“He makes me brush my teeth in the dark.”
As soon as the words left my girlfriend’s lips I knew I was in trouble.
We were at a dinner with a few friends and I suppose my girlfriend and I were acting “too in love.”
To address this seemingly rude gesture, a friend asked her, “What does Ravi do that annoys you the most?”
Me, being the fool that I am, think she’s about to tell him to take a hike, that I’m perfect just the way I am.
Except that’s not what happened.
“He makes me brush my teeth in the dark.”
Out of context that seems pretty odd, and I ended up being berated for over an hour at that dinner.
But there is a method to my madness.
Over the past few years I have been obsessed with reaching what I like to call my “maximum life”.
This is my ability to excel in all of the areas of life I find important (health, wealth, finances, relationships, etc.).
This became my life’s mission on April 10th, 2022.
I remember this day because it was the day I made $1,000,000 in two hours.
The specifics around how I did that aren’t important for this story (it involved our annual event in Miami: Scaling With Systems Live).
What is important is what I felt afterwards: nothing.
I mean not even a glimmer of excitement.
Which was kind of scary.
I had sacrificed so much in my personal life to achieve this, yet there was no sense of joy.
No ticker-tape parade.
This ended up being a blessing (not just for the $1,000,000, which was nice), but because it woke me from a trance.
I realized that if I wasn’t careful, I would look back on my life in 50+ years and only be able to say “I made a lot of money.”
I had fallen into the “rat race.”
I was constantly chasing the next business milestone, neglecting other parts of my life, only to reach it and set another milestone.
I’m not saying that milestones or goals are a bad thing, they are absolutely necessary for growth.
What I’m saying is that for me, I realized that I didn’t want 100% of my milestones to be around making more money.
I wanted to experience the same growth and development in my personal life as I did in my business.
And that was the day “maximum life” was born.
To achieve similar results in my personal life as in my business…
I turned my personal life into a business.
I hire people to help me:
- House manager
- Executive assistant
- Meal prep company
- Maids
- Car detailers
- Grocery shoppers
I fire people that don’t help me:
- Blocking toxic family members
- Turning down dinners with friends that don’t align
I set quarterly, yearly, and 3-year goals:
- Get my pilot’s license
- Buy a plane
- Achieve < 10% body fat
- Build a custom home on 8 acres of land
I track progress and solve bottlenecks with key stakeholders:
- Weekly meetings and Asana project boards with my girlfriend
- Google sheets to track trends from my Oura ring
- Daily journals to get qualitative feedback
I leverage automation to remove manual work:
- Smart thermostat to cool my house at bedtime
- Automated lights to wake up to in the morning
- iRobot to vacuum up the wig of hair that falls from my girlfriend’s head daily
- Amazon Subscribe and Save to keep the essentials always stocked
I use an online calendar to stay on schedule:
- Workout at the same time every day
- Eat at the same time every day
- Schedule 12+ months worth of vacations in advance
- Invite my girlfriend to “intimate time” 3x/week
- Host a recurring dinner with friends
I follow decision-making frameworks to prevent repeating the same mistakes:
- Pain + reflection = progress
- Constraints are what make life enjoyable
- Time is our most valuable asset so we must protect it
- I value experiences over things and more specifically, experiences with people I enjoy being with, can learn from, and/or who value the same experiences equally or more.
This may seem extreme to some people, which is fine.
But ask yourself one question.
If all human existence has focused on optimizing ways to make money, couldn’t we apply some of those same systems to enhance other areas of our lives?
For me, the results speak for themselves.
Over the past few years I’ve been able to:
- Get my pilot’s license, buy a plane, fly it across the United States.
- Achieve and maintain < 10% body fat.
- Spend an hours in the middle of every day at a spa.
- Develop a meaningful relationship with my girlfriend (who has now become my best friend).
- Re-kindle a relationship with my mom which was previously non-existent.
- Go on 15+ trips a year (many of them with 10+ friends).
- Sign many of my friends as clients and turn many my clients into friends.
- Avoid doing or even thinking about many things I dislike (cooking, cleaning, packing, unpacking, emails, scheduling, etc.).
- And so much more.
All while I’ve grown my business, started a portfolio company, and invested 80% of my income.
Let me be clear, my life is not perfect, very far from it.
I still suck at a whole lot, sometimes my businesses don’t do well, and I sometimes fall back into my “old ways.”
But I’ve never felt closer to achieving my “maximum” life than I do right now.
And that is what I want for you reader (as long as that’s what you want).
To be multi-dimensional.
To master multiple domains.
To be able to look back on your life in 50+ years and be able to say more than “I made a lot of money.”
I’m excited to share these specific systems in my upcoming letters, so you can create a similar setup for yourself.
Until then, remember: design, systemize, realize!
Ravi Abuvala
P.S. The reason why my girlfriend has to brush her teeth in the dark is because my automated lights turn off at 8:30 PM to promote going to sleep on time.
If she wants to not brush her teeth in the dark then she needs to brush them earlier.
For those of you in a relationship I’m sure you can appreciate that is NOT how I explained it to my girlfriend, there may have been baby voices and kissing noises used.
Know your audience.
P.S. If you want my team’s help in helping you design and systemize your business, please learn more about that here.
We’ve worked with 2,000+ businesses and helped implement the systems that allowed them to build a business that serves them (enabling their maximum life), instead of them serving it.
