Simple Life Hacks That Will Change Your Future (Steal These Habits From Billionaires)

High-Level Overview

Mel Robbins starts with a funny story: while watching a YouTube video about rooting hydrangea cuttings, she was served a video titled The number one habit billionaires run daily, with over 12 million views. She clicked, and it turned out to be a pirated 10-minute clip of her own online course on mindset. If 12 million people wanted to know the habits of billionaires, she figured, it was worth researching properly. The result is this episode: six habits drawn from Warren Buffett, Taylor Swift, LeBron James, Sara Blakely, Shigeru Miyamoto and Jamie Kern Lima, illustrated largely with clips of them explaining things in their own words.

The tone is upbeat, enthusiastic and practical, with Mel repeatedly pointing out that every one of these habits is free. The conversation works through one person at a time, pairing each clip with Mel's commentary, stories about herself and her husband Chris, and a concrete way listeners can start using the habit today.

The Discussion Explores:

• Warren Buffett's daily reading: five to six hours a day that builds mental filters for fast decisions
• Forcing yourself through fear: Buffett's Dale Carnegie course and why public speaking is a key life skill
• Taylor Swift's idea capture: an endless notes file on her phone that becomes a library of lyrics
• LeBron James and sleep: why an elite athlete calls sleep his self-care and his secret to stamina
• Sara Blakely's make-the-call habit: cold-calling Neiman Marcus and the bathroom demo that launched Spanx
• Shigeru Miyamoto's wandering: breaking habituation to fuel creativity, with research from Dr. Tali Sharot
• Jamie Kern Lima's knowing: trusting your gut over self-doubt and outside rejection

Deep Dive into Main Ideas

Habit 1: Warren Buffett Reads, and Reading Builds Filters

Mel starts with the Oracle of Omaha, the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, whom she describes as worth $145 billion. In a 2015 interview with Professor Jeff Cunningham at Arizona State University, Buffett describes his media routine: "I just read and read and read. I probably read five to six hours a day." He reads five daily newspapers, magazines, company filings, annual reports and biographies. Mel points out that this habit is free, since libraries and online sources cost nothing.

What fascinates her is the payoff Buffett describes: reading has built filters in his mind. When someone pitches him an investment, he says, "I usually know in two or three minutes whether I have an interest." His speed, Mel explains, comes from decades of slowly accumulated knowledge. She connects it to her own experience: people often praise her ability to distill complex research from neuroscientists and medical researchers into simple takeaways, and she realizes that comes from 14 years of reading and researching psychology, happiness and human behavior daily, a habit that began when she was trying to climb out of a very dark period. Feed your brain every day in any field, she says, and you build a knowledge bank that helps you connect ideas and decide faster.

Habit 1b: Force Yourself to Do What Scares You

Mel adds a bonus lesson from Buffett: make a habit of doing things you're scared of that you know will improve you. In the same interview Buffett admits, "I was terrified of speaking in public when I was in high school." He avoided any class that required it, then finally paid $100 for a Dale Carnegie course after college, and joked that he proposed to his wife during the course, so he really got his money's worth.

Mel finds it hard to believe given how relaxed and relatable Buffett seems now, but that's the point: public speaking is a learnable skill. She says it's most people's number one fear, ahead of dying at number two. Her advice is to force yourself to speak up more with friends, family, roommates and at work, and if you're truly terrified, do what Buffett did and sign up for a class, because the class will make you do it. Being able to advocate for yourself, express yourself or give a wedding toast comfortably is a life skill that improves everything.

Habit 2: Taylor Swift Captures Every Idea

Mel, a devoted fan who took her daughters to the Eras Tour, highlights Taylor Swift's prolific songwriting. She notes that The Tortured Poets Department arrived with 16 songs and three bonus tracks, followed by a surprise anthology of songs 17 through 31, and that all 31 debuted on the Billboard Hot 100, with Swift holding the top 14 spots, a first in Billboard history. In a 2015 interview with singer-songwriter Ryan Adams, Swift explains that she's always prewriting: when she gets a cool observation or lyric idea, "I type it into this endless note pad on my phone".

She then explains the second stage. When writing Blank Space, she wrote the chorus and then searched through a year's worth of saved lyrics for lines that fit the dramatic, visual feel she wanted, cherry-picking phrases she'd thought of at random times. Mel's takeaway is that anything you want to be better at should be a daily practice, and that getting ideas out of your head grounds them in reality and creates a library you can return to. Otherwise, the epiphany you had while walking the dog is simply gone.

She offers her husband Chris as a model: for the 30 years she has known him, he has carried a tiny notebook that fits in his back pocket, pulling it out to jot down ideas while walking in the woods, stopped at a stop sign or cooking, and he has probably filled 50 of them. Mel admits she hasn't found her own system yet, blaming ADHD, dyslexia or plain disorganization; she has tried Moleskine journals and is currently using three-by-five note cards scattered everywhere, and says she may try the notes app like Swift. Later she adds that capturing ideas is also a way of honoring your own wisdom by treating your insights as worth remembering.

Habit 3: LeBron James Prioritizes Sleep

LeBron James is remarkable, Mel says, not just as one of the greatest basketball players ever but for sustaining elite performance across two decades while building businesses that made him a billionaire. She also praises the I Promise School he founded in his hometown of Akron, Ohio, for kids at high risk of slipping through the cracks, including many with learning differences like the ones Mel and her son have. On a podcast hosted by the school's students, a child asks him how he practices self-care. His answer: "What I do to practice self-care is I sleep. I love to sleep." He says he needs eight hours plus, that sleep re-energizes body, mind and spirit, and that it brings great dreams and great ideas. Mel notes he has said he tries to get 10 to 12 hours when on the road for games.

In a December 2021 post-game interview, after a week of flying around the country and dominating at age 37, LeBron was asked the secret of his stamina. He answered sleep, plus inspiration from watching his son's team play, and described sleeping at night and then going back to sleep again before the game. Mel jokes she'll send the clip to Chris next time he's up at 5:30 a.m. while she's still in bed: she's working on her stamina.

She ties this to what she's learned from sleep experts on the show, Dr. Poe and Dr. Robbins: sleep clears junk out of the brain like a Zamboni cleaning the ice, repairs and boosts the immune system, helps the body recover from stress and illness, and is when the day's learning and muscle memory take hold. Sleep, she says, is a free superpower habit.

Habit 4: Sara Blakely Makes the Call

Sara Blakely started Spanx with $5,000 in savings and landed Neiman Marcus as her first account. When people in the industry asked how she did it, her answer was simply, "I called them. Others had spent six or seven years setting up booths at trade shows hoping for a chance; Blakely didn't even know trade shows existed. Her lesson: what you don't know can be your greatest asset if you let it", as long as the self-talk of having no idea what you're doing doesn't shut you down.

Mel turns this into a habit: "You don't get what you don't ask for." Make the call, send the DM, show up, send the letter, whether it's asking someone out, raising something at work or pitching a buyer. The only thing stopping you, she says, is your own self-talk telling you that you don't know how or aren't ready.

Then comes the story of the meeting itself. Blakely flew from Atlanta to Dallas with her lucky red backpack from college, the prototype in a Ziploc bag from her kitchen and a color copy of packaging made on a friend's computer. Halfway through her pitch, she could read in the impeccably dressed buyer's non-verbals that she was losing her. Rather than panic, she asked the buyer to come to the bathroom with her, put the product on under her white pants, and showed her the before and after. The buyer said she got it and would try it in seven stores. Mel notes that Spanx went on to become a $1.2 billion company, and sums it up: make the call, stop talking yourself out of things, and remember that "Doing things differently differentiates you."

Habit 5: Shigeru Miyamoto Wanders

Mel admits Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda and Donkey Kong (the game she spent her childhood playing), isn't technically a billionaire, but she crowns him one anyway as the father of modern video games. His habit is regularly wandering city streets and parks, watching people and environments, which has inspired his game worlds and characters.

To explain why it works, Mel brings back neuroscientist Dr. Tali Sharot, a previous guest who studies habituation, the way the brain gets used to things we do repeatedly. To be creative, you need new inputs. In a clip, Sharot says: "Whatever kind of life you have, you can actually shake things up a little bit." That could mean changing your commute, taking a course (even a free online one), listening to a new podcast, or befriending someone whose personality is different from the people you usually spend time with. Diversifying your inputs dehabituates you and sparks new connections.

Mel adds two more examples. Maya Angelou rented a small hotel room to write in, believing the unfamiliar setting and lack of distractions helped her focus, and brought a dictionary, a Bible, a deck of cards and a bottle of sherry. And Chris, who is getting his master's degree and writing his first book, works from a local coffee shop three days a week because the different people and sounds make him more creative.

Habit 6: Jamie Kern Lima Listens to Her Knowing

The final habit comes from Mel's friend Jamie Kern Lima, who co-founded IT Cosmetics, sold it to L'Oreal for $1.2 billion and, Mel says, became the first female CEO of a L'Oreal brand. Jamie's habit is to trust her gut. In a clip from a past episode, she describes the difference between the no's you hear from the outside world and the knowing, intuition or still small voice you hear when you get quiet, and says every moment in life comes down to which one you listen to. She warns that "our self-doubt will lie to us all day long", and that when you ask whether it's true, your gut will give you the right answer.

Jamie goes further: "I don't believe your gut is ever wrong." It either leads you to the next right step or the next right lesson, and sometimes that lesson comes as a rejection you needed. Mel echoes this in her wrap-up: even if you take a risk and fail, you won't regret listening to your gut, because the rejections and hard moments are where the most important lessons are learned.

Putting It All Together

Mel closes by recapping all six: read daily to build mental filters and push yourself into scary skills like public speaking (Buffett); get ideas out of your head and into a notes app or notebook (Swift); protect at least eight hours of sleep and go back to bed if needed (LeBron); make the call and ignore the self-doubt (Blakely); wander, change your environment and meet people unlike you to shake loose ideas trapped by routine (Miyamoto); and listen to your knowing (Kern Lima). She says she believes listeners already know these in their gut, and that the only thing standing between anyone and these free habits is themselves.

Conclusion

Mel Robbins' tour of billionaire habits lands on a reassuring message: the routines behind extraordinary success are simple, and every one of them is free. Reading daily builds the knowledge that makes fast decisions possible, facing fears builds essential skills, capturing ideas creates a creative library, sleep powers performance, asking directly opens doors that others wait years for, novelty fuels creativity, and trusting your gut guides you through rejection toward the next right step. With vivid clips and personal stories, the episode is an energizing reminder that you can start borrowing these habits today.

This is a summary of "Simple Life Hacks That Will Change Your Future (Steal These Habits From Billionaires)" from The Mel Robbins Podcast, giving you the GIST so you can decide if you want the REST. Listen to the full episode.