“We all have goals that we would like to achieve and dreams that we would like to fulfill, but it doesn’t matter what you are trying to become better at, if you only do the work when it’s convenient or exciting, then you’ll never be consistent enough to achieve remarkable results.”
– James Clear.
A lesson in occupational and environmental wellness…
As an Amazon Affiliate it is policy to inform you that this is an advertisement. However, this is still a reflection of a great book that I’ve read many times over. I believe it would benefit any who may read it. You can find the link for it in my references located at the bottom of this page.
No more games
The ironic thing about a “fresh start” is that it gets old after enough times. Reaching maturity is an odd feeling. It’s that epiphany that it’s time to get your act together once and for all. No matter who’s watching. No matter how long it takes. It’s an odd exasperation with the current trajectory of your life. You aren’t giving up, but you’ve had enough. Somehow, you’re going to make it all work. It’s about building momentum. That’s the only way you’re going to break through your threshold of latent potential.
Victory depends on your strategy, your plans, your protocols, and your tactics. What ties them all together are your habits. Habits have a way of compounding; much like investing. A long string of failures is a reflection of accumulated bad habits. The best of us manage to learn on the way. Most of us become too set in our ways to make any changes. It is popular advice to “never sweat the small things.” I disagree. It is often the little things that make the difference. Mastery is about perfecting the micromovements. Changing even one small detail in your routine can make a huge change in your life.
This might take a while
Compounding takes time, and it works best when it goes uninterrupted. Imagine a simple change such as drinking adequate amounts of water every day. After a week, you become hydrated. After a month, your skin clears up. After 2 months, cognition improves. After 3 months, you might even start seeing some weight loss. All from one small change. Every ten thousand hours or so, a subtle shift occurs in the brain. You become more accustomed to whatever it was that you’ve been doing during that time.
One small change could be what is stopping you from reaching your potential, but it is likely that it is more than one thing. “Overnight” success is a myth. Most of us are unaware of this. This is why we give up so easily when making a change in our lives. but starting small is better than waiting for that right moment that will never come. Discard the notion of overnight success. Instead, work towards making a breakthrough. Only once your good habits reach a certain threshold will you witness exponential growth in your character.
It’s not easy to become the best versions of ourselves. We set our goals and then try our best to reach them. But there’s a problem with being goal-oriented. Goals require motivation, which only lasts a short while. Motivation may be enough to accomplish one goal. However, motivation by nature is short-sighted. It’s a product of hope, which we now know is the source of a lot of your problems. Eventually, motivation must become discipline. When you have discipline, you no longer need goals. It’s who you are. It’s the pain you chose. Motivation means nothing in competition. The loser had the same goal as the winner. Who cares how bad you wanted to win? Who had the better strategy? Who kept the ideas coming?
Building momentum
Long-term goals are often unachievable. Motivation isn’t meant for the long term. Chasing a long-term goal often results in reverting to the way you were before, wasting precious time. Of course, you shouldn’t become some sort of neurotic perfectionist. But sweating the smaller details will eventually make a huge difference in your life. Perfectionism is the enemy of progress. An affliction. The mind is constantly stopping. At the end of a thought is supposed to come action. Someone who is truly “smart” does more than contemplate. Perfectionism is the close relative of procrastination. One thinks too much, while the other doesn’t think enough. One is a coward, while the other is an idiot, but they accomplish the same amount of nothing.
Reaching your pinnacle requires switching yourself on every day. That may sound tough, but only if you don’t know how to accomplish it. Basically, you need more good habits than bad habits. More traction, less distraction. But what makes a habit good or bad? There’s technically no such thing as a good or bad habit. We formed our habits in the first place because they served us in some way. Our habits are our answers to our recurring problems. Our habits are the sum of the lessons we learned, the stories we believe. We change our habits by revising those chapters.
Our habits are born from our values, much like our instincts. Remember that your values are stories. Stories about who you are. Your stories require evidence. The easiest way to acquire this evidence is by keeping a record. This is why writing your stuff down is so important. It builds that internal momentum required to produce external results. Each time you record your progress, you’ve proved to yourself who you are. The reward is never the actual achievement. The reward is that you’ve done it. You became the kind of person who could do it again and again. Not a giddy happiness, but a calm satisfaction.
I’ve brought up the feedback loop in the past. During that time, I focused mainly on how the steroid hormones affected the brain and body. I didn’t spend too much time on the role of dopamine. Dopamine isn’t just the feel-good hormone. It’s also the memory hormone. Your reflexes were carved by dopamine. Dopamine comes into play during two crucial moments. During moments of anticipation and during moments of achievement. The moments of anticipation are a bit more powerful than the moments of achievement. Wanting a reward comes naturally. Unfortunately, it is appreciating the reward that goes against human nature. That’s the flaw that comes with being goal-oriented. You exchange your gratitude for hope.
Compulsion and triggers
All impulses are powered by dopamine. When an impulse is triggered, we are likely to give in. Take grocery shopping, for example. If you walk in there without a shopping list, you’re almost guaranteed to impulse buy something you had no need for. We can’t help it. This is called “compulsion.” Even if you resist bad influences by sheer strength of will, you will eventually cave once exposed to it for long enough. Eventually, your impulses will prevail. Controlling your impulses requires sticking to some sort of plan.
Compulsion strikes you hardest when your mind is idle. Keeping your instincts sharp requires being aware of your triggers. If you have a bad habit, you have to figure out what provokes you into such behavior. It is likely more than one thing that triggers you. You must not be blind to your surroundings. You are often a product of your environment. Chances are high that you would kick your habit if you changed your influences. At the very least, you could remove the influence or change locations yourself.
The secret to self-control is not giving yourself the opportunity to act out in the first place. You operate by instinct at all times. The closer you are to your trigger, the less control over yourself you have. That’s how compulsion works. It hijacks your feedback loop. Previous generations came off as more mature because they didn’t have the variety we have today. Variety keeps you immature. Variety is a problem. It keeps you idle. Only once you’ve limited your choices will you reach the paradox that I like to call “true” freedom.
Variety is different from diversity. Variety is for fun. Diversity is for progress. Are your habits just fun, or are they useful? Are you saving time, or are you wasting it? Is your schedule diversified? Or do you just have a bunch of things on your list that you should be taking care of? Sticking to a schedule is tough, but it’s the key to switching yourself on. There is a way to use compulsion to your advantage. You must build a proper regimen for yourself.
Regimens
Every good regimen begins with a ritual to kick things off. A ritual is a string of habits that compel you to commit a certain action. The morning ritual, in particular, is extremely underrated. Waking up early to get your affairs in order ahead of time is the mark of a true badass. The morning ritual is only half as effective without a nightly ritual. You have to set up properly for the next day. The first step to switching yourself on is learning how to effectively power yourself down. Make sure you aren’t getting to sleep at odd hours every night. Your doctor would tell you to get to sleep at the same time every night. So will I.
In the beginning, it may take several days to figure out what would make up your regimen. But it’s worth the effort if the result is a more efficient version of yourself in the future. Record what you do every day. Make a quick note every time you’ve noticed a significant action you make, nothing that would take longer than a few seconds to write down. Start actively recording your actions the moment you wake up. After a few days, you should have enough material to work with.
Then, you take your list of habits and break each of them down to the basic motions. Estimate the time it takes to complete each task. Record how many times you repeat this action throughout the day. And finally, record why you do it. Once you’ve managed to dissect your habits, once you can actually see what you do with your time, you’ll know once and for all if it’s a good habit or a bad one. Even if a habit is a bad one, you developed it because it’s an answer to your problems. Once you’ve actually identified what that problem is, an alternative solution can be applied to your regimen.
Using compulsion to your advantage
As you record yourself, you can spend your free time gathering the proper tools needed to reaffirm your identity. For example, an athlete would require exercise equipment, correct? You can speed things up even more by developing a proper newsfeed. This is simple. You can make a new email address and dedicate it to newsletters that suit your interests. Whatever keeps you interested in checking in once or twice a day, but not much more than that. Remember, if it takes up too much of your time, it’s probably a bad habit. You can do the same with social media accounts to follow relevant contributors you wish to emulate. It would be something like checking the newspaper every day.
The easier something is to do, the stronger the impulse to do it. You have two options. Either find the ideal environment for you or create it yourself. You must design your environment. You can never have too many sanctuaries. Make sure your areas of recovery have plenty of opportunities to exercise your habits. It’s part of recalibrating yourself. While in your sanctuaries, remember that your visual cues are the strongest of the five. Make sure you can see your tools. Take a second to refer to your list. Record any progress you’ve made so far or anything you might have noticed. Recalibrate yourself, then attack by stratagem. Stabilize any part of the environment that is under your control. There are no growth opportunities on shaky ground.
Your mentors and colleagues make all the difference in the world when forming a new habit. The people you surround yourself with make up a huge part of your environment. We adapt to the people around us as survival mechanism. If you are surrounded by tough guys, you’ll develop thicker skin. It is either that or be cast aside. 10000 hours isn’t necessarily the magic number for significant change. Depending on your mentors, your resources, and your environment, you could get 10000 hours of training complete in a fraction of the time.
Your brain needs time to get used to any novelty. When first learning how to dance, it’s as if you have two left feet. Then, one day, it’s like you got rhythm out of nowhere. That’s because the neural pathways have finally connected. This is “the moment everything clicks.” Exactly when does that happen? I couldn’t tell you. But it will likely happen within 10000 hours of repetition. When forming a new habit. Pick something that will benefit your other habits. That way, you’ll have more chances to repeat this action throughout the day.
Any new habit you pick up cannot go against the grain. Even the hardest workers you know choose the simplest options available to them. If what you wanted to do was hard, you wouldn’t do it. Not for long anyway. Not without some sort of miserable obligation. It’s like working a job you hate but being in no position to quit. You have to make it easy to keep the momentum going. You don’t avoid what is hard because you are lazy. The brain is programmed to conserve energy. The last thing you want is having your brain overheat. It may take years to recover from burnout.
The changes you make actually have to be enjoyable to you in some way. The most satisfying feeling in the world is progress, is it not? Gathering small wins builds that internal momentum you need to conquer. It’s called “the winner effect.” The winner effect is the ultimate positive feedback loop. The spirit is ablaze. The mind is sharp. You are ready for anything. Achieving the winner effect is the goal of the regimen. This is how we use compulsion to our advantage. The winner effect helps you build anticipation when faced with a challenge. A fighter doesn’t just wake up in the fighting spirit. They need to get fired up before stepping into the ring. You are no different.
Keeping track of yourself
The only way the winner effect would work against you is if you are focused on merely one aspect of your life. Don’t focus solely on your occupational habits. Wellness is holistic. So your regimen must also be holistic. Make smaller improvements to your health and hygiene habits as well. Make small improvements in your personal relationships. Have you checked in with anyone today? To guarantee the success of your regimen, never neglect recording your progress.
Progress tracking is an important step when developing new habits. Not just for motivation, but so you’ll know when it’s time to push yourself. A plateau is easier to see when it’s in black and white. The most motivating factor of progress tracking is the urge to continue it. You are much more likely to progress in your endeavors if you are tracking how much you are doing. Let’s use a gamer example. Imagine fighting some ultimate secret boss when you can’t see its health bar. Sure, it’s possible to come out on top, but you are likelier to shut the game off.
Tracking your progress also gives you something to show off to others. Who’s a more desirable candidate? The promising rookie? Or the tested veteran? Tracking your progress replaces goal setting. Tracking your progress becomes the goal. You would have successfully switched from motivated to disciplined. You no longer need goals. We all like being impressive. If you’ve managed to choose your pain and stick to it for years, you are impressive.
Getting the most out of your talent
Tracking your progress frees up the mental capacity to think of other small improvements you could make. Life is full of distractions and novelty. You won’t be able to make progress every day. I’d like to meet the person who can. What’s important is that you pick up right where you left off the moment you are able to. Use your energy to save you time. Use your time to make the most out of your energy. This is how compounding works, and it’s also the “magic formula” for success that is guaranteed to work for everyone.
It’s all about how you use your time. Time will pass whether you use it wisely or not. Boredom is bound to seep in after sticking to a regimen for a duration of time. Boredom lulls the mind into autopilot. Autopiloting numbs you to your bad habits. Where the common mind allows itself to fall into autopilot, a master would fall into a flow state. A flow state cannot be achieved while pacified. We shouldn’t just settle for the easiest activities. We must also pick what is best suited for us.
When the subject of mastery comes up, you should think in matters of talent instead of skill. We all have a natural talent for something. A lot of us are lucky enough to realize what that talent may be. But it’s how it is applied that makes the difference. Let’s use an art example. Perhaps being a lyricist is your talent. But maybe you aren’t meant to be a star. Perhaps you are meant to create them. Or perhaps you ARE meant to be a star, but you’re in the wrong genre. You need to apply your talent to as many areas as you can. Find your area of maximum effect.
For those who still have no idea what their talent might be, cleaning up your habits would be an excellent start to your soul searching. One day, your grand pattern will become visible, and the talent you didn’t know you had will shine through. The flame in your heart will be your guide. Pay close attention to what ignites it. Figure out what it is that keeps you grounded in the present. Your habits typically branch from your natural talent regardless if you actually know what that talent is. If you actually know your talent, picking your habits should be easy. But if you don’t know your talent, your habits can show you the way. The key to figuring out what your talent could be is having a curiosity that is stronger than your despair. “The need to know” is the ultimate driver of dopamine. Never lose your love of learning. You will never lose your love of life.
Even if you do discover your talent, it’s not likely that you’ll find any space for you to display them. This wouldn’t stop a true master. You would create your own space. Mastery is about the micromovements. A master makes the most out of every inch. In matters of competition, a winner is often decided by a narrow margin. Something distinct that separates them from the others. Most people stop learning once they find something easy enough to pacify them. Do not allow this to happen to you. This is what separates the good from the great. The greats never run out of ideas.
Excellence can only be achieved once you’ve learned how to train yourself. Knowing on your own when it’s time to learn something new or when to focus on the basics. You’re one step closer to never running out of ideas again. Excellence can never be achieved by a smug master. Learning ceases once you believe you know everything. Humility will await you. A master’s love of learning goes deeper than restless studying. They actually know how to make something out of the information they are given. They aren’t the ones who need hope. They are the ones who inspire it.
Stop rushing
The best defense against smugness is an accountability partner. An accountability partner is the best honor system you can have. Remember that your friends are the people who learn with you. Surround yourself with the right people. Accountability partners not only keep you on the right path, but they push you further than you may have ever gone alone. Number two in your organization would make an excellent choice as an accountability partner. However, anyone who is invested in your results would do just as well. You can also have more than one person holding you accountable. The more people you risk letting down, the harder you’ll work.
Learning how to switch yourself on requires acute attention to detail. It is often the little things in life that matter the most, and one small change could make a large impact on your life. Build a regimen and record your progress to figure out what that small change might be. Design your environment from the setting to the people you associate with. Create an optimized newsfeed and gather the appropriate tools to practice daily with. Never allow the mind to fall into autopilot, instead achieve a flow state. Use your energy to save you time. Use your time to make the most out of your energy. Remember that you have to become someone who doesn’t require motivation. Discipline is what gives you continuous results. It’s not about what you accomplished. It’s about who you are.
References and photos.
Atomic Habits – James Clear
Doug- Nickelodeon Studios
SpongeBob- Nickelodeon Studios
My Hero Academia – Kōhei Horikoshi