Remember Your Future - One Epoch At a Time!

Today we are going to talk about epochs - a word which is not to be confused with epic. Although by the time we’re done, hopefully you’ll agree that epochs are indeed epic when it comes to remembering your future success!

The word epoch typically refers to a fixed period of time. For any linguists out here, the word is derived from Medieval Latin as epocha, and ultimately from the Greek epokhe meaning, "stoppage, fixed point of time".

Earlier this year, Stanford professor Andrew Huberman highlighted the use of epochs in his epic podcast on visualizations. His simple rules for great visualizations: Keep them Brief, Simple and Repeated. This formula works for both motor skills practice, such as a golf swing - as well as for more abstract visualizations such as winning a race, giving a speech, learning a language or reaching some type of financial or business goal.

In more detail - your basic visualization epochs should be kept short, lasting about 15 seconds and be viewed in the first person - meaning how achieving your goal will look from behind your eyes as opposed to having an imaginary drone filming you from above. In between each epoch, rest for 10 - 15 seconds.

Within each epoch, be sure to name and tag the elements of your vision. This combination of words and pictures helps to amplify your learning neural circuitry. 

If your goal is complex, or with a long time horizon, you can create a small “mini series” of 3-4 epochs that unfold one after the other culminating in ultimate success. For example, in marathon training you can repeatedly visualize the main epoch of crossing the finish line in 3:00 hours - but there are other supporting epochs that lead up to that goal such as successfully running a half-marathon, doing your speed work, sticking to your high performance training diet, etc.

Last but not least, it’s very important to get a good nights sleep after working on your visualizations.

For best impact, research finds that you should aim to repeat your simple, clear and well labeled epoch of goal success over and over for 15-20 minutes. Completing these intense epoch based sessions 3-5 times a week is enough to help improve real-world performance! You can literally remember your future into reality, one epoch making session at a time.

Finally, while remembering your future with this type of powerful, epoch-based training is a proven substitute for real-world training, it is not a complete substitute. In other words, after remembering your successful epochs, you still need to get out there and perform in the real world if you want to enjoy epic progress!