#444: Hugh Jackman on Best Decisions, Daily Routines, The 85% Rule, Favorite Exercises, Mind Training, and Much More

• Hugh Jackman doesn’t drink alcohol because It’s really important for him to wake up in a good frame of mind. He doesn’t go out and party afterward.
• He says that The party he has on stage is better than anything he can imagine anywhere else.
• He limits the amount of coffee intake and tries to quiet his monkey mind before going on stage by stretching and doing his warm-ups.

• You cannot overinvest in education
• If you are ever in doubt of what to do, go and learn more
• Everyone needs to feel appreciated. It doesn’t matter what they do, it doesn’t matter who they are, that’s a need in everybody.
• If you’re a guest, always offer to help clean up
• You always keep your word

After finishing high school, Hugh decided he wanted to study economics and law. However, halfway through his gap year, he realized that wasn’t the direction he wanted to go into so he switched to communications. Hugh ended up graduating college with a degree in journalism

In his last semester, he took a theater class because he needed to fill an elective and the class had no exams. Hugh ended up getting the lead role.

It was around that time that Hugh had the epiphany that he loved theater more than journalism or any other subject. 

Hugh graduated from drama school when he was 26

Whatever you want to accomplish in life, you can’t sit around waiting for luck to happen. You have to chase success. Be stoic, be hopeful, but work your ass off.

Most actors are unemployed so if you get a job you need to work like hell. Say yes to any role you can get.

Hugh also had this attitude you got to say yes to everything when you graduate. Just say yes, go for everything.

Even though Hugh wasn’t a singer, his agent told him to audition for the role of Gaston in Beauty and the Beast. Hugh ended up getting the role.

Hugh loves doing puzzles, he recommends getting a 1,000 piece puzzle from Wentworth. When he’s working on a puzzle, he has to set an alarm to remind him to go to sleep or otherwise he’ll stay up till 4 AM working on it

Doing puzzles puts him at ease he thinks it’s probably another form of meditation in a way. He also likes to turn memorable photos into puzzles he uses MyJigsawpuzzle to do so.

Hugh started taking cold showers after reading about the benefits of it in Tim’s book The 4 Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat Loss, Incredible Sex and Becoming Superhuman 

Hugh will read a book out loud for 15 minutes and then his wife will do the same. Right now Hugh and his wife are reading The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life by David Brooks

3 books Hugh gifts to people regularly:

• Here is New York by E.B. White
• This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life by David Foster Wallace
• The Overstory: A Novel by Richard Power