Opening Thoughts
You are in the midst of a deep slumber. Encompassed by the weight and warmth of the cotton blanket shielding you from the cold. Enjoying the nightly respite from the pressures of life. Transported to an alternate and convoluted reality where things don’t quite make sense but you don’t question it as you’re encapsulated by the moment.
Brrrrriiinnngg. Brrrrriiinnngg. Brrrrriiinnngg.
The alarm goes off and you’re violently woken up along with the customary sense of panic, fear, and dread. Through blurry and light-sensitive vision, you are able to make out the time.
5:30AM.
Confusion wraps its arms around as you try to make out what could have caused this error. There’s no way you’d wake up an extra two hours early on Monday.
Maybe your alarm went off by accident? Or maybe you fat-fingered your alarm setting and scrolled to 5 instead of 7?
The day is long enough as is. Your job has this amazing ability to freeze time such that 8 hours feels like 20 by the time 5:00PM rolls around.
Relieved by the technical error, you double check to make sure your 7:30AM alarm is still active and throw your shield back on your vulnerable body. As the warmth steadily dissipates the panic and your worldly thoughts, realization makes its dramatic entrance like a protagonist is an action film.
“I’m supposed to go the gym!”
Your mind flashes back to Saturday night of you scrolling through Instagram and coming across a motivational video that inspired you to get in better shape. Feeling motivating and engulfed by the moment, you switch to your alarm app.
“I’m gonna wake up two hours early on Monday and go to the gym six times a week from now on! Yeah, it’ll be great!”
As you lay in bed and consider your options, your mind juggles back and forth.
30 more minutes…(hits snooze)
20 more minutes…(hits snooze)
10 more minutes…(hits snooze)
5 more minutes…(hits snooze)
Ultimately, the comfort and warm of the shield is too much to overcome as you convince yourself that you’ll go after work. With a slight sense of guilt and even more faint sense of reassurance you dose off and delve deep into a sumper.
You know you won’t go after work but probably tomorrow…
Moved By Fear (And Urgency)
We all have goals. We all have things we want to accomplish. We all have things we want to cross off our checklist. The biggest hurdle for most people is that achieving things means doing things – consistently. Achieving goals means showing up to play the game everyday. Some days you’ll feel great and other days you’ll be moving around with a weighted vest called lethargy that slows down every movement. The bigger the goal, the longer the journey. But even the smallest or simplist goal requires a degree of consistency. That is what most people struggle with, we are conditioned to only respond to external pressures and deadlines. We procrastinate until there’s little to no time left and then let the fear and urgency of the moment carry us forward.
Front Loaded Life
One helpful framework I’ve developed recently is understanding that life is front loaded – a fulfilling and rewarding life that is. On TV, Social Media, or even in your personal life. There are people you know who are successful because they created a foundation for their current trajectory at an earlier stage of their life. Whether by coincidence or by foresight, they etched a vision of what they wanted for themselves and took the steps to get there.
Note: One thing I’ll note quickly is that I didn’t put successful in quotation marks like I usually do. We’ve previously touched on what success looks like, today I want to focus more on the process and habits needed to achieve one form of success.
If you want to get good grades in your classes, you will study. This is obvious, but the obvious path isn’t the one most people go down. We tend to prefer the path of least resistance, the path with the least disruption to our daily comfort. The Studious student (🧨) will establish a routine in which they will study and show up for their future self (the one taking the test) consistently on a predetermined schedule (to reduce burnout and enjoy life guilt-free).
At first they will have to rely on willpower to force themselves to go to the library and study for a couple hours everyday. Overtime this repetition will become a habit. The habit will become a part of their identity. This leads to them getting good grades and motivates them to continues on their trajectory. Eventually they no longer have to force themselves to study because it’s now a subconscious process for them.
This scenario plays out similarly for other goals as well. For example, I’ve been looking to get back into the gym. I’ve had an on- and off- again relationship with it since high school. Like most people, I would force myself to go or would make excuses early on (being too comfortable laying on the couch 😅). However, everytime I did go to the gym, I was not only proud of myself but also felt great, physically and mentally. After a couple of weeks, I made the decision to identify as someone who enjoys going to the gym. As of now, I’m not concerned about losing weight or building any muscle. My focus is to show up and enjoy the session (still getting to that point).
The main takeaway here is that you have to designate a stage of your life for front loading the work and building a foundation for your future self. Everyone who is serious about achieving their goal comes to this realization eventually. For some it’s earlier in their lives, while for others it’s at a later time.
Your time can be today, you have not missed the boat.
Resistance Bands
I was recently listening to an episode of Mark Manson’s podcast and they mentioned something that stuck out to me. Instead of using motivation as your primary driver, use it instead to create the habit or environment that will allow you to be consistent. In other words, front load your work.
Motivation is a sensation just like fear and anxiety or even joy. All of these feelings are fleeting and tend to fluctuate based on your day or mood. Creating a habit in which your operate almost purely on muscle memory in the key to getting the change to stick.
Staying with the fitness example, at first my motivation for going to the gym was based purely on excitement and envy of others who have already committed months if not years towards their goal. I’ve been incredibly inconsistent for well over a decade. However, ever since COVID, I started jokingly referring to myself as a “Homebody who got tired of being inside all the time 😄”.
I’ve always enjoys long walks so I leveraged that into running then cycling then some traveling. Eventually I came to realize that I enjoyed being active not because I wanted to be in shape but because the activity itself was rewarding or enjoyable.
A very subtle change to my outlook has been in my choice of words when going to the gym.
I tell myself that I get to go to the gym tomorrow instead of having to go tomorrow.
The former phrase subconsciously makes it something I look forward to doing, while the latter gives off an aura of commitment and potentially sets me up for a sense of guilt if I don’t follow through.
I’m in my positive and optimistic era (aka the unlimited mindset, we’ll talk about that in the future 😉), fear and guilt isn’t how I want to motivate myself.
Bachelor’s In Consistency
The key to being consistent is properly channeling the initial motivation towards building a habit and creating an environment that will carry your forward. I used my initial motivation of going to the gym to overcome the fear of being judged or looked down upon (as crazy as that may sound, we all go through it).
I used the initial motivation to overcome the obstacle of the 20 minute walk to the gym, turning it into a warm up and mini-therapy session (being in the moment and watching the city wake up).
I used the initial motivation to pinpoint when to shut my brain off.
The alarm goes off at 5:00AM, its time to get ready and brush my teeth.
5:30AM, sit down at my computer with a cup of warm water and write for an hour.
6:30AM, it’s time to get dressed to go to the gym. At this moment my brain goes off because if I think about it too much it’ll be easy to come up with an excuse for why I can skip out.
One of my biggest wins for this year has been establishing consistency in key areas of my life and that will only get better with time because I’ve made it a priority (physical health, mental health and financial health).
I’m operating with a long term view. These are areas that I intend to prioritize for the long haul. This focus had led to a lot of personal growth, a sense of fulfillment, and satisfaction.
Closing Thoughts
One of the core tenants of the 15-Minute Workday is that the path of success starts with small steps.
Success is defined as being consistent because the most important factors are your habits and mindset.
Consistency is defined by creating momentum, specifically constant motion on a predetermined schedule.
momentum = small steps * consistency
The size of the step doesn’t matter, a giant leap or 100 small steps both get you to the same spot, but the latter path is more sustainable.
The goal is getting closer to your goal by getting closer to the best version of yourself.
This isn’t a fad, it’s a long term commitment to yourself. The work and growth needed to achieve your goals can’t be avoid or outsourced. The beginning of any new path is going to be met with natural resistance because we are deviating from an established road. However, if you are not comfortable with where that road is headed then leverage your initial gust of motivation into paving a new walkway for yourself so walks in the future are less stressful and more scenic.
Thanks for reading! Subscribe to my newsletter to get the latest updates and a semi-weekly letter documenting my miscellaneous thoughts. Who knows what its cooking up next 👀
