You don’t get time—to read, eat well, love your spouse, exercise, or whatever.
You have to make time. This applies to anything important to you. If it matters, you must carve out time in your day to ensure it happens.
Otherwise, life will ensure it doesn’t.
What would your work day look like if you compressed everything into just two hours? Well, I tried it.
I gave myself two hours to complete a project that I was sure was going to take all day to finish. You know what happened?
I finished it in two hours.
Most of the projects (work or otherwise) take much longer than they should. And I think the reason is because we spend so much time working around them instead of on them.
We check our emails. Look at text messages. Do a little work. Check the news to make sure we didn’t miss anything important (we didn’t). Maybe do a little more work.
If only we could more reliably put our heads down and sprint through the project at hand. We’d create so much extra margin in our personal lives.
If you could give yourself only two hours to get your most important, what would that look like? Could you keep your job that way?
(h/t to Tim Ferriss for the nudge in this direction)
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The people we admire most are the ones who act the most inauthentic in the moment.
Being authentic: the idea that you should do or say whatever it is you’re thinking or feeling in the moment. This is what we glorify.
Vs.
Being inauthentic: doing things we’d rather not. Doing them because we promised we would. Doing things regardless of how we feel in the moment.
War heroes, the type of people we admire for their bravery and selfless acts, are those who act decidedly inauthentic in the moment.
If they were being authentic—when the rounds cracked overhead or the grenade dropped in the middle of their buddies—they’d run as fast and far away as they could.
But instead, they make a conscious decision to act despite how they feel in the moment. They run towards the sound of battle, or throw themselves on the grenade to save their friends.
They do these things despite feeling terrified, exhausted, or pained. And we admire them for that.
We admire the same traits in people from all walks of life: athletes, leaders, writers, musicians.
We want them to do what they signed up to do. Imagine going to a concert where the musician didn’t play because “they just didn’t feel like it” when they got on stage.
So, in fact, we don’t want authenticity. We want professionalism, decency, integrity—for people to keep the promises they make… To do the things that need doing regardless of how they’re feeling in the moment.
In terms of behavior, authenticity leads to tantrums and inaction.
Inauthenticity, on the other hand, leads to professionalism.
(H/t to Seth Godin for inspiring this post.)
“If you want to change your body, being consistent is more important than anything else.”
—Precision Nutrition, “Prepare for liftoff”
This is wonderful advice. But it doesn’t just apply to your body.
With anything you pursue, consistency is the key factor that will determine success or failure, change or stagnation.
If you want to be a writer, showing up to the page consistently—upon waking for Morning Pages or each evening on a blog—is the most important thing you can do.
If you want to start a business, showing up to work on it every day—writing copy, sending emails, building an offer—is the way to do it.
Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do.” To be the thing you want to be, you have to do it day after day.
What do you want to become? What do you need to do consistently to become that?
I just finished reading Michael Hyatt’s latest blog post: “3 Ways to Create More Margin in Your Personal Life” and absolutely loved it.
I’ve been a follower of his advice for a few years now, but I’ve always just applied his stuff to my work life.
Today’s blog post showed me that I could easily apply his “Delegate, Automate, Eliminate” philosophy for things I do around the house.
Most interestingly, his advice is to find what you both enjoy and do well at home that also needs to be done.
For me, that’s cooking. I enjoy doing it, making menus, crafting yummy healthy meals, and serving it to people I love.
But most of the other things I have to do, I either hate doing or just don’t do well. The two that first came to mind were cleaning and lawn care.
But for whatever reason, I never thought to eliminate, automate, or delegate any of these things. So what did I do?
We’ve already hired someone to handle our lawn care from now on. The next step is to hire someone to help us keep our home clean.
That way, we’re helping someone else make a living, creating more margin in our free time, and focusing on what we enjoy and do best.
Check out the article here:
Once you read it, let me know in the comments what you’re planning to eliminate, delegate, or automate. I’d love to see what you’d like to focus on instead.
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In traditional Jewish & Orthodox Christian cultures, the new day begins at sunset, not sunrise.
Even God, in the book of Genesis, began his work days building the universe in the evening.
Yet we base all our work, plans, and decision-making around what time we wake up. And we end the day with (often inadequate) rest and sleep.
What if we flipped this idea on its head?
I’ve been listening to Michael Hyatt’s latest book, Win at Work & Succeed at Life. In it, he has an entire section dedicated to this topic and its importance.
But what interested me the most was the inverted way he looks at work and rest.
He made me realize that rest isn’t a reward for hard work…
In fact, rest is the vital precursor to doing excellent work day after day.
Think about it: in the ancient world, everyone worked long, hard days building, crafting, and farming. Without adequate rest, their bodies would have broken down, and their work would have suffered.
The crop might have failed, the buildings might have crumbled… Their creations would have worn out and broken. So their days began at sunset, which means they started their days with rest, relaxation, and sleep.
Most of us do knowledge work these days, but the same principle applies. We have to prioritize rest if we hope to succeed at work.
Can you change your mindset and start your days with rest?
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I’m sure you’ve experienced this before: you’re tired, exhausted, stressed out… You have too much on your plate and feel like you’ll never get everything done.
You’re staring at the car keys to drive to the gym…
Or at the blinking cursor on your keyboard where you’re writing your next post…
Or maybe it’s the pile of stuff in the corner you’ve been meaning to organize and put away…
Or that stack of books you want to read but just never get around to…
And every time you look at it, you get hit with a wave of anxiety. You just don’t see how you can do it all.
And because you can’t do it all, or you can’t do it all perfectly, you don’t do ANY of it.
I’ve been there. There have been days where I just didn’t feel like dragging myself to the gym. Days when I had no desire to write another blog post…
But I learned from my Precision Nutrition coaches how to get out of the f*** it mentality and make steady progress. The secret?
Just do 1% of whatever it is.
If I don’t feel like exercising, I tell myself “I’ll just do my warm-up and that’s it.” I don’t even tell myself “I’ll see how I feel.” I just do the warm-up.
I’d say 80-90% of the time, I end up doing the whole workout. But there have been times when I just did the warm-up. And you know what? That’s okay.
It’s so much better to do 1% of something every single day than it is to do 100% of something 3 days in a row… And then burn out, not doing ANYTHING for the next two weeks (or two years in the case of me exercising at one point…)
It’s the Kaizen method, the Japanese practice of tiny improvements over a long period of time that lead to massive gains in effectiveness.
You can do this with anything that’s overwhelming you. Just take the next right step.
Doing that small step is better than nothing at all. And if that’s all you do, you still did better than zero.
But chances are, you’ll do that one thing and feel motivated to keep going. If you do, then run with it!
But if you don’t, feel satisfied knowing you did something. And that you’ll do something again tomorrow.
(H/t to James Clear for reminding me about this practice. Read his post on the subject here.)
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