Hello, hi John. Hi, Merlin. How's it going? Merlin, how are you going? Oh, I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. We cleaned out the garage over the weekend, so I inhaled. I think a lot of dust and feces dander.

I'm seeing that garage. For the meases. Oh, you wouldn't believe it now. Oh, man. Oh, wow. I found my copy of that when I pretend to fall on CD. Uh-huh, CD at once popular media.

Yeah, you don't want to know what I did. I went, I went all in. I committed. How many cans of half-consumed fizzy water did you find?

Um, just a couple. Because I remember you used to go down the stairs to the garage and put your half-consumed can of fizzy water. You would tuck it in various little nooks because you save it. You know, you put it there because you were going down to the garage to do something.

And then you would forget it was there. And then you would remember this is what you remember. I, you know, whatever, there's a funny tweet a few weeks ago, somebody said down something like everybody in their life has at least one beverage abandoner.

And I don't think of myself. Well, you know, how I think of myself does not necessarily reflect who I am. But, um, you know, I finished most of them. I finished them too fast sometimes. Too much fizzy. Yeah, a lot of burping. I'm committed. I'm committed.

But, you know, no, you know, one thing I did do is I took a home depot five gallon bucket and put a bunch of celtars and ice in it. And that way I had, you know, had a treat down there.

Um, because I think I think this is true in life. I really believe this is that one reason we don't succeed as well as we would like or that we procrastinate is we lack infrastructure.

Agreed.

So for me, that starts with me the day I was a Friday morning, I wake up and I start making a list. And it's a list of all the things that I need to take down to the garage or, or locate and move to the garage, all the things I need to make this something that I look forward to doing.

What you do this every Friday or you did this, this past. Well, if I did every Friday, that would be crazy. That would be a new project. No, no, no. So I made a list and it had stuff on it like, you know, bucket of celtzer.

It had stuff on there like utility knives, sharpies, two kinds of tape, a home pod. So I could listen to power pop. I like to listen to power pop when I'm, when I'm cleaning and and it made it so much easier.

Oh, it's string. You always get a string or rope, you know, you're going to use it. This was this was garage cleaning technology support stuff. Yes. Yes.

This was the one time only you're going to bring this stuff down to accomplish this job.

Yes. And you know, you know, me, like one reason I think New Year's resolutions and similar tend not to succeed is that the people who make that big wager about the person they think they want to be.

They lack the infrastructure to support that. Go on.

Okay. So for example, what's a popular one? A popular one? Well, let's set aside stop drinking. Let's, let's go to, I want to, I want to lose weight.

You could say the modern new version of that, you know, I want to, I want to make better decisions. But really let's say, I don't, I don't want to, I don't like the way my tummy feels in my pants.

Okay. All right. Good. Okay. So you say yourself, you see, so if I'm going to lose 20 pounds this year, whatever. Oh, ambitious.

More things to set aside. Let's set aside that if this had really mattered to you, you already would have done it.

Okay. Let's decide that you've probably done this more than one year and it didn't stick. You've talked to your, you, it's very, you know what? Sometimes that's the kind of tough love a person needs is like, you're just saying a bunch of bullshit.

And that's no, that's no good. You're lying. You're making a plan to lie to yourself. So step number one. Guess what? Get rid, identify, well, we're to step back, identify the foods that you think make you a fatty or, or tummy boy.

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