Tag: habits

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Double your productivity

The only thing more valuable than your attention is the energy you deplete to direct it.

Thinking, stress, and making decisions burn a lot of energy. According to Stanford University researchers, professional chess competitors can burn up to “6,000 calories a day sitting in their chair while playing in a tournament, three times what an average person consumes in a day.”[1]

Your brain uses energy to process thousands of important conscious and unconscious choices throughout your day. From the second you wake up, visual images flood your eyes and sound waves crash into your ears. Information travels through your brain at over 260 mph, igniting more than 100,000 chemical reactions per second across 86 billion cells.[2]

To double your productivity, you must design habits, workflow, and systems to promote the efficient use of energy. Energy is upstream of time. Time management is important, but it’s not the root of the problem.

There are three main levers you can pull to increase your market value:

Boosting productivity delivers the quickest return on investment out of these three levers.

What if you could double your productivity? What impact would that make on your career advancement and compensation?

How much is your attention worth?

You have a finite amount of energy and time each day. Paying attention to one thing requires ignoring something else. Every word you read, email you write, and conversation you have eats more of your daily energy budget.

According to research published by RescueTime, the average American office worker:

By my calculations, the cost of that kind of distraction equals at least $124 / day or $32,240 per  year for the average U.S. worker.[4]

Don’t multitask and context switch

Context switching can kill up to 80% of your productivity.[5] In other words, multitasking can affect your productivity as much as drinking alcohol throughout the workday. If you’re like most people, you’re constantly jumping between tasks, email, instant messages, and meetings. According to research from Carnegie Mellon University, knowledge workers “average about three minutes on a task and two minutes using any electronic tool or paper document before switching.”[6]

Context switching makes you dumber. Heavy multitasking:

Build habits to increase productivity

Your brain is not stupid. It turns recurring behaviors into habits, allowing it to free up brainpower for more important tasks. Habits automate decisions to conserve energy, reduce stress, and provide the structure to function efficiently in everyday life. According to researchers from Duke University, up to 40% of our behaviors on any given day are powered by habits and routines.[8] 

Good habits help you become the person you want to be. Bad habits get in your way.

Kill bad habits first

Ending bad habits can deliver more productivity gains than creating good habits.

What are some unproductive behaviors you could abandon to improve your productivity?

Perhaps you could:

Add friction to help you avoid bad habits. For example, remove temptation by deleting social media apps from your phone and schedule time to check social media using your computer. The extra effort and inconvenience of logging in using a mobile web browser can be a deterrent.

Conversely, reduce friction to encourage good habits. Take the first step in that direction by eliminating inefficient work habits. What decision can you make once to eliminate hundreds of future decisions? For example, could you allow people to book unblocked time on your calendar using a scheduling tool (e.g., Calendly, Google Calendar) instead of emailing back and forth to decide on a meeting time? Imagine the hundreds of scheduling decisions and emails you could eliminate.

Focus on value

Instead of focusing on hours worked, focus your attention on the value created per hour. Not all work has the same value. Laser focus on completing high-value tasks in less time. What you decide to work on is more important than how hard you work. Embrace this mindset and you’ll start to see every moment of distraction as a thief robbing you of potential income, energy, and time.

Don’t get jerked like a puppet. Prioritize your most important work and design your workday to avoid context switching.Create quarterly plans to identify strategic priorities and plan your week in advance to focus on important milestones. Don’t allow yourself to get sucked into spending hours responding to email and instant messages or working on lower-priority tasks.

Assign every hour a task

To design your workday, break your daily schedule up into specific blocks of time that are aligned with your energy level, work responsibilities, and goals. Scheduling tasks for specific time periods helps you focus on one task at a time and guard against distraction. When you fill your calendar with priority work tasks, it’s harder for people to steal your time.

For example, I schedule a recurring two-hour time block every morning when I have the most energy to focus on important work that requires deep concentration. And I schedule a recurring one-hour block after lunch to complete less cognitively demanding administrative tasks. Schedule all eight-plus work hours in your day, but don’t break the time into smaller than 20-minute increments.

Use time blocking and the following habits to supercharge your productivity. You will feel like you’re driving a Ferrari on a racetrack instead of a minivan stuck in traffic.

I approach each time block like a sprinter running a race and put my full energy and focus into the scheduled task for that limited period of time. No going to the bathroom, checking email, or getting up to grab a cup of coffee.

Start with 20-minute time increments to train your focus. Add time gradually as your focus improves until you can sustain longer periods of intense concentration. Due to the overhead of context switching, it takes most people the first five to ten minutes to clear their heads and get into a flow state. Work gradually toward a goal of 60- to 90-minute blocks of focused time. My sweet spot is 60-minute blocks before I need a mental break.

Minimize email and instant messaging

Don’t allow email or instant messages to drive your workday. Opening your inbox is like pulling the handle on a Las Vegas slot machine. Hitting the jackpot is highly unlikely, but you are guaranteed to waste a lot of time. When you open your email or instant messenger, you no longer control what grabs your attention. Therefore, you want to limit your exposure.

But scheduling time to check email and instant messages is not enough. You want to reduce the number of messages you receive in the first place.

Create clear processes to minimize messages and improve communication with your team and customers. Inventory your email inbox and instant messages over the last 30 days. Examine the purpose of each message and identify recurring decisions. Look for ways to construct a process for each decision to prevent future messages. A little investment up front can create a workflow that avoids lots of back-and-forth chatter and distraction.

For each recurring decision, create a shared document (e.g., Google sheet) or add it to a task board (e.g., Trello, Asana, Flow) and establish a review schedule. Creating a predictable workflow allows everyone involved in the decision to see information, update statuses, schedule responsibilities, and add notes to identify issues or ask questions. You can use this method to review content and provide input on any type of collaborative project.

Another strategy to reduce messages is to set office hours at a designated time to make yourself available to talk with people. Sometimes a short conversation can save dozens of back-and-forth messages.

Don’t use your email inbox to manage tasks and obligations. Put them into a task manager or to-do list to reduce the time you spend in your inbox.

To dig deeper into all the ways you can kick your email habit, read Cal Newport’s book A World Without Email.

Have fewer—and more productive—meetings

Most meetings are an inefficient waste of time and resources. When I walk into a meeting (or join a Zoom call), the first thing that comes to mind is how much it costs to have all these people in one room. Long-form memos can replace many types of meetings. Getting multiple people together for a meeting should be reserved for times when discussion is needed on important decisions.

Don’t call a meeting to provide updates—use memos to communicate those. When a meeting is necessary, distribute long-form memos in advance to help the meeting be more productive and worthwhile. Communication based on long-form writing forces team members to exchange ideas based on complete thoughts and contemplation, whereas meetings encourage participants to react in the moment and shoot from the hip.

Communicating through comprehensive written memos also frees you from aligning schedules and allows people who could not be in the room to understand issues, assumptions, and decisions. I’m not suggesting you do away with meetings altogether because there can be value in getting people together to discuss ideas. However, meetings should be a last resort and not a first option.

Exchanging ideas in written memos before meetings can also allow your times together to be shorter and more effective. For example, Amazon does not allow PowerPoint presentations in meetings. Instead, the company requires a meeting memo—a short written document with background on the agenda items, assumptions, scenarios, and decisions to be made. The meeting memo loads information into people’s brains quickly and allows them to absorb information better because they are reading.

Offload information to your second brain

Storing information in your head burns energy and limits your capacity to process new information and remember things. So stop trying to remember everything. Instead, capture and preserve knowledge, notes, and ideas in a digital format.

Outsourcing your memory improves your thinking, reduces stress, and helps keep you organized. I completed a personal knowledge management training called Building A Second Brain that transformed how I capture, organize, and share information. Here’s the overview of the methodology taught in the course.

Boost energy and accelerate learning every day

Your habits compound to help or hurt you. Physical and mental fitness are tied together. You can get exponential return on learning, exercising, eating healthy, sleeping, and meditating by investing a small amount of time every day.

But beware: bad habits also compound. Drinking, smoking, eating junk food, and failing to exercise can have cascading negative effects on your health and productivity.

Not all habits are created equal.Focus on significant actions that move the needle. For example, you could habitually track multiple metrics related to your car, such as tire pressure, miles traveled since last oil change, or when to check and replace your air filter. These metrics might be very important to make sure your car is achieving optimal performance. But when you’re driving the car, the most important metric to track is how much gas is in the car’s tank. You need to make a habit of watching the fuel gauge to know how far you can drive without running out of gas.

In the same way, you need to focus on habits that fuel your body and brain. Cultivating the following habits has had the biggest impact on my energy, learning, and productivity.

Sleep. Maintain a consistent sleep schedule during the work week, waking up and going to sleep at the same time each day. Benefits: Improved health, attention, response time, creativity, and decision-making ability. Sleeping for fewer than seven hours a night impacts your brain function and immune system.

Morning routine. I do the same things in the same order every morning. Benefits: Fewer decisions, which saves time, conserves energy, and reinforces good habits.

Meditate. I meditate first thing every morning. If you’re new to meditation, start with five minutes and add time gradually. Over the course of one year I increased my time to 40 minutes. Benefits: Less emotional reactivity, reduced stress, improved focus.

Read. I dedicate a minimum of 30 minutes to reading books—not social media, news, or articles. Benefits: Injects my brain with new ideas and accelerates learning.

Write. Writing helps integrate the knowledge learned from reading. I invest at least 30 minutes writing every day on topics I want to learn more about. Benefits: Improves clarity of thought, internalizes learning, allows me to share and communicate ideas with others.

Exercise. I exercise for a minimum of 30 minutes every day. I run outside, go to the gym, or walk. Benefits: Increases energy, reduces stress, prevents weight gain, makes me stronger, and makes me feel better.

Track habits manually

Tracking measures progress and builds a positive feedback loop reinforcing your actions.

I used to always look for ways to automate tracking and reduce friction. But I discovered a counterintuitive insight through trial and error. Adding friction by manually updating the most important metrics as I complete them throughout my day works better than automated tracking.

I’ve tried using different tracking apps and metrics but have been surprised to find that tracking minutes in a simple Google sheet has yielded the best results. Opening the sheet several times a day to manually update metrics for each habit and seeing my progress creates a dopamine hit and positively reinforces my goals.

I track a limited number of important daily habits that yield the biggest impact on my learning, energy, and performance. You can see a sample of my tracking here.

Tune your day

Experiment with productivity methods and customize them for your situation. Productivity is not one size fits all. Tune your habits, workflow, and systems in the same way a musician tunes their instrument to hit the right pitch. Strike the right balance between flexibility and structure to conserve your energy and maximize your creativity and focus.

I don’t want to give you the impression that any of this is easy. Growth requires effort. But you don’t need to incorporate all these ideas at once. Start small and build momentum. Your effort will pay off. Work toward doubling your productivity to earn more money and gain time to pursue your interests and spend more time with friends and family.

Goals provide a desired destination and help you clarify why you want to be more productive in the first place. Habits, workflow, and systems provide the method of transport to get there.

To learn more, sign-up for the “High-Performance Playbook” email series (it’s free), where I share the best evidence-based strategies, tactics, and frameworks to advance your career and make more money.

[1] “The grandmaster diet: How to lose weight while barely moving,” Aishwarya Kumar, ESPN.com, April 2020, https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/27593253/why-grandmasters-magnus-carlsen-fabiano-caruana-lose-weight-playing-chess/.

[2] “Exploring the human brain,” Anythink, December 2015, https://www.anythinklibraries.org/blog/exploring-human-brain#:~:text=With%20information%20traveling%20at%20260,complex%20entity%20known%20to%20man/.

[3] Work life balance study 2019, Jory MacKay, RescueTime, January 2019, https://rescuetime.wpengine.com/work-life-balance-study-2019/.

[4] Assumptions: Salary per year = $50,000; $50,000 / 1,800 hours = $27.78 / hour; $27.78 / hour X 4.5 hours distracted = $124 / day

[5] “Context switching: Why jumping between tasks is killing your productivity (and what you can do about it),” Jory Mackay, RescueTimeI, February 2021, https://blog.rescuetime.com/context-switching/.

[6] “Work fragmentation as common practice: The paradox of IT support,” Gloria Mark, Human Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, https://www.hcii.cmu.edu/news/event/2004/10/work-fragmentation-common-practice-paradox-it-support/.

[7] “The high cost of multitasking,” Infographic, Fuze News, January 2014, https://www.fuze.com/blog/infographic-the-high-cost-of-multitasking/.

[8] “Habits—A repeat performance,” David T. Neal, Wendy Wood, and Jeffrey M. Quinn, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2006, https://web.archive.org/web/20110526144503/http:/dornsife.usc.edu/wendywood/research/documents/Neal.Wood.Quinn.2006.pdf/.

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Meditation: The antidote to suffering

Look around you. Find a pen, book, or anything you can hold in your hand that will not break if you squeeze it. Pick it up. Squeeze the object as hard as you can for about five seconds. Feel the muscles in your hands and arm contract. Notice the tension in your stomach. Is your heart starting to beat faster? Feel your palm starting to warm as the blood rushes into your hand. Notice the thoughts running through your head. Don’t drop the object but slowly start to relax your grip. For the next ten seconds, use the least amount of effort possible to hold the object so it does not slip out of your hand. Notice the difference in tension in your body as you lightly hold it. 

Congratulations! You just learned the first stage of meditation, which involves training your concentration and being aware and fully engaged in the present moment. You can use dozens of different meditation techniques to focus attention. Many of these methods involve focusing on the breath or a sound or repeating a word or group of words—a mantra. 

When I was 19, I got the opportunity to experiment with lots of different techniques when I traveled to India for four months to learn meditation. I had such a great experience that I went back for another four and half months at age 22. I spent most of my time at Osho’s commune in Pune with thousands of other people from around the world. The commune was Disneyland for personal development. A multiversity with workshops, training, therapies, and personal sessions focused on meditation, healing arts, martial arts, and psychology.

Osho was an Indian guru. He was a great storyteller, teacher, and innovator. He developed new, active meditation techniques better suited to deal with the pace of modern life. And he was a curator of wisdom from Eastern and Western religions, philosophy, and psychology. His teachings highlighted stories from Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tzu, and dozens of spiritual and religious traditions. Osho was a flawed human, like many other great artists and teachers. But if you focus only on his cult following, you will miss a lot of insight. 

Let’s examine some basics of what meditation is, what it isn’t, and how to establish a daily practice.

Meditation is a useful skill to reduce suffering

What’s the purpose? Why learn meditation? How does this practice benefit you in your daily life? The main reason to meditate is to reduce mental suffering. Meditation also enables you to read and regulate your emotions, better manage stress and anxiety, and punctuate more of your daily life with self-awareness. 

Life provides a lot of challenges and opportunities for disappointment and not getting what you want. You get fired. You get dumped. Your business fails. You think you’re fat. You’re diagnosed with an illness. Your kids don’t want to spend time with you. How you internalize these experiences determines how you feel. Mental suffering is optional most of the time.  You can train your mind to reduce mental suffering using meditation just as you use exercise to strengthen and train your body.

I dread going to the doctor to get a blood test or a shot. I hate the idea of needles piercing my skin. But my fear is completely irrational. I’ve had my blood drawn dozens of times, and it doesn’t hurt when the nurse slides the needle into my vein. However, I create anxiety and stress by mentally experiencing the needle piercing my skin over and over again in my mind—sometimes for days before my appointment. My fear creates a lot of unnecessary stress and anxiety that has no benefit to me. Meditation can help control that anxiety so that I don’t create my own suffering.

Meditation is a way to influence your emotions and decisions

Meditation can help you learn to better read and regulate your emotions, which will help you make better choices and build better relationships. Taming your emotion gives you an advantage. The ability to stay calm when under pressure will improve your performance. Professional fighters understand this well. If they start fighting from anger, they risk wasting precious energy, clouding their judgment, and burning out quickly. 

How you see and judge the world around you shapes your thoughts. Thoughts create emotions. Emotions drive behavior. Emotions are powerful but short-lived unless you feed them. If you are willing to sit in the emotion fully, instead of struggling to ignore or repress it, you will find the emotion is very short and usually lasts from thirty seconds to a few minutes—not hours. 

Practicing meditation can also help you control your anger. Think back to the last time you were angry. Did it feel good? At that moment are you at your best? How long did your anger last? Can you force yourself to stop feeling angry? Will you make good decisions when you are full of rage? Sometimes anger can be useful to spur you into action, but most of the time it is not helpful. Even if you don’t express your anger outwardly, you will repress and internalize it. 

Meditation isn’t easy

Taming your mind is difficult. I’ve been practicing meditation for years and still struggle with it every day. Don’t believe it can be that hard? Take out your phone and set a timer for 60 seconds. Close your eyes and watch your thoughts as you would watch a movie on a big screen. Where are your thoughts coming from? Can you control them? Do you have the ability to get rid of a thought? Can you focus on one thought for more than ten seconds? Don’t picture a pink elephant. Were you able to stop a pink elephant from entering your mind? You will quickly realize you have little control over what thoughts pop into your head or how long they stay. 

Your mind lives in a constant state of fear and desire. If you inspect your thoughts, you will likely see you are addicted to thinking about the past or the future. If you dig deeper, you will notice your thoughts are driven by fear or desire. Fear of failure. Fear of being judged or not fitting in. Fear of not having enough money. Fear of getting hurt or sick. Wanting attention from someone you care about. Wanting your contributions to be acknowledged. Wanting to go somewhere. An endless stream of thoughts sucks your attention into the past or the future. It’s not easy to train your mind to be fully in the present, but you can do it with practice.

Meditation isn’t necessarily spiritual

Practicing meditation does not bind you to any religion, spiritual practice, or belief system. You can be atheist or a devoted Christian or Hindu or Buddhist or any other faith. With practice, meditation simply allows you to gain the ability to witness your thoughts, sensations, and emotions without reacting to them. It does not require you to focus on any religious or spiritual idea or doctrine, although it can be a part of religious practice.

Meditation isn’t about detachment

The opposite is true. By fully paying attention, you feel, smell, hear, and see everything more vividly and fully. The combination of opening your senses to allow a flood of sensation while simultaneously holding the least amount of tension in your body allows the opportunity to fully experience the present moment.

Most of the time, meditation requires you to focus on an object of attention. You may feel as though you are directing attention from the space between the back of your head and your face into your environment. However, there is a second stage to meditation, which happens spontaneously and cannot be forced. Stage two happens when the body and mind finally relax and let go. The subject–object illusion dissolves. You feel no distance or separation from everything around you. Instead of being aware “of” sensation, you’re aware “as” sensation. Your consciousness no longer feels it is being directed from the space between the back of your head and your face.

When this happens to me, I’m in a deep state of relaxation, and I feel the boundary of my hands, feet, and body disappear. Thoughts, emotions, and sensations arise and I witness everything without judgment or effort. I’m not grasping for the pleasant or pushing away the unpleasant. This experience cannot be forced, and the more you try to force it, the more elusive it becomes.

Mediation isn’t focused on peak experiences

Peak experiences feel like an orgasm in your head. They happen when your sense of self or ego melts away. It feels similar to an orgasm, but rather than being focused in your genitals, the sensation moves up your spine into your head. Sometimes this experience is referred to as “flowering” because it feels like a flower opening. People have described this experience as similar to the effects of being on psychedelic drugs (e.g., LSD, psilocybin mushrooms.) Although these types of experiences are pleasurable, they don’t bring a lot of utility. 

I realize these types of experiences are difficult to describe and difficult to understand if you have never experienced them. I assure you the sensations are as real as the ones you get when you put your hand on a hot stove. But a lot more pleasurable. However, peak experiences can be a distraction from the main benefit of meditation. And the harder you try, the less likely you are to experience them. 

How to create a daily meditation practice

You don’t learn to ride a bike by reading a book. You learn through practice. You start with training wheels or someone holding onto your bike seat so you don’t fall and hurt yourself. With practice, you learn how to balance your body weight until you no longer need support. Learning meditation works the same way.

Seek instructions and use meditation techniques to support you. Then learn through consistent practice. At first, it may feel difficult and frustrating, but it gets easier as you learn to train your mind. Eventually, you will not be dependent on the techniques and can start punctuating more of your day with awareness as you relate to other people.

Build your daily meditation practice by following these steps.

Step 1: Make meditation part of your identity. The most important step in creating a new habit is to embrace the identity of who you want to become. Identity is shaped by our beliefs, behavior, and worldview. Self-development requires continually learning and upgrading your identity. See yourself as someone who meditates—just as you see yourself as someone who practices a hobby, exercises, reads, writes, listens to music, or eats a healthy diet.

Step 2: Use “inversion” to identify and remove obstacles. Inversion is a thinking tool that allows you to flip a problem around and think backward. Inversion looks at the problem in reverse and identifies all the things to avoid. To avoid distractions and scheduling conflicts, wake up a little earlier to practice meditation first thing in the morning. 

Step 3: Start with baby steps. The best way to start a new meditation habit is to make it easy to follow. Motivation and willpower are useful for getting started, but they are unreliable. Don’t make the mistake of setting goals and expectations too high. Build habits from the ground up and don’t impose big challenges. You are building new neural pathways in your brain, and you want to eliminate all friction and resistance. Repetition and consistency are more important than pushing yourself to do more. Start by meditating for five minutes or less every day. This may seem too easy, but resist the temptation to do more in the beginning.

Step 4: Make very small improvements gradually. Start small and make tiny improvements slowly. If you start by meditating for five minutes per day, advance to six minutes per day the second week, and then seven minutes per day the third week. Continue increasing weekly. Make sure not to push yourself too hard too quickly. As you increase the number of minutes, you’ll need to find the right amount so you can accomplish your goal without failure.

Maximum motivation occurs when you face a challenge that is not too difficult to manage but not so easy that it bores you. The point is not to see how many minutes you can meditate in a day, but rather to develop a daily meditation habit that you can follow for the rest of your life.

Step 5: Be consistent. The key to creating a new habit is doing it every day. Repetition and consistency are critical. The amount of time you invest is less important than repeated, deliberate, daily practice. Never miss two days in a row. Missing one day every once in a while will not have a big impact, but missing two days in a row will have a negative effect. This principle applies to any new habit.

Step 6: Focus on long-term benefits. Focus on small, incremental improvements over time. When I consider incorporating a new habit into my life, I ask myself the following question: Can I do this every day for the next three-plus years? Unless your new habit becomes part of your identity and lifestyle, it will not stick. This is why most people fail at dieting. They may lose weight in the short term, but they will most likely regain it because they cannot sustain the diet across time.

Here are a few more tips I’ve found useful in my meditation practice.

Building a meditation practice has been one of my best investments. It has helped me reduce mental suffering, be calm under pressure, and improve my relationships.

But don’t take my word for it. Try it yourself. The benefits are tangible and self-evident. Now it’s your turn. You can do it. Let me know if you have questions or if I can help you in any way.

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Sin

“To sin” means “to miss the mark.” And you have missed it.

Weak-willed. Timid. Malleable. You are mediocre.

How did you let this happen? Why do you continue to let this happen?

Your dreams of greatness lie wet and soggy, like a loaf of bread left out in the rain.

You can’t stay on course. Your plans are uprooted like a sapling pushed over by a weak gust of wind.

You live as if you have no power to resist. No will. No agency. No strength. Your moments of resolve break like the weakest link in a chain.

You feel sorry for yourself because you think you deserve better. Have you earned it? Do you deserve more when you are so easily distracted?

A few drops of water extinguish your burning desire to achieve. You recoil at the slightest pain. You’re always seeking comfort. Greatness cannot be found there.

You must push through your weakness of will. Pick up and shoulder the weight of responsibility and do not drop it.

Your weakness is rooted in fear. Afraid of judgement, you contort yourself like a circus performer. Your lack of courage is repulsive.

Fear wraps around you like boa constrictor—squeezing your voice and crushing your creativity. You even fear the judgment of strangers walking near you on the street or sitting next to you in a restaurant. Why? Why do you care more about their opinions than your own?

Why are you so afraid? How long will you allow your fear to rule your decisions?

Was it fear that allowed mediocre people to sculpt your beliefs? You failed to question, probe, and puncture the assumptions and instead accepted and believed out of laziness. Is it really a surprise you were so wrong?

Like a sponge, you soaked up the ideas in your environment without caution or thoughtful consideration. Distorting, bending, and forcing reality to fit your limited ability has disfigured your mind.

Errors of overconfidence and misplaced certainty litter your life with failure. How many times do you need to fail before you learn?

Beliefs were not all you sponged up from the people around you. Constantly seeking affirmation, you began to model their vices: drowning your sense of purpose in alcohol. Desiring, wanting, consuming. Never satisfied. Never content.

The fat on your body testifies to bad decisions. Fuzzy black mold rots your brain as you scroll through useless information, hour after hour.

You don’t have time to waste. You don’t have to live this way; get up and get going.

The antidote to sin.

Don’t act like a victim. Victim mentality will rob you of your agency and power. Take action to improve your situation and be grateful you’re not rotting in the ground.

Embrace responsibility. Own your strengths, weaknesses, and position in life. Take responsibility for your actions and own the outcomes. 

Follow your interests. Build specific knowledge around your interests and find something you love to do. You will gain unfair competitive advantage because your passion will push you to work harder than other people and spur you to be creative and innovative in your field.

Create meaning. Find meaning by shouldering as much responsibility as you can manage, building competence, and contributing value.

Aim with purpose. Identify what you want in the long term and aim for that.

Update your identity. The most important step in building the life you want is to embrace the identity of who you want to become. Identity is shaped by your beliefs, behavior, and worldview. Self-development requires continually learning and upgrading your identity. The stories you tell yourself about your experiences shape your identity and mental state. Your mental state is your reality.

Build daily habits. You need goals to know where you are going and daily habits to help you get there. Get a little better every day. Consistency develops ability. Few things impact the quality of your life more than daily habits. Good habits help you become the person you want to be, whereas bad habits lead to pain, suffering, and self-loathing.

Upgrade your friends. Don’t underestimate the power of the people around you to influence your behavior. The social norms of your group shape your behavior. Surround yourself with people who push you to be better and give you feedback. Direct, honest feedback is hard to find because very few people are willing to tell you the truth. Most people want to avoid conflict, and they don’t want to jeopardize their relationship with you. 

Nobody’s going to do the work for you. You can do better. Dare to be great. Define your future. Take aim, shoot, calibrate, and repeat until you hit the mark. The worst sin of all is to quit trying.

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Build high performance teams

A group of people will be smarter and stronger than any one individual. Our prosperity has been built on this principle. Cooperation requires a common goal. Banding together to fight off predators. Hunting animals faster or stronger than you. Aligning to fight off other tribes. Born vulnerable, our ancestors were unlikely victors. Lacking the lion’s strength, the rhino’s protective thick skin, and the cheetah’s speed our odds of survival looked grim. People cooperating resulted in the winning survival strategy to overcome the dangerous forces of nature.

We not only survived but prospered and evolved to become the apex predator. Cooperation continues to be the organizing principle of our institutions. Business, religion, government, and sports all involve groups of people cooperating and aligning around a common aim.

Startups and professional sports involve groups of highly skilled people in pursuit of a common purpose. And they have a lot in common. Both are highly competitive stressful environments with large financial investment at stake. Winning requires peak performance. Recruiting top talent is essential to achieve success. Strong group identity creates shared norms, values, and behaviors. Culture, strategy, and grit make the difference between winning and losing. Both employ technology to obsessively track metrics to learn faster.

With all of these similarities, why don’t knowledge workers train like professional athletes? Science has taught us a lot about how to optimize human performance. Professional sports teams take a holistic approach to optimize performance of each player. They seek out unfair advantage wherever possible. Nutrition, sleep, mental training, physical conditioning, and specialized coaching. Frequent feedback loops are used to accelerate learning.

Your brain performs better when you sleep well, exercise, and maintain a healthy diet. As a knowledge worker, your habits impact your performance. Exercise provides the single most effective way to improve your cognitive ability. Cognitive decline begins in healthy educated adults in their twenties and early thirties. Increasing blood flow to your brain on a consistent basis prevents cognitive decline. Exercise also reduces stress, increases your energy, prevents injury, strengthens your immune system, and combats disease.

Insufficient sleep leads to getting sick and making mistakes. If you sleep less than seven hours a night you accumulate sleep debt which impacts your brain function and immune system. Your attention, response time, creativity, decision making ability becomes compromised.

Eating a healthy diet improves your performance at work. Companies gain productivity due to healthier employees and reduced sick days. Maintaining healthy eating habits boosts your immune system, improves mood, controls weight gain, and combat disease.

High performance cultures are built on high performance habits. Peak performance requires proactively designing your culture around rapid learning, trust, accountability, and habits to improve mental fitness. Habits to improve mental performance are not limited to sleep, exercise, and diet. Mental fitness also requires exposing yourself to new ideas, considering a diversity of viewpoints, and learning new skills. Your team’s learning accelerates through consistent daily practice and feedback. Design daily habits around these principles to build a high-performance team.