The First Burner: Health

Why I Started the Four Burners with Health

If you’ve been following our Four Burners theme, you might assume I’d start with Work. Most people would. Others would argue Family or Friends is the most important.

I’m starting with Health for one reason: without it, this one life we’re given doesn’t have much of a runway. And if the runway is short, everything else becomes noise.

Four years ago, I started taking my health seriously. Not because a doctor told me to. Not because a judge told me to either – if you get the joke, you know what that means. I did it because I watched something that didn’t make sense happen too many times.

Friends who “looked healthy” dropping from sudden heart attacks. People getting hit with cancer way too young. It was the reminder nobody wants, but everyone needs.

You don’t get to negotiate with your body when it’s done.

So I made a decision and went cold turkey on drinking. No big announcement. No dramatic story. Just a line in the sand.

Since then, I’m down over 40 pounds, my blood markers have improved drastically, and I don’t lose days to hangovers and recovery. More importantly, I got momentum. When you prove to yourself you can do a hard thing, you start looking at other parts of your life differently.

Sleep Is the Foundation

The next move was sleep.

We only have 24 hours in a day. If we’re serious about managing our fuel across the Four Burners, sleep isn’t just “rest.” Sleep is the foundation that everything else sits on.

I’ve said for years that the real flex isn’t sleeping less. It’s sleeping better.

There’s a famous line from Arnold Schwarzenegger where he tells people to “sleep faster.” I laughed the first time I heard it. Then I realized the deeper point wasn’t about grinding. It was about treating your time like it matters.

So I stopped guessing and got intentional.

I now sleep about 5.5 to 6 hours a night during the week, and I’m consistently hitting 85%+ sleep scores with 99% sleep efficiency.

Translation: I’m not just unconscious, I’m recovering.

I’m getting better sleep in 5.5 hours than most people get in 8 or 9 because the goal isn’t more time in bed. The goal is higher quality recovery. That gives me real time back without stealing it from my body.

And time is the only currency you can’t earn more of.

Health Isn’t Just Physical

Here’s the part people miss. Health isn’t just physical.

Mental health is capacity. It’s decision quality. It’s patience. It’s focus. It’s your ability to handle pressure without becoming a different person.

One of the simplest ways I’ve found to keep my mind sharp is to keep learning. Leaders should read constantly. Some people throw around numbers like 60 books a year. I’m not there, but I’m consistently over 30, and it’s because I treat “dead time” differently.

A 10-hour sit in a deer stand can be two books, or one long 600-page banger like Principles or Elon Musk. Long drives are audiobooks, not music. Quiet time becomes learning time.

Not because I’m trying to be a machine, but because I want my brain to stay hungry and my perspective to keep expanding.

The Three-Hour Question

That ties directly to something I shared in the last newsletter from Dandapani’s work on focus and awareness. He has a concept that hits hard if you really sit with it.

Imagine you’re told you have three years to live. Most people would finish the workday, then figure out how to break the news to their family later.

Now cut it in half.

Eighteen months.

Cut it again.

Nine months.

Again.

Down to weeks. Down to days.

Then he takes it all the way down to three hours.

At three hours, nobody is answering emails. Nobody is “just jumping on one quick call.” You drop everything. Your focus becomes pure. Your awareness becomes crystal clear.

You stop pretending.

That’s the point. The closer you feel to the edge, the more honest your priorities become.

We’re all born with one guarantee: death. None of us know when. Some things we can’t control. But the one lever we can influence more than we admit is our health.

Not perfectly. Not obsessively. But intentionally.

What Consistency Can Do

Recently I took a biological age test and got a result that honestly shocked me.

As of May 10th, my biological age came back at 36.1 years old, which is 11.2 years younger than my actual age. And it showed that for every calendar year that passes, my body is biologically aging about 0.73 years.

I’m not sharing that to brag. I’m sharing it because it’s evidence of what four years of consistent choices can do.

Health Makes the Other Burners Possible

Health is the burner that makes all the other burners possible.

If Health is weak, Work becomes harder, Family gets the leftovers, Friends get postponed, and your patience gets thinner.

If Health is strong, everything improves. Not because life gets easier, but because you have more capacity to handle what life throws at you without breaking down.

And the truth is, most people don’t lose their health in one dramatic moment. They drift. Just like burnout.

They trade sleep for one more email. They trade movement for one more meeting. They trade peace for one more scroll. They do it so slowly it feels harmless, until one day it isn’t.

This is the first burner for a reason.

I have a lot more to share on what specifically has worked for me, what I track, what I don’t waste time on, and what I believe is misunderstood about health in high performers.

I’m happy to talk through it with anyone who reaches out, especially if you’re in a season where you know you need to get your energy back.

Next month, we’ll go deeper into another burner. Which one? You’ll have to wait and see.

For now, here’s the question I’ll leave you with:

If your life has four burners and health is the gas line, what is one habit you know is draining your fuel right now, and what are you willing to change before your body forces the conversation?