THE SOVEREIGN DROP 041 — On the Bare Minimum
Not a newsletter, but a ritual. One drop each week. Distilled wisdom for the whole man.
Field Note: On the Bare Minimum
You can’t graduate to the next level until you’ve mastered the basics.
Yeah yeah yeah, Amy, we’ve heard this one before.
Yeah? Then level up and let’s see it.
The reason this has to be brought up (again) is because it’s not as intuitive as it seems to master the basics.
You’re a high performer. Above average. Type A. High achiever.
Great, except there are a handful of areas you consistently show up as every other guy in the neighborhood. We need to address the areas where you act like the lowest common denominator in society. (Real upper, I know.)
Let’s go after a couple of things:
Sleep.
8 hours.
You know it. You don’t do it.
Average men think they can get by on 5 or 6 hours of sleep. They can plead ignorance because they probably haven’t read the books or listened to the podcasts on the super power of sleep. Fine. But you? You know that sleep is a super power and one of the highest leverage tasks you could do, and you consistently go low bar. Night over night. It’s average thinking followed by average action.
This is out of alignment with who you are.
Fix it. Sleep 8 hours.
Next:
Relationships.
Your wife.
Your kids.
You have relationships. They’re average.
Average men think they can prioritize work over relationships and still have good ones. They focus on themselves and their work 95% of the week and re-engage with their role as husband and father for 2 hours in the evening and a few extra on the weekends. That’s low bar. Anyone, and almost everyone, does that. You might be marginally better, but let’s be real, much of the time you’re in just-get-through-it mode.
You think your wife and kids can’t tell? How do you think they feel?
Fix it.
Be an extraordinary husband.
Be an extraordinary father.
Define what that is for you and get after it.
These two areas of average “performance” (dripping with irony) are costing you far more than you realize.
Question
Where in your life are you quietly settling for what every average man settles for?
Integration
1. Set aside 10 minutes today to strategize how you’re going to get yourself 8 hours of sleep a night.
2. Set aside 5 minutes weekly to ask yourself how you can best love your wife and kids in the coming 7 days.
Benediction
You aren’t exempt from the fundamentals because you're exceptional everywhere else. The basics are where an exceptional man is revealed. Not in the boardroom, where everyone is watching, but at 10pm and at the dinner table — where no one is watching. Master those, and you’ll earn the next level. Skip them, and you’ll stay average.
I believe in what you are becoming.
-Amy
If you know a man who would benefit from reading this, feel free to forward it to him. One drop each week. Distilled wisdom for the whole man.
