I recently asked my close founder friend on why he stopped drinking. Here’s what he texted me.

“I like the idea of treating professional goals + career like a pro athlete treats their craft. If you want to be an elite operator, you should treat everything surrounding your work as equally important inputs.”

I am not telling you to stop drinking. That’s not the point of this post.

Rather, I want to focus on the last part of his message. Treat everything surrounding your work as equally important inputs.

Over the last few years, I’ve been relentlessly creating and writing. Twitter threads, newsletters, podcasts, investment memos, ghostwriting, and so on.

Sometimes, this work feels sooo easy. I mean the words just flow out and I impress myself with what I can put together in under 20 minutes. And other times, I’m about two seconds away from punching my laptop.

For the longest time, I thought it was just a matter of luck. “Oh today’s a good day, let’s get extra writing done before my magical power goes away”. “I have a post to send out on Friday, I’m really hoping the vibes will be right”. I left my creative output to chance because I assumed that’s how it worked. That’s why being consistent with my writing over a long period of time felt so burdensome.

Only in the last few months have I come to realize that I have more autonomy over my creative efficiency than I thought I did.

Take a second to read this transcription of Michael Phelps, a pro athlete, on the Raj Shamani podcast:

“I started doing ice tubs. So it’s recovery. How can I recover my body and my mind so that I can make sure that my body…if I’m treating it like a Ferrari and I want it to go that fast every single day…then I need to treat my body with love. If I’m not eating, stretching, drinking water, sleeping , staying off my feet, all of those small things then I don’t have a chance to be my best when I’m in the water for those 2-4 hours of practice.

After hearing this, it became crystal clear to me that I have the agency to maximize my deep work.

What does that look like? It starts with realizing that everything outside your laptop influences what happens on it.

There’s three tiers:

1. Physical

2. Mental & Emotional

3. Spiritual

Physical (Hardware)

For physical health, some simple examples are how well you’re sleeping, how much exercise you’re getting in, and how healthy you’re eating. Don’t roll your eyes. I’m being serious. If you want to show up and work on your craft for decades, then it’s essential to do the basics. It’s not about “being healthy” for the sake of it. It’s about calibrating your hardware to maximize what you can produce the moment you sit down to work.

Mental & Emotional (Engine)

The next level of control you need to have is over your mind and emotions. If you’re stressed about ten different things, it can be really hard to focus on articulating your thoughts. Your creative pipelines are plagued with gunk and that will show up in what you create. Additionally, if you’re angry or frustrated or anxious and don’t know why, these emotions will quickly eat up your deep work time and leave you feeling helpless. Staying calm and in control is a superpower. Do whatever you can to learn how to be more aware of your mind. Meditate, sit in silence, get a therapist, journal, etc. The approach doesn’t matter. You need to have your mind ready to be fully present in the 2-4 hours of daily deep work you do.

Spiritual (Fuel)

And the last tier of control you need to have is over your spiritual health. This one is non-obvious and the trickiest.

You know those mornings where the inputs for a productive work day seem perfect? Eight hours of sleep, a clean desk, a fresh coffee, a clear calendar, and the phone in the other room. We set high expectations for ourselves to get everything done. But the moment you try to start typing, finishing even the simplest task feels impossible.

Being in that position used to piss me off. It felt like the universe was conspiring against me. I felt so much anger because I couldn’t blame anyone or anything for my lack of productivity.

It took me a while to realize that the missing input wasn't physical but rather spiritual. There’s somewhat of a voodoo aspect involved. I was skeptical at first, but I've come to believe that every creator has to fill up in order to pour out aka Strummer’s Law.

Strummer's Law, named after Joe Strummer of The Clash, is the simple creative principle: "No input, no output," meaning you can't generate new ideas (output) if you're not actively seeking new experiences, art, knowledge, or inspiration (input). It's a reminder that creators need to feed their minds by reading, visiting museums, listening to music, or engaging with the world to avoid creative burnout and keep ideas flowing. - Gemini

So how do you do this?

Here’s what’s worked for me so far:

• Listening to one of my favorite songs or sets on repeat all day

• Watching my favorite comedians, speeches, TV highlights, & movie scenes

• Doing errands or going on long walks without my headphones

• Sitting in silence for > 1 hour

• Guided loving-kindness meditations

• Say hi and have a spontaneous conversation with a stranger.

It’s hard to articulate how, but after deliberately working on my spiritual health for the last 6 months, I can say for a fact that doing the activities above truly make my soul feel more aligned. The best way to describe it is that I start to look at the world around me with a lens of love and gratitude. This helps me create and write from a place of abundance, not scarcity.

“You know, creative people have to be fed from the divine source. I do. I have to get fed. I have to get filled up in order to pour out. I really have to.” - Johnny Cash

Everything I’ve described above in terms of the Ferrari analogy is what works for me. I’m not claiming the same framework will do wonders for you. The main point of this post is communicating the fact that you have more power over your deep work time than you think. And if our brains can only handle 2-3 hours of deep work per day (if even), then it’s essential to show up the best we can for those training sessions.