Therefore, if you have a passion, like making music, starting a business, or even a new career path entirely — the first step is to muster up the courage to and pursue it. As David Sarokin once wrote, “Passion is what gives you boundless energy, intense almost single-minded focus, and the willpower to overcome even the most daunting obstacles. You can take steps to define your own passion and put work in building your career or business.”

Of course, the journey will not be easy. But you can make the time to prepare for it, even if you’re working full time.

Here are some places to start:

1. Learn from online experts at your leisure

Whether you’re switching careers or pursuing a business, you can always take online classes to build the skills you need to succeed in your venture. For instance, General Assembly’s online design courses can help aspiring designers learn specialized skills like UI, UX, and motion technology. Meanwhile, Maryville University’s online RN to BSN programgrants registered nurses the ability to pursue other careers in the field, like being a nurse educator or analyst. Despite these courses being purely online, students are taught to apply lessons in a practical setting, allowing you to gain a bit of experience before you graduate.

With online coursework, there’s no rush to finish quickly either. You can choose a few classes at a time, and only what your schedule permits.

2. Grab a value-adding part-time internship

Another way to build the skills you need and get your foot in the door is to land a part-time internship.

Look into positions that can provide you with valuable experience. For instance, if your passion is music production, internships for recording studios and radio stations can help you become more familiar with both the equipment and the industry. Music production also has a business and marketing aspect to it, which makes part-time jobs for those positions helpful as well.

Remember, one of the 10 Things Nobody Can Take Away From You is your experience — you just need to actively look for opportunities to gain it. Online job sites like Indeed, Craigslist, and CoolWorks easily let you search for positions that match your needs and background.

3. Look for opportunities to connect with industry experts

Networking events have plenty of benefits for those who are pursuing a new venture. For example, they give you the chance to connect with suppliers and organizations, which may help jumpstart your business. They're also often attended by industry experts, making for great opportunities to ask for tips.

To maximize every networking event, an article from Business 2 Community finds that it’s good practice to go in with a plan. Define your objectives: Is it to take inspiration? Is it to ask questions? Your answers will allow you to start meaningful conversations with the right people.

Many networking events are held during weekend or after office hours, so you won’t have to worry about it affecting your current job. Networking platforms like Meetup and Eventbrite are good places to start looking for events.

4. Read professionally-written books during your free time

Aside from approaching industry experts, another way to gain knowledge about the field that you're pursuing is to read books written by them. For example, those who want to learn more about building an ecommerce empire can benefit from Launch by Jeff Walker or Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller.

Incidentally, this activity is a good option for people that neither have the time to attend networking events or take classes.

Plus, if a particular title you're looking for isn't available in paperback, you can always grab an electronic copy of it from Google eBookstore or Amazon. There are also websites like Project Gutenberg and Open Library that offer their book collections for free.

It's neither easy nor impossible...

Chasing your passion while maintaining a full-time job isn’t easy. However, it’s also not impossible.

Just remember to take on the extra load only when you can. You don’t want to burn out. Pursuing the thing you love should be an enjoyable journey, so don’t rush to get to the end.

About the Author

Gale Jinx is a full-time business freelancer who has made it her goal to help her fellow readers succeed. She hopes her articles will be a good guide for those who are struggling to earn money. In her free time she can be found walking her dog.

I got up at 5:40, meditated, planned my day, got the kids off to school, exercised, and was ready before 8 am.

This rarely happens, but when it does, my day goes well. ⠀

Just not this day.

This day, I crushed my morning routine but watched my afternoon suffocate slowly until, by 3 pm, it had died with no chance of revival.

I found myself procrastinating, skipping parts of my plan, and getting distracted.

The result was an ending that felt as if I’d left a lot on the table. It was a day that felt wasted.

Where did things go wrong?

Why was I able to have so much success in the morning, and so little in the afternoon? What did I do that killed my momentum?

Was it the decision to eat lunch with my wife?

Was it because I walked down to get the kids off the bus? ⠀

Should I have taken another break, meditated again, or eaten more protein?

If you’ve ever had a day like this, you may have also asked a dozen questions trying to figure out why.

Even if you start your day strong, ending it on a sour note feels as if you could have or should have done something else, something more, something different to keep the momentum and finish everything you’d set out to accomplish.

And while there may have been one distraction that derailed you, the problem is more fundamental than that.

After all, if you were truly committed to your tasks, if your job depended on getting them done, watching that cat video would have waited.

No, the problem isn’t the distractions themselves.

The problem is that your tasks aren't aligned with what matters. As such, the distractions beckon for your attention, and you can’t help but follow.

You can start strong with good intentions, but if you don’t have your why, your purpose, your end goal in mind, you’ll run out of steam and find yourself distracted by everyone and everything vying for your attention—a bunch of trivialities that seem important but are only urgent.

Every morning, or even the night before, take a moment to set your intention for the day. Remind yourself WHY you need to do what you plan to do.

Doing so will prevent you from starting strong, then going wrong.

“Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it.” ― Jane Wagner

I knew something was wrong the moment she answered.

“Your father had a stroke,” my mother explained. “He’s in the hospital now. The doctors are trying to find out more.”

The memory of my grandfather rushed to mind — a man I’d only ever known to be in a wheelchair from a stroke he’d had years before I was born. We used to watch Wonder Woman and eat popsicles together. He’d get pissed because I thought it was funny to hold the popsicle just out of his reach. It was a dick move, even for a four-year-old, and the sudden image of him reminded me just how helpless he could feel at times. It made me wonder if my father would suffer as he did.

Three days later, my wife received a similar call.

“I’m going to the hospital,” her mother explained. “I’m not feeling well, and I think there’s something wrong with my heart.”

As it turned out, my mother-in-law had a heart arrhythmia and was diagnosed with heart failure. Both her and my father’s issues were caused by, according to their doctors, high blood pressure from associated stress. It was the same diagnosis my wife had received a few weeks earlier at the dentist. She’d gone in with terrible tooth pain, thinking she needed a root canal. It turned out she was just clenching her teeth.

Had my father’s stroke occurred a year before my mother-in-law was hospitalized for heart issues, I wouldn’t have connected the two. Had my wife’s emergency dental visit happened a year after, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. But with such serious events happening only weeks apart, my pattern-matching brain couldn’t help but see a connection. All told, these three important people in my life were suffering from chronic stress manifesting itself in physical ways.

And how couldn’t it be? They’d turn on the news for a minute and be inundated with stories of death, destruction, and corruption. They’d open social media for a second and be hit with hateful, ignorant comments from so-called friends who claim the moral high ground and dismissed their views and opinions wholesale.

I know my blood pressure is up over the past year. Never before have I been so consumed by the happenings in our world. Whereas I used to pride myself on not spending a second worrying about things I couldn’t change, I now feel the need to feed on every fact, every opinion, and every article on politics, social injustice, and the global pandemic.

My parents did too. And I hope that changes. Because stress and anxiety and hate are literally killing them.

And me.

And you.

Stress and anxiety and hate are literally killing us

Stress doesn’t look like a murderer. It’s not dressed all in black, hiding in a dark alley, waiting to jump out and stab you. Even so, it kills. In fact, the American Institute of Stress claims that work-related stress kills over 120,000 people every year. Not with a knife, but with a drug called cortisol.

Cortisol is the hormone our bodies produce while under stress. It’s our body’s way of kicking off our fight or flight response — releasing the regulatory substance to increase our heart rate, slow the supply of blood to our digestive organs (so our brain and body can use it), and tighten our muscles in preparation for what’s to come. While these reactions are helpful for threatening situations, they are damaging when the stress doesn’t relent.

Increased cortisol levels linger for hours. By adding more stress before giving those levels a chance to decrease, cortisol levels simply stay high. That’s called chronic stress, and that’s when the body starts having real problems.

“The stress hormone cortisol just ravages our bodies when it’s dumped into our system repeatedly.” — Dr. Cynthia Ackrill

Chronic stress, according to the American Psychological Association, is linked to the six leading causes of death:

1. Heart Disease

2. Cancer

3. Lung Ailments

4. Accidents

5. Cirrhosis of the Liver

6. Suicide

Too much cortisol in the body for too long causes inflammation that, in addition to these six causes of death, can lead to autoimmune diseases, asthma, and allergies. It can lower the amount of blood the heart pumps out, causing cardiovascular problems such as heart attacks. Even our skin can be affected. Acne and other problems pop up with elevated levels of cortisol in your body. Add breathing issues, headaches, migraines, depression, insomnia, pain, bloating, and nausea to the list, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.

Which is precisely how I would describe modern media — a disaster.

We’ve got stressor after stressor hammering our brains. We click the clickbait, reading about how our world is falling apart. We slurp up the nightly news, seeing riots and death and ignorant politicians devising even more ignorant plans for our future. We read through every hateful and morally superior comment, feeling angrier and angrier over the cluelessness and hatred and idiocy on display. As such, our stress levels increase, our jaws tighten, our brows furrow, and our cortisol levels rocket higher than the SpaceX team on their inaugural launch.

But we can’t get enough of it. Not because it’s interesting (it is). Nor because we like feeling this way (we don’t). No, we keep going back for more because we’re biologically wired to.

We’re wired to mind the screaming

Imagine yourself in a jungle.

All around you is dense green foliage. The tree branches above creak quietly as they bend in the breeze. Birds chirp. Leaves rustle. Dewdrops pepper the ground from the canopy above.

It’s peaceful.

Suddenly, a chimpanzee shuts out the silence with a blaring shriek. Another joins him. And another. Until a cacophony of screaming fills the air.

You’d believe in an instant that something was wrong, and your body would prepare itself accordingly.

That chimp wouldn’t have to prove himself to you. He wouldn’t have to cite a peer-reviewed, double-blind study justifying why he sounded the alarm. No, he’d scream, and you’d react. Better to prepare yourself to fight (or flight) than to be caught by a predator on the hunt.

To your body, his scream saved you from certain death. His warning triggered a cortisol response that increased your heart rate, redirected blood to your brain, and tightened your muscles in preparation for a fight to the death. This, of course, is extremely helpful if a tiger is on the prowl. The problem for modern society is, our brains can’t distinguish between a predator and a hateful social media comment. We don’t have a separate system for dealing with global pandemics and big cats on the hunt.

When we read about the dangers of a viral outbreak, our brain hears a screaming monkey. When we see another murder on the nightly news, we hear a shriek. “PAY ATTENTION!” our brains say. “I’m warning you that your life could be in danger!”

In other words, though our thinking brain can tell the difference between fake news and a prowling tiger, our reptile brain kicks off a series of bodily reactions as if that tiger were breathing hot air on the back of our neck.

And if a tiger were breathing down your neck hour after hour, day after day, night after night, you’d get really fucking stressed.

We need a more balanced stress-diet

We need a more balanced diet. Not one of food. One for our mind.

In my new book, Home Early, I discuss the balance between too much stress and not enough. Bottom line upfront? Stress is not completely terrible. Stress, in measured doses, can actually be a motivator.

While too much stress can cause us humans to get really grumpy, too little stress results in an inactive lifestyle. You might recognize such a person as lacking drive or being too laid back; they just don’t seem to care about getting anything done and are under no pressure to produce results.

In reality, stress sits on a continuum starting with too little (the inactive couch-sloth) and ending with too much (the hospital-bound burnout case suffering from heart problems or a stroke). The right balance is managing your stress level to an optimum amount, right up to when you feel fatigued, but before exhaustion sets in. This is best illustrated in the Yerkes-Dodson chart below:

In 1908, Robert Yerkes and John Dodson set out to test the effects of stress on rats in a maze by, get this, shocking the shit out of them. When the rats were left to find their way out of the maze on their own, they managed, though it wasn’t an inspired performance. When the rats were given a mild shock, low enough to stimulate and motivate them, they performed better yet. When the shock was too strong, the rats panicked. They dodged around randomly, trying anything and everything to escape. In short, a certain level of stress increased their performance while too much destroyed it and eventually resulted in a panic-induced breakdown.

I’ve felt like a rat in a maze occasionally. You probably have too. Maybe, like my parents and wife, you’re feeling it now. Thinking about stress like a cup of water helps make sense of it all.

High-pressure situations add water to the cup. Stressful news articles do the same. Everything seems fine until you read that one ignorant social media comment. You feel okay until you see some asshat breaking windows out of historic buildings in our nation’s capitol. That’s when the cup overflows, and you feel pissed beyond belief. If you don’t take the time to pour some water out — by laughing, having sex, chatting with a friend, relaxing, sleeping, or otherwise recharging — the cup will eventually overflow, and you’ll end up feeling like a shocked rat in a maze.

You’ll know you overdid it if you feel some of the psychological and physiological symptoms of stress — tension, headaches, boredom, ulcers, high blood pressure, and lack of appetite, to name a few. Keep this up for too long, and your body won’t wait for you to destress. It will start shutting itself down with one of the six leading causes of death described above.

We have to get off the rocking chair

I get it. There’s reason to be stressed. Sometimes (most of the time?), it feels as if the world is burning down around us.

We hear the chimpanzees screaming from the trees about disease, injustice, fraud, conspiracies, and murder hornets (if those are even still a thing). As such, we feel compelled to consume every detail on them. We believe that, if we could only just come to know every fact, we’d be able to figure out a solution and protect ourselves from certain doom. But we forget that not everything is in our control. Sure, we’re concerned about these things, but they are not within our circle of influence.

In Steven Covey’s popular self-help book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, he discusses the difference between our “circle of influence” and “circle of concern.”

The circle of concern is filled with matters we care about. Things like our health, our children, getting to work on time, who the next president is, polar bears in Antarctica, and how many people have tested positive worldwide during a global pandemic. Some things we have control over. Most, we don’t.

Contrast that with the circle of influence, which is filled with issues that we have some ability to change or affect. Things like our health — which we can affect (either positively or negatively) through eating, exercise, and stress — fall in our circle of influence. Our children, the height of our lawn, and getting to work on time are others.

Our circle of concern is a superset of our circle of influence. In other words, the things we care about and can’t control (our circle of concern) is far, far bigger than the few things we can control (our circle of influence). As such, the amount of time we can spend worrying over just about anything is limitless. But in the wise words of Glenn Turner, “Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere.”

“Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere.” — Glenn Turner

If we’re going to worry, let’s at least worry about the issues that fall squarely in our circle of influence. That way, we can stop our rocking, get up, and do something about it. We can turn our concern into action.

For all our other concerns, those that fall outside our circle of influence, we need to ignore them or let them pass lest we stress out (and potentially kill ourselves) over matters we have no ability to change.

You’ve got to stop the screaming

At the time of this writing, we (Americans) spent the past year (2020) dealing with a global pandemic, racial injustice, riots, a hate-filled presidential election, and election fraud claims convincing half of Americans that our government was corrupt beyond measure and the other half that America was going bat-shit crazy. The rest of the world had their own problems.

Knowing now what we know about stress, is it any surprise to come across statements like this:

“Shilpi Khetarpal, a dermatologist at the Cleveland Clinic, used to see about five patients a week with stress-related hair loss. Since mid-June, that number has jumped to 20 or 25. Mostly women, ages 20 to 80, are reporting hair coming out in fistfuls…”

Or this:

“Throughout the pandemic, people who never had the coronavirus have been reporting a host of seemingly unrelated symptoms: excruciating headaches, episodes of hair loss, upset stomach for weeks on end, sudden outbreaks of shingles and flare-ups of autoimmune disorders. The disparate symptoms, often in otherwise healthy individuals, have puzzled doctors and patients alike, sometimes resulting in a series of visits to specialists with few answers.”

Or this:

“As of July 9th, [2020,] there were 153,000 more deaths than normal that were not covid related across 28 countries.” (a number that rose to 412,000 as of November 20, 2020)

It’s frightening. And it’s exactly why we have to stop the screaming.

If we know that stress causes all these issues, and if we know that our monkey brain hears articles and social media banter as a stress-inducing threat, and if we know that a single hateful news broadcast can increase our blood pressure, increase our anxiety, and make us worry about the state of the world as if our life depended on it, then why the fuck are we listening to that shit? What’s the use in stressing out, thinking about everything wrong with the world, then going to bed realizing there’s nothing we can do about any of it?

It just breeds a feeling of anger, despair, and hopelessness — all feelings we can avoid, or at least temper, to save ourselves from the ill effects of chronic stress.

The world we live in is the one we focus on

“This is an unprecedented disaster for most of us that is profound in its impact on our daily lives. But it’s different from a hurricane or tornado where you can look outside and see the damage. The destruction is, for most people, invisible and ongoing.” — Ann Masten, PhD

Just like anyone else, I want to live in a virus-free world. I want my kids to grow up in a just world. But in order to live in that world, I have to focus on the changes in the world that I can actually make, and I have to stop fretting about the bullshit happening everywhere else that doesn’t affect me (or that I can have no effect on).

It’s time we stop gnashing our teeth over a news cycle that’s specifically aimed at engaging our emotional brain centers to get a reaction. It’s time we stopped participating in hateful, hurtful, personal attacks on social media that will neither change the others’ mind nor solve the problem at hand. It’s time to refocus on what really matters, recognizing what we can control and how we react to stress in our lives. As Marci Lobel, director of the Stress and Reproduction Lab at Stony Brook University in New York said, “During this period of the pandemic, we are all experiencing a high level of stress. What matters is how we respond to it.”

From this moment forward, we can all replace stress-generating activities with nourishing ones:

1. Instead of getting depressed or angry or spun-up by the news on shit that’s completely outside of our ability to control, we could meditate or take a walk or pray.

2. Instead of fighting with so-called friends on social media over ideals and about shit that will literally help nobody nor change anything, we can disengage from hateful content and turn our social media feeds into an inspiring place with pictures of friends, family, and positive messages.

3. Instead of doom scrolling through Instagram, comparing our lives against useless images of influencers sprawled over their Lambo’s in front of their 6,000 square foot mansion, we could exercise.

We could talk to family, even if only virtually. We could learn a new hobby. We could volunteer at a local shelter. We could buy a gift for a friend. We could have sex.

Any one of these activities are completely in our control and will add value to our lives.

Should all else fail, we can shift our focus to being aware of what’s happening. We can mentally step back from the stress and view it from afar, recognizing and acknowledging how the news, social media, etc. are making us feel. Then, and most importantly, we can recognize that we are fine. We are alive. We are breathing. We are safe. And, what’s happening elsewhere in the world doesn’t have to affect us unless we let it.

I am extremely grateful that my father walked out of the hospital a few days after being admitted for his stroke where half his body didn’t function. I am wildly lucky that my mother-in-law left the hospital on her own a few days after being admitted for heart arrhythmia that left her short of breath and fearful of a pending heart attack. In some sense, his stroke and her heart issues were a warning shot across the bow — a wake-up call that the stress they felt could have severe consequences, the worst of which could be death.

It was a wake-up call for me, too, inspiring the research and message of this very article.

I hope it does the same for you.

Because stress and anxiety and hate are literally killing us. And, as dismal as it sounds, nobody’s coming to save us. It’s up to each and every one of us to be aware and do what we can to leave the jungle of screaming monkeys and find a different, more peaceful, more meaningful space for our minds.

References

1. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-yerkes-dodson-law-2796027

2. http://v2020eresource.org/content/files/stress_jul-sep02.pdf

3. https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/14/health/stress-coronavirus-physical-impact-wellness/index.html

4. https://www.slma.cc/the-science-of-stress/

5. https://www.miamiherald.com/living/article1961770.html

6. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html

7. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/health-coronavirus-usa-cost/

8. https://www.marchofdimes.org/complications/stress-and-pregnancy.aspx

9. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2020/05/11/pregnancy-stress-coronavirus/%3FoutputType=amp?espv=1

10. https://elemental.medium.com/your-surge-capacity-is-depleted-it-s-why-you-feel-awful-de285d542f4c

11. https://apple.news/ABwClk0mzSg-OVfU136pzKg

How can you live a balanced, productive, and meaningful life?

Hell if I know, but I think about it. Like, a lot.

Every once in a while, I write something that matters. And, when I do, you’ll be the first to know. Sign up for my newsletter and I’ll immediately take you to one such article, 10 Ways to Massively and Immediately Improve Your Life.

Originally published on Medium.com.

This article is a shameless promotion of my 365-day holistic planner available on Amazon.

But before you click “back,” hear me out.

Because, by the end of this article, I’m going to give you a digital version of that planner for free (scroll down and click the link if you can’t wait). But also because I’ve spent the last decade refining and tweaking and tailoring a 360 degree, science-backed productivity system focused on improving all seven important aspects of my life.

It’s been so powerful for me that I wrote a book about it, have written countless articles about it (this being yet another), and have spent the last few years meticulously drawing out every month, week, and day in my paper notebook with a ruler and pen.

Why it’s so powerful is the purpose of this article. And it comes down to these seven essential elements:

1. Don’t create a resolution; define a mantra

I think New Year’s resolutions, in general, suck. Like the As-Seen-On-TV Ronco Rotisserie, you set it and forget it.

Unfortunately, once forgotten, you don’t end up with a juicy chicken. You end up stricken with guilt, feeling a small sense of hopelessness for the rest of the year. You know, like when you promise yourself you’ll exercise two hours a day, seven days a week, and then skip it after the second week of January.

This is exactly why the first essential element of planning your year is not a New Year’s resolution; it’s a yearly mantra.

A yearly mantra is, very simply, a statement of growth for your year. A word or three about what will guide you through the next 365 days. Last year my mantra was “Connect.” This year my mantra is “If Not Me, Then Who?” (thanks to Dan Crenshaw’s influential book, Fortitude).

“Connect” was a powerful mantra because it reminded me to connect with everything I do. Connect with my family. Connect with my business. Connect with my readers and exercises and food. This year, I hope my mantra of “If Not Me, Then Who?” will remind me to get to work, to take care of my family, to do the best job possible. After all, if not me, then who else will?

Unlike a resolution, a mantra can’t be broken. It’s a guideline. A mental slogan. A focus word for your year. With this word as your guide, everything you do can be measured against it. Does eating a chocolate peanut-butter buckeye fit with your mantra of “Healthy”? Probably not. Does spending 30 minutes on a treadmill? Yep.

Now, instead of focusing on simply one aspect of your life by resolving to work out seven days a week, you can bring your mantra to all aspects of your life, moving and changing yourself for the better in the direction of your choosing.

Other past mantra’s of mine have included:

1. Focus, for when I was constantly distracting myself with iPhone games like Clash of Clans or spending too much time picking the perfect desktop background.

2. Simplify, for when I was overcomplicating my business and personal life by adding too many bullshit life-hacks that weren’t helping me.

3. Clarity, for when I was all over the place and wanted to hunker down and spend time on what mattered most.

Sure, sometimes I forget my mantra. But not often. Primarily because when I feel lost, I always look to my mantra to refocus my efforts on what’s important to me for the year. But also because, as we’ll discuss in the next section, I have a system for reminding myself of this mantra (and many other things that matter) built into my yearly plan…

2. Writing down what matters once isn’t enough

So many planners either:

a) don’t ask you to think about what matters at all, or 
b) only ask you once.

Asking once is better than never, but not by much.

Think about how often you get distracted by work, games, social media, or news. Even that New Year’s resolution you used to make likely became ineffective after a few weeks.

My point is, you get busy. Things change. Life throws you curveballs, and you have to adjust. If you don’t continually refresh that which matters most to you, it’s too easy to forget and trudge through the rest of the year, responding to every new distraction that interrupts your attention.

So you have to continually remind yourself what matters, lest you wander.

At the very least, weekly is a good cadence. Once a week, remind yourself where you are going and what you are doing. If that’s too often, monthly can work, but I wouldn’t wait longer than that.

With a brief written reminder of your yearly goals every week, you set the tone for what’s to come. You recall where you are going and set your intentions to adjust course for the upcoming week, the week after, and the week after that. Doing the same thing on a weekly basis helps remind you where you need to find yourself at the end of the month, and what you need to do this week to get there.

Spend some time at the beginning of your year defining what matters, then spend a bit of time each week reminding yourself of where you are going. With a clear direction for your year, and a reminder every week, before you know it, day after day will pass filled with intentional, meaningful work that matters to the vision you’ve set for your year.

You do have a vision for your year, don’t you? It’s the next essential element of a yearly plan.

3. Look back from your future

Get into your Delorian and set the time for December 31st, one year in the future. In that future, one year from now, you will find yourself having lived the absolute best year of your life.

It’s incredible. You are so proud. You can’t believe what you’ve become, and so you set out to ask your future self how you did it:

1. What did the best year of your life look like?

2. Who did you spend time with? How often?

3. What did you accomplish? What are you proud of? So proud that you opened a nice bottle of wine?

4. In what ways did you grow? How did you accomplish that?

5. How did you spend your days, your weeks, your months?

6. How many vacations did you take and when? Where did you go? What did you do? What made them so relaxing and rejuvenating and enjoyable?

Get the idea?

You’re describing, in detail, how an awesome year would go. Not a fantasy year where you somehow came into billions of dollars, bought yourself a personal jet, and lived a complete fantasy. No, a realistic year in which you leveraged all your resources, all your relationships, and made it an amazing one for yourself.

Why do this at the beginning of the year? So you can design the year ahead.

Without this vision clearly in mind, it’s too easy to simply float through the year, letting the wind take you where it may. With a vision in mind (and reviewed regularly, like we just discussed), you can know better what needs to be done to achieve that vision and see more quickly when you are getting off course.

You can also easily transform your vision into goals, which you’d then break down into milestones. Let’s discuss that now.

4. Start big, focus small

I know you have big goals for the year. You may have even written those goals down. But the problem with goals isn’t usually setting them; it’s finding a way to achieve them. That starts with breaking them down.

At the beginning of each year, spend some time setting really big, achievable goals for yourself. Goals that will move the needle for you. Goals that will help you achieve your vision.

But you can’t stop your planning there. If you want to actually achieve your goals, you have to break them down so you can focus on one thing at a time.

In my book, Home Early, I write about my $3 million sales goal in 2018. With a number that big, it was nearly impossible to envision how I’d get there. I knew that I needed to hit that number (lest I be fired), but how the hell was I supposed to land $3 million in sales?

The answer is one sale at a time.

At the beginning of the year, I set $1.5 million to be my goal for the year. After some quick math, I knew I needed to sell $125,000 per month to acheive that target.

But I didn’t stop there. I also knew that I needed five meetings, on average, to make one sale. And to get those five meetings, I’d need to call thirteen people. Doing that math, I quickly found out that I’d need to call 33 people per month or eight people per 5-day workweek to achieve my target.

1. How do I bring in $1.5 million? Make sales.

2. How do I make sales? Pitch prospects.

3. How do I pitch prospects? Make calls.

4. How do I make calls? Just fucking do it.

Making calls, specifically eight per week, was therefore my broken down goal. And that was much more achievable than selling $1.5 million in products.

Set your big, hairy, audacious goals. But don’t stop there. Break them down into small, measurable, achievable chunks. From there, you can start tracking them daily, and you can start building those chunks into your schedule, which happens to be the next essential element of your yearly planner.

5. A plan without a schedule is just wishful thinking

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “a goal without a plan is just a wish.” I’ll add to that and say, “A plan without a schedule is just wishful thinking.”

So many planners help you define your goals. Some even help you define your purpose and vision. But very few combine help you translate that plan into a schedule for your day. The problem with that is, if you don’t think about how you are going to spend your time, even your best plan will go to waste when distraction hits. As Mike Tyson once said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

Many planners stop at planning. A good planner will make room for you to schedule your plan, so you have time to actually work it. It’s not complicated. But it does need to be done every day.

First, with your plan in mind, prioritize your day. What is it that needs to be done first? What next? What after that? Choose two or three things that will keep you on track for achieving your broken-down goals for the week, which will keep you on track for the month and year. Then, put those priorities on your schedule.

Find open chunks of time throughout your day and set a date with yourself to work that priority to ground. Literally, block off time with yourself to do your important work. Instead of doing what we all tend to do, which is get to our prioritize when we get to them, make time for them. And making time for them means literally ignoring everything else.

In order to execute your beautiful plan for the year, you need to work on it. And working on any plan takes time. If you don’t block out the time to work your plan, life will (and always does) get in the way.

With your priorities scheduled, you will no longer fall victim to interruptions. Random emails and events will not fit into your schedule and so won’t get in your way. You’ll actually be able to work on the priorities of the day, which means you’ll be working on things that matter. And working on things that matter will make for a most productive year.

6. It’s an all-in-one solution

Look, this is simple. If you have to carry a planner and a calendar and a scheduler and a notebook, you’re not going to carry any of it. There are too many physical and mental barriers to consistently using all of them. The burden is simply too high.

Questions like, “where did I put that to-do” or “where did I keep those notes about XYZ meeting” come up. And if you can’t answer that question immediately, you will revert back to chaos. If you don’t know where you left your to-do list, you’ll go back to trying to remember everything you need to do.

So the sixth essential element of a “planner” is to incorporate all of these aspects into one single system… one single notebook to rule them all.

1. At the beginning of the year, you draft your vision, set your goals, and plan your months.

2. At the beginning of each month, you break down your goals, set your habits, and plan your weeks.

3. At the beginning of each week, you break down your goals further and prioritize your days.

4. At the beginning of each day, you schedule your hours and get to work.

5. Then, throughout the workday, you take notes and capture miscellaneous tasks for the future.

It’s all there, in one system, in one planner that you have with you at all times, so the path to your vision is never out of reach.

And, it incorporates one final element to help you continually learn and grow throughout the year…

7. It leaves room for introspection

If you don’t learn, you don’t grow. And you can’t learn if you don’t take the time (or have the space) to incorporate it into your life.

Every hour of every day we are learning something. We learn which foods we like and which we don’t. We learn what negotiation tactics work and which don’t. We learn how to talk to others, how to be more efficient, and how to become better humans. But if we don’t take the time and space to incorporate what we learn into our being, we’re not actually learning so much as passing by.

Which is why the final essential element of a yearly planner is to leave room for introspection.

It doesn’t have to be anything complicated. It just has to be consistent. Every day, we can ask ourselves what we learned.

1. What successes did you have, and how can you build on them?

2. What was your biggest win?

3. What can you improve upon tomorrow?

Like the continual self-improvement found in Kaizen (where you focus on getting just 1% better every day), asking yourself simple questions like this will help you incorporate what you learned into tomorrow. Your most important lessons won’t be forgotten. And, at the end of your year, you’ll be amazed at how much you’ve grown.

The 7 Essential Elements of a Yearly Planner

To make good on my promise, I want to share with you my yearly planning system, based on my Amazon bestselling book, Home Early.

I’ve painstakingly created this planner to have all seven essential elements:

1. A space to define your yearly mantra

2. Monthly and weekly spaces to remind yourself of your vision and goals

3. Questions to set your vision for the year

4. Spaces to define your goals and break them down monthly

5. Daily pages to prioritize your day and schedule your plan, so you get your most important work done

Of course, you don’t have to use my planner. Any planner will do… even a blank one (I love the Bullet Journal methodology in a dot-grid Moleskine notebook). But I got sick of repeatedly drawing out my monthly, weekly, and daily plans, so created this one to save time.

Regardless of what planner to choose, by making sure it has these seven essential elements, you will be far more likely to find your future self happy, fulfilled, and having had a massively successful year filled with meaningful work and relationships that matter.

Free Download — Home Early Yearly Planner

Learn more about the Home Early Yearly Planner, and grab the Home Early Yearly Planner | Digital Edition for free.

Thank you for your support, and I hope you have a massively productive and successful year!

Even with starting out small, you face a unique set of obstacles as a business owner — but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try beating these challenges. So with that in mind, below are several tips on how to overcome the challenge of owning a small business.

Money management

Managing cash flow is an aspect of the business that takes getting used to. Not every entrepreneur is number-savvy and many struggle with keeping track of their finances. Research shows that the top cash flow challenges for small businesses are managing receivables, invoicing, payroll, and acquiring capital. Because finances are not something you should learn through trial and error, it’s best to outsource financial consulting or accounting services. These professionals can teach you the ropes of money management, which any business of any scale needs to survive and grow.

Protecting against cybersecurity and legal threats

Most would think that hackers only target big companies but that’s not true at all. Small businesses are just as much in danger of these risks because of their lax cybersecurity measures. Small businesses store valuable data too, such as customer data, and bank details, which is why you should implement basic cybersecurity strategies. Install anti-malware or anti-virus software, use multi-factor authentication protocols, and increase the security of your network. Outsource cybersecurity services if needed and always prioritize training your staff on new safety protocols.

Mishandling of critical data, such as your customers’ personal information, is a major legal threat. There are other ways you can get sued by customers, employees, or even other businesses. Negligence and copyright infringement are two examples. What many businesses do is set up a limited liability company (LLC) to soften the blow of any lawsuits. As an LLC, your personal and business liabilities are separate unlike with sole proprietorships. In the case of a lawsuit, you can protect your personal assets if you have to settle. That said, your business will still be held legally responsible and it might tarnish your reputation. Avoiding that road means you should put protective measures in place and observe proper business procedures.

Competing with other businesses

Let’s face it: there are a dozen other businesses offering the same product or service as you. But while competition makes the playing field a lot more difficult, it’s a sign that your business is actually on the right path.

Instead of letting your competitors beat you, what you can do is use them as examples for your own business success. Look at what others are doing right and wrong — learn and apply them to your own business. Consider the areas that can still be improved or innovated upon and never let complacency put you in last place. For example, find a different way to deliver your goods that others may not be doing yet, like through a user-friendly e-commerce platform. Think of ways you can provide a better and more personalized customer experience to increase brand loyalty.

Implementing effective marketing strategies

In many cases, what gives others the edge is their marketing. Poor visibility is one of the biggest challenges small businesses face because they might not have the budget to launch a marketing campaign. But don’t think that you can’t do anything with limited funds. Social media is, for the most part, free and can be utilized to create a strong online presence.

Start by following the basics of branding, which entails creating a logo, a website, slogans and product taglines, and choosing a color scheme to go with your brand. All of these combined should be something that represents your business, an image you want to be associated with your company. Your branding needs to be consistent across the board, which means all of your online pages should have the same feel and tone to it. It should be clear, easy to recognize, and most importantly, attractive to potential customers.

As it’s told, a school of koi swam upstream through China’s Yellow River. They worked together, against the current, until they came upon a waterfall called the Dragon Gate.

Upon seeing the obstacle, many koi turned away, unwilling to tackle the challenge. The rest remained, jumping with all their might in an attempt to reach the river above.

But their efforts brought more struggle.

Nearby demons heard the koi’s splashing and came to mock them. They raised the waterfall to discourage them from succeeding. Decades passed and, one by one, the koi became disheartened, floating away with the others...

Until only one koi remained.

After 100 years the of trying, this single koi gathered all his strength and leaped over the waterfall, into the river above, where the gods transformed him into the most magnificent creature in Chinese culture, a golden dragon, as his reward. To this day, he flies in all his glory above the water, gathering wisdom, content with a life well lived.

The meaning of this fantastical legend is all too obvious.

It tells the story of persistence in the face of challenge, effort in the face of adversity, and unfailing determination.

But it also speaks to staying true to oneself. Of always believing in yourself, of always swimming toward your purpose.

It reminds me of a quote I first heard from Brian Roberts:

Like the koi who became a golden dragon, when you do what only you can do, you differentiate yourself from the crowd. When you focus your strengths towards your purpose, you overcome challenges others cannot.

So, today, remember the legend of the koi—take that one thing that only you can do and use it to overcome the obstacles you face. You may not transform into the legendary golden dragon, but the strength and focus you find in your purpose will help you crest the next Dragon Gate you encounter, whenever and wherever that may be.

The first is to follow your interests, becoming a jack of all trades but master of none.

If you walk this path, your bookshelf may look like a public library. You’ll find almost any conversation interesting, especially one in which you’re taught something new. You may consider yourself an amateur photographer, and chess player, and writer pencil, and chef, and weightlifter, and... you get the idea. It’s not that you don’t have a specialty, you just love learning about all the world has to offer.

The second way is to focus, diving deep into a single interest, becoming an expert in your field.

If you subscribe to this life, photography and chess and writing and cooking and weightlifting are all a waste of time distracting you from your main interest (unless, of course, your interest is one of those topics). Sure, you enjoy discovering new things, but you’re single-mindedly focused on your vocation.

Neither path is wrong (or right). In fact, the world needs both types—those who learn a bit about everything and those who learn a lot about one thing.

Those who learn a bit about everything find novel connections between disparate ideas.

Those who learn a lot about one thing find novel ways of pushing the limits in their field.

What the world doesn’t need is someone who lives the third way—the “me too” way—the person that copies and mimics and tries to get ahead by following the leaders.

Those who work the “me too” angle only learn what they need to make a buck. They find neither novel connections between disparate ideas, nor do they push the limits in their field. They just add to the noise.

Don’t live the “me too” way. Instead, find that one thing that lights your fire or let your interests guide you. Discover, stand out, and embrace what makes you different. Find your purpose and bring it to the forefront of all that you do.

Which way are you living?

About the Author

Michael Mehlberg

HUSBAND, FATHER, ENTREPRENEUR, BUSINESS STRATEGIST, AUTHOR, FITNESS NUT, ORGANIZATION FREAK, PRODUCTIVITY JUNKIE

I help high-achieving entrepreneurs organize their brain and schedule so they can organize their life and business.

Subscribe to my free, weekly newsletter on personal excellence and business mastery that one client called “The Owners Manual to an Awesome Life.”

The two go hand-in-hand.

For example, you can’t get results without putting in work. But just because you put in the work doesn’t mean you’ll get results.

"One of the reasons people don't achieve their dreams is that they desire to change their results without changing their thinking." -- John C. Maxwell, Thinking For a Change

Furthermore, just because you get results doesn't mean your work is meaningful.

The gamer who sits at home playing Call of Duty alone in his parents' basement may be killing it, but has he really made anyone else’s life better?

"Your work is the single greatest means at your disposal for expressing your social intelligence. By being efficient and detail oriented in what you do you demonstrate that you are thinking of the group at large and advancing its cause." -- Robert Greene, Mastery

When you’re not getting results, try changing your thinking. Try looking at your problem from a different angle. Ask yourself different questions. When you do, your results will change. Maybe not for the better, but you’ll at least walk away with data that can inform your next move.

On the flip side, regardless of the results you’re getting, ask how you can deepen the meaningfulness of your work. How can your work advance the cause of your tribe?

Eventually, you’ll strike the right balance between the two—doing meaningful work that positively affects others and getting results that reward your efforts.

There is work, and there are results.

The two go hand-in-hand.

About the Author

Michael Mehlberg

HUSBAND, FATHER, ENTREPRENEUR, BUSINESS STRATEGIST, AUTHOR, FITNESS NUT, ORGANIZATION FREAK, PRODUCTIVITY JUNKIE

I help high-achieving entrepreneurs organize their brain and schedule so they can organize their life and business.

Subscribe to my free, weekly newsletter on personal excellence and business mastery that one client called “The Owners Manual to an Awesome Life.”

I took the day off to home school my kids and I'm about ready to pull my friggin’ hair out.

Not because of my kids.

They're troopers. They're working hard. They're dealing with this $#%@ #covid19 hand better than many adults.

No, I was frustrated because I didn't know how long each assignment would take, didn't know when they'd get tired, and had no idea how to move them through their planned education. As such, we failed a math test, spent twice as long as we should have on history, and I missed feeding them all lunch.

Tonight, I'm recommending my wife to sainthood.

"It's a lack of clarity that creates chaos and frustration." — Steve Maraboli

Now, with a bit of perspective, I see exactly what went wrong.

I had a plan, but I didn't have a schedule.

Planning vs. Scheduling

(Taken from my upcoming book, Home Early: Destroy Distraction, Become Powerfully Productive, and Finish Work Before Dinner)

Remember Franklin Planners? My Dad used to tote one everywhere.

Bound in leather and stuffed thick with assorted papers, it was the executive professionals’ badge of the 1990s.

I remember spying it on the kitchen counter, wondering at its contents, imagining it packed full of world-changing business deals, c-level contacts at publicly traded companies, and strategic plans for supreme corporate domination. Alas, when I grew old enough to afford my own, Franklin Planners were no longer in vogue, replaced instead by their digital equivalent, the Palm Pilot.

I bought this digital copycat, learned how to write its semi-cryptic letters, and didn’t look back for 15 years. Now, I see there was always something missing.

The Palm Pilot was not the digital equivalent of a paper planner. Neither are its successors: the BlackBerrys, the Surface Books, or the iPhones of the world. Something was lost in the translation from paper to silicon. The most important part of a planner. The ability to plan.

There’s a difference between planning and scheduling.

Planning is thinking about what you want your life to look like in one, three, five, ten, or twenty years. Where do you want to be? What do you want to have? What do you want to be doing?

Scheduling, on the other hand, is what you do today, tomorrow, or this week. Plans are your mission, your vision, your goals. Schedules are your meetings and other calendar events. They are the blocked off times where you do the work necessary to achieve your goals.

For example, your plan for tomorrow might be to refurnish your dining room. Your schedule will be to go to Costco at 9 am, spend an hour shopping for and buying a dining room table, drive home at 10 am, unload and put the thing together at 10:30 am, then spending the next two hours painting the dining room, have a 12:30 pm lunch for 30 minutes, hang a new light fixture at 1 pm for one hour, then play video games until bed.

If you have a plan without a schedule, you’ll have good intentions without action. This leaves you vulnerable to getting lost in a sea of urgent tasks that distract you from your goals. You’ll want to buy a dining room table, but may wake up late and get to Costco when it’s an effing zoo, taking two hours instead of one. You’ll have to interrupt your painting with lunch and then might lose yourself to the mental pit of Instagram for a bit. Before you know it, it’ll be 5 pm and you’ll have wet walls, a half-hung light fixture, and nowhere to eat.

On the other hand, if you have a schedule without a plan, you’ll work hard toward an unknown goal and make progress toward someone else’s vision. You’ll drive to Costco to just shop… for anything. You might buy a book, you might buy one of their thick and meaty hot dogs. You won’t get your dining room started, instead leaving to spend the next hour with stomach pain in the bathroom reading your new book.

Build your plan first, then schedule daily. Create a direction for yourself, then block time to execute. Design your life, then live it.

“If it’s not on your calendar, it’s not a priority. If you don’t have goals for it, you’re probably not thinking about it. If you’re not thinking about it, then it’s probably falling apart.” —Benjamin Hardy

The Beauty of Scheduling

The beauty of scheduling what needs to get done is this: Your time is blocked, making it far less likely that distractions, meetings, or other people will take it. When you schedule a task, you’re more inclined to work on it. When you schedule a task, others can’t capitalize on your time without your permission.

Imagine two scenarios.

In scenario one, you have a free and open calendar. You’ve got goals, and you’ve even broken those goals down. You know what you should be working on today, but are giving yourself all day to do it.

What happens when the phone rings, when someone comes to the door, or when a new email comes in?

When the phone rings, it’s easy to think, I wonder what the caller needs? I can probably help them. I’ll just answer it. When someone comes to your door, you have no reason to turn them away. After all, your calendar is clear; you’ll just get to your important work later. When an email comes in, it’s far too enticing to triage it immediately. You get bonus points for being responsive, and now your inbox has one less todo to deal with.

The problem with this approach is that you’re not doing your important work. You’re not even doing your work. You’re doing other peoples’ work. You’re replacing your goals with whatever urgent matter someone else has brought to your attention.

In scenario two, you get a knock at the door, a phone call, an email, but you have something on your calendar. You only have so much time to finish before your next meeting. If you don’t work on it now, there’ll be no time to squeeze it in since the rest of your day is scheduled.

These interruptions are far easier to control. You can simply ignore that call and set a reminder to call them back later. You can tell the person at your door that you really need to get something done, but you’ll stop by later to see what’s up (or ask them to send you an email so you can work on their request later). You can set a time later to answer all your emails at once, removing the start/stop overhead of going to your email app, checking to see what’s new, then trying to context-switch back to whatever it was you were doing (and risking getting sucked into the rabbit hole of email while you’re in there).

Sure, some things will have to get addressed instantly.

Your boss may come to your door with a time-sensitive matter. Your spouse may call and say the pipes exploded in your house and the basement is flooding with toilet water. An email may come in with a late bill notice, saying they’re going to shut down your electricity if you don’t pay immediately.

Those are worthy distractions. But they’ll be few and far between. The multitude of interruptions you face on a daily, even hourly basis are usually never emergencies. They can almost always wait.

They can wait until you schedule them.

When you get to the end of the year, will you remember if you answered that email immediately? Will you remember that phone call? Will you remember what task you did for someone who came to your door unannounced?

Likely not.

But you will remember that you hit your goal. You will realize that you achieved all that you set out to achieve. You will have a new sense of direction and hope for the future—a future where you are in control of your schedule, your calendar, your goals, your focus, your vision.

Schedule Your Day

Years ago, while visiting San Francisco on a business trip, I arrived at my hotel just before midnight. I had an early morning so needed to get to bed, but was too spun up from the natural hustle and bustle of travel to sleep. Not wanting to get involved with a Netflix show, I dug through a care basket left by the hotel staff and found what I now call a daily planning card.

This card was quite simple. It was the size of an index card with times printed along the left from 7 am to 9 pm in 30-minute increments. I filled it out, went to bed, and awoke to the most productive day I’d ever had.

Ever.

Benjamin Franklin is well known for his daily plan, which he laid out in advance. Every morning, he'd rise at 5 am to the same daily ritual: work, read, work some more, rest, examine his day, and sleep. He is also well known for saying, "by failing to plan, you are planning to fail." Good advice from a legend. But he's not the only one. Alexander Graham Bell once said, “Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.” Clearly these two gents held planning and preparation in high esteem.

Now, before you say that those two historical figures are out of touch with modern life, take note. Former American Express CEO, Kenneth Chenault, lists three important things to finish the following day so he can wake up and immediately start working on what matters. In fact, in a survey of 163 corporate leaders from Fortune 500 companies, the average leader spent 25 minutes on strategy and planning every day.

If this anecdotal evidence isn't enough, researchers Bruce Britton and Abraham Tesser studied the effect of time management practices on college students' GPAs. Shockingly, they showed that time management skills were a bigger influence on GPA than high-school SAT scores.

In my upcoming book, Home Early: Destroy Distraction, Become Powerfully Productive, and Finish Work Before Dinner, I talk about planning vs. scheduling and the importance of each. I also give three methods you can use to schedule your day, depending on your appetite for details. Grab the first chapter here and get notified when it's published.

In the meanwhile, take note: Planning your day and scheduling it in advance is the single most effective thing you can do to produce consistency measurable results.

And so, with that in mind, I'm off to finish my wine and build a schedule for my kids tomorrow. At the very best, we'll get caught up on all the work we missed today. At the very least, I'll be sure to feed them lunch so they don't get hangry and fire their teacher before I have a chance to prove myself.

About the Author

Michael J. Mehlberg

Michael Mehlberg is a husband, father, entrepreneur, business professional, author, fitness nut, organization freak, and productivity junkie. He helps high-achievers consistently save time, get productive, and become more organized so they can live their passion and achieve their dreams.

Grab his new book Home Early: Destroy Distraction, Become Powerfully Productive, and Finish Work Before Dinner.

Shocking, excruciating pain. The kind that takes your breath away.

It started mid-spine and radiated outward, wrapping around my ribs, then upward toward my neck.

I gasped for air, dropped my dumbbells, and collapsed to the ground.

It felt oddly good to lie there on the cold concrete of my basement exercise room. If I stayed still, I could regroup and take account of what happened. But the slightest twitch brought immediate suffering.

Even breathing hurt.

Had I warmed up before working out, I could have avoided twisting my back muscles into a tangled hammock. But I dove right in, curling heavy weights completely cold.

Over the next two weeks, while my back muscles healed, I’d live to regret it.

Moving as deliberately as I’ve ever moved in my life, I attempted to get up. And, with every painful move, I could hear my trainers’ voice in my head: “You’re old as fuck bruh. You gotta spend the time getting your muscles ready so you don’t hurt yourself.”

Lesson learned.

Are you warming up your day?

If you’re not warming up before working out, you’re not preparing your body for the intensity to come. You’re putting yourself at risk for injury. You’re not priming yourself for maximum gains.

Similarly, if you’re not warming up in the morning, your not preparing your body and mind for the day to come. You’re putting yourself at risk for distraction. You’re not priming yourself for maximum productivity.

Of course, I’m not talking about warming up with an exercise routine. I’m talking about preparing your mind and body for the day to come so you can avoid distractions and get shit done.

After all, that’s what your morning routine is all about.

There are a thousand articles on morning routines. Most of them push specific things to do: wake up early, drink water, eat protein, meditate, journal. All great, but they miss the point.

Your morning routine isn’t some to-do list. It’s a warmup for your day.

It’s a way to avoid lying in bed because you’re dreading what’s to come. It’s a way to kill the anxiety that comes from not knowing what you’ll do to kick-start your day.

Perform the correct activities in your morning routine, and you’ll be primed to hit the ground running and make progress toward your goals. Do the wrong things or skip your morning routine altogether and you’ll risk burnout, stress, distraction, and chaos in your life.

Here’s the thing though…

Most morning routines are bullshit

Join the 5 am club. Exercise. Journal, meditate, read. Eat protein, take a cold shower, plan, schedule, review your goals, blah, blah.

Good God, who’s got time for it all? Or energy?

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried these morning activities, and love doing most of them. But only in moderation, and only when the time’s right.

When I get to bed early enough, for example, I can wake up early and get some time to myself before the days’ battles begin. Just this morning I journaled and found some direction for this otherwise lost article. Occasionally, when I meditate, I find it a nice way to be a nice way to wake up.

But the second I have to travel, everything gets fucked up. The second my Nats are playing in a world series game, which doesn’t end until 1 am (go Nats!), I know my morning isn’t going to start early. Kids get sick, a bad email comes in, just about anything can kill my favorite morning routine before it even starts.

And this is the number one problem with morning routines. They are prescribed by people who pretend to know more about your life than you do. Prescriptions set in stone because they’re “backed by science.” Prescriptions that you’re supposed to follow regardless of circumstances.

But what if you need the sleep and can’t wake up early? Should your day go to shit?

What if you injured yourself working out and need to take a rest day? Should you exercise anyways and risk further injury, or skip it and feel bad for “falling behind?”

What if you travel or meet someone for breakfast or have to take care of a sick kid? Should you feel guilty all day for breaking your perfectly crafted routine? Should your productivity be destroyed? Should your day fall apart because things didn’t go as planned?

Fuck no it shouldn’t.

Your morning routine should be a source of inspiration

Yes, you need a morning routine; something to give you momentum and gear you up for the work to come. But your morning routine (or lack thereof) should never be a source of guilt that drives you to feel anxious about a change of plans.

Your first activity every morning should be something that excites you right out of bed.

For me, that’s brewing coffee. I love the smell, the sound, and the time it takes to fill the pot. It gives me a moment to myself to wake up before downing a half-cup of hot energy.

Every activity after that should get you up and running and ready to take on the day.

If you don’t need to meditate, don’t fucking meditate.

If you always enjoy a cup of coffee, chug that shit.

If you need to stare at the wall for 30 minutes (like I do) to let your thoughts settle and your brain warm-up, stare that bitch down.

For those other mornings when you don’t have time, or energy, or willpower, that’s okay. Do what you can. There’s no reason to feel guilty for screwing up some perfect morning routine crafted by Elon Musk and scientists who know what’s better for you.

Find the routine that’s right for you

Not all days are created equal. Therefore, neither should your morning routine.

There are a thousand “science-backed” techniques for starting your day off right. I’ve listed a few of them here (meditate, wake early, eat protein, etc).

The point isn’t to do them all. It’s to pick the ones that inspire you to get going. It’s to choose the ones that warm up the right muscles, body, and mind, for the day to come.

So OMG, can we stop with the morning routines already?

Just experiment. Figure out what works best for you in different circumstances. Find an inspiring routine that gets you out of bed regardless of time, energy, or willpower. And whatever you do, don’t kick yourself for not starting your day like some highly productive internet celebrity.

If you warm up with the right routine for you, whatever that may, you’ll be preparing your mind and body to avoid distractions and get shit done. There’ll be no need to compare yourself to someone else who doesn’t live in your shoes.

What’s more, you’ll never feel guilty again for not following the so-called “perfect morning routines” created by self-proclaimed productivity gurus. Those routines may work for them, but they’re not going to magically make you successful.

Only the routine that works best for you will.

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Why Internet Shaming Doesn’t Work, and is Ignorant, and Cowardly, and…

I’ve got a message for the pissed-off suburbanite who posted an emotionally charged and personally-identifying Facebook story about a terrible person speeding through our neighborhood with reckless abandon.

You are the problem. You.

Not the person who was allegedly going 15 over in a school zone.

No.

If what you say is true, a local cop should serve that someone a ticket as punishment for their mistake and to pump a bit of funding into our sheriff’s coffers.

But that so-and-so was speeding, probably like you have too. It’s just that you happened to eat an extra bowl of bitch-flakes this morning, giving you some holier-than-thou complex that made you the judge, jury, and executioner.

So congratulations. You win the Internet shaming award. And you, being the problem, should change your ways.

Oh, and while you’re at it, take down that picture of their vehicle, or at least blur out their license plate.

You’re acting like a two-year-old, and shaming doesn’t work.

Here’s why.

Shaming Doesn’t Work

“Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we’re flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” — Brene Brown

You probably think you’re doing a public service.

But the public isn’t served if you don’t get results. And shaming this guy isn’t going to get you any.

I know how humans work. I am one. When I’m attacked, my first reaction is to get defensive. When someone points out how I did something wrong, my mind races with reasons that could explain why what I did was justified.

In my experience, when I’ve pointed out someone else’s wrongdoing, the accused has the same reaction: defensiveness and justification.

They always come up with a perfectly valid reason why they did what they did.

This so-called-speeder? He will too.

That’s his ego talking, and it takes a calm, rational mind to tell that ego to shut up — which is not something everyone has.

But let’s say he does. Let’s say he overcomes his ego and takes your shaming feedback to heart. It still doesn’t teach him. It silences him. It fills him with regret. Not regret for his actions. Regret for getting caught.

In other words, he’s disappointed in what the world thinks of him, not that what he did was wrong.

So now you’ve got a defensive guy filled with regret, no do-over, and no apology allowed. You’ve shamed them. You’ve brought the world’s attention to their mistake. And you’ve taken away the courtesy you would usually afford this guy face to face — the ability to apologize and try again.

Will he learn his lesson?

Hell no.

He’ll simply go into silence. Or worse, he’ll feel wronged and attack back.

Almost anyone would.

Shaming is Wrong

My eleven-year-old has a phone. I tell him not to post mean stuff on social media.

He’s of average intelligence, but he gets it right away.

I asked him if it was okay to rat someone out to get them in trouble. He told me that’s called tattletaling, and tattletaling isn’t right.

I asked him whether it’s okay to post a pic and say mean things about someone on social media. He told me it’s not.

Even if what they were doing was dangerous.

Even if what they were doing was illegal.

He told me when someone does something wrong, dangerous, or illegal, he’d ask the person politely to stop. If they didn’t stop, he’d ask a teacher for help. If the teacher wouldn’t help, he’d bring his problem to me to get involved.

What he wouldn’t do is post a photo of the offender on Facebook and tell everyone how wrong or dumb or mean or terrible they are.

But now you’ve gone and posted a picture with personally identifying information for the world to see. You’ve hung this guy in a virtual pillory against his will. You’ve pointed at him, mocked him, and read his crimes aloud.

I get it.

You want everyone to see how awful he is and how good you are.

His mistake is unforgivable. It’s a mistake you’d never make it.

You are the hero. He’s pure evil. And, as soon as you decide to free him, it’s probably best you tattoo a scarlet letter to his forehead in deep red ink.

Can’t you see that what you’re doing is barbaric? Can’t you see that it’s wrong?

You want to ruin this person by pitting the world against him. You want to get him fired and load search engines full of negative tweets and articles which will forever affect how others treat him.

Because why? Because what he did was wrong in your eyes?

Well, guess what, what you’re doing is wrong also, and two wrongs don’t make a right.

Oh, and get with the times. Shame is primitive and barbaric. And barbarism was phased out in the 1850's.

Shaming Hurts

“Shame is real pain. The importance of social acceptance and connection is reinforced by our brain chemistry and the pain that results from social rejection and disconnection is real pain.” — Brene Brown

It’s one thing to tell someone that what they’ve done is wrong.

It’s another to post their picture in a negative light for all to see.

In the first scenario, you’re talking about the persons actions. You’re telling this guy that you don’t like what he did. You don’t devalue him as a person. You don’t undermine his belief that he can improve and right their wrong.

In the second scenario, you do.

When you shame someone, you’re telling everyone that this person is bad. In turn, you’re telling the person that they have no chance for redemption. They’re a lost cause and should find another place to live.

Except the Internet is global, so where else would they go?

“These days the hunt is on for people’s shameful secrets. You can lead a good, ethical life, but some bad phraseology in a Tweet can overwhelm it all, become a clue to your secret inner evil.” — Jon Ronson

In 2011, the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute of Drug Abuse studied shame. They concluded that shame — the intense experience of social rejection — hurts the same way as physical pain as far as your brain is concerned.

In other words, shame hurts. Really, physically, seriously hurts.

And before you say, “good,” ask yourself whether you are the type of person who hurt others.

Ask yourself, if given a chance, would you really be willing to kick and punch smack around another person for speeding, getting angry in public, or tweeting an inconsiderate comment (all things people have been shamed for).

I’m guessing you wouldn’t because you’re better than that.

The problem with shaming is that it hurts someone and, when shamed, they don’t believe they can fix it. They don’t think they can do better.

And when you don’t think you can do better, you nosedive into depression, violence, addiction, etc.

“Shame is highly correlated with addiction, violence, aggression, depression, eating disorders, and bullying… there are no data to support that shame is a helpful compass for good behavior. In fact, shame is much more likely to be the cause of destructive and hurtful behaviors than it is to be the solution.” — Brene Brown

Seems counterproductive if you ask me.

It also seems cowardly.

Shaming Others is Cowardly

You think you’re brave because you shamed someone through the veil of social media?

You didn’t throw the first punch. You just asked your friends to kick this guy around. And they’ll keep kicking, even after he’s down.

Thats not bravery, that’s cowardly.

You’ve made an otherwise private action public so you could bully your way to victory with the power of the crowd. You didn’t have the balls to look up his plates, visit him, and give him a piece of your mind. You didn’t want to handle things yourself, so you brought the world to bear on your problem.

If you want to make real change, try standing up to a wrong in the face of possible recourse.

If you want to tell someone how they’ve affected you, try looking them in the eye.

Throwing virtual stones to shame someone risks nothing, so means nothing. Which, in a way, is ignorant.

Shaming Others is Ignorant

You’ve shamed this dude because you thought it was the right thing to do?

How ignorant.

You probably thought you were protecting the world by showing everyone how what this guy did was wrong, but you’re only sharing your perspective; a perspective, by the way, which has no context, no explanation, and no evidence of the person’s improper actions.

You don’t know what that person was thinking. Hell, you don’t even know the driver was driving his own vehicle.

You just assumed.

You assumed why they did what they did. You put this person on trial without evidence, without a jury, and without due process. No benefit of the doubt. No patience for their mistakes.

And humans need patience.

Anyone with two brain cells to rub together understands that humans aren’t robots, and rarely are the decisions we make black and white.

Nobody is perfect. Believing they are is ignorant. Holding someone to an unattainable standard, expecting idealistic perfection in a non-idealistic world is beyond ignorant, it’s counterproductive.

“Maybe there’s two types of people in this world: those people who favor humans over ideology, and those people who favor ideology over humans. I favor humans over ideology, but right now, the ideologies are winning, and they’re creating a stage for constant artificial high dramas where everyone is either a magnificent hero or a sickening villain, even though we know that’s not true about our fellow humans. What’s true is that we are clever and stupid; what’s true is that we’re grey areas.” — Jon Ronson

And, if all that doesn’t get through your thick skull, then know this — shaming others is ignorant because nobody really gives a shit.

This shaming you’re doing, this accusation you’re making, it didn’t really affect anyone else. They act like it did. They cry foul, nash their teeth, and pile on as if they were personally accosted. But they don’t want to do anything to fix the situation. Not really. They just want to join the chatter. They want to feel something in what must be an otherwise meaningless life. So they get involved, and they react along with you.

Which happens to be (in a final bout of ignorance) a reaction that doesn’t even fit the crime.

Getting threatened for driving too fast? Ignorant.

Getting ridiculed in front of others? Asinine.

I’d be shocked if you did these things in person. In fact, I bet you’re a pretty nice guy.

So Who Shames, and Why?

“Some in our society sickeningly delight in assuming the guise of blameless saints, while simultaneously lambasting others for the things they themselves just haven’t been caught doing yet.” — David M. Kirby, The Cost of Pervasive Culture of Shame // Huffington Post

Trolls shame.

They shame to feel good. They shame to feel in control. They shame to feel powerful.

But trolls will be trolls, and nobody cares about them.

What’s surprising is that evangelists shame too. They capitalize on others’ shame to further their cause, to feel good, and to get attention. If there’s a positive form of shaming, it’s done by an evangelist donating to their cause on the heels of someone else's shame.

But after the trolls and evangelists, it’s businesses and the rest of us.

While businesses shame to support their cause, further their brand, and increase profit, what about the rest of us?

Well, nice people shame others too. And, unlike what you did while shaming someone this morning, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.

Because, as I said before, you’re probably a nice person.

This shaming you’re doing, I’d bet, is being done out of a misplaced sense of empathy. You shame others to protect our kids, to make a statement, to “do the right thing.”

It’s not the ends I’m challenging, it’s the means.

Because what you don’t realize is that your compassion has driven you to act uncompassionately.

In turn, this uncompassionate shaming has created fear in others; fear that if they don’t jump on the bandwagon, they will be shamed themselves.

“There’s an obligation to stand up to abusive power. And, abusive power happens on social media too. Even when it’s being done by nice people, like us.” — Jon Ronson

Shaming Others is Driven by Fear, and Drives Fear

When a monkey screams in the jungle, the animals listen.

A tiger might be on the prowl, searching for its next meal.

This monkey is out to frighten everyone into running away or ganging up on the predator.

Your “screaming” on the Internet is done out of fear too. Except, on the Internet, there is no tiger. There is no big-bad-wolf looking to kill its next victim. Just a person who made a mistake… and you’re screaming is an attempt to get everyone else to join in screaming too.

Great work.

Now you’ve got a bunch of screaming animals trying to tear down an otherwise good person for one misdeed. And when the screaming is done, everyone will be afraid of everyone else.

That’s exactly the kind of society we all strive to live in <— sarcasm.

What to do Instead

First and foremost, if you’re a troll, I’m going to ignore you. So should everyone else.

Trolls, by and large, know their dicks. They enjoy it. They feed off of it. There’s no use trying to change them.

But, if you’re not a troll (and I don’t suspect you are), I hope you realize by now that evil doesn’t stop evil. Nor does wrongdoing justify acting wrong yourself.

I also hope you realize that you shouldn’t participate.

Shaming silences others. It turns us against each other. It transforms us into a surveillance society. Except it’s not the one from George Orwell’s 1984 where the government holds all the power. It’s a horrific society where we hold power over each other and have turned against each other anytime we need a pick-me-up.

“The great thing about social media was how it gave a voice to voiceless people, but we’re now creating a surveillance society, where the smartest way to survive is to go back to being voiceless.” — Jon Ronson

Have some empathy. Give people a chance, just like you would face to face.

Humans aren’t perfect. We’re messed up, tangled, confused beings trying to live our best life.

This person you shamed is one too. They deserve a chance to make mistakes, learn from them, and come back a stronger, participating member of our society.

So, the next time you see someone else being shamed, say something. Just like you’d stand for an injustice face to face, tell the shamers of this world all the reasons why they’re wrong, ignorant, and how what they’re doing won’t work.

Maybe even share this article with them.

If the whole world is against someone, the shamed will have nowhere to turn, nowhere to go. But if even a few defenders come to their aid, it can make their mistake (and subsequent shaming) bearable.

I Had to Stop the Screaming

Look, I’m sorry I came off so harsh.

I bet you are a good person. In fact, I know you are.

You wouldn’t have gotten all upset over this school-zone-speeder if you didn’t care about living in a better world.

Just be careful not to make the world worse as you try to make it better.

Eight hundred twenty-seven years ago, Japanese Samurai would commit seppuku out of shame; a horrific death in which they’d slice open their belly with a short sword. Despite its gruesomeness, committing seppuku was thought to bring honor back to the Samurai. It was a means to rid themselves of shame and end their life nobly.

Four hundred years ago, Puritans would scorn, stone, or throw the shamed into stocks and pillories when they crossed the line. The shamed would lay trapped while their offenses were read aloud to anyone who would listen. Once released, the offenders would live out their lives in shame in their small town as an example to anyone else who would think of committing their crimes.

Fast forward to today, and the digital tools we have for shaming reach much farther than a 2-foot sword or a small Puritan town.

Anyone with a grudge can shame anyone else, anywhere in the world.

Internet shamers can enjoy immediate impact, pure anonymity, permanence, and a worldwide audience, which leads to the allure.

But while this may make you feel good, don’t fool yourself into thinking it’s making a positive impact.

“Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we can change and do better.” — Brene Brown

We don’t live in small towns anymore. We live in a connected world where your transgressions can be immediately shared with anyone (or everyone) in an instant. And, if the world comes down on you, it will leave you with nowhere to turn but deep into a pit of your own despair, violence, and aggression.

I know this isn’t what you want. This isn’t what anyone wants for the world.

You and I, we actually want the same thing.

We want a safe place to live and love. We want a safe place for our children to grow.

We’re not going to get that by pretending everyone must be perfect and screaming like monkeys when they don’t.

We’re humans; perfection isn’t possible.

So instead of shaming people, encourage them to do better. Let’s help others by accepting each other, building each other up, and giving each other grace when we make mistakes. Let’s encourage positive actions and results instead of shaming others into submission.

Do that, and you’ll be a part of the solution instead of part of the problem, which is far better than acting like a two-year-old, and much more likely to get you the results you were looking for in the first place.

Sources

1. Salters-Pedneault, K. (2019, April 30). Why Your Whole Self Feels Ashamed But Only Part Of You Feels Guilty. Verywell Mind. Retrieved October 8, 2019, from https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-shame-425328

2. Brown, B. (2015, April 7). Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead.

3. Ronson, J. (2015, June 1). When Online Shaming Goes Too Far. TED: Ideas Worth Spreading. Retrieved October 8, 2019, from https://www.ted.com/talks/jon_ronson_what_happens_when_online_shaming_spirals_out_of_control?language=en

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10 Minutes to 10x Your Output and Completely Control Your Day

It’s a terrible feeling.

Being exhausted from a day of constant activity but without a sense of accomplishment.

You move from task to task, keeping busy, but never really making progress.

As if exhaustion weren’t enough, overwhelm hovers overhead. Even when you finish a task. Even after you head home for the night.

That overwhelm is the last thing you think of before falling to sleep.

It’s the first thing you think of upon waking.

It just might be the biggest source of stress in your life.

You’ve tried many life hacks and productivity tips. Like aspirin, they offer some temporary relief. But this sense of overwhelm isn’t a minor headache; it’s a goddamn knife in your brain that leaves you constantly wondering how you’re going to get it all done, or whether you’ll ever get ahead.

It’s time you took the knife out and felt a sense of relief.

The same relief that massively productive people feel every day — a sense of accomplishment that comes from one behavior, which leads to killing overwhelm, getting organized, and getting shit done.

Why Massively Productive People Plan Their Day

“Why spend a thought worrying when you can invest the same thought planning a prosperous future?” ― Phumi Ngwane

Massively productive people don’t drift in the wind.

They don’t follow their fancies. They aren’t driven by random events throughout their day.

They plan.

They know that aligning their actions with their goals eliminates wasted effort and makes procrastination obsolete because they know what to do next and when to do it. With a plan, the work they do drives meaningful progress toward their purpose, vision, and goals.

And, because they’re busy doing meaningful work, it becomes difficult for others to interrupt and distract them.

Massively productive people don’t fatigue themselves by deciding what’s important every time they have a free moment.

They know what to work on.

They know when to work on it.

And they know how each task will move them closer to their goals.

As such, they don’t have to think. They don’t have to decide. They get right to work and are massively productive.

None of this certainty comes naturally. Nor does it come from experience. This type of productivity sure as hell doesn’t happen by accident.

It happens with consistently spending a few minutes planning every day.

Which you can (quickly and easily) do too.

10 Minutes to 10X Your Productivity Today

“Plans are useless. Planning is everything.” — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Planning should not be a big ordeal.

Spending even 30 minutes planning out your next 24 hours is far too much time, especially when your plan will fall to shit the second you start work.

Schedules change. Tasks get reprioritized. And life happens.

So instead of a drawn-out process spent locking down every moment of your day, we’re going to use a 10-minute, 5-step planning process that will have you back to work before your coffee is done brewing.

Every morning, walk yourself through these steps without fail. By the end of the week, you’ll wonder how you ever got anything done without it.

Step #1: Empty Your Mind

That sense of overwhelm you feel? It comes from too many tasks overloading your mind.

Like a dryer full of shoes, every task you store in memory is tumbling around, making a lot of noise, and getting tangled with the others.

Massively productive people transfer these tasks out of their heads.

Not all of them. Just the loudest ones, which are likely to be the most important and most pressing tasks that need to get done.

Grab a sheet of paper, a pen, and unload your mind.

Anything that bubbles up gets its own line. And, once you’ve written 10, it’s game over. You’re done.

“But I already have a task list,” you say? Too bad. I have a task list too. And an app to track to-dos. They’re so loaded with crap they no longer help. So you’re going to write ten new tasks down today on a fresh sheet of paper to clear the noise of the past and start fresh today.

Don’t worry. You won’t work on all ten. That would be too much.

Instead, you’ll choose the top three based on specific criteria that will ensure maximum productivity.

Step #2: Pick Your Focus Tasks

Massively productive people don’t work on everything.

They work on the most important things.

They work on tasks that will move the needle, give them energy, and provide them with a huge sense of accomplishment.

Of all ten tasks, only a few will lead to massive productivity.

Which ones will move the needle on your goals? Which will give you energy? Which will give you a huge sense of accomplishment? Most importantly, which tasks will make the rest of your day, week, or month seem easy?

Circle those tasks, but no more than three.

These are your top priorities for the day — your focus tasks. You’ll focus on getting these three done above all else.

As for which one to work on first, take a tip from the fantastic productivity and prioritization book, The ONE Thing and ask,

“What’s the ONE thing I can do to make everything else easier or unnecessary?”

If that one thing doesn’t come to mind immediately, don’t fret. You’re going to schedule these tasks in another step. But not before you ensure nothing will block your path forward.

Step #3: Kill Your Dragons

“It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit or There and Back Again

Like you, massively productive people have ambition and drive.

But they know that’s not enough.

Even the most ambitious people fail when unanticipated obstacles block their path — “productivity dragons” can foil their great intentions and hard work.

Most of the time, with a little forethought, you can bring those dragons to light, which gives you a chance to avoiding stumbling into them in the dark.

Which is what we’ll do now.

For each of your three focus tasks, ask yourself who or what could get in your way.

Is it Instagram? Or your ever-growing email inbox? Or maybe a colleague who always swings by your office and talks your ear off for an hour after lunch?

These distractions destroy your ability to perform. They are obstacles to a productive workday. They are dragons that, if unaccounted for, will stop you dead in your tracks or, at worst, eat your ass for dinner.

Recognize them. Plan to avoid them. Or kill them.

On the flip side, massively productive people don’t do everything themselves. Many tasks can be automated or accelerated or assigned.

Ask yourself, who has done this before that could push me in the right direction or guide me down the quickest path to success? What tools are available to make this task easier? What tools are available to automate this task completely? Or, if it can’t be automated, ask yourself if you must be the one to work on it. You may be able to assign it to someone else, freeing up time to focus on other important tasks.

Step #4: Schedule Your Day

“A plan is what, a schedule is when. It takes both a plan and a schedule to get things done.” — Peter Turla

If you stop at step #3, you’ll have prioritized your task list and feel clear about what you should do.

But you won’t actually get anything done.

Without scheduling the tasks you intend on accomplishing, life will get in your way.

Colleagues and customers will fill your calendar with meetings. Urgent tasks will fill your day with miscellany. Procrastination will fill your free time with busy work. All the good intentions, plans, and prioritization in the world won’t help you get things done if you don’t block out the time to do the work.

And massively productive people block out time to do their most important work.

You can too. Consider when you will have the energy and motivation to do each task, how much rest you need in between tasks, and how you will balance challenging or draining tasks with energizing ones. Then, with all that in mind, schedule a meeting with yourself (literally) for each focus task on your plate.

Treat this meeting as sacred, and do the fucking work.

Step #5: Do The Fucking Work

For each of those tasks you scheduled, do the fucking work.

Treat that time as sacred.

Just as you wouldn’t skip out on a conference call with an important customer, don’t skip out on the time you’ve scheduled with yourself.

Massively productive people don’t compromise on getting important work done. They may shuffle around their calendar, but they always prioritize time to work on their most important tasks.

When else would they do the work?

When else would they have the time to actually be productive?

So Get Planning

It’s the one behavior that massively productive people do to eliminate chaos and disorganization from their every day.

And it doesn’t take much.

You’ll make progress toward your goals instead of fielding interruptions by the needs of others.

You’ll end your day with a sense of accomplishment.

You’ll leave behind that sense of overwhelm and disorganization.

You’ll be working on what matters.

And while this may have sounded impossible before, you now have a simple, 10-minute planning process that will help you design a day to get 10x more done than you ever would have before.

About the Author

Michael Mehlberg

HUSBAND, FATHER, ENTREPRENEUR, BUSINESS STRATEGIST, AUTHOR, FITNESS NUT, ORGANIZATION FREAK, PRODUCTIVITY JUNKIE

I help high-achieving entrepreneurs organize their brain and schedule so they can organize their life and business.

Subscribe to my free, weekly newsletter on personal excellence and business mastery that one client called “The Owners Manual to an Awesome Life.”

Japan? America?

Those were my answers, but they’re not even in the top 5.

Every year, Expert Markets study the productivity of countries around the globe. Their measurement stick, however, isn’t hours worked per week.

Rather, they calculate hours worked divided into income generated toward the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). In other words, how much dough the average citizen earns per hour of effort.

Which makes sense, since being productive isn’t about working as much as possible. It’s about working as little as possible for the biggest return.

Of course, money isn’t the only measure of success. But for the purposes of this study, it’s a good yardstick. And, using that yardstick, the countries that work the MOST per week actually earn the LEAST.

For example, while the average American works 33.6 hours per week and earns $68 GDP dollars per hour worked, Luxembourg citizens work, on average, 4.6 hours less per week and earn $25 more.

Luxembourg isn’t the only example. Norway workers work 6.3 hours less and earn $13 more. Belgium workers work 3.9 hours less and earn $1.40 more.

The list goes on. And, while there are some outliers, the trend stays consistent: the more hours worked, the less money earned. The less hours worked, the more money earned.

Now, there are a lot of factors at play here. Like, a lot.

So, making a blanket statement like, “just work less and you’ll make more money” is ignorant.
⠀
But at a minimum, this data tells me that being productive isn’t all about jamming more hours into your day.

It tells me that creating more value means working smarter, not longer.

It tells me that productivity has more to do with rest and non-work activities than we might like to think.

It tells me that success doesn’t come from burning the candle at both ends and that well-being isn’t associated with single-mindedly focusing on work—it comes from living a balanced life.

If every moment of your day is spent hustling and grinding, it might be time to reconsider the data.

Find a way to reduce that sense of overwhelm by taking a little time off, and you just might find that your productivity increases at the same time.

Alternatively, you could just move to Luxembourg 😉.

About the Author

Michael Mehlberg

HUSBAND, FATHER, ENTREPRENEUR, BUSINESS STRATEGIST, AUTHOR, FITNESS NUT, ORGANIZATION FREAK, PRODUCTIVITY JUNKIE

I help high-achieving entrepreneurs organize their brain and schedule so they can organize their life and business.

Subscribe to my free, weekly newsletter on personal excellence and business mastery that one client called “The Owners Manual to an Awesome Life.”

If you don't know of Jon Morrow, he's the founder and chief writer on SmartBlogger.com, and he's wildly successful.

I read pretty much anything Jon Morrow writes, and buy pretty much anything he has to sell. Jon has proven to me, through countless blogs and paid courses, that he's the real deal.

His writing is spot on, his advice is practical and immediately useful, and he seems to know every pain point a writer like me faces in running a writing-based business.

So when he offered his Write a Kick-Ass Blog Post writing challenge in which he and his staff of pro bloggers would walk challengers through writing an article in one week for—get this—$10, purchasing it was a no-brainer.

Over 600 others thought the same.

We set out on a journey to write a list-post from scratch in 7 days. Every step of the way—from idea to outline to introduction to content to closing—Jon and his team read our work and gave us invaluable feedback.

Here are some of the best things I learned.

1. Nobody Has Patience for a Lengthy Build Up

When it comes to your introduction, you can't waste a nanosecond of your readers time. They came to your article for advice, and a 500-word story to "draw them in" or emphasize some later point won't impress them. It will turn them away.

Get to the point. Say it clearly. And move on.

If you're not delivering value from the very first word, your reader will click the back button faster than you can say, "but wait!"

Don't just write an intro. Speak to your reader. Let them know that they didn't click on your article in vain. Answer the question they've been asking the second they read your headline: "Is this a waste of my time?"

I know what you have to say isn't a waste of time. Make sure your reader knows too.

2. Every Subheading Needs to Support Your Headline

There's a lot of emphasis put on writing a good headline. And for good reason.

The wrong headline, one that doesn't promise to answer some burning question in your readers' mind, means people won't click.

But if your reader, convinced by your headline, opens your article only to find a bunch of subheadings that don't align, they're gone. If they don't see subheadings that answer the burning question your headline created, they'll click the back button faster than you can say, "please don't!"

Readers don't read at first. They scan. Especially list posts.

They're scanning your article for tidbits of information they can immediately use. They're looking for value. They're validating their reason for clicking.

Of course, the real value is going to be in the content. But the subheadings will confirm they're in the right place.

Make sure every subheading in your post answers the question your headline poses. If each subheading is an answer to the burning question your headline created, there's a good chance they'll stop and start reading your actual post.

3. It's Too Easy to Be Condescending, and Hurts Your Post

Man, was I guilty of this; being condescending. The bad part was, I didn't even know it.

I thought the purpose of my writing was to convince someone to do something, believe something, or learn something.

It's not.

Good writing helps the reader. It gives them value. That value might be a good laugh. It might be useful information. It might be a productivity gadget or a different way of looking at the world.

It's not to tell them what to do, what to believe, or how to act.

Once the reader is done reading your article, they may very well be convinced. They may very well want to do something, believe something, or learn something. In fact, if you've written your article well, there's a high probability this will be the case.

But when you tell your reader what to do, what to believe, or how to act, it comes across as condescending. Your reader will click back faster than you can say, "I'm sorry!"

Words like should, must, need to, or just are all ways of trying to force the reader to get behind your message. It's a sure way to lose them.

Instead of telling them, convince them. Inspire them with your words to believe in what you are saying and take action for themselves.

Wait, ignore that last sentence.

If you can convince them instead of telling them, inspire them instead of lecture them, it will be easier for them to believe in what you're saying and take action for themselves.

(Did you see what I did there?)

4. A Ridiculously Challenging Goal Keeps Dilution to a Minimum

We all tend to over-explain our ideas and over-complicate our prose.

Long sentences, big words, and lengthy stories don't help the reader; they confuse and bore them. And, the second your reader gets confused, bored, or doesn't know where your article is taking them, they're clicking the back button faster than you can say, "God no!"

Keeping an article short is hard. But doing hard things will make you stand out.

The Write a Kick-All Blog Post Challenge I joined set a 7-point article with a max of 750 words. I wrote over 1600.

I had a LOT of editing to do.

And, while I didn't cut it down to 750 in the end, I managed to get it down to just over 1200, a 25% reduction.

Cutting it down this much was extremely challenging, but it makes the article 10x better. Without the challenging goal of keeping the article below 750 words, I may have kept adding. In the end, this would have only diluted my message and bored my reader.

5. Consistency is More Important Than You Think

You know how it is.

As a reader, when you start "getting into" a blog post, you get lost. You become consumed with the words and ideas on the page.

Your readers are the same. When they start to gel with your article, they forget about what's going on around them. Their sole purpose becomes reading the next word, sentence, paragraph, and getting one step closer to their goals.

But, if your subheadings aren't in a consistent format, length, and feel, your reader will instantly be jarred back to reality. They'll stop to think. And, once that happens, they'll remember everything they have to do. They'll think about all the other articles they're missing out on. And, they'll click back faster than you can say, "stick with me!"

Your headline creates a question for the reader. How can I ___? What should I do about ___? Where do I go to find ___?

Your subheadings answer that question.

For example, in my post, 7 Ways to Hustle Hard, Stay Productive, and Still Sleep Like a Baby Every Night, the question in the readers' mind is, how do I hustle hard and stay productive? Every one of my seven subheadings needed to answer that question directly, lest I lose the reader.

If you asked me, "How do I hustle hard and stay productive?" and I said, "Sprinting Burns You Out," you'd be jarred back to reality. The answer doesn't fit the question.

But, if you asked me, "How do I hustle hard and stay productive?" and I said, "Treat Your Work Like a Marathon," you'd have a direct answer to your question. You might be interested in learning more about what that means, and so would read on.

6. More Eyes = More Space = Better Writing

Using someone else's eyes takes your writing from good to great.

You already know this. But how often do you do it?

I, for one, don't do it often enough.

I self-edit most of the time and will continue to do so. But having another person look over your work, tell you where they got stuck, and give you feedback on how they felt or reacted to your piece isn't just valuable, it's critical.

It helps you get out of your own head. It ensures you see the problem through anothers' eyes. And it gives you space.

If you've just written an article, you're emotionally invested in the work. Your ego is tied up in the words it's crafted so eloquently on the page. But being emotionally invested makes it difficult to gain perspective on the ideas. It also means it's nearly impossible to empathize with your reader, read it from their perspective, or understand it from their world-view.

And if you don't speak with empathy to your reader, they're going to click back faster than you can say, "listen up!"

Space gives your ideas time to mature. It helps separate your ego from your ideas on the page. And, it separates you from the emotion tied up in your words, allowing you to be far more effective in creating a piece that resonates with your readers and yourself.

7. Breaking Your Ego Makes for a Better Message

First drafts don't usually spread far.

Most of the time, when I write, my first draft lands in an Evernote note that will never, ever see the light of day. To think of posting it into a Facebook group with over 600 people would be laughable.

But for this challenge, that's exactly what I did. It's what we all did.

And you know what? Putting my drafts out there for the entire group to see did wonders for my writing.

When you put your work out in the world, it breaks your ego. And that's a good thing. At first, you worry about how others will react. But then you start worrying about whether your reader will get your message, which is a much more valuable concern.

After all, a reader who doesn't understand your message will click back faster than you can say, "let me explain!"

The way around that is to post your drafts for other's to read. It will help you get out of your own way, get the work done, and publish something others understand.

8. The Length of Your Intro and Closing Matters

The length of your intro doesn't matter. Neither does the length of your closing.

What matters is that the length of your intro and closing are, more or less, the same. In other words, if your introduction is longer than your closing, your intro is either too long or your closing is too short.

That's because the job of your introduction is to hook the reader in the beginning. Your closing, on the flip side, will keep the reader hooked until the end. Your introduction sets the stage for what the reader will learn. Your closing will turn what the reader learned into motivation, inspiration, or action.

If you've promised the reader seven things in the intro, you're going to need to convince them of seven things in the closing. And, since it's not the job of either the introduction or closing to provide new information, the amount of space it takes you to promise or convince will be approximately the same.

This is not to say they must be exact. Nor is it to say that this is a hard and fast rule that must be held at all costs.

It's only a guideline for ensuring all the points you lined up in your introduction are met with a closing statement; that all the promises in the beginning are met with a convincing argument at the end.

Keeping this guideline in mind will ensure you close any open loops, and make the reader feel far better about reading every word of your post through to the end.

9. Lower Stakes Makes Writing Far, Far Easier

Short, unbreakable milestones are crucial to building momentum.

From the get-go, our writing challenge was 750 words. I typically write more than that in a single day. For this challenge, we had seven days to do so.

That's barely over 100 words per day.

Because the stakes were so low, I didn't worry about a giant, complicated post in front of me. Writers block didn't surface once. I knew I could do it. And, since we were asked to check in every day, it was extremely easy to get the job done.

After day five, I had chosen my topic, written an outline, crafted the introduction, filled in all my list points with content, and finished a draft conclusion. The entire blog post draft was done, and I felt like I had given almost no effort.

In reality, I had given more than double what was expected of me.

Instead of writing a 750-word post, I had written over 1600 words. Instead of writing a long, complex, and probably unreadable article, I had written a clear, concise, succinct article that gave my readers immediate and practical value.

When you keep the stakes low and your milestones small, you'll likely find yourself exceeding your goals and milestones without even trying.

It's Time to Get Uncomfortable

Look, if you're like me, you've probably read everything there is to read about writing. At some point, it's hard to find a new golden nugget of information that truly helps you raise the bar on your skills.

Maybe one of the lessons I've learned here will help you do just that.

But even if you've seen these points before, even if you didn't discover anything new, I hope you leave with one final and most important lesson:

Forcing yourself to get uncomfortable when you write your next post will level up your writing.

For me, this 7-day writing challenge started as a way to learn a bit more from Jon Morrow, who I consider to be the best blogger in the world. But it turned into an exercise of uncomfortable stretching that, in the end, forced my writing into a better state than before, and forced me to think outside the artificial constructs I'd created for myself.

Major progress in any endeavour doesn't come from doing the same old thing over and over. It comes from extending yourself beyond what you already know, what you already can do.

Happy writing!

About the Author

Michael Mehlberg

HUSBAND, FATHER, ENTREPRENEUR, BUSINESS STRATEGIST, AUTHOR, FITNESS NUT, ORGANIZATION FREAK, PRODUCTIVITY JUNKIE

I help high-achieving entrepreneurs organize their brain and schedule so they can organize their life and business.

Subscribe to my free, weekly newsletter on personal excellence and business mastery that one client called “The Owners Manual to an Awesome Life.”

The faster you move, the more energy you need.

The faster you move, the slower time passes for you.

The faster you move, the more your mass increases.

Reaching maximum speed, the speed of light, would require an infinite amount of energy and would mind-bogglingly, for you, bring time to a halt.

His formula, E=mc^2 mathematically describes how these principles apply to our physical world. But the concepts ring true for our daily life too.

Bust your ass too hard, and you’ll fall into bed exhausted.

Bust your ass for too long, and seconds will feel like minutes.

Bust your ass for too hard and too long, and you’ll feel as though you need an infinite amount of energy to go on. The “weight” of your work will become unbearable. You’ll burn out, falling to ground zero (or below).

You don’t think of Einstein’s equation while at work, but you feel the ramifications of overdoing it. You know deep down which tasks suck your energy and which tasks recharge it. And you instinctively know when it’s time to call it a day.

As it turns out, these feelings are key to maintaining the intricate balance between Einsteins four variables—time, speed, mass, and energy—which in turn is the key to becoming maximally productive.

An Intricate Balance

Everyone has the same 24 hours in a day.

Anyone can schedule that 24 hours into the tiniest increments, maximizing their working hours.

But 24 hours of go go go isn’t sustainable. Even if it were, back-to-back activities from dawn ‘till dusk is not a healthy lifestyle. 

It takes energy to get through your day. It takes time to get things done. And, the speed at which you move through your tasks changes depending on the weight or complexity of your work. Like Einstein’s equation, you have to balance time, energy, mass, and speed to stay maximally productive and happy. Should any one of these fall out of equilibrium, you’ll find yourself in a funk.

Time — Overschedule your day, and you’ll feel overwhelmed, burned out, and ready to quit. Under schedule it, and you’ll feel your day was wasted. You’ll want your time back.

Energy — Work too hard or too long, and you’ll feel exhausted, unable to continue without rest. Don’t work hard enough (vacations aside), and you’ll be looking for things to do. Distractions will creep in, and you’ll find yourself wasting time.

Mass — Tasks don't have mass, but they do have "gravity." The weight or complexity of your tasks needs to be in balance. Choose a task that’s too difficult (given your energy levels or time available), and you won’t get anything done. Choose a task that's too easy, and you'll find yourself procrastinating, bored, or feeling unaccomplished.

Speed — How quickly you move from one task to the next directly affects your energy and focus. Jump around too much, and you’ll find it hard to focus on a more complex task. Jump around too little, and the administrivia will pile up. The urgent will outweigh the important, making it more difficult to find time to work on what matters.

We often think of productivity as time management, but it’s really the balance of time with these other variables. 

Keep all four stable, and you’ll have the time and energy to work on complex tasks at high speed. Let any one get out of whack, and you’ll feel any number of emotions, preventing you from working on what matters.

Which turns out to be the fifth variable; one that Einstein couldn’t enter into his equation but one that makes this intricate balance productivity far easier to master.

The Fifth Variable

There’s one variable that you can use to measure the balance of all other productivity variables. It will drastically simplify your ability to balance life and get things done.

Emotion.

Emotion doesn’t fit into the space/time continuum of Einstein’s world. It doesn’t help you move faster, gain energy, or slow down the passage of time. But it’s immensely useful in measuring those four productivity variables to know when they’re out of whack, and what to do about it if they are.

Feelings like overwhelm, exhaustion, elation, confidence—these feelings are vital indicators that your day is running well, or not. They’re your personal thermometer knowing when to push harder or scale back your effort.

“The reason emotions have a surprisingly powerful effect on our performance is that emotions have adaptive value—they can help us cope and respond to the situation at hand.”

—Josh Davis, PhD

Take overwhelm, for example.

Overwhelm commonly occurs when you have too much to do and too little time. When in a state of overwhelm, your brain can’t focus. It thinks of everything, and so does nothing.

Or take exhaustion as another example.

When you feel exhausted, you’ve either worked too hard or for too long. Even if you have the time, you won’t have the energy to work on even the smallest task. Your system is out of balance and requires an adjustment.

They key is knowing what to adjust, and when.

Tuning Yourself for Maximum Productivity

What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Prioritize.

Prioritizing your tasks will “unjumble” them in your mind, allowing you to focus on and make progress toward just one. The weight of your todo list will suddenly lighten, and you’ll find yourself with the energy to get started, make something happen. This will give you momentum, and you’ll move to the next task with increasing speed.

What do you do when you feel exhausted? Recharge.

That could mean rest. It could even mean sleep. But it could also mean working on something tangential to your job. Many times, taking a walk around the block, having a snack, playing an instrument, reading a book, or calling a loved one will replenish a bit of energy, allowing you to get back to work and knock a few more tasks off the list.

What do you do when you feel confident? Take on a big, complex task.

Confidence means you have the energy and will to tackle a difficult challenge. Choose an important task from your todo list, something you've been avoiding for lack of time and energy, and wrestle it to the ground.

On the flip side, if you feel stuck, the task you've chosen may be too complex.

Working in a stuck state for too long will drag your energy levels down, making it hard to continue and deflate you from working on other tasks. If you're stuck, take a break, even if only to work on something else. In this break, you’ll usually find some perspective to help you deal with your challenges in the future.

Finally, what do you do when you feel unfocused? Get clear on your goals.

Either remind yourself of what you're doing and why, or take some time to figure that out. Journaling can be a great source of clarity. So can meditation. Any method or tool to help you recall what matters will bring renewed focus and energy back to your day.

Of course, all these suggestions are reactive. Feel one way, respond another. 

Our responses can help get us back on track, but to be maximally productive, take what you’ve learned here and prepare instead of react.

Planning Instead of Reacting

You can wait until you get grumpy.

You can wait until you’re bored.

You can wait until you’re stuck or tired or drowning in too much work.

Or, you can proactively prepare for maximum productivity by planning your day in advance. And I'm not just talking about scheduling your meetings.

As you learn how your emotional state changes based on the time of day or the activities you perform, you can prepare to maintain balance throughout the day instead of waiting to find yourself unbalanced and trying to adjust. 

For example, if filing out expense reports sucks the life out of you (like it does me), schedule a short walk around the block after you’re done to recharge and reset yourself for a more productive afternoon.

Or, if you have a task that requires focus, lock down calendar down for a morning when you’re fresh from a good nights sleep and ready to tackle some intense work. Trying to fit that important task in between meetings and emails just won't work. Administrivia and meetings can wait. 

I like to plan in phone calls after giving a presentation as public speaking energizes me and makes me more effective when talking to others. I also know that I can’t write for more than 45 minutes before the words on the page blur together and I lose focus, so I build an hour of weightlifting in between writing tasks to break it up.

Learn which tasks give you energy, and work them in between tasks that drain it. 

Learn which tasks take time, and reserve your calendar to get them done. 

Learn which tasks are complicated, and schedule them when you have the most energy. 

Learn which tasks can be done quickly, and find ways of doing them in between meetings, projects, or in line at Starbucks.

Schedule your day with all of this in mind the night before or the morning of. Once you learn the balance that works for you, you’ll get to the end of the day feeling like you crushed it while still having time and energy to spare for friends, family, and fun.

Keep It Relative

One final note before wrapping up. 

This article wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t mention relativity. We are talking about Einstein, after all.

As he brilliantly showed in his thought experiments and mathematical formulas, our perception of time, speed, and mass are all relative. In other words, how you experience time differs from how I experience it.

The physics of this are beyond my comprehension, but I do know that this concept holds true for productivity.

I’ve heard Elon Musk schedules his day into five-minute increments. Internet celeb Gary Vaynerchuck gets only 6 hours of sleep and works from 6 am to 11 pm daily. Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson wakes up at 3 or 4 in the morning to lift weights for two hours.

These ideas of productivity frighten my sensibilities. 

But that doesn’t mean they’re wrong. It just means their balance is different than mine. 

Just as time is relative, so is productivity. 

You don’t have to compare yourself to Elon Musk, Gary Vaynerchuck, Dwayne Johnson, me, or anyone else. You can be maximally productive in your own way based on your energy, your time, the speed at which you work, and the weight of your tasks. 

In short, your balance is yours, and yours alone. 

The key is to find what works for you. 

Maximize Your Productivity While Balancing Your Life

In 1905, Albert Einstein showed us that time, energy, mass, and speed are intertwined.

And though you don’t think of this principle while at work, you feel it in action throughout your day.

You feel it when you lack the time to get things done. You feel it when you lack the energy to carry on. And you feel it when the complexity or speed of your tasks goes beyond your comfort zone. 

The good news is, you don’t have to bust your ass so hard you fall into bed exhausted every night.

You don’t have to bust your ass so long you feel as though you need an infinite amount of energy to continue. 

You know that burnout is just around those corners, and you don’t have to compare your productivity to anyone else on the planet. You are you. Productivity is relative. It is yours and yours alone to master. 

So decide how you’ll balance your 24 hours with the energy you have and the tasks before you. And use your emotions to do it.

Luckily, despite what many productivity articles say, pushing away your feelings so you can crush every second of the day with reckless abandon doesn't make for a sustainable, happy, or productive life. But if you use those feelings to maintain the intricate balance between Einsteins four variables—time, speed, mass, and energy—you'll find your own version of becoming maximally productive.

Sources

1. http://www.emc2-explained.info/Time-Dilation/#.XYqPnYwpC-o

2. https://www.rd.com/advice/work-career/emotions-productivity/

About the Author

Mike Mehlberg

HUSBAND, FATHER, ENTREPRENEUR, BUSINESS STRATEGIST, AUTHOR, FITNESS NUT, ORGANIZATION FREAK, PRODUCTIVITY JUNKIE

I help high-achieving entrepreneurs organize their brain and schedule so they can organize their life and business.

Ready to crush it? Subscribe to my free, weekly newsletter on personal excellence and business mastery that one client called “The Owners Manual to an Awesome Life.” I’ll also send you to the article, 10 Ways to Massively (and Immediately) Improve Your Life.

The constant hustle. The endless grind. The relentless push to overachieve. 

Every other social media post seems to have some self-improvement quote floating over a well-dressed celebrity, hustle-guilting you into working harder.

They tell us to never stop, never surrender.

They tell us to wake up at 5 am, exercise, side-hustle for a few hours, then put in a full workday and side-some hustle some more before hitting the sack.

Just recently, this showed up in my Instagram feed – A quote by Dan Pena telling me that I’m “poor” because I don’t work 100 hours a week, skip vacations, ignore my wedding anniversaries, and push back Christmas.

Dan Pena, a business mogul worth $450 million does it. Other Internet celebrities do it. So shouldn’t you too? Isn’t this what it takes to drive your life to the next level?

Maybe so. But that’s not the world you want to live in.

Sure, $450 million sounds nice, but a 6 or 7 figure income would be just fine. Especially if it came with 8 hours of sleep, a happy family, and dedicated time for your passions.

It’s time we ignored the advice of those who live out of balance.

It’s time to kill the overwhelm, the constant hustle, the endless grind, and the relentless push to achieve more for the sake of more. 

It’s time to learn a new way to hustle hard, stay productive, while still sleeping like a baby every night.

1. Get The Fundamentals Right First

If you don’t get the fundamentals right, you have nothing.

Big, hairy, audacious goals are great. 

Make a million dollars. Write a book. Scale a mountain.

These goals inspire us to achieve more – to be more.

But without your family, immense wealth means little. Without a purpose, writing a book will be a grueling endeavor. And without your health, climbing Mount Everest will be next to impossible.

These things – your family, your purpose, your health, your finances, your spirituality – they are the fundamentals that you have to get right, before and above all else.

Ask yourself what you want to get out of life? How do you want to spend your time? What does “healthy” look like to you? What does success mean to you and your family?

Only when you have answers to these questions can you align your activities for maximum productivity and happiness.

2. Let The Wrong Things Get Out of Balance

To live a productive life, you have to let some things get out of balance. The wrong things.

It’s easy to say family is important, but it’s hard to let go at 5 o’clock and spend time with them. It’s common knowledge that your health should come first, but it’s hard to skip Netflix to make room for exercise.

When we try to balance everything equally in our life like a juggler spinning plates, we reach days end feeling like we were busy, but didn’t get anything done.

Some of your plates, the unimportant ones, need to fall.

Things like email, social media, and unnecessary meetings. These things keep us busy, but are distractions from work that matters.

Once you’ve brought focus to the fundamentals — the tasks that further your goals, improve your health, deepen your relationships, and expand your knowledge — get comfortable with letting the rest fall out of balance.

When you’re working on things that matter, everything else can drop and lay broken on the floor.

3. Compound Your Value Over Time

The surest way to move faster toward your goals is to compound your value over time. 

Compound interest on a penny is almost magical. 

Start with one penny, then double it daily. On day one, you have one cent. On day two you have two. On day three you have four. And on day 20, you have over 1 million.

Similarly, if you learn something new and useful to your goals, you’ll always operate at a higher, more knowledgeable level. Learn even more and you’ll move faster yet. 

Over time, by continually learning and investing in yourself, you will compound your value exponentially. 

Things that were once impossible will become the new norm.

4. Treat Your Work Like a Marathon

Whatever your effort, it must be sustainable. 

Life is a marathon, not a sprint. 

Working 100-hour weeks may be approved by hustle-mongering Internet celebrities. It may even be necessary on occasion. But it’s not sustainable in the least.

Sprinting too hard for too long doesn’t lead to productivity, it leads to burnout. The time it takes to recover will set you back days, maybe weeks. 

Hustling is not about burning the candle at both ends. Productivity isn’t about staying busy 24/7. 

No, hustling and productivity are about taking action, working on what matters, and producing results consistently over time. So pace yourself. 

You can’t produce results if you’re a burned-out mess worn ragged by overexertion.

5. Make Your Todo List Drop-Dead Simple

If you’re like me, your todo list grows faster than a magic beanstalk.

It’s not messy. It’s not complicated. It’s just long.

Whenever you have a free moment, you find yourself scanning it over, looking for something to do while in between tasks. Unfortunately, this is doing two things:

1. It’s killing your productivity.

2. It’s sapping your energy.

Every task you read becomes a decision point– should I do this or not? Every decision you make takes time and ever so slightly drains your willpower.

By the time you’ve reviewed 10 tasks, you’ve wasted valuable energy and minutes in your day. Not to mention, you’ve probably reviewed these 10 tasks a hundred times before.

So simplify your todo list by prioritizing it.

Give every task a due date and a priority (high, medium, and low is fine).

With a dated, prioritized task list, you will no longer suffer the fate of those who decide what to work on over and over. 

You’ll look once, take action, and get $%@# done.

6. Harmonize Every Aspect of Your Life

Two singers in harmony is one of the most pleasing sounds to the human ear.

Two singers out of harmony is grating.

Similarly, allowing the different aspects of your life —  work, religion, family, etc. — to influence other aspects of your life will give you a feeling of satisfaction like no other. 

Where you can, harmonize your life.

That doesn’t mean work while at the family dinner table. It means let your children teach you how to be a better employee. It means let your spirituality teach you how to be more patient with your family and colleagues.

When you harmonize different aspects of your life, you will feel the energy from one carry through to the next. You will see how one activity can help you in another. 

And, you’ll be getting more done with less effort. 

7. Give Yourself Enough Energy

Some tasks give you energy.

Others drain it.

While 24 hours constrains everyones’ day, your energy level can mean the difference between crushing it or watching cat videos on YouTube.

Having enough energy starts with getting enough sleep and eating the right foods. From there, be aware of how your activities either recharge or drain you. 

For us introverts, crowds sap our energy while time alone recharges it. For some, commuting to work gives them time for energy-building thoughts and ideas. For others, it sucks the life out.

Being aware of how you feel and what tasks give you energy (and what tasks don’t) allow you to maximize your day.

Everyone has administrivia that must get done. Weaving those routine, energy-sapping tasks between reinvigorating tasks will allow you to move through your day with ease, get more done than most, and still have time and energy for fun when the workday ends.

The Hustle-Guilt Ends Here

Despite what the Internet celebrities say, you’re not poor, and you never were. 

They tried to hustle-guilt you with stories of how their 100-hour workweek, their skipped vacations, and their relentless grind earned them the posh, millionaires' life.

But you never needed the posh life. You never needed that kind of money to feel happy, successful, fulfilled. You just needed to stop the overwhelm.

And you can.

You just needed to find some balance to your day, having time to spend with friends and family and a bit of time to yourself.

It’s entirely possible.

You just wanted to get the fundamentals right; have a respectable work routine, improve your health, invest in your relationships, expand your side hustle, and grow your finances.

You can, you can, and you can.

Because, despite what the Internet tells you about being maximally productive, they don’t understand your needs, your desires, your dreams. Their advice is for the hustle-monger who doesn’t care about missing Christmas with their family or an anniversary with their spouse. They are dishing out a recipe for personal disaster.

So ignore them.

Ignore them and let the things that don’t matter get out of balance. Invest in yourself to compound your value over time. Harmonize the different aspects of your life and work on things that give you energy throughout the day. 

Ultimately, by doing these things while remembering life is a marathon, not a sprint, you’ll have the motivation and energy to crush every day, work on what matters, and still sleep like a baby every night.

Ready to crush it?

Subscribe to my free, weekly newsletter on personal excellence and business mastery that one client called “The Owners Manual to an Awesome Life.” I’ll also send you to the article, 10 Ways to Massively (and Immediately) Improve Your Life.

What a Kids Baseball Game Teaches Us About Winning Big by Aiming Small

They finally got three outs.

After 45 minutes of disappointing hit after hit, the opponents’ pitcher finally ended the inning by picking off our third base runner.

The runner wasn’t upset.

Our team of 10 and 11-year-old boys had scored an impressive 15 runs in the bottom of the third inning completely dominating the opponent and going on to win by eight points.

Two things about this score were surprising:

One, we lost against the same team in a walk-off hit just an hour earlier.

And two, out of seventeen plays that inning, only one was a home run.

Celebrating Big Achievements

Our kids celebrated the hell out of that homer.

The entire team ran out to home plate and bounced, in unison, chanting the player’s name as he rounded third. When he finally touched home, their collective cheer must have scared away the local wildlife. 

It was awesome. It was exciting. Even us parents cheered for the team.

Big achievements, like a home run, deserve celebration.

When you’re a kid, it takes a lot of effort to put a ball over a 10-foot tall fence over 200 feet away. When you’re an adult, it takes a lot of effort to get a promotion, write a book, or run a marathon.

Whatever your big goal, should you achieve it, you’re justified in throwing a party and patting yourself on the back. 

You earned it. You deserve it.

But it’s important to remember, while big achievements are fun and exciting, if you want to win games consistently, you need to aim small.

Strive for Small Achievements

Late Sunday, after our double-header, our coach sent the following email:

…

The offense really came alive in the 3rd inning of game two, scoring 15 runs! How did we score 15 runs in the inning?

Noah walked
A.J. singled
Luke singled
Tyler walked
Tal singled
Will singled
Anderson walked
Jack M. walked
Jack B. walked
Landon homered
Noah singled
A.J. singled again
Luke singled again
Chris singled
Tyler doubled
Tal walked
Will reached on error

…

One base on error, six walks, eight singles, one double, and a home run. Put another way, 82 percent of our plays came from walks or singles.

Nothing fancy.

Nothing big.

Just player after player achieving one measly base—the bare minimum necessary to eventually score.

The lesson here is probably clear, elementary even: While big achievements don’t come often enough to add up to a big win, multiple small achievements do. The trouble is, while it’s easy to visualize a single in baseball, it’s exceedingly difficult to do so in life.

We set big goals for ourself, then wonder why we haven’t achieved it a year later. We have a grandiose vision for our life, but hit middle-age and wonder why that vision hasn’t become a reality. 

The concept of small wins leading to big achievements is easy enough to understand, but it’s a paradigm shift in how we need to act.

To truly apply this lesson and start consistently winning, we’ll have to do the opposite of what we do now: focus on getting more singles (and cheer wildly when they happen).

Small Wins Aren’t Sexy, They’re Essential

Too often we get hung up on making big progress while forgetting that, without achieving small steps along the way, we’re missing the vast majority of opportunities to eventually score.

Small wins simply aren’t sexy.

So you’ve led an important customer meeting. Big deal.

So you’ve written for a week and finished a draft of chapter one. Who cares?

So you’ve run the first mile in a marathon. So what?

Here’s what: 

Small wins are the steps along the way and necessary to making big progress — Without a successful first customer meeting, you’ll have no chance of closing a deal and getting a promotion in the future.

Small wins help you build momentum and make progress faster — Once you’ve written a draft of chapter one, you’ll feel excited about your progress and carry that momentum into writing chapter two and beyond.

Small wins provide you motivation and energy to keep working toward a larger goal — Once you’ve scaled the first half of the mountain, it will be too hard to give up on progress. Your forward motion will propel you another 10th, then another, and another until you reach the summit. 

More so, the people who seem to continually make progress toward their goals are always extending themselves by either learning more, doing more, or being more. Not a lot. Just enough to complete their next milestone; small, manageable enhancements to their abilities, which help them grow.

Small wins are essential. 

Not just because small achievements add up to big goals, but because the steps you take, the momentum you build, the motivation you nurture, and the value you create within yourself all enhance your intrinsic inner-value. Then, like interest on your savings account, this inner-value compounds over time, allowing for even greater achievements in the future.

In other words, once you learn how to hit a single, you can do it again and again, loading the bases, scoring 15 runs in a single inning, and ultimately winning the game.

Think Big, Aim Small, Win Big

Don’t get me wrong. Creating big goals is a good thing. After all, whatever game you’re playing, you’ve set out to win, not come in second.

If you’re writing a book, maybe you want to hit the New York Times Best Seller list.

If you’re going for a promotion, maybe you want your bosses job, pay, and responsibilities.

If you’re running a marathon, maybe you want to rank nationally and receive sponsorship. 

Whatever the game, it’s great that your goals are big, hairy, and audacious. The ideal goal is inspiring. Sizeable goals represent some future, better version of yourself that doesn’t currently exist, giving you a lighthouse toward which to sail. As Tim Ferriss once said, “Think big and don’t listen to people who tell you it can’t be done. Life’s too short to think small.”

But to achieve big, aim small.

Just as you can’t get the promotion in one day, you can’t write the book in one sitting or run a marathon in one step. Making massive progress doesn’t mean hitting a home run every time. Big wins are often made from a series of smaller ones, incremental steps that get you closer to your goal. 

So focus on them.

Focus on the small immediate wins that will make everything else easier or unnecessary. Steal small victories to continually improve and step toward your goals. Take your big, hairy, audacious goals and break them down into small, manageable chunks. Set measurable milestones as stepping stones along the way. And every day, make sure the tasks you’re working on lead to the next milestone successfully so that you never stray from the path to winning big. 

Operating in this way will be the difference between hitting the occasional home run and running up the score, dominating your game, and achieving far more than you might have originally thought possible.

“So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.” —Christopher Reeve

Focus on getting singles, and the game will take care of itself.

What next small step can you take?

About the Author

Mike Mehlberg

HUSBAND, FATHER, ENTREPRENEUR, BUSINESS STRATEGIST, AUTHOR, FITNESS NUT, ORGANIZATION FREAK, PRODUCTIVITY JUNKIE

I help high-achieving entrepreneurs organize their brain and schedule so they can organize their life and business.

Ready to crush it? Subscribe to my free, weekly newsletter on personal excellence and business mastery that one client called “The Owners Manual to an Awesome Life.” I’ll also send you to the article, 10 Ways to Massively (and Immediately) Improve Your Life.

Here are 19 tiny changes (with affiliate links to products that I’ve personally used to enhance my productivity) that can do exactly that. Try one, or try them all. The more changes, the more you’ll find you have the clarity, focus, time, and energy to work on what matters.

1. Greener is Better

Plants look great. They boost your mood. They purify the air, reducing air toxins by up to 87% in less than 24 hours. And studies have shown that plants in your workspace can increase your productivity by up to 15%.

Combine that with a reduction in tension and anxiety, depression, anger, and fatigue, and you’ve got yourself a low-cost productivity enhancement to any work environment.

If you want to learn more about the positive change plants can create, read Seven Benefits of Having Plants in Your Office by Barry Chignel of CIPHR.com [1]. 

If you already believe me, just buy a plant for your office. They’re like ten bucks.

2. Keep It Organized

If you leave drawers open, cables untucked, and @#$% everywhere, consider cleaning things up.

Sure, you feel like you’re saving time by not worrying about throwing out the rotten banana peel on your desk. But the few seconds you save now is lost tenfold later.

That’s because being productive requires energy, and disarray saps it.

In a survey of over 800 workers, P-Touch discovered that the combined cost of searching for lost items in the physical and digital world adds up to $177 billion per year. That was in 2010 (it’s only gotten worse) [2].

While organizing a messy office takes time up-front, and keeping an office organized requires an ongoing investment of time, the long-term benefits outweigh the short-term costs. 

Keep a clean, open space on your desk. Organize your files in a meaningful way on your computer. Keep your browser tabs to a minimum. Organize extra cables in little storage bins (I use these). And don’t stack @#$% up or store stuff in your workspace. 

All of these small tactics will lower your stress and make it faster to find what you need so you can get back to working on what matters.

3. One Keyboard to Rule Them All

There’s no one best keyboard for everyone. Personal taste in keyboard “clickiness,” shape, and color are all personally important factors. But, there are two major attributes to any keyboard that can improve your productivity while at work (the second attribute being more important than the first).

First, it must be Bluetooth (for reasons I’ll share below). It matters that you are unbound by cables, free to twist and turn while still able to interact with your devices.

When you’re leashed to your desk and constrained to a particular posture, you’ll get uncomfortable and stop working. Cut that cord and you can lean back, shift position, and move around, saving you from losing your groove when the typing gets monotonous. 

Second (and the reason for getting a Bluetooth keyboard), is that you can pair it to any device. But I don’t want you to get a keyboard that only pairs to one device. I want you to get one that pairs to at least three. 

Here’s why.

You’ll pair device #1 to your computer. Device #2 your phone. And the 3rd device can be your iPad, a personal computer, or any other device you use during the day requiring a keyboard. Being able to switch, with the tap of a button, between any one of these devices means you don’t have to interrupt your flow or lose your positional context (the arrangement of your body and how it affects your mental state). You can go from emailing on your computer to texting on your phone without moving a muscle.

Productivity win.

4. Make It a Safe Space for Fidgeting

Sometimes being productive means doing nothing at all. 

Well, it’s not that you’re doing nothing. You’re thinking, planning, and strategizing. You’re just not moving, producing, and working. 

For those times, the most important thing is to maintain focus.  

You’re familiar with the popular fidget spinners, the toy that broke $1 billion (with a B) in sales in 2017, right? While you may think of these as a toy for kids, fidget-like toys such as stress balls, even doodle-pads have been adopted by adults and businesses for decades. 

The reason why is both simple and complex.

You know from firsthand experience that fidgeting with toys can help you focus. They give you something to do, a background task to work on while your brain concentrates on more meaningful tasks. 

Simple.

However, a bit of science and research tells us that fidgeting releases dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain, two chemicals that increase focus and attention [6].

Sounds like a great way to concentrate on work that matters. 

Personally, I find fidget spinners boring. They’ll get the job done, sure. But if you want some real fun, try ForeverSpin tops. 

Or, if you want a real mindless challenge, try a Kendama. Getting good at one of these will put hair on your chest (male or female), and is a wonderful fidget toy to keep you focused during meetings or phone calls.

5. Google Isn’t Everything

This one isn’t complicated. When you need to look something up, you don’t want to interrupt your workflow to do it.

Google is fast, convenient, and omnipresent. But sometimes the information you’re seeking is in a book, a magazine, or other physical material. When you find yourself referencing the same materials more than a few times, it’s time to keep it on hand. 

I keep a bookshelf of writing and business books within arms reach of my desk.

Writing and business may not be your thing. So, whatever your thing is, keep those materials close by. The next time you are deep in the middle of focused, productive work, you’ll be able to grab your reference materials and continue on without interrupting your flow. 

6. The Right Speakers and the Right Music for the Right Task

It’s proven. Music makes you more productive (especially while performing repetitive tasks) [7].

Playing music while answering emails, inputting data, or doing other routine jobs can drastically improve your productivity. For me, throwing on some Dr. Dre gets me in the mood to crush just about any assignment. 

Now, when it comes to working on creative tasks, you can still get a productivity bump with music. But be careful to select music without lyrics. Electronic or classical music are better choices for thinking or learning as they won’t distract you from the mentally-demanding task at hand.

Either way, music makes you more productive, so a great pair of speakers for your office is worth the investment. Just make sure it has one important quality: the ability to play music from wherever your music resides. 

Sometimes I listen on my phone, sometimes on my computer. Sometimes I listen to records from my record player. These speakers allow me to switch modes quickly with the push of a button so I’m not constrained by the source. On top of that, they are bookshelf size, sound amazing, and aren’t that expensive. 

Many soundbars are great alternatives, pumping out amazingly clear tones while allowing you to switch between multiple inputs (including Bluetooth and analog). If a soundbar is more your style, I’ve had great success with this Vizio bar in our basement movie room.

The important thing is to get some decent speakers in your office so you can really enjoy the music, pump up the volume, and let it works it’s productivity magic on you.

7. Let Them Listen

If you want to be productive, you need to maintain momentum. And nothing stops your momentum quicker than an unanswered question.

Think of all the times you wonder when your favorite sports team is playing, what the weather will be like later, or how many kilometers are in a mile. These simple questions, though they can quickly be answered with a quick Google search, are often distractions pulling you away from work that matters.

You found the answer to your question, but the next thing you know, you’re lost in a sea of text messages and social media.

So get an Echo Dot (I use these) or Google Home or Apple HomePod for your office.  

Yes, it’s a bit creepy that it’s always listening. But the number of times during the day you’ll ask simple questions, get an immediate answer, and get right back to work will number in the dozens. Beyond that, you can set timers, set reminders, look up information on Wikipedia, and have it spell words for you. All with nothing more than your voice. All while preventing you from getting lost in your phone.

Which after all, is the main benefit: Answering whatever question was top of mind, scratching your mental itch and letting you get back to working on what matters.

8. Stink it Up

The smell of lavender will make you sleepy. The smell of citrus will wake you up. 

It stands to reason that certain smells could help you focus and make you more productive.

In fact, several scents including lemon, which helps you find clarity and concentrate; cinnamon, which prevents mental fatigue; and peppermint, which stimulates your mind and gives you an energy boost will do precisely that [8].

There are a thousand companies that produce candles, essential oils, incense, or wax burners with these various scents. Which one you pick is up to you. 

I use a combination of Scentsy and essential oil diffusers. The essential oils seem to pack more punch, so if I’m not trying to cover the smell of dog or spilled coffee on my office carpet, I’ll fire up some peppermint and get to work.

9. Hug Your Head

As I’m writing this, a bluejay is screeching outside my window.

It sounds like someone is murdering it, and it’s treacherously distracting.

It couldn’t be my kids. They just got home from school and are stomping around my wood floor with their shoes on, screaming just as loud as the bluejay.

Times like these warrant headphones.

Not just any ol’ headphones. I’m talking over-the-ear, noise-canceling headphones with as many decibels of sound reduction as money can buy. 

When it comes to productivity, headphones are different than speakers. Headphones don’t blend sounds with the environment as speakers do. They draw you in. They buffer the outside world from your inner thoughts.

Even without playing music, a pair of headphones hugging your head creates a barrier, a walled garden around your mind, allowing you to focus on what matters and stay productive in treacherously distracting times.

I have two pairs:

1. AirPods, which I carry with me at all times. They’re not great but are incredibly convenient and do in a pinch (especially while traveling).

2. Beats Studio 3 with Noise Cancelling. I keep these in my bag or at my desk. When I’m ready to hunker down and get real work done, I crown myself with these babies and drown out everything but my productive thoughts.

10. Sit. Stand. Sit. Stand. Both

Experts claim certain health benefits to standing at work. But there are productivity benefits too--though not what you might expect.

While a Texas A&M study found that workers who used standing desks were 38% more productive than those who did not, the research was debunked for a variety of scientific reasons [3]. The fact of the matter is, whether you stand or sit while working, your productivity doesn’t increase one bit.  

However, having the option to work while standing does.

First, being able to work in the way that is most comfortable to you will increase your engagement by up to 38%, according to Dr. Laura Hamill, Chief People Office at Limeade. If you’re more engaged, you have a higher focus, creativity, and motivation. 

Second, the health benefits associated with standing over sitting, such as increased circulation and improved oxygen flow, lead directly to productivity benefits such as improved focus, increased energy, and a reduction of pain and discomfort [4].

Finally, and this is anecdotal evidence by yours truly, having an adjustable desk lets you switch things up a bit when you get tired of sitting, allowing you to keep focused on the task at hand while experiencing a rejuvenating change of pace.

Here’s the desk I use. It’s slim profile and elegant design doesn’t detract from the aesthetics of my office or ergonomics in my sitting position. Plus, it’s quite easy to lift and lower with multiple height choices available for different situations (typing vs. writing, for example).

11. Chew to Recharge and Refocus

I don’t know about you, but I get lost in the refrigerator when I’m procrastinating.

Give me a tough task to accomplish, and I walk straight to the light, basking in its glow while the cold air chills my feet and I look for something, anything to eat. 

Not productive.

Furthermore, everyone has those moments when they’re “zoned out.” Seemingly unable to accomplish anything, you stare at your monitor, lost in thought (though you’re not really thinking) as the minutes tick by.

Also not productive.

A solution to both problems is keeping a small snack handy, ready to deploy when you feel the gravity of procrastination weigh you down.

Lifehack.org has a list of 20 Foods to Snack on For Enhanced Productivity; all brain-happy, energizing foods to enhance productivity and finish work by dinner.

Keep a few of these options by your desk and pull them out in times of need. The act of eating will help you refocus. And the energy from the food will carry you through those dull moments in your day.

12. Hang Your Compass

Maybe this should have been tip #1. It’s that important.

If you don’t know where you’re going, it’s impossible to be productive.

Priorities are the compass. They are your direction. Priorities tell you exactly what to do and by when so you can work on what matters.

A big task list is handy, but not good enough to maximize your productivity. You must prioritize.

Every day, pick one or two tasks (no more than three) that you need to focus on to have a successful day. Those are your priorities, and they should align with a successful week, which should align with a successful month, which should align with a successful year.

Get the idea?

When you choose your priorities for the day (either the morning of or the night before), it’s not enough to keep them hidden in your notebook. You must hang them where you can see them at all times.

With your priorities front and center, they’ll continually remind you needs to get done. They’ll also act as a warning siren for when the inevitable distraction strikes.

Figure out your yearly goals. Break them down into monthly, weekly, and daily priorities. Then, every day, write and hang your daily priorities so you know exactly how to stay productive all day long.

13. Time Your Limits

There are two reasons to use a timer:

1. For use with a productivity methodology such as Pomodoro.

2. To prevent you from getting lost on Instagram all day.

The Pomodoro method is an effective way to manage your energy. You can read about it here. Keep the timer of your choice on hand because, with this productivity method, you’ll use it often. 

As for Instagram (or your social media drug of choice), keep a timer to set your limits.  

Instead of cutting yourself off completely from social media, which is both unrealistic and boring, set a five, ten, or twenty-minute timer when you start a social media break. This will give you time to rest, zone out, and catch up on fake news. And the timer will prevent you from getting lost in your feed for 45 minutes, squandering your productivity for the day and making you feel guilty for such overindulgence. 

It doesn’t matter what kind of timer you use. If you bought that Echo Dot I recommended above, you can set timers until you’re blue in the face. Of course, you can use your computer or phone as well. And, some of you classic folk out there might go with a Pomodoro “egg” timer or use an hourglass.

I personally like using this hourglass  (it keeps 30 minutes worth of sand) because it provides a visual and ever so slight and unobtrusive audio cue (the sound of sand falling). The combination reminds me that I’m keeping a timer while not distracting me from my endeavor.

14. Double Your Desktop Space

If you don’t have two monitors, get another. Alternatively, buy one double-wide monitor for the same effect (here’s the one I use).

Two monitors vs. one big one are not created equal. 

Depending on what operating system you are using, multiple monitors are handled differently than a single double-wide.

I recommend two monitors if you always have one application opened, front and center. Email comes to mind. When you have two monitors, this main application can remain contained to a single monitor leaving you another monitor for miscellaneous work.

However, if you don’t typically operate out of a single application, I recommend getting a single, double-wide monitor (make sure your computer can handle the ultra-wide resolution). Having all that extra screen space will give you plenty of productivity opportunities. Think research while writing, summarize webpages into an email, or video chatting while playing Sudoku ;-).

Either way you go, the productivity benefits of having two monitors are well documented. Some studies have shown that productivity can increase by up to 30%, especially in cases of data entry, comparing side-by-side information, and communicating with others while you work [5]. Furthermore, the extra real estate provided by more pixels let you spread some information out (like a spreadsheet or a multi-page document), giving you a broader view of the information at hand and saving you time from switching between windows or scrolling around to take it all in.

15. Open Writing Space

Stop looking around for a pen and paper as if you’ve never been asked to write something down before. 

You know, when you’re talking with someone and they ask you to write down an address and, since you’ve got nothing handy, you pretend to memorize it. Or when you’re in a meeting and you feel the need to jot down an action item but don’t have a pen and paper handy, so you just don’t.

What do you think happens to that address, those action items? You forget them, that’s what. Now you’ve got to go back to that person and ask them to help you remember. 

That wastes your time and theirs.

So keep a blank sheet of paper and a pen on your desk. 

At. All. Times. 

Not a computer. That doesn’t count. Computers have too many apps, too many distractions. If you want to take a note on a computer, you have to open up your note-taking app, wait for it to load, create a new note, and navigate to the text area before you can start typing. That’s too much… too many things to go wrong.

Pen and paper is best.

Okay, it doesn’t have to be a pen and paper. It could be a mini whiteboard and marker. It could be a Boogie Board (these are pretty cool for taking down misc notes that you can quickly erase at the end of the day). It could be a stone tablet and chisel for all I care.

Just have something to write with, within arms reach, handy at all times. The small moments you will save by not having to go on the hunt will add up throughout the day, making you more productive.

16. Layer Your Lighting

To be productive in your office, you have to remain comfortable for long periods of time. 

Unfortunately, staring at a computer too long causes eye-strain, which kills productivity. So does sitting in an uncomfortable, uninspiring space. 

Lighting can make a huge difference.

First, you need overhead lighting to illuminate your entire office. Incandescents are best as fluorescent lights can cast an irritating glare. 

Second, you need a desk lamp to shine focus on your task at hand. While overhead bulbs will provide light for your desk when writing, typing, etc., they aren’t focused specifically on your work and can cast distracting shadows. A desk lamp solves that problem and provides a second layer of light to warm the room and give it depth. I use a halogen desk lamp similar to this one.

Third, put a light behind your computer monitor. This will help reduce eye-strain by minimizing the drastic difference in the amount of light between the foreground (your monitor) and the background.

Finally, and try this only if you want to get really fancy, get some wall lights. Illuminating your walls will give your office space a very sophisticated, warm look. It can even make your room look bigger. Here is a great Pinterest feed on office lighting to inspire you. Notice how the lighting in most of these offices is layered. 

Copy what works best for you and layer your office lighting to enhance your work-mood, reduce eye strain, and ultimately make you more productive.

17. Create a “Focus Zone”

My favorite spot in my office is what I call my “Focus Zone.” 

It’s the place where I work on important things... writing, thinking, studying, whatever.

You need one too. 

Your normal working zone is full of distractions. Your computer, papers to file, notes to review, pictures to look at, and anything else you keep in your workspace... It’s a recipe for never finishing anything but the most trivial of tasks.

It’s not just about the distractions though. 

It’s about your mindset.

Your focus zone is where you go when you want to get real work done. It’s where you train yourself to get real work done. Your focus zone is reserved only for getting real work done.

If you need to check email, sit somewhere else. 

If you need to take a phone call, take it elsewhere. 

But when you need to work on the things that matter, go to your focus zone, light a candle, don your headphones, and make it rain.

18. Keep a Stable Temperature 

When your fingers are turning blue and hard to bend, it’s too cold, and you’re not going to be very productive. 

On the flip side, if you’ve incubated a case of swamp-crotch after typing an email, it’s too hot, and you’re not going to be very productive either.

Too hot or too cold is not good for productivity. No surprise there. 

But is there a perfect temperature?

In 2006, Helsinki University of Technology and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory set out to discover just that. They tested a range of temperatures on participants and found that productivity peaks at 71.6 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Program your thermostat for 71 or 71 degrees during the day, and you’re good to go.

19. Don’t Keep Everything You Need Nearby

Wait. What?

Don’t keep everything nearby?

Sounds like bad productivity advice. But there’s more to productivity than focusing, hustling, and being “on” 24/7.

There’s rest. 

If you don’t rest, your productivity will only last so long. If you don’t rest, you can’t consistently maintain forward momentum toward your goals.

Rest doesn’t have to mean taking a nap (though it can). It can often be as simple as getting up, walking around your desk, and taking a moment to think about something—anything—different.

The problem with keeping absolutely everything on hand is that you get into hustle-mode. You never leave, never see a change of pace, and therefore, never rest, which is a problem because, well, you’re human. 

You don’t have an endless supply of energy or patience. Nobody does.

Take the time to rest, recharge, even if only for a minute. It will pay dividends for your productivity throughout the day.

Sources

1. https://www.ciphr.com/advice/plants-in-the-office/

2. https://theproductivityexperts.com/7-reasons-why-being-organized-boosts-productivity/

3. https://www.fastcompany.com/3061782/the-truth-about-standing-desks-and-productivity

4. https://flexispot.com/spine-care-center/4-ways-standing-desks-improve-employee-productivity/

5. https://www.business.com/articles/increasing-productivity-how-dual-monitors-can-save-you-time-and-money/

6. https://www.pgi.com/blog/2017/11/fidget-toys-workplace/

7. https://www.sparringmind.com/music-productivity/

8. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/224575

About the Author

Michael Mehlberg

HUSBAND, FATHER, ENTREPRENEUR, BUSINESS STRATEGIST, AUTHOR, FITNESS NUT, ORGANIZATION FREAK, PRODUCTIVITY JUNKIE

I help high-achieving entrepreneurs organize their brain and schedule so they can organize their life and business.

Subscribe to my free, weekly newsletter on personal excellence and business mastery that one client called “The Owners Manual to an Awesome Life.”

Maybe my weekend was too hectic.

Maybe it was because my kid woke me up three times: once to complain that he couldn’t sleep, once to tell me his stomach hurt, and another to puke.

Whatever it was, I stumbled out of bed feeling like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich marinated in a bag of Nickelodeon gak, trampled by a herd of bison, and left out in the sun to dry.

A glance at my calendar told me that I had more meetings than a millipede has legs giving me one and only one time to exercise, one and only one time to write an article, and zero times to take a seven-hour nap (which is the only thing I was contemplating doing).

Today was gearing up to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Drastic Times...

This wasn’t the first time I’d felt tired, sore, and unmotivated to do, well, just about anything. It happens from time to time, mostly unexpectedly, often after getting out of my routine (traveling being the worst of it). 

I’m sure you’ve been there.

You wake up, you’re dragging @$$, and it’s all you can do to make the coffee and stumble into work. You’re goals take a backseat for the day. Your attitude is crap. You’re in survival mode, just trying to make it to 5 o’clock.

But in the back of your mind, your hustle-guilt is chastising you for even thinking about taking a break. You have half a mind to check some emails, zone out in meetings, and call it a day. But you know a better life is waiting for you on the other side of persistence and hard work. 

So what to do?

Emails and zoning out isn’t a good long-term option. Neither is taking a seven-hour nap. No, drastic times call for drastic measures.

Luckily these “drastic measures” are about a straightforward as brewing a pot of coffee, don’t take much longer, and might even get you more motivated than chugging the entire thing.

Self-Administered Motivational Drugs

Staying on track requires motivation. And motivation is a fickle beast.

We don’t all have drill-sergeants belittling us for moving to slow. We don’t all have hard-nosed coaches screaming at us to pick up the pace. And, yelling at ourselves rarely works.

No, we need to self-administer some motivational drugs. Here are the three things I do (in order) to stay on track when stuck in the doldrums.

1. Recover Past Inspiration

We’ve all been inspired from time to time by a powerful quote.

Maybe you highlighted it in a book. Perhaps you saw it on social media. Or you could have an Evernote note with a bundle of inspiring thoughts for times like these (hint hint).

Wherever you store your inspiration, find it.

Re-read a quote, an inspiring article, or a favorite passage in a book. Find something that once lit you up; it’s likely to do so again. 

Don’t have one? That’s okay. You can use mine. I keep this bad boy printed by my desk for times like these.

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”

— President Calvin Coolidge

Good quote, right :-)?

While this step is rarely enough to push you through the entire day, think of it as the appetizer, the antipasto, the first step to warming your engine. It’s a step that sets you in the right mindset to persist, grow, thrive. It also puts you in the right mood for step 2.

2. Get Hyped Up on Some Rock Vids

Okay, maybe Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson doesn’t pump you up as he does me. But that’s not the point.

You know who inspires you. You know who gets you fired up. So find a video of them doing awesome @#$& on Youtube and let it work its magic on your mindset. 

Not too long ago, I wrote a post about one of my favorite motivational videos of all time, 5 Mindset Hacks that Make Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson So Massively Successful. This vid jazzes me up. It reminds me that it takes hard work, a positive attitude, and a growth mindset to make my life what I want it to be.

Find your own video, or use the one I found. Either way, this step should help get your blood pumping and take you one step closer to killing your funk. In the next and final step, we’ll shoot that funk straight between the eyes. 

3. Remember Your Lighthouse

Your lighthouse is your guiding light, your beacon, the reason you started doing whatever it is you’re in a funk over now.

Maybe it’s exercise. Maybe it’s writing a book. Maybe it’s your side-hustle. Maybe it’s all three.

Whatever it is, this lighthouse of yours was, at one time, just an idea. To turn that idea into reality, you had to start working on it. And to start working on it, you needed motivation.

You’re going to write down that motivation now. 

Grab a sheet of paper or your favorite note-taking app and, for each project or goal for which you feel unmotivated, write down why you ever started working on it in the first place. Just one paragraph will do the trick. Get to the core of what it was about the goal that initially excited you. Recall why you started and where you wanted to end up. Most importantly, capture why this goal was so important to you and why it still is.

Here’s an example. I broke out of my last funk with these three simple paragraphs that took no longer than five minutes to write:

Exercise — I want to look good, and I know that exercise makes me feel good. I started because I wanted to do something hard... something that required me to push myself... something that required me to break through barriers. I wanted exercise to be that breakthrough part of my life that influenced all other parts of my life. Work hard in the gym, work hard elsewhere. Breakthrough walls in the gym, breakthrough walls in business and life. Push through the resistance. So that’s why I’m [here in my gym], sore and tired. It’s mornings like this when I need to push through. Breakthroughs can’t happen without resistance, so this is the perfect morning to do it.

Book — I want to be an author. I want to see a book on the shelf. I want to see my book in a bookstore, in a strangers hands. I want to have something to say, and say it. I want people to talk about me, my book, what I’ve accomplished. I want to hand my book to friends, strangers, crowds, anyone with an interest. I want to change their lives with what I know.

Articles — I want to grow my readership. I want to have 500k email subscribers. I want to be able to send my newsletter an email and have them not only interested in reading what I’m writing but actually buy things that I recommend... books, gadgets, etc. I want to make my living waking up, writing, working out, writing, eating, writing, resting and reading, writing, then publishing and marketing. The world is led by people who have something to say. Articles give me a chance to hone my voice, think through complex issues, and have something important, intelligent, insightful to say that changes lives for the better.

I didn’t think about it. I didn’t worry about whether the sentences sounded good or were grammatically correct. I just wrote until the core of why I’d started set these goals snuck out on the page. I wrote until I found my lighthouse.

Summary

God knows it takes persistence to get anything meaningful done. It also takes hustle. And, anyone who is persistently hustling over time will eventually feel exhaustion set in.

Sometimes that exhaustion is telling you to rest, to take a break from the hustle. On those occasions, it’s perfectly acceptable to dial it back and allow yourself the time and space to recharge. 

But for those times when you get off your routine, wake up in a funk and need to break out of it, following these three steps should restore your motivation:

1. Warm-up your engine with a motivation quote or inspiration passage from a book.

2. Get your blood pumping with a motivational video from an inspiring hero in your life.

3. Shoot your funk straight between the eyes and get to work by remembering your lighthouse.

A quote, a video, and some stream-of-conscious writing are all it takes to kick your otherwise funky self back into gear. These steps will remind you of what you originally set out to accomplish. And, in less than 10 minutes, you can get back to work with renewed vigor, taking a day that started out shite and crushing it with aplomb.

About the Author

Michael Mehlberg

HUSBAND, FATHER, ENTREPRENEUR, BUSINESS STRATEGIST, AUTHOR, FITNESS NUT, ORGANIZATION FREAK, PRODUCTIVITY JUNKIE

I help high-achieving entrepreneurs organize their brain and schedule so they can organize their life and business.

Subscribe to my free, weekly newsletter on personal excellence and business mastery that one client called “The Owners Manual to an Awesome Life.”

Using Brain Science to Profoundly Alter Your Life for the Better

It looked like a Coke.

The brown sugary liquid fizzed over a tall glass of ice just like a Coke would.

My college roommate even handed it to me saying the words, “here’s your Coke.”

I grabbed the glass without a thought, thanked him, took a swig and...

Spit out a mouthful of the nastiest tasting liquid into the glass, onto my chin, and all over my shirt.

It may as well have been motor oil. It tasted that bad.

I shot a look at my roommate, a combination of disgust and surprise, to tell him the Coke had turned. But his smirk told me he was up to his pranks again. This time I was his target.

As it turned out, there was nothing wrong with the drink. It simply wasn’t the drink I was expecting. I had asked my roommate to grab me a glass of Coke. He brought me a glass of root beer instead.

Funny.

The thing is, I love root beer. There’s nothing better than a tall, cold glass of Mug on a hot day. I have fond memories of pulling up to an A&W in the back of my Grandma’s beige Cadillac where the waitress would hang a tray of frozen glasses full of the sweet drink on our window.

But because my brain was expecting one flavor and my taste buds delivered something completely different, my brain malfunctioned causing a visceral reaction that had me wiping my chin and had my roommate laughing at me for hours.

Your Brain is an Expectation Machine

Everything you do, or experience, or think is affected by the expectations you already have.

Take your arms, for example.

With both arms intact, your brain works swimmingly. It sends signals to your limbs, they move, they provide feedback, and your brain breathes a sigh of relief that the cycle is complete. When you expect your arm to move and it does, your expectations are fulfilled. All is well.

But if one arm were missing, this feedback loop doesn’t close. A variety of sensations, including pain, can follow.

In a fascinating book Phantoms in the Brain, Dr. Ramachandran explores the world of neuroscience through people who have lost a limb. Patients experienced phantom sensations in an extremity that no longer existed; some as simple as a fleeting tickle, others as irritating as an un-itchable itch and, in the worst of cases, pain.

The patient’s brain, having sent a signal to the missing limb, would expect a response. Without receiving one, its neural pathways would get confused, causing severe phantom pain where none should be possible.

Ouch.

Or take relationships, for example.

While you may pride yourself on accepting strangers with open eyes—never judging, never assuming—how you actually treat them is, in part, based on expectations you already have for them.

In a pivotal study performed by Harvard Professor Robert Rosenthal in 1964, a random group of students was given a standardized IQ test. From the pool of test results, Rosenthal selected a few children at random, telling their teachers that his test predicted these children were “on the verge of an intense intellectual bloom.”

Rosenthal then followed these children and their teachers for two years. What he found was astounding. The randomly chosen children, children whose teachers had higher expectations for them, now performed better on IQ tests than the other students in his study. In short, the teachers’ higher expectations for the students positively affected the children’s development.

Woah.

In both studies, the study of phantom pain in missing limbs and of setting high (albeit false) expectations of a students performance, we see that our brains aren’t quite operating in the way we believe they are.

We believe we receive stimulus through our senses, process it, then consciously decide how to react. But in reality, we receive stimulus through our senses, our brain processes it, then delivers answers based on what it expects to see next. Unless we interrupt our brain’s processing and delivery system, we receive answers that may not be logical, reasonable, or even appropriate.

While this may seem cause for alarm, it’s actually quite helpful.

Your Expectations Maximize Your Productivity

Most of the time, you are on autopilot.

Wake up, make coffee, eat breakfast, shower, and head to work. You do these things without thinking.

From the second your alarm goes off, your brain begins to execute a series of routines. Unless something unexpected comes up, these run without a hitch.

During the day, many other programs execute without your involvement: meeting with people, triaging emails, lunch, social media, driving home. All of these things happen without much contemplation on your part. Yes, you’re engaged, participating, even interacting. But you’re not thinking deeply. You know what’s expected of you and easily live up to those expectations.

Your brain, the ultimate expectation machine moves from one program to the next, predicting what will happen and delivering answers that match reality with your assumptions. You’re doing whatever comes to mind.

And that’s a good thing — most of the time.

Autopilot lets you act without thinking, perform without expending energy, and make decisions without deciding. It lets you talk to a friend while driving a stick shift. It lets you shampoo your hair while thinking about your upcoming schedule. With autopilot turned on, you can move through your morning routine in a sleep-deprived daze, making coffee, eating breakfast, and triaging emails using minimal mental resources.

But when it comes to self-improvement and personal growth, autopilot, for all its energy-saving and decision-making benefits, is hugely limiting.

Your Expectations Are Limiting Your Growth

Even with good intentions—plans to eat right, exercise, plan your days, set goals, build your side-hustle, get home before dinner—it sometimes seems impossibly difficult to grow.

We all have our reasons.

There’s too much to do. Too little time. Too many distractions. Too many competing priorities. Life seems to get in the way.

These reasons sound well and good, but (truth bomb coming) they’re all lies.

The real reason you don’t plan, eat right, exercise, set goals, grow your business, and live a balanced life isn’t because you have too much to do. It’s not because you get distracted.

It’s because you aren’t conditioned to.

If you always eat breakfast after making coffee, your autopilot switches from coffee-mode to breakfast-mode without thinking. If your morning routine has never included exercise, inserting a workout into it is jarring. In some ways, your brain rejects it, making it far easier to skip it and fall back into a familiar routine. A routine that’s safe. A routine you’re comfortable with.

Self-improvement requires change. It requires us to do things we’re not familiar with, that we’re uncomfortable with. But our routines, the expectations we’ve built for how our life runs, they don’t allow for the uncomfortable. And so, they don’t allow for growth.

Without modifying your expectations, you can’t hope to change. And without change, you can’t hope to grow.

Why Self-Improvement is So Effing Hard

Now we have the basis for understanding why self-improvement is so effing hard.

If you expect to drink a Coke and your prankster roommate gives you a root beer instead, your brain cries foul. Not because you don’t like root beer, but because you’re geared up to taste Coke and, when you taste something different, alarm bells tell you something is wrong. Similarly, if you introduce exercise in your morning routine when you’re used to eating breakfast after making coffee, you’re brain will initially cry foul. It won’t feel right. It won’t be expected.

And that’s when the excuses come. “I just don’t have enough time to exercise. Not this morning.”

If you lost a limb in an unfortunate accident, your brain might be tortuous. Telling your arm to move and not receiving the expected feedback confuses your neurons, causing pain where none should exist. Similarly, if you try reading a productivity book after breakfast when you would normally read the news, you’re brain will feel confused. You’ll worry that you’re missing out on important world events. A mild form of pain will crop up.

And that’s when the excuses come. “There are just too many distractions. I’ll read this book tomorrow.”

Or, as we learned with Professor Rosenthal’s teaching experiment, the expectations we set for others changes the way we interact with them. If you’re used to doing everything yourself but know a mentor could help accelerate your business, the expectation you have for yourself (that you can do it all) will prevent you from finding that new mentor.

That’s when the excuses come. “Finding a mentor just isn’t a priority right now. I’ll look for one next week.”

As if that weren’t enough, even if you force yourself down the path to a better self, your brain produces a little motivation and happiness drug called dopamine. Dopamine is released in anticipation of met expectations. It’s withheld for unmet ones. Dopamine, as we’ll see, likes to keep us right where we are. Safe and sound.

According to Professor Wolfram Schultz, who studies dopamine and the brain’s reward centers at Cambridge University, the best way to release the most dopamine is with an unexpected reward. On the other hand, the best way to withhold dopamine from your brain (which can frustrate you and put you into a severe funk) is to set expectations that won’t be met.

My kids get pretty excited when we decide to go out for ice cream for no good reason (unexpected reward = dopamine hit). And those few times we’ve promised them ice cream and then have to change plans, all hell breaks loose (expected reward withdrawn = dopamine withheld).

But professor Schultz studies go further, showing that your brain not only releases dopamine when you get what you want but also just by wanting something at all. In other words, wanting something—a treat, a gadget, an award, a goal—creates the expectation of getting that thing, which releases dopamine to reward your good intentions.

Things like exercise, reading self-help books, or finding a mentor to improve your business are all long-term investments that won’t provide an immediate reward. When your brain can’t expect the reward somewhat immediately, it doesn’t release dopamine. Worse, if you’ve forced yourself to get started but aren’t seeing immediate results, your brain withholds dopamine because your high expectations weren’t met, putting you into a funk that brings all further self-improvement to a halt. You won’t feel good about what you’re doing and will quickly fall back into old habits.

That’s when the excuses come. “This isn’t working... I’m not seeing results... why bother?”

Using Brain Science to Profoundly Alter Your Life for the Better

You have to break out of autopilot.

And the good news is, you can.

You don’t have to live a life of conditioned response, doing whatever comes to mind, whatever your brain is expecting. You can improve. You can grow. You can break through self-imposed barriers that cause fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

Using the same neuroscience concepts to your advantage, you can create new expectations and habits that set you on a path to success, profoundly altering your life for the better.

1. Set Your Environment for Success

Set an expectation of success and your brain rewards you. Follow through on that expectation and your brain rewards you again.

If exercising is important to your daily self-improvement ritual, set an expectation that you’ll succeed. Lay your clothing out the night before. Not just a shirt and shorts, everything you need to go to the gym. Socks, shoes, keys, wallet, a bottle of water, gym pass, maybe even a note to yourself on why it’s important to you to workout.

When you do this, your subtly telling your brain that you expect to go to the gym. Upon waking up, everything is ready for you. NOT going to the gym will go against your expectations. Your brain won’t like it. It won’t feel right. So you’ll just do it.

Similarly, if you know that planning your day will improve your ability to hit your goals (it will), set out your planner and a pen the night before. Put a candle next to it. Have your chair pulled out and ready for you to sit in. Leave your planner open to the page on which you’ll do your planning.

Your brain won’t be able to ignore the expectation you’ve set for yourself. You’ll have created an environment where you can only be successful.

“Most people’s environment is like a rushing river, going the opposite direction of where they want to go. It takes a lot of willpower to tread upstream. It’s exhausting. Instead, you want your environment to pull you in the direction you want to go.”

—Benjamin Hardy

2. Set a Big Hairy Audacious Goal

Your brain rewards you with dopamine just by wanting something. So, want something. And want something big.

Don’t merely set a goal to exercise daily. Make it specific. Make it realistic. And make it as grandiose as possible.

Set a goal to add 12 pounds of muscle in the next 12 months, which will require you to lift heavy and eat big.

Set a goal to drastically improve your bloodwork in the coming year, which will require you to eat more fruits and vegetables.

Set a goal to increase your income by 20%, which will require you land a raise, start a side-business, or both.

Big goals are rewarding. They set expectations for you to change. It’s the beginning of improving yourself. It’s the first push of a giant wheel that starts momentum building for the future.

3. Break Down Your Goals into Smaller Milestones

Setting a big, hairy, audacious goal will kickstart your momentum, but if you don’t actually achieve something, the dopamine reward your brain gives you will wear off, and you’ll lose interest quickly.

So keep setting goals. Smaller goals. Milestones that will take you from where you are to where you want to be: achieving that big, hairy, audacious goal set far in the future.

When you set a smaller goal, your brain rewards you. And, if it’s set small and achievable enough, you’ll be able to hit that milestone before the dopamine-induced excitement wears off. Then, when you reach your milestone, your brain will reward you with another dopamine hit. Set another milestone, achieve that, and keep getting rewarded. Rinse and repeat.

All of this builds momentum. It changes your expectations for what’s possible. You’ll no longer be satisfied living someone else’s goals and dreams. You’ll turn into a dopamine-crazed goal monster, setting bigger and better targets for yourself, increasing your confidence, and building more momentum over time.

4. Clear a Path to Your Goals

When you’re trying to improve yourself, you’ll encounter many obstacles and unknowns along the way.

It’s a certainty.

If you already knew how to make a million dollars, you’d be a millionaire. If you already knew how to pack on 12 pounds of muscle in the next 12 months, you’d already be fit as a show horse.

The challenge, once you’ve started down the path of self-improvement, comes from bumping into obstacles the way. These obstacles, no matter how trivial, can be devastating to your progress. In many cases, it can kill it completely.

When you set an expectation for receiving something, achieving something, or getting somewhere, and that expectation isn’t met, your brain withholds dopamine. It can put you into a funk, frustrate you, even make you angry. This effect can last for days, destroying your progress and possibly halting all the momentum you’ve created to get where you’re going.

You can’t let this happen.

So, to prevent that, plan for failure by clearing a path to your goals. Create a list of risks and obstacles that you’ll destroy one by one.

Write down anything you can think of that would get in your way. Write down anyone you can think of that would benefit from you NOT succeeding. Write down all the reasons you might find to quit, stall, or have doubt in your work.

Then, for each one, write down an action plan for not letting that (or them) get in your way.

Of course, unexpected roadblocks will pop up. But if you’ve planned for failure, you’ll be in the mindset to break through that obstacle and keep on trucking instead of stalling out or stopping progress for good. Furthermore, the momentum you’ve built and the expectations you’ve set for crushing your goals and milestones will keep you on the straight and narrow.

5. Believe Your Work Will Make You Better

Just as a teacher can improve their students IQ scores by expecting more of them, you can improve yourself by expecting more of yourself.

You have to believe with every cell in your body that what you are doing will make you a better person.

I’m not just talking about, “yeah, if I read this book, I should be a little smarter and will probably have learned a thing or two.”

No.

I’m talking about, “I must read this book, at all costs, because it’s precisely in line with my goals, will help me achieve my next milestone in life, and if I don’t learn the information found within I will be worse off than if I had.”

I’m talking about, “I must exercise every day because, if I don’t, my heart will atrophy and I’ll find myself back in the emergency room with another heart attack in 6 months... or in the ground, dead.”

When you have those kinds of expectations for yourself, you expect NOT to fail. And so you won’t.

6. Make it Exciting

Whatever it is you’re trying to improve—your health and fitness, mindset, or productivity—it will be easier to achieve if it’s exciting.

Your brain is rewarded with dopamine when expectations are met, and even more if those met expectations are unexpected or surprising.

Excitement isn’t simply the anticipation of reward. It’s an entire physiological response, an arousal that increases your heart-rate, production of hormones, and nervous system activity.

When you are excited, you are more likely to make impulsive decisions. This is great because, instead of overthinking (and finding yourself in the same rut you’ve been in), you can override those rational decision-making parts of your brain and make an emotional decision to start whatever self-improvement activity you need to.

To get excited about the personal development ventures you’re undertaking, you need to get emotional.

Print out a motivational quote that gives you goose-bumps and read it before each workout.

Make progress on a small task that fits into your bigger milestone or goal. Every small win excites you, even if only in a small way, giving you the motivation to keep going.

Finally, limit your options. If you tell yourself you’re going to either a) workout or b) take a nap or c) do some email or d) watch tv, your will tire from deciding and will probably default to whatever it expects to happen next; usually the easiest possible decision with the lowest amount of energy consumption, and therefore the lowest personal-growth reward.

Save energy by giving yourself only one option. Get excited about that option. And execute.

Onward and Upward — Practice Discomfort Until Discomfort is Comfortable

Your self-improvement journey won’t happen without practice.

Breaking your expectations won’t happen overnight.

Research shows that habits take 21 days to form. You’re literally reprogramming your brain on what it should expect. You’re telling your brain that what it’s familiar with should be replaced by something else. Something hard. Something uncomfortable. Something that forces you to grow.

So practice.

Practice using the techniques described above. Set your environment for success. Set a big, hairy, audacious goal. Break down your goals into smaller milestones. Clear a path to your goals. Believe your work will make you better. And make your self-improvement journey exciting.

Finally, stick with your discomfort for the long haul. Realize that progress won’t happen overnight.

Keep at it time and time again, and you’ll finally get to the point where your brain doesn’t just expect you to succeed, it will crave success.

That’s when you’ll know you have won.

“A fundamental part of conscious evolution is learning to control and direct your attention - so that you can shine that spotlight onto what you want, rather than what you’ve been conditioned to want.”

—Benjamin Hardy

Sources

1. Cook, G. (2012, October 16). How The Power Of Expectations Can Allow You To ’Bend Reality’. Scientific American. Retrieved September 13, 2019, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-power-of-expectations-can-allow-you-to-bend-reality/

2. Patel, N. (2015, May 17). The Psychology Of Excitement: How To Better Engage Your Audience. Hubspot. Retrieved September 13, 2019, from https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/psychology-of-excitement

3. Rock, D. (2009, November 23). (Not So Great) Expectations - Expectations: use them or be used by them. Psychology Today. Retrieved September 13, 2019, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-brain-work/200911/not-so-great-expectations

4. Spiegel, A. (2012, September 17). Teachers’ Expectations Can Influence How Students Perform. NPR.org. Retrieved September 13, 2019, from https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/09/18/161159263/teachers-expectations-can-influence-how-students-perform

5. Yon, D. (2019, July 4). Now you see it: Our brains predict the outcome of our actions, shaping reality into what we expect. That’s why we see what we believe. Aeon. Retrieved September 13, 2019, from https://aeon.co/essays/how-our-brain-sculpts-experience-in-line-with-our-expectations

About the Author

Michael Mehlberg

HUSBAND, FATHER, ENTREPRENEUR, BUSINESS STRATEGIST, AUTHOR, FITNESS NUT, ORGANIZATION FREAK, PRODUCTIVITY JUNKIE

I help high-achieving entrepreneurs organize their brain and schedule so they can organize their life and business.

Subscribe to my free, weekly newsletter on personal excellence and business mastery that one client called “The Owners Manual to an Awesome Life.”