Earlier this year my mental health hit a breaking point. My focus was absolute shit and the stress was debilitating. I had to make some serious lifestyle changes and can proudly say that today I genuinely feel better physically and mentally than I ever have in my life.

I’ll often catch myself working at 9pm with as much focus and energy as I had back at the start of my day. Most days I genuinely feel like I could go on forever.

If you don’t care for “self help” or improvement stuff, feel free to skip this one. But making these changes and taking care of myself has been one of the best investments I’ve ever made as a founder.

I meditate for at least 15 minutes every single morning, non-negotiable. I started with some guided meditations, and now just freestyle while listening to some hippie sound bowl melody.

I’m not going to sit here and write about all of the benefits of meditation: less stress, lower cortisol, better focus, improved mood, etc. You get it – but it’s probably the best habit I’ve picked up this year and the difference has been staggering.

I used to wake up at 5:30am and scroll Slack before even getting out of bed (being in LA, I’m 3 hours behind most of the team). Jumping from channel to channel triaging problems and putting out fires, all before the sun rises, isn’t a particularly healthy way to start the day.

But it wasn’t just Slack and work. The moment I open iMessage, I’m catching up on conversations ranging from sports to news to whatever else is going on with the people in my life. I began to realize how much these outside signals would influence my thoughts.

Instead of being in control of my mornings, my mornings were entirely dictated by whatever notifications were on my phone. If, for example, someone texted me about plans for the upcoming weekend, then I spent my morning thinking about that.

Now, I don’t touch my phone for the first hour after I wake up. I protect that time to ruminate, stretch, mediate, whatever – without the influence or disruption of the outside world. Almost all of my best ideas occur during this time.

And I feel 100x better, as opposed to being some lab rat clicking through notifications and ingesting the shit content and drama that most people consume themselves with.

Don’t get me wrong – I love coffee. I love the taste of it, I love the rush of it, and I love coffee culture at cafes (shit, I might actually relapse while writing this).

But as a founder, I already operate with a heightened baseline of cortisol and stress.

No matter how much work I complete, there’s always some insurmountable amount of work remaining. That feeling mixed with three cups of cold brew translated to a level of crippling anxiety that I could never escape (granted, I probably could have settled on one cup).

Caffeine is a stimulant that fucks with the chemical composition of your brain, and after years of normalizing the existential anxiety, I decided I wanted out. So I cut coffee cold turkey earlier this year and have never felt more alive.

The stress levels measured with my Oura ring seem to agree.

Earlier this year, I used ChatGPT and uploaded the labels of all of the vitamins and supplements that I was taking. I discovered that I was consuming way too much of certain things (like zinc) and way too little of others (like K12 and omega-3s).

I spent an hour going back and forth as it recommended the right supplements to balance everything and ensure I wasn’t overly-saturated or deficient in anything. Then I did a ton of additional research to identify the highest quality supplements in each category.

I’m not going to shill my supplement stack, but I am a big believer that we are all, quite literally, made up of chemicals. And by consuming the right balance of vitamins, minerals, and supplements you can make marginal improvements in your energy, mood, sleep, focus, and overall well-being.

I’ve experimented a ton over the years, and feel like I’ve finally cracked the code for my body and regimen (it varies depending on your goals, activity levels, diet, habits, etc.). I highly recommend firing up ol ChatGPT and giving it a try for yourself.

I religiously go to the gym each morning before work (after the whole stretch, ruminate, and mediate routine and all). I used to think that this was total psychopath behavior (maybe it is), but I began to listen to podcasts instead of music while I workout.

I’m bought into the concept of an information diet. tl;dr – what you read, watch, and consume impacts your thinking, focus, and well-being.

Well, my podcast rotation is almost entirely focused on business, startups, and tech. And the episodes are either informative and tactical (i.e. things I can do to improve the company) or inspirational (i.e. stories that motivate me to work harder).

Lifting weights and consuming this type of content is an electric combination. I get back to my desk around 8am absolutely juiced with energy and inspiration.

By the way, if you’re interested in the podcast rotation:

Speaking of All-In, at the All-In Summit Bryan Johnson said, “the single best thing I've learned out of everything I've ever done is (lowering) your resting heart rate before sleep is the best thing you can do for your health.”

I began reading each night before bed and it’s made a massive difference in the quality of my sleep. I’ve experimented a ton with my nighttime routine and according to my Eight Sleep and Oura ring (both companies that should sponsor my newsletter), my sleep scores are noticeably better.

And similar to my undisrupted mornings, I try not to use my phone at all for the last hour or so before getting into bed.

I think we are still so early in understanding our health and how the food we eat, air we breath, water we drink, content we consume, and products we use actually impact our wellbeing.

I’ve installed reverse osmosis filters in my apartment and only drink ultra-filtered water. I have hardcore air purifiers in every room. I’ll measure my glucose from time to time to ensure my diet isn’t impacting my health.

I’m not trying to live forever. I genuinely don’t really give a shit about the whole longevity trend. I just want to feel incredible today.

I want to build beehiiv into a multi-billion dollar business. I want to scale this newsletter and community to millions of founders. I want to create tons of incredible content, build fun side projects, explore the world with my friends, and have a damn good time doing it all.

That all takes a ton of energy and ambition. I just want to do everything that I can to always feel and be at my best.

Take it or leave it, those are some of the habits I built in 2025 that have helped me accomplish that. See you in 2026 ✌️.

If you enjoyed this post or know someone who may find it useful, please share it with them and encourage them to subscribe: mail.bigdeskenergy.com/p/2025-habits

I’m renting a house with Houck (founder of Founding Journey) in Tamarindo, Costa Rica in February with 7 other founders. We’ll be working, vibing, and delivering shareholder value. Other details:

Shoutout Curtis for the reader submission 🫡. Having the home office walking distance from the beach is all that I ask for in this life.

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Some of my favorite content I found on the internet this week…

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