Very often, what stands in the way between your journey to success and you is you — your mindset, your habits, your actions, and your attitude.
And it’s only when you fully grasp the notion of what Will Durant famously said: “We are what we repeatedly do”, that you begin to appreciate Rumi’s words:
“Yesterday I was clever so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise so I am changing myself.”
Here are the 10 daily habits I’ve since integrated. They’ve drastically improved my life — they’ve made me more self-aware, more productive and increased my energy and focus.
Putting My Phone on Airplane Mode Before Going to Sleep
Do you know what’s the best feeling to wake up to? Zero notifications. Zero calls. Zero messages. Nothing I have to attend to.
According to a study by IDC Research, “about 80% of smartphone users check their mobile devices within 15 minutes of waking up each morning.” If you’re one of those, you need to stop.
Checking your phone first thing after waking up increases your stress levels and primes your brain for instant distraction. More importantly, it automatically sets you in a reactive state instead of a proactive one — you give away your power to your reactions to other people’s requests. Your brain becomes overwhelmed with information.
Putting my phone on airplane mode ended this vicious cycle. I now wake up stress-free, distraction-free and stay away from my phone the first 30 minutes.
Meditating Every Morning
Over the past 6 months, I’ve been building the habit of starting my morning with a 15-minute mediation session and I’ve noticed a considerable difference in my mental energy when I slack off and go 2–3 days without a session.
On the days that I do meditate, I feel like I’ve set the tone for the day.
I train myself to focus my attention and be in control of my mind. It helps me find calm and clarity while also allowing me to lengthen my attention span on tasks that come after in the day (ex: writing).
There are over 12 science-based benefits of meditation — but what I love about its daily practice is that in a world of distracting noise and chaos, I begin my day mentally focused and emotionally calm.
Stretching Every Morning
I began this habit because I had no other choice. After an accident a few years ago where I fractured my spine, I started having severe back problems.
I was given a set of stretches by my physiotherapist to do every day — and it has changed the fluidity of my body. I’m much more flexible now; I can even bend over and rest my palms on the floor without bending my knees.
After my morning meditations, I roll out my mat and stretch my body. Sometimes I do a variety of yoga poses. Sometimes I do a foam rolling session. What matters is that I’ve given my body a chance to wake up and breathe.
Practicing Gratitude: One Line Per Day
“Opportunities, relationships, even money flowed my way when I learned to be grateful no matter what happened in my life.” — Oprah
As with anything in life, you become a grateful person with practice. The best method that has worked for me? One line per day. Every night before going to bed, I open my journal and ask myself: “What am I grateful for today?” And then I proceed to write one line in my journal.
That’s it. And this habit helps me go to bed in a much more positive state.
The beauty of this exercise? You can look back over the year and find 365 things you were grateful for. That’s called abundant living, and isn’t that a life worth being thankful for?
Writing Everyday
I only started writing and publishing toward the end of 2019, and to say it is changing my life is an understatement. Here’s why:
Writing has given me a purpose. I believe that fulfillment in life comes from following our calling. Mine is writing — and so I write. It’s my “one thing” — I use my words to share my experiences, encourage others to pursue their calling and help people lead more fulfilling lives.
Writing has given me more clarity. I write my goals in my journal every month, and I reflect on their progress every week. Twice a week, I open up my journal and write how I feel. This form of self-conversation is how we become more aware of our thoughts and in turn, more aware of our emotions and more clear of where we want to take our life.
Writing helps me cement what I read and learn. A lot of the articles I publish are inspired by the books that I read. In writing out concepts and ideas, I internalize them better. This is called “the generation effect”, a concept that states we learn what we read when we write it down.
I’ve become a more productive, self-aware and disciplined person because of the habit of writing daily. So my advice is this: Write every single day. Write to yourself. Open a journal and reflect. And if you don’t know how to start, try writing down one line per day. Then two, three, and four…
Intermittent Fasting
Here’s a perfect explanation of intermittent fasting provided by Healthline:
“Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern where you cycle between periods of eating and fasting. You fast for 16 hours every day and restrict your eating to an 8-hour eating window. No food is allowed during the fasting period, but you can drink water, coffee, tea, and other non-caloric beverages.”
There’s a whole lot of studies that have explored the benefits of intermittent fasting, but I do it for 3 reasons:
It burns more fat and catalyzes weight loss.
It improves my mental clarity and concentration.
It helps me practice willpower.
I stick to a weekday routine where my first meal of the day is anywhere between 11.30 am to 1.00 pm— so I fast on 14-hour to 15-hour windows. And it’s due to a combination of intermittent fasting, healthy eating and regular exercise that I haven’t gained any significant weight (over 2 kgs) over the past 2 years.
Habit-Tracking
“Consistency is the key to achieving and maintaining momentum.” — Darren Hardy
Whatever it is you want to achieve in your life, there’s only one thing that will get you there: consistency. In fact, consistency was my one-word intention for this year. And what’s the best way to stay consistent? Use a habit tracker.
I was first introduced to this concept from James Clear’s Atomic Habits and it transformed my thinking about building better habits and systems to achieve our goals. Habit-tracking is the act of tracking your habits so you can measure your progress as you work toward creating sustainable change.
Simple filly out the list of habits you want to track for the given month and anytime you do take an action toward it, mark an X in the box. Your goal is to not break the chain of X’s. I currently track the following daily habits: meditation, stretching, writing, reading, exercise and this month I added a new one — waking up at 6.00 am.
Living “Slow”
I spent my twenties living fast and chasing happiness. I set unrealistic goals, I pushed myself too hard, and eventually, this past summer, I hit burnout.
That’s when I decided this:
I will stop living fast, and I will start living slow.
Living slow means listening to your body and giving it the rest it deserves. It means sleeping 8 hours a night. It means not forcing myself to go exercise if I’m tired. It means refusing to reach a level of exhaustion.
You can build a habit of living slow only when you begin to see what can only be felt with the heart.
Living slow means not rushing your mornings, but rather waking up earlier to enjoy your “slow” start to your day. It doesn’t mean “being lazy”; it means actively working towards your goals one day at a time, one small step at a time. Living slow means living without self-inflicted pressure.
You can build a habit of living slow only when you begin to see what can only be felt with the heart: the music in the sounds of chirping birds, the joy of sitting around a dinner table with your friends, the beauty of a sinking sunset.
Reading at Least One Article a Day
Reading expands our mind and boosts our creative imagination. While I aim to finish one new book a month by reading a few pages every day, there are days when I just don’t find the time to open a book and read. That’s when I turn to an article online.
The idea is simple: There’s a wealth of knowledge out there and the more input I consume, the more output I can produce, so I do my best to read every day and learn something new — even if that means only reading a 500-word article.
Drinking at Least 500 mL of Water Before I Go To Sleep and After I Wake Up
According to a study, “drinking water in the morning increases weight loss and improves mental performance.”
About 60% of your body is comprised of water, and since our body loses water regularly (due to sweat, caffeine, urine), we need to compensate for these losses to avoid dehydration.
Drink 500mL of water before going to bed and first thing in the morning. It helps you stay hydrated, flushes out toxins and keeps your skin healthy. For me, drinking water before I go to sleep helps me wake up earlier (dehydration makes you tired) and in the mornings, it wakes up my system.
30-Minute Exercise Sessions
“Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.” — Jim Rohn
Sometimes, I’m lazy. Sometimes, I’m tired. Sometimes, I’m just not in the mood. And on those days, I might not exercise. But as with any habit mentioned above, I do my best not to break it more than twice in a row.
The most important thing is to move every day. On weekdays I go to the gym for a 30-minute workout session. On the days that I don’t, I go for a 10-minute walk around the block. On weekends I go on a nature stroll through a park.
The habit of exercise has kept me healthy thus far into my life.
It’s scientifically proven to be an instant mood booster and stress-reducer. In fact, it even helps you stop overthinking. So whatever you decide to do, keep moving.
I know what it feels like to have no motivation. I’m talking zero motivation.
Here’s a list of some of the laziest things I’ve done:
I used to watch Law and Order SVU marathons for 8 to 12 hours at a time, never leaving the house.
I drank and/or smoked weed daily for at least a full year.
I’ve had a major porn addiction.
I got a 0.00 GPA one semester in college and wasn’t even smart enough to drop out. I paid for the classes and didn’t go.
I’ve been there.
You feel like you have all the talent in the world to be successful, and you do, but you continue to cling to this identity that you’re not a ‘motivated person’. And each time you do try to clean up your act and fail, it further solidifies that identity.
If you have no motivation and want to change that, you have to change your identity. To change your identity, you have to adopt actions that disconfirm your old identity and gradually help you to build a new one. To adopt the right actions, find something that excites you and compels you to work hard.
From someone who’s been on both sides, I’m confident in telling you that going from having no motivation to tons of motivation is more than possible. If you follow the path I’m going to describe, you won’t even feel like the old you existed. You couldn’t fathom that you were ever that lazy at a certain point in your life.
So…what do you do? How do you fix your seemingly perpetual laziness problem?
The Only Source of Motivation I’ve Found to Ever Work
If you find something that excites you, you have a chance to turn up that motivation dial. Finding these opportunities doesn’t guarantee you anything, but they’re your closest chance of a saving grace.
When such an opportunity arises, or you actively search and find one, jump on it and ride it as long as you can.
You might try and fail, but those moments will at least remind you of what you’re capable of if you stick with them for at least a little bit.
I had many motivational waves before I found my ultimate wave of writing.
I joined some MLM pyramid scheme companies. One positive takeaway from these companies? They teach you personal development. I started reading books, listening to audiotapes, and even though I never made any money with these companies, I kept my nose clean while I was in them because I was inspired to. Ultimately, I quit, but persisting at something for a couple of months put that subconscious signal in my brain that I was capable of more.
There were semesters in school where I did very well because I found activities that excited me and stimulated my natural talents, strengths, and curiosity. I joined the student council and had my highest GPA that semester. Then, after losing the election to become Treasurer the next year, I quit.
Writing was the motivational wave, the thing that was so exciting for me, that it stuck.
The lesson here?
Riding a bunch of motivational waves and falling short counts for something. Even if you end up quitting, sustaining any level of motivation for any moderate length of time reminds you that you are capable. Then, when you find something truly aligned to your talents and strengths, you can ride the wave for a long time — maybe even for the rest of your life.
Some practical recommendations for this include:
Say yes to everything: Go to that local event you see on a flier at a coffee shop. Download the free PDF guide from your favourite internet marketer and do what it says for once. Buy that book or course. Take any remotely positive opportunity you can.
Focus on your talents and strengths: Don’t be afraid to lean into exactly who you are. This isn’t to say you can’t do what you want, but your odds are higher if you do what you’re pre-disposed to doing. Don’t know your talents and strengths? There’s a guide at the end of this post to help you find them.
Remember what you’ve been excited about: If you are legitimately clinically depressed and have never had moments of excitement or joy, then you need professional help. But for everyone else, odds are, you’ve been excited about something in life. Think about these things and understand you already have some level of motivation in you.
How to Go From No Motivation to An Abundance of Motivation
The self-help game is simple — find and ride waves of motivation. Sometimes you feel particularly inspired to do something. When you feel this way, seize the opportunity. Honestly, when you don’t feel this way, you won’t do anything about your situation. That’s where motivational content comes in. It’s simply there to provide the spark, but you have to do the thing.
And the good news? You always have hope. You really do.
I’m not saying that in a pandering way at all. Your current situation could change drastically until you reach a point where your old life seems like an illusion. I share my story so much because there’s no better way to illustrate the power of self-improvement than to tell you what it’s like moving from one side to the other.
It’s crazy. I’ve been extremely lazy. Maybe lazier than you. I had everything going for me, systematically ruined my own life one bad decision at a time, found myself in a truly bad spot, and dug myself out of it. I don’t know how deep your personal definition of having “no motivation” is, but mine was pretty damn low.
I’m picturing myself right now back at the electronics factory I worked at for 12 hours a day making $10/hr — sitting on one of the tables outside in the smoking area, puffing away at menthol, savouring every minute of my break because this was the most mind-numbingly boring job I’ve ever had.
In the back of my mind, I always felt things would pop eventually, but at that time my situation looked hopeless. I dropped out and didn’t have a degree. I was still on felony probation. Most all my friends had left the college town I was in. I lived in a dorm room because they allowed you to accrue credit instead of having to pay rent right away.
This was my life.
The person whom many people look up to now, who probably think I’m perfect, exceptional, or somehow more capable than them is the same person described in the paragraphs above.
I found my passion and found personal development. Both saved my life. And both can save yours. But you have to fully let them in.
Be Patient Until it Finally Sticks
Keep reading the self-help content to get you fired up until it sticks. Watch the cheesy YouTube videos with the rocky theme music. Read all the self-help classics. Keep yourself mentally above water so you can seize an opportunity when it strikes.
Here’s the thing. What choice do you really have? I understand that self-improvement is often ineffective and that most people never reach their dreams. Still, I don’t see a logically better route than continuing to make attempts at getting it all to work, no matter how many times you mess up.
And you only have to get a few things right a few times to shift the trajectory of your life.
The more you focus on personal development, the better able you are to see opportunities. Even if what you’re doing right now doesn’t seem very effective, understand that it’s the path to a better life. Also, understand one important truth about you.
You say you have no motivation, but you’re reading an article about how to get more motivated. Look at this definition of motivation from Merriam-Webster:
“The general desire or willingness of someone to do something.”
Reading a blog post about how to find more motivation fits this definition. You at least have the desire or willingness to read this article. You are doing something.
If you truly had no motivation, your lack of motivation wouldn’t bother you because…you’d have no motivation to change.
Some people, many people, have given up. I met quite a few of those people at that electronics factory. You’re not one of those people. The fact that you’re reading this means you’re not one of those people. Remember that.
I know who you are. You’re a seeker.
Seekers always have the best chance to win in life. Even if you haven’t materialized your thoughts into outcomes, you still actively think about how to live a better life. Most people just daydream. You, at least, are active enough to look for an answer.
Trust me, it’s better than nothing. It’s a start.
I don’t have a magical guarantee for you. I never make promises that if you follow my secret success recipe everything will work out. I’m certain you have hope, though. I’m certain you have a chance and that you’re much more capable than you probably know.
And I’m certain that this message will get through to a handful of you. That’s why I write. Not for the masses. I can’t save everyone. But I can help a few people save themselves.
“It doesn’t matter how many times you strike out. In business, to be a success, you only have to be right once.” — Mark Cuban
I promised I wasn’t going to write a book about “how to make a six-figure income in six weeks,” but it’s important to understand the power of hustling — making your own money and having control over how you make your income.
Why is it important to learn how to hustle? Because any other option puts the fate of your life in someone else’s hands.
Regardless of how much money you make, how long you’ve been at your job, or even how much you like it, you’re always at someone else’s mercy, and you’re always at risk. You don’t ever need to become a capital E entrepreneur. I’m definitely not. I don’t really “own a business.” I’m a writer who has some little online hustles that make me enough money to live.
I do have the three things you really want, though.
Control — My money isn’t guaranteed, but it’s tied to my effort. I can work harder and make more money. With a non-commission job, you make the same amount of money regardless of the effort.
Freedom — Nobody tells me what to do, I wake up when I want, wear what I want, do what I want.
Safety — I have multiple sources of income, which means if one source dries up, I can focus my effort on others. If you have a single source, you can’t do that.
While this chapter isn’t about getting you to quit your job this second, move to Bali, and become a digital nomad, it’s important to understand both the position you’re in and the possibilities that lie ahead of you if you learn how to become a hustler. As with many sections of this book, I’m going to start by dispelling some lies and replacing them with the unfiltered truth.
Lies You’re Told About Entrepreneurship
In Chapter 1, I talked about the fact that society wants you to operate under an old model: the industrial and corporatist model. Again, no conspiracy theories at all. It just made pragmatic sense to get people saddled with debt, tied to their employers, have few other options, and to hook people into consumerism to keep them working.
As I also mentioned, it was a pretty good bet to just be normal back then. You’d have a nice job and could support an entire family as “the company man.” But now things have changed. The old model is dead, but many don’t realize it. This has and will continue to bite people in the ass.
Just as the perceived state of employment lags behind the current reality of it, the same can be said about entrepreneurship. The old model of entrepreneurship was, in fact, quite risky. First, you’d have to go shill yourself to the bank to get a loan. Then, you’d have to have some sort of physical space to provide your service or sell your wares. If you were in a product business, you’d need to take on the responsibility of the inventory first and try to sell it. Even with service businesses, you needed to pay rent for the storefront, utilities, etc.
A few decades ago, you’d essentially have to start a business with debt or be lucky enough to find a backer, which was way harder to do back then than in today’s age of venture capital and angel investing. Of course, the payoff could be huge. Ask Sam Walton. But the risks were high, too. Walton almost got wiped out of business all together at one point when the owner of his storefront tripled his rent for no reason.51
The remnants of this old model of entrepreneurship left an imprint on people and still stays with us today. That’s why people will often tell you it’s “risky” to start a business, even though in a very real sense, it isn’t. One of the last things I’ll do is guarantee your business success, but I can guarantee you an opportunity regardless of who you are.
First, you must unravel the lies of the old model.
Entrepreneurship Is “Risky”
Many people have the mistaken belief that you still have to sack yourself in a bunch of debt, burn your bridges behind you, and become this bold, daring, risky person to become an entrepreneur. Untrue. You don’t need to become some Silicon Valley guru to own a business.
Nor do you need to go into any debt or put your livelihood at risk whatsoever. The idea that you’re not starting a business because you’re protecting yourself and your family is a cop-out excuse. Why?
Because almost anyone of average intelligence can start a business as a result of the most important invention of all time. You know, this thing called the internet. The internet has leveled the playing field. Any of us can try to be anything we want in 2020 and beyond (for the most part). The key words are “try to be.”
There are many examples that carry little to no risk; businesses you can start for less than $10, like starting an affiliate marketing blog through WordPress for a couple of hundred bucks, amounts of money you spend all the time.
And you can work on a business as a side hustle in your spare time.
Aytekin Tank built his multi million dollar company JotForm on the side for five years before he quit his job.52
James Altucher started one of the first web design agencies in the ’90s on the side while he was working for HBO. After he got traction, he still worked at his job for another 18 months straight while working on the business, even though his side-hustle income exceeded his job income. But he wanted to be sure.53
I waited until my side-hustle income exceeded my job income six months in a row and had six months of cash saved before I quit my job.
Entrepreneurs don’t love risk. They hate risk. For every Steve Jobs, there are thousands of business owners who bootstrap their companies and build on the side until they feel comfortable quitting.
We’ve gone over how to find your strengths. You use those strengths to start a teeny tiny little side gig that won’t bring in much money at all to start. You keep tinkering with it as a hobby until you can make $1,000/mo with it. After $1,000 a month, you begin to build confidence to go further. And all of this can be done with little to no risk.
Here are some examples of dirt cheap businesses or hustles you could start.
Affiliate marketing — You could start an affiliate website for as little as $3.95, the cost of web hosting through a company like Bluehost.
Freelancing — You could become a freelancer for free. It’d be better if you have a website, but if you have a talent to sell, you can use sites like LinkedIn and Upwork to look for prospects without paying a dime.
Dropshipping — You can buy a Shopify website for $30 a month. With dropshipping, you carry no inventory. People buy from your site, and a third party ships your product for you.
Blogging — You can get paid to blog without paying a dime. This is one of my primary sources of income. I write on medium.com, a website that pays you for getting engagement on your content from members of the site.
Self-publishing — I usually spend a few thousand dollars creating a book because I’m confident I’ll make it back, but you could self-publish a book for less than $1,000 if you found some good yet cheap freelancers to work with.
These examples are very basic. Of course, you can end up spending more time and money to make these businesses successful. The point? Very few people are so destitute that they can’t afford to start a business or side-hustle.
You Need To Be a Genius To Start a Business
I blame Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. I think there are two types of entrepreneurship: capital E and lowercase e.
Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, venture-backed companies like Uber, Facebook, etc. are capital E businesses. These examples are often what people think of when it comes to entrepreneurship.
You can do just fine being a “lowercase e” entrepreneur. Solopreneurs fall in this bucket, people with their own little affiliate blogs, e-commerce shops, etc. Freelancers fall into this camp, some people say freelancing is technically a job, but you still can ramp up your income as a freelancer in a way a job doesn’t allow, e.g., doubling the price of your services. And when you store up some cash you can hire staff, train them on your skillset, and turn your one person shop into a company. Someone who makes handmade jewelry and sells it on Etsy comes to mind as well.
These types of businesses can become very profitable and scale, but you don’t need to have this grand vision and genius level IQ to get the job done.
I’ll expand soon, but you need some of these basic skills and supplies to start a lowercase e business:
A computer (or even just a smartphone)
A website
Copywriting
Marketing/sales/persuasion
Very, very basic HTML and the ability to use “no code” technology, e.g., setting up a Shopify store
(Optional) blogging & content marketing
(Optional) paid advertising
Patience
Persistence
The ability to work 5–10 hours a week on the side
This list seems long, but it’s not. The skills seem out of reach for some, but they’re not. People just get hung up on wrapping their head around it all and starting. You’re smart enough to get the hang of the tech stuff, and you’re skilled enough to learn basic marketing.
The skills that matter most are patience and persistence. These skills are hard to master, of course, but they’re worthwhile. I’ve seen so many people with different levels of intelligence, backgrounds, circumstances, etc. succeed in business where I know the only two variables required are patience and persistence.
Talent always matters, but there’s not much of a talent barrier when it comes to simple online business.
Most Businesses Fail
There are a bunch of statistics flying around about how many businesses fail: 50%, 80%, who knows. I think those numbers are off.
What does failure mean to you? If you run a dropshipping company that carries no inventory cost, try it for six months, get no sales, and decide to quit, did you fail? Or did you just give up? To me, business failure looks like the person who does drop a pretty penny on a storefront and goes broke. Having to bankrupt your business is definitely a failure. But when it comes to many of these low-risk ventures, failure isn’t really a thing.
Make no mistake about it. There are levels to the entrepreneurship game. Levels above my paygrade. At these levels, failure carries real consequences, and there is real risk involved. But at the scale I’m trying to teach you about, the most you’ll really lose out on is the money you spend on website hosting, advertisements, etc. You won’t get wiped out if you do it right. That’s the point.
Now that we’ve dispelled some of the myths and lies, let’s talk about the mindset and way of thinking you need to adopt to become a hustler.
Learn To Become a Master of Leverage
This is my third book, which means on three separate occasions, I spent a dedicated amount of time creating a product. Those three separate occasions, due to leverage, pay me over and over and over again. Leverage occurs when what you produce begins to work and produce profit for you without your additional effort.
Sure, I put things in place to promote my books — advertisements, email funnels, traffic to my site, etc. But for the most part, the bulk of the work is done upfront, and I keep getting paid. On the website I write for, people engage with articles I wrote months ago, and I get paid for that engagement. Leverage creates freedom. Leverage equates to the idea of “making money while you sleep.”
Without leverage, your income is forever tied to your time. When your income is tied to your time, you can never be free. I know you’ve heard this before, but let the idea sink in. Imagine being able to reap the rewards of your effort over and over again. This affords you time to build more assets and products that create even more leverage.
I have three books making money for me. I use affiliate marketing on my websites to earn some extra change. People come to my site through Google and buy a product I recommend, and I get paid. I only have to make the resource that mentions the product once. I have a service where I help aspiring writers build their own audience. If I were to turn this service into something like an online course, it would become leveraged.
See, the whole idea is to have more money coming in than coming out. It sounds simple, but when you understand how leverage can help you accomplish this, it’s profound. Once you build one asset that pays you money without your additional effort, you’ll become addicted to it. You can either refine those assets into better products you can charge a higher price for, or you can create more assets.
What do people do who make money from assets like products? After taking care of their expenses, they take their extra profit and put it into investments like index funds. They invest in rental properties that create monthly cash flow. They hire people to help them earn more money. These types of strategies create more leverage. Your money (usually) makes even more money for you. The market has gone negative for an entire year only twice in the past 100 years — the Great Depression and the most recent financial crisis. The more your money grows and compounds, the more you earn. At a certain point, it grows at a crazy rate.
All wealthy people have leverage; the bulk of people who work jobs don’t. This is the only difference between the two.
The Life-Changing Magic of Compounding
People say they know how compounding works. They do, but they don’t, really. See, if you understood the unfathomable power of compounding and embraced it, you’d behave much differently. The average person behaves in a way that’s antithetical to understanding how compounding works.
They’re in debt to the gills:
Mortgage
Car note
Student loans
Credit cards
This addiction to financing and being a borrower instead of a lender is the №1 reason why people consistently stay broke. It’s because the entire concept of “financial literacy” is bunk.
Morgan Housel explains this well in his essay “The Psychology of Money”:
“Investing is not the study of finance. It’s the study of how people behave with money. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people. You can’t sum up behavior with formulas to memorize or spreadsheet models to follow. Behavior is inborn, varies by person, is hard to measure, changes over time, and people are prone to deny its existence, especially when describing themselves.”
“… Managing money isn’t necessarily about what you know; it’s how you behave. But that’s not how finance is typically taught or discussed. The finance industry talks too much about what to do, and not enough about what happens in your head when you try to do it.”54
That’s the rub right there. You know you’re not supposed to be in debt up to your gills, but debt is alluring and beguiling. You know you should squirrel money away and invest it, but delayed gratification sucks. When it pays off, boy does it pay off, but the time and shrewdness it takes to master is often too much to bear for most people.
Again, I’d be doing you a disservice to make all of this seem easy. It’s not. I don’t have a better bottom line answer for you than “You’re just going to have to do it.” The best I can do is illustrate the concept in a way that’s appealing enough to compel you to act.
Why the First Six Months of Your Hustle Matter Most
Before you’re able to compound money, you’ll need to learn how to compound your skills. See, people make the mistake of thinking the entrepreneurial hustler type journey is this long slog when in reality, the most difficult obstacle you’ll face happens right away.
Most people quit before they hit the tipping point where your skills compound and everything gets easier. Success isn’t mysterious. It’s mathematical. The more time you spend improving your craft, the higher your chances of having creative breakthroughs. This is due to the Power Law.
The world’s top artists, entrepreneurs, and leaders know the power of the Power Law. This is why they persist, even when things don’t seem to be going their way. They know that toiling away at their craft will eventually lead to explosive growth.
In the book Zero to One by Peter Thiel, he talks about the importance of the Power Law when it comes to our lives and careers. He says that instead of “diversifying” by having a wide range of mediocre skills (i.e., a multiple page resume with tons of “extracurricular activities”), we should instead focus in one area in order to take advantage of the Power Law.
If you look at the math, it’s hard to argue against. When it comes to becoming great at what you do, one plus one equals more than two.
One Billion X Better
This idea came from a post I read from James Altucher about becoming “1% better” each day. According to the Power Law, if you become 1% better each day at what you do, by the end of the year you’ll be 38 times more skilled, pretty good!
I took this idea and combined it with the popularized “10,000-hour rule,” from Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell,55 that says you reach a higher plane of creativity and skill after 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. Depending on how much you work per day, achieving 10,000 hours of practice will usually take 10 years.
I did the math on getting 1% better on a daily basis for 10 years according to the Power Law. It came up with a number so high the calculator couldn’t spell it out.
I wanted to see how many days it would take to increase your skills by a ridiculous yet fathomable number. I chose 1 billion. Any guesses? It would take you 2,083 days, a little bit shy of six years, to become 1 billion times better at what you do.
Is this an exact measurement? Not even close. The point is to illustrate the power of focusing on doing the work each day until you reach breakthroughs. If you put in the workday in and day out for that long, the person you started out as wouldn’t be able to comprehend the one you’ve become.
Fighting Through to the End
All of this sounds good, but actually taking the time to get 1% better each day takes a level of commitment most of us haven’t made, or aren’t willing to make. Staying consistent is hard. You’re going to reach many setbacks and plateaus before you reach fast growth. Accept this up front. People who don’t do this almost always fail.
They ignore the power of the Power Law. Once you make it through the initial phase of doing the work (over and over and over and over and over), one day your skills will experience a steep rise. When you hit explosive growth, you can put your foot on the gas pedal, leaving your doubts, fears, and anxiety in the dust.
If you’re reading this book, you’re likely at the beginning of this curve:
You don’t realize how much you’ll grow as you progress forward. The flatter start of the curve represents the period where most people quit — before 90 days, before six months, etc.
Once you hit that accelerated part, things become easier. Easier in the sense that you know what you’re doing, and some of your skills have become second nature. People mistake the word “hard” for what the correct term should be, which is time-consuming.
The art of hustling just takes time to get good at. It took me five years of consistent work to get to a point where I feel real financial freedom, but it wasn’t grueling or anything like that. I liked what I was doing and became more competent at it over time by practicing at a moderate pace. That’s it.
Skills beget other skills, compound, and create more leverage. This means it’s easier for you to learn new skills. The side hustle is the perfect entryway into building a life, skillset, and bank account that compounds and grows over time.
How To Start a Successful Side Hustle and Make Your First $1,000/Month
There’s nothing wrong with having a job. Jobs are stable. Jobs can be fun. You can reach all of your career goals through a job without ever starting a business. Nothing is black and white. Everything has pros and cons.
While a steady income is great , let’s go over the drawbacks again:
You have no control over when you get your money.
You can’t increase your output and suddenly earn more money.
Jobs have disincentives for your output, e.g., stretching a five-hour day into eight because … who knows?
Even in the best job, you have to wait for a handout, even if it’s one you’ve earned.
Contrast that with “eating what you kill.”
There are few better feelings than making money directly for something you made or provided.
You have more redundancy and safety. If you have a job and a little side-hustle, you have “two lungs,” so to speak.
If you’re in a pinch, you know you can go get some money.
Accumulate enough money on your own, and you can tell people to fuck off.
Now, before we dive into the “how” portion of this, let’s get a few things straight.
The Many Levels of Hustling
If you want to permanently remain at the side-hustle level, you can. You can get to $1000/month and increase your lifestyle a bit. What would an extra $12k a year do for you? I’m guessing quite a bit.
If you want to pursue your side hustle at a moderate pace — without waking up at 5 a.m., grinding and “crushing it” until you have a panic attack, or moving to Bali — you can.
You don’t have to put entrepreneur in your Twitter profile (actually, don’t do that). You can slowly and patiently start to earn a little side-hustle income and reap the benefits from it. Nothing extravagant. Having a side-hustle is less about the money you make and more about the person you become when you pursue one. It’s also the perfect route to true entrepreneurship.
I’ve noticed a trend, all the real entrepreneurs give the exact opposite advice from what most entrepreneurship coaches and Silicon Valley gurus give.
Don’t take risks. It’s called a side-hustle for a reason.
Don’t quit your job. Build a bridge to a company if that’s what you want to do.
Be patient and don’t take yourself too seriously along the way.
You can slowly creep into your side-hustle until you can leap into something better.
Next, let’s look at some ways you can earn money.
Freelance Writing, Design, Coding, and Marketing
Lots of people try to freelance, but they go about it the wrong way. First, they’re quickly disillusioned by the “race to the bottom” mentality because they sign up for Upwork and find that competing with developers in Pakistan who will work for $3/hr doesn’t pave the road to financial freedom. Pro tip: Don’t go to a freelancer mill to start freelancing.
Want to know what works? Good ol’ fashion outreach. Create a portfolio. Reach out to businesses (they have more money than individuals), and pitch your stuff. Keep pitching until someone accepts, and improve your skills in the process.
Send 100 emails to get 10 replies, three meetings, and one contract. Voila. As with all keys to life, working hard and doing shit repeatedly (while iterating along the way) seems to work. Who knew?
Here are some great freelancing resources to get you started:
Makealivingwriting.com
Freelancetowin.com
Iwillteachyoutoberich.com
Beafreelanceblogger.com
E-Commerce Businesses
You can start e-commerce businesses with low overhead. You don’t even have to carry the inventory. E-commerce businesses are great for people who don’t necessarily consider themselves creative.
So let’s say you don’t want to be that creative type. You could sell bamboo sticks on Amazon (this is a real company). You could be the type of business owner who simply finds great products, positions them, and promotes them.
Of course, you’ll still need to learn the skills to help you sell more, like copywriting, advertising, sourcing manufacturers, etc. But these are the type of skills you don’t have to be innately creative to learn.
If you are the creative type, e-commerce works just as well for you. There are websites like Etsy, where you can sell your products online. You can start your own website using a cheap and simple-to-use platform like Shopify to sell your work.
This is a super broad and simplified version of what it takes, obviously. The point is simply to show you that there are many options available.
Lifestyle Businesses
A lot of people have muddied the lifestyle business niche. This isn’t going to be a sales page or a Facebook ad about “making six-figures in six seconds.” People do build lifestyle businesses. It’s just not as easy as some people make it seem.
The short version of the process: Write/video/Instagram/whatever about stuff you’re interested in, build a following around it, find something to sell them that they actually want.
It takes hard work, but it’s fun. I’ve barely covered all the possibilities when it comes to starting your side-hustle. Places like Side Hustle Nation go into much more depth than I can.
There’s opportunity out there to make some extra change and build a more comfortable and exciting life for yourself.
So why don’t most people do it? Well, you need skills to pull off a side-hustle. To get those skills, you have to hustle. Not at a breakneck pace, but not at a snail’s pace either. The more skills you build on top of one another, the more opportunities you have to create a custom-tailored career.
Build Your Talent Stack
Do yourself a favor and read the book How to Fail at Almost Anything and Still Succeed.56 Scott Adams, the creator of the comic strip Dilbert, wrote the book. In it, he shares an interesting concept anyone can apply. If you asked Scott, he’d tell you he’s an average drawer at best, funny but not hilarious, business savvy but no Buffett, and good with words but no Hemingway.
He’s pretty good at a handful of skills. On their own, they’re not worth much, but combined, he suddenly becomes the best in the world at the combination. When you stack talents, your skills amplify each other until you have “career capital,” meaning you’re rare and indispensable.
If you’re rare and indispensable, you can charge more, have more autonomy, and have access to more opportunities; skills beget skills, and success begets more success.
Here’s a pool of items that make great potential for a side-hustler’s talent stack:
Writing
Marketing
Public speaking
SEO, PPC, Ads
Second language
Coding
Design
Networking
Artistic talent, e.g., painting, sculpting
Organization
People skills
Above the money, you should start a side-hustle to try and get good at a valuable skill. Then, you can start more hustles and experiment until you have a skillset and portfolio unique to you.
Break the Monotony
Imagine you own a little online jewelry shop. Nothing fancy. You went on Shopify, and set it up in a few hours. You don’t carry any inventory, and the products go straight to the customer. It’s just something you’re doing for fun; a hobby.
You make a few hundred extra bucks a month. When your car breaks down, you have the money to fix it. Or you and your spouse randomly decide to take a weekend trip because you can.
Time goes on. You’re enjoying your hobby. Because you enjoy it, you start to get curious and read more about marketing the store. You implement the techniques. The store grows, and grows, and grows. One day, the income you make from the store matches the income from your job. You can keep your job and have the extra money, or you can scale your business.
The moral of the story? You have the option. Side-hustling, trying creative experiments, and tinkering with your career provides optionality. That’s the biggest benefit.
I’m not here to tell you what to do or try to sell you an entrepreneurship course. I’m here to promote the idea of trying low-risk ventures to spice up your life and your bank account. I know you want to do it too. I know you’re a little tired of the rat race and monotony. Why not give it a try?
Here’s the thing. One chapter of a book isn’t going to show you the process of how to start a business or a side-hustle in any justifiable way. This is a primer I included because the concept is important.
The rest of this book will support you on an entrepreneurial journey (both big and little e), but as far as the business resources themselves, there are some very good online courses and places on the web — both free and paid — that can teach you what to do.
They work, but you have to do them.
This book isn’t very long. You could read it in a few days. The lessons from it will take months to years to implement and a lifetime to master. Self-improvement is hard. Making money is hard. No book will remove the difficulty of these aspects. OK? OK.
First, you discover your strengths. Second, you start your side-hustle. Then, you navigate the winding road from nobody to somebody.
To do this, you’re going to have to understand how to take the right risks. That’s the №1 thing you’re afraid of, isn’t it? Risking your livelihood, ego, and future on an uncertain outcome. This next chapter will tell you how to pull off your “evil plan” without having to risk much at all.
Many people spend more time in their heads than they need to — 80 percent of the time. This habit creates a default background of anxiety, stress, preoccupation and less time enjoying the moment.
When you are exercising and your mind keeps wandering about what you have to do at work tomorrow, your thinking mind is at work — it wants everything to be a problem.
Mental chatter can serve us or enslave us.
“The Thinking Mind is always chattering away while you’re waiting in line, while you’re in bed trying to sleep, when you “tune out” of conversations with people, or when your mind wanders while reading,” says Mark Manson.
The problem with the thinking mind is that it likes to be in total control until you actively remind yourself to stay in the moment. It diverts your attention from everything important to the noise, stops you from creating, and sometimes poses as reality and cause fear and anxiety.
Mental chatter doesn’t deserve the attention it demands. “Talking in your head rarely arrives at any great revelations, since what’s floating around is often just a bunch of un-ordered thoughts and worries,” writes Alice G. Walton of Forbes.
In our increasingly busy and connected world, brain fog is becoming far more common. When you spend a lot of time in your head, it becomes difficult to think. A cluttered mind is disruptive and frequently hinders productivity and critical thinking and causes mental fog — often described as a “cloudy-headed” feeling.
Common conditions of brain fog include poor memory, difficulty focusing or concentrating, and struggling with articulation.
Imagine if you could concentrate your brain power into one bright beam and focus it like a laser on whatever you wish to accomplish. When you struggle to concentrate and spend most of your time in your head, everything you do is harder and takes longer than you’d like.
To achieve total focus, calmness, clarity, and insight, silence your mental chatter
The pressures of daily life can make it insanely difficult to stop and think about your thinking. But maintaining mental clarity and focus is not impossible. The good news is, you can shift the behaviour and spend less time in your head whilst you busy becoming your best self.
Returning your attention to the present (and calming your thinking brain) is a learnable skill, which can eventually become a reflex.
Your thinking mind is a tool, and we can learn to put it down when it’s not needed, which is most of the time. You have an enormous amount to gain by simply spending less time in your head.
Recognise and name your state of mind.
“The moment you realize you are not present, you are present. Whenever you are able to observe your mind, you are no longer trapped in it. Another factor has come in, something that is not of the mind: the witnessing presence,” says Eckhart Tolle, in his book, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment.
At our best, we feel calm, confident, focused, enthusiastic, and optimistic when we’re most creative, and productive. At our worst, we typically experience self-doubt, impatience, irritability, defensiveness, pessimism and we tend to spend even more time in our heads wondering about everything that has gone wrong or could go wrong.
Most of us move along the spectrum between our best and our worst all day long, depending on what’s going on around us.
To think better, improve your mental clarity and make the most of your brain energy, it’s important to recognize your state of mind at any point in time. Naming your emotions (or better still, what you are thinking of) tends to lessen the burden of being at your worst. The physician and psychiatrist Dan Siegel refers to this practice as “name it to tame it.”
David Rock argues that when you are experiencing significant internal tension and anxiety, you can reduce stress by up to 50 percent by noticing and naming your state. In his book, “Your Brain at Work”, David Rock explains, “Without this ability to stand outside your experience, without self-awareness, you would have little ability to moderate and direct your behaviour moment to moment.”
“You need this capacity to free yourself from the automatic flow of experience and to choose where to direct your attention. Without a director, you are a mere automaton, driven by greed, fear, or habit,” he argues.
The basic skill of directing your attention to the “now” improves your ability to think critically about important issues and make better decisions.
“Stress is caused by being “here” but wanting to be “there,” or being in the present but wanting to be in the future,” says Tolle.
Rather than choosing to obey your thinking brain most of the time, choose to engage in your present activity mindfully.
Spending less time in your head takes time. The thinking mind does not like discipline and will resist your efforts to discipline it. It loves its freedom more than anything else, and won’t let you master it easily.
The ability to switch it off for focused develops over time through concentration exercises — reading engaging long books slowly (don’t skim), starting a distraction to-do list to tame the thought, using everyday experiences as opportunities to be mindful, and practising active listening,
Shutting down the mental noise means more time for what really matters. This results in saving a lot of mental energy and time wasted on thinking on issues that do not add anything to your life.
We all try to be productive. We all have lots of stuff that we need to get done, for work, for our art, for our families. This is all good.
So maybe you’re too busy to get it all in. To write the book you’ve been meaning to write. Too busy to get to the gym. Or just drowning in email and want it to end. It doesn’t have to be that way. The right productivity tweaks can get you where you need to be–to help you get more done without adding more to your plate.
But you have to remember: It’s human being not human doing. With that in mind, here is some productivity advice that will certainly help you get more done, but more importantly, will help you get more done in a healthy, effective and balanced way. Some of these I have learned by virtue of working alongside people much smarter than me and stealing their tricks, others through my own trial and error.
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–Keep texting for friends only. If there are too many ways for people to reach you, the day never ends and you’ll never have time to think. I try to not do any business texting–only email and only phone. When I get a text, I know it’s from a friend.
-A small to-do list of 5–10 items, if completed day in and day out, will put you far ahead of everyone else.
-Save time in the mornings before you do email or social media. Write in a journal, have breakfast with your kids, take a long shower. Don’t jump immediately into the noise. Have some peace and thoughtful time first.
-Inbox zero. Inbox zero. Inbox zero. (but here’s the key: you don’t have to respond to most. Delete/archive is your friend)
-On that note, Napoleon used to deliberately ignore correspondence for weeks so the trivial stuff would deal with itself. I do that with things that are particularly frustrating or aggravating. What if you just thought: Oops, I accidentally deleted that offensive email or Oops, I guess I never saw it. Chances are it would save you some anger.
-What’s your main thing? Ok, so why are you doing all these other things?
-If you’re struggling with something, print it out and go over it in physical form. The computer is a medium and not always the best one. Don’t feel stuck or wedded to it.
-Fire crazy people from your life. That is: people who send too many emails, people who stir up drama, people who can’t be counted on, people who waste your time with projects that don’t go anywhere. It’s not fair to you, it’s not fair to your clients/employer, it’s not fair to your family.
-Make commitments–short, regular deadlines that you have to meet. It will force you to ship and deliver results. This is how you will improve. It will also get you out of your own head.
-Use tools but don’t overuse tools. I really like Basecamp, 15five, Buffer and Google Docs. Yes, there are some other great ones out there: Scrivener, Evernote, Slack, Asana, Any.do, Timeful, etc. but you’re supposed to manage the tools, not be managed by them. How many different platforms can one have going on? Keep it simple and keep it straightforward. Don’t feel guilted into trying every single thing that other people rave about.
-Beware of both work addiction and work aversion. They are two sides of the same coin. Ask yourself: Why am I doing this? Am I avoiding anything in my life? Am I adrenalizing? Is this really that important?
-Don’t set up a voice mail. Or if you do, tell people to email you.
-Avoid conference calls, get-to-know-each-other coffee meetings, industry events and unless they’re really important, even interview/media requests that require meeting or Skype. Why? Because it puts you on someone else’s schedule and not yours. Email is best for all these things, even if it takes a little longer to actually do, for one reason: it’s on your terms. You can do it after you’ve done the other things you want or need to do, without interruption.
-Exercise will make you productive. It will clear your mind, process any negative energy, and give you a win every day.
-There’s the old Benjamin Franklin line about being a penny wise but a pound foolish. It’s the same thing with time management. Most people get the little things right and the big things wrong–and then wonder why they don’t get much done.
-Be wary of giving your time away just because some asked. Try asking them to pay. It weeds out the moochers and makes sure people will respect it and take it seriously.
-Pick a set of clothes you like and are comfortable in and buy a lot of them. Everyone from the President to Steve Jobs realizes that this is a way to cut down on unnecessary decisions. It also means you’re focused on what is important (who you are vs how you look).
-Treat yourself like a startup. Register an LLC if you need to make it clearer. Now if your business needs something to be more productive–whether it’s a nice pair of headphones or a trip–you won’t think about money. You’ll be objective.
-Keep a journal if you like, but definitely keep a commonplace book. You’re essentially stockpiling information for when you’ll need it later. Saving you time and making you better prepared.
-Robert Louis Stevenson has a quote to the effect of “Thinking your work is terribly important is the first sign of insanity.” Remember…you’re not the president of the world here. Relax. It’s going to be alright.
-You think hiring a professional is expensive? Try hiring an amateur. When you hire help, don’t cut corners. You’ll pay for it, I promise.
-Put an inspirational quote or two above your desk. Not something like “Hang in there” with a cat photo but something that reminds you of your purpose and the major tasks at hand.
-What do you make in a year? Divide that by how many hours you work to get a true hourly rate. I’m not saying to not do anything less than that rate, but don’t lose track of that number. Let it weigh against your choices.
-One thing it will do is help you say ‘No’ to things. Which is critical. You need to say no more often. We all do.
-You have to know why you do what you do–what you prize and what’s important to you. Or you will be endlessly comparing yourself against other people, which will not only be a major distraction, it will make you miserable.
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These are things I’ve learned over the last few years, I don’t always follow them but I always regret it when I don’t.
You’ve heard a guru or two say, “If you just want it bad enough, you’ll succeed.” For the most part, they’re right.
If you aspire to do something most other people can’t or won’t do, it takes an inordinate level of desire — but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
On top of wanting to succeed, you have to stop wanting other things.
Let me explain.
The Love Affair We Have With Negative Emotions
If you think about it, self-pity feels good. On the surface, feeling sorry for yourself seems like a negative emotion, but it has tons of benefits. Self-pity gives you the benefit of not having to feel a perhaps more devastating notion — the truth.
The truth tells you you’re just not working hard enough. Self-pity tells you you’re incapable of working hard or you have some insurmountable obstacles in your way.
Blaming other people or your circumstances can also give you this weird sense of superiority — if everyone and everything is out to get you or ruin your situation, you should be applauded for holding it together at all, right?
You’re busting your ass for that check that’s too short. You’re taking care of your family even though the government is destroying the middle class. You’re surviving in spite of everything around you.
Everybody loves a pity party. We find venting to one another cathartic. We find solace and unity in complaining.
Think about it. What if you and a group of friends were all complaining about your lives and one of them halted the conversation and said, “You know what guys? I think we’re just being sorry for ourselves. Maybe we should stop complaining and come up with a plan to change our situations.”
Either in the back of everyone’s mind — or out loud — they’d say screw you, who are you to tell me how to live?
Maybe we’re defensive to that dialogue not because we hate what’s being said, but rather we truly love wallowing.
If only complaining and self-pity were our lovers, maybe we’d be okay. But we lust after other negative emotions too.
Jealousy Porn
Jealousy, like self-pity, gives you the high ground again. If someone’s success makes you feel bad, you must tear them down.
You discard their results as nothing more than luck and it makes you feel good about yourself.
You’re unlucky, so you’re off the hook again. The problem with envy? You can’t be like someone you despise.
If you hate wealthy people, you can’t be wealthy yourself. If you hate any type of success — artistic, health, academic, career, etc — you put yourself in a position to climb an uphill battle toward having it yourself.
Yet we often choose envy. Why? Because we love it.
I want to reiterate the idea of our true love for negativity over and over again. When you look at these emotions as pleasurable, you’ll realize why they’re so hard to shake — they’re not overt poisons like cyanide, rather they’re like alcohol, corn syrup, and drugs that are pleasurable yet harmful.
Sloth and Unreliability
Who doesn’t love being lazy?
Some of us would prefer to lay in our cosy bed all day instead of having to wake up, pour that coffee, and tackle the day. Left to our own devices, we’ll often choose the easier route. Laziness doesn’t just mean watching too much Netflix or skipping a few workouts at the gym — those are minor infractions.
True laziness occurs when you avoid making the major changes you want from life because they’re too hard.
Not following your dreams is a form of laziness, and it’s the one we love most because it weaves all the aforementioned emotions together.
With laziness, you get the ultimate excuse — it’s too hard. Who can argue with that? When it comes to following a dream, relatively speaking, it’s too damn hard. Not only do you get an excuse, but you can a logical and extremely justifiable one.
The best thing about laziness? You can easily rationalize it and twist it into words like contentment, self-love, and being ‘down to earth.’
This way of thinking is a sleight of hand we love using because you can relate to it, it’s comforting, and gives you a sense of piety at the same time — but is it true?
Only you know the real answer.
If you find yourself realizing how much you love to indulge in negativity, it’s on you to find a way to change those thoughts.
So how do you break out of the cycle of negativity?
The Life-Changing Magic of Self Awareness
First, realize what’s going on. Maybe you’ve thought of these emotions as things you dislike or want to change, but examine whether or not that’s true.
Consider the fact you actually love to complain, talk down to others, and give less effort than you’re capable of. It’s uncomfortable to think that way, but you might find the truth if you do.
If you’ve decided you are, in fact, in love with these emotions, it’s time to break up.
Becoming a better version of yourself is a never-ending cycle, so you’ll never get this right 100 per cent of the time, but every time you catch yourself feeling these negative emotions, try to pause and think about whether or not you’re revelling in it.
If you do realize you’re revelling in it, focus on how perverse that is.
Consider today your dose of medicine. I partially wrote this for myself because I need it as much as you do.
As much as I believe you’re wildly talented, intelligent, and useful to this world, I also think you can sell yourself short.
The people around you love complaining and moaning. When your co-workers, friends, and family members engage in it, why don’t you be the one who turns the conversation positive or acts as a good example for everyone else?
That’s a great first step. One good step for one day can turn into a week, which can turn into a month, which can turn into a year, which can turn into a life.
A lot of people think happiness is about saying “yes” to the right stuff. Well, that’s one side of a coin. There are many things we say “yes” to that we really should be saying “no” to.
For a happier 2019, try saying “no” to the following things:
Personality
1. Mediocrity
You’re almost always better than you think you are.
“I’d rather choke on greatness than nibble on mediocracy” — boldomatic.com
2. Procrastination
Stop thinking, start doing.
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” — Marcus Aurelius
3. Talking Shit About Yourself
Be positive. Don’t seek loathing, seek improvement.
“Just remember; someone loves everything you hate about yourself” — Frank Ocean
The grocery store is 15 minutes walk away? Walk to it!
“Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.” — Thomas Jefferson
12. The Snooze Button
Be so focused on achieving your goals and set tight deadlines and you won’t ever think about snoozing anymore!
“You Snooze, You Lose” — smart people
13. Partying Every Night
Enjoy a party, but don’t forget your goals, and resting of course!
“Everything in moderation, including moderation.” — Oscar Wilde
14. Stimulants Before Bed
Don’t get in the way of a good sleep.
“Sleep is the best meditation” — Dalai Lama
Productivity
15. Long Commute
Waste as little time as possible on non-productive activities.
“If you have to commute, read or listen to a book, or a podcast.”
16. Distractions
When comes time to be productive. Shut any distractions down.
“You can’t do big things if you’re distracted by small things” — picturequotes.com
17. Blockers Of Personal Progress
Bad friend? Block. Netflix? Block. Video Games? Block. Unblock when comes time to unwind.
“I hate watching an episode a week, I’m more of a season a day kinda person.” — pinterest.ca
18. Reading Things You Don’t Enjoy
Seriously. You don’t have to finish everything you start! The author won’t know. Stop reading shit things, there’s too much great stuff out there!
“Life is too short to read a bad book.” — James Joyce
19. Completing Useless Things
Plan things. Organize priorities. Do the ones that matter.
“Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.” — Peter Drucker
20. Planning Things That Don’t Need Planning
Planning is great and all, but don’t forget to execute!
“Just do it!” — Nike
Relationships
21. Takers
Say “yes” to givers. Give yourself.
“Know the difference between those who stay to feed the soil and those who come to grab the fruit.” — pinterest.com
22. Social Media
Uninstall the Facebook, Twitter and Instagram apps from your phone. BAM! I gave you back an hour of your day!
“Never before has a generation so diligently recorded themselves accomplishing so little.” — pinterest.ca
23. Talking Shit About Others
Always be honest. Don’t be a hater.
“Don’t do unto others what you don’t want others to do unto you.” — unknown
24. Listening To Complaints About Others
Gossiping is poisonous. Avoid people who spread it.
“Who gossips to you will gossip of you” — Turkish Proverb
25. Naysayers
If someone doesn’t have time for you, don’t find time for them. Relationships are mutual.
“Naysayers have little power over us — unless we give it to them.” — Arianna Huffington
Work-Life Balance
26. Bad Routines
Don’t get stuck in a non-productive routine. You can change things around.
“Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” — Warren Buffett
27. Meetings Without An Agenda
These tend to last too long and have no focus. No sense of direction. Avoid them.
“Disorganization can scarcely fail to result in efficiency.” — Dwight Eisenhower
28. Overly Long Team Meetings
Bring people back on track or leave. Seems rude, but in the long run, people will thank you for it.
“Time isn’t the main thing. It’s the only thing.” — Miles Davis
29. Bad Clients
To hell with the good money. If a client is not good to you, focus your energy on the good clients.
“It is better to starve than get a bad client.” — Massimo Vignelli
30. Good
Say “yes” to great.
“Good is the enemy of great” — Jim Collins
31. Cluttered Environment
Have a clean workspace, both physically, mentally and on your computer.
“Clutter is anything that doesn’t support your better self.” — Eleanor Brown
32. Responding To Messages Ad-hoc
As much as possible set blocks of times to answer messages.
“Emails get reaction. Phone calls start conversations.” — Simon Sinek
33. Doing Life Stuff At Work
Give your full attention to your work, it won’t go unnoticed.
“You can always find a distraction if you’re looking for one.” — Tom Kite
34. Doing Work Stuff At Home
Give you full attention to your family, it won’t go unnoticed.
“When you work, work. When you play, play. Don’t mix the two.” — Jim Rohn
35. Doing Things You Can Delegate
Find your superpower, delegate the stuff that’s outside of it.
“As much as you need a strong personality to build a business from scratch, you must also understand the art of delegation.” — Richard Branson
36. A Bad Business Partner
Communication is key. Work things out or walk away.
“I can’t control your behavior; nor do I want that burden… but I will not apologize for refusing to be disrespected, to be lied to, or to be mistreated. I have standards; step up or step out.” — Steve Maraboli
Other
37. Your TV And Couch
Make your environment uncomfortable so you can focus on the things that matter.
“I’ve made it to the couch. There’s no stopping me now!” — coolfunnyquotes.com
38. Waiting For Things You Don’t Need To
Coffee machine? A traffic light when there are other options? A file upload? Just do something else!
“You can’t recycle wasted time.”
39. Things That Don’t Work Towards Your Goals
Question the things you do. Better yet, question it before you start it.
“If it’s not a Hell Yeah!, it’s a no” — Derek Sivers
40. Comparing Apples To Oranges
Don’t waste time comparing things that don’t compare. They’re quantified or qualified using a different set of attributes, it’s not the same thing!
“Don’t compare yourself with anyone in this world. If you do so, you are insulting yourself.” — Bill Gates
41. Your Cellphone
Top productive people set their phones on Airplane mode for most of the day.For me, it has become a brick of sorts.
“Technology can be our best friend, and technology can also be the biggest party pooper of our lives. It interrupts our own story, interrupts our ability to have a thought or a daydream, to imagine something wonderful, because we’re too busy bridging the walk from the cafeteria back to the office on the cell phone.” — Steven Spielberg
Conclusion
Feel like saying “no” now?
You can start right away! Reading this article on your cellphone? Just toss it!
Learning to say “no” is a skill. Practice it. Master it. Say “no” to the right things in 2019 and you’ll be happier for it.
A few weeks ago, a friend approached me because he felt he wasn’t being as productive as he should. While I had written about productivity many times in the past, I didn’t want to point him to the many articles I had written on the subject.
As a result, I brainstormed a collection of quick and simple tips to help him increase his productivity dramatically in less than a month. I walked him through the list and he immediately managed to implement a lot of the tips.
Then this evening I thought, if that was useful for him, maybe it could be useful to a lot more people!
So, if it was useful to him, I bet it’s useful for you too!
1. Shut down communications outside scheduled time
As much as possible, schedule a block of time when you will answer all your non-time-sensitive messages. For me, I answer to my emails and most Slack messages between 1pm and 2pm.
If you’re not familiar with the 4 quadrants (Urgent and Important, Not Urgent and Important, Urgent but Not Important, and Not Urgent and Not Important), I suggest you get familiar with it to get some perspective on how your time is spent and how it should be spent going forward.
3. Play audio and video at 2x speed
It takes some getting used to, but once you can listen to anything at 2x speed, you save so much time. A lot of learn is happening through audio or video, so you greatly accelerate your learning this way.
4. Put your computer mouse/trackpad at maximum speed
A lot of people use a computer to accomplish things. Learn to use your mouse or trackpad at max speed. You can save hours every week just by learning that.
5. Know all keyboard shortcuts for any software you use
Like above, learn all keyboard shortcuts to minimize the amount of time you spend going back and forth between your mouse and keyboard. Again, you can save hours every week by learning that.
6. Schedule distraction time
We all have activities that distract us. I was obsessed with stats checking (across different projects). I now check everything only once a day.
7. Do your productive activities when no one is around
Distractions are probably the greatest killer of productivity. Do your important things when you are certain you won’t be distracted. For me, that’s very early in the morning.
8. Do things at best known times
According to the Power of When book, different types of people have different best times to do different types of activities. Know yours.
9. Plan your week ahead of time
As much as you can, never start your week without knowing what’s coming. Be aware of how you can best spend your time during the week.
10. Break everything down in chunks of at most 15–25 minutes
Whenever you have a task that seems too daunting to do, break it down it more manageable size, taking about 15 to 25 minutes each.
11. Save your small wins in a “success” journal
Every time something good happens to you, save it somewhere you can retrieve for later. The act of recognizing it makes you feel rewarded, and when you’re not feeling great, you can always refer back to good things that happened to you to cheer you up.
12. Have monthly goals
Think of a month as you would a new year resolution. What do you want to accomplish during the month that would change your life for the better. One month is a lot more motivating than on year.
13. Start your productive day by working on one or two easy tasks first
No one is really motivated to work on a super hard task to start with. Completing small tasks builds your energy up for future tasks. Which brings us to…
14. Work on your hardest task next
With that new found energy, it’s time to work on your most complicated task for the day. If you fail to do anything else that day, at least you’ll have done the hardest thing!
15. Put the right music at the right volume
I know that one doesn’t work for everyone, but experiment with what music at what volume puts you in flow state. This doesn’t only apply at work but for other fun activities and chores.
16. Learn to power nap
Power napping is a skill that takes practice. It took me about 2 years to master. Power napping is when you nap for 10–20 minutes. I nap on relaxing music and set an alarm for 25 minutes. It takes me 10–15 minutes to fall asleep, so I nap for 10–15 minutes. More than 20 minutes disrupts your rhythm.
17. Consistency is always key
It’s always better to do, even if just a little. Inaction breeds more inaction. Do with consistency and build some momentum up!
18. Be accountable
Have someone or something hold you accountable for the things you want to accomplish. Find a partner. Make your goals public.
19. Take tons of notes on all your learnings
No one is good enough to recall everything without referring to resource material. Whatever you are learning, always take notes. Even just the act of taking notes will make you remember.
20. Answer this question: “Why do you do what you do?”
The hardest question of all. Once you can clearly answer the question, your goals and actions start to align. Peter Drucker said: “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
21. Journal your heart out
Learn to write anything that comes to mind in a journal. This will bring clarity in your life.
22. Understand and use the Pareto Principle (80/20 rule)
Do 20% of the work that yields 80% of the result. Seriously think about that before jumping into a time-consuming endeavour.
23. Build yourself a strong morning and evening routine
Mornings set up your mood for the day. Evenings affect your quality of sleep and thoughts given to your subconscious. Both are of utmost importance.
24. Track how your time is spent
Most people don’t know where their time is spent. For a week, analyze every minute of your day and realize where time is wasted. Use tools like RescueTime on the computer.
25. Walk fast
Walking fast is both good for your health and brings you to your destination faster. Once you’re used to it, it’s just as meditative and enjoyable as slow walking.
26. Listen to podcasts or audio books while walking/commuting
Free education on the go! There are tons of great podcasts and audiobooks to listen to on any subject you may be interested in. Use commuting time for passive learning. Don’t forget to learn to listen at 2x!
Most people are at their most creative after waking up. Use that time to learn new skills. Your brain works on things you feed it while sleeping. Feed it with thing you want to remember most before going to sleep.
29. Meditate for context-switching
Learn to meditate and do it between different activities. For example, before and/or after work.
30. Do a quick workout routine shortly after waking up
Spend at least 10 minutes doing physical activity to “activate” your muscles.
31. Put your phone in airplane mode from 9am to 9pm
Don’t be reactive, be proactive. Make this 12 hour period your own. Customize times to your preference.
32. Done is better than perfect
In most scenarios, it’s better to have something ready and get feedback before pushing through “blindlessly”.
33. Read uplifting content before going to bed
Again, what you feed to your brain before going to bed is crucial. Read things that uplift you so you wake up energized the next day.
34. Experiment to find your best sleep schedule
Common wisdom says to sleep 8 hours every day. This doesn’t work for everyone. Our cycles are of 90 minutes. I found that for me 6 hours (4 cycles) or 7.5 hours (5 cycles) work best. If I sleep 8 hours, I wake up in the middle of a cycle and it’s terrible. Experiment to find your sweet spot.
Conclusion
I hope some of these tips useful to you. Ultimately, being productive means making the most out of the 24 hours you have available to you each day. These tips should help you with that.
When someone is described as being “mentally tough,” it typically signals that they’re resilient, self-assured, and bold. Ask any athlete what the concept means in sports, and they will answer, “you thrive in competition,” “you’re self-confident,” and “you can handle the pressure.” But all these statements describe behavior, rather than what’s going on inside one’s head. They fail to define what mental toughness actually is and how it develops.
In 2002, Graham Jones, professor of elite performance psychology at the University of Wales, set out to answer the question: “What Is This Thing Called Mental Toughness?” He interviewed 10 sports professionals competing at an international level — swimmers, sprinters, gymnasts, triathletes, rugby players, and runners — and asked what the concept means to them.
After analyzing their answers, Jones concluded that to be mentally tough in sports takes an unshakeable self-belief in the ability to achieve goals, and the determination to bounce back from performance setbacks. A mentally tough athlete is confident that their skills are unique and is recognizable by an insatiable desire to succeed, Jones writes.
Peter Clough, a professor of psychology at the University of Hull, looks at mental toughness beyond elite athletes and the context of sports. He considers it an actual personality trait, fundamental to the performance, well-being, and personal development of everyone, that determines “how people deal effectively with challenges, stressors, and pressure… irrespective of circumstances.”
Since the human psyche is strongly influenced not only by external but also internal voices, our mental state can benefit from psychological tools including positive thinking, visualization, attentional control, and goal setting.
According to Clough’s model, mental toughness is made up of four components that psychologists call the “4Cs:” challenge, control, commitment, and confidence. A mentally tough person interprets challenges as opportunities and believes they can maintain control in their life.
Clough also developed a questionnaire to measure mental toughness in sports and used it to learn about the concept’s impact on athletic performance. When 41 undergraduate sports students were assessed and then asked to hold weights, at arm’s length, for as long as possible, Clough discovered that those who scored better in mental toughness (based on his questionnaire’s measures of challenge, control, commitment, and confidence) experienced less discomfort and pain and performed better physically.
In sports, mental toughness gives someone an advantage over opponents by enabling them to cope better with the demands of physical activity. And in everyday life, mental toughness allows someone to better manage stress, overcome challenges, and increase contentment.
Can you develop mental toughness?
Evidence suggests both upbringing and life experiences shape the human psyche and play a role in how mentally tough someone is. A 2011 paper in Journal of Sport Psychology in Action confirmed that — no surprise here — a challenging-yet-supportive environment that promotes self-reflection, personal responsibility, and the development of independent problem-solving skills can boost mental toughness.
But even if you didn’t grow up in an environment that nurtured mental toughness, it can be learned later in life. Since the human psyche is strongly influenced not only by external voices but internal ones, too, one’s mental state can benefit from psychological tools including positive thinking, visualization, attentional control, and goal setting.
Positive thinking impacts what is known, felt, and believed to be true. Affirmations — repeating short statements such as “I am ready for this” or “I am in control” — provide a means by which an athlete can mirror the positive effects of hearing positive messages from a friend or coach. Self-talk — an inner dialogue of “I have planned for this,” “my training has prepared me,” or “I know how to control these feelings” — provides a way of handling nerves and stress. Successful performance can also be positively reinforced at the end of each day by writing down, and reviewing, three achievements from the last 24 hours. This daily closure activity can help you refocus on what went well, rather than dwelling on disappointments or perceived failures.
Visualization, an internal focus on positive mental images, can favorably impact both mind and body. Mental rehearsal is a proven way to prepare for challenges and assert control over your inner voice. Mentally working through the steps in as much detail as possible (the start of a 100-meter sprint, a serve in tennis, questions in a job interview, or presenting in front of an audience) can be as real to your mind as actually doing the activity.
Attentional control increases your capacity to focus. For some, this may be the difference between success and failure. “If there is one factor that underpins people’s ability to perform at their best,” says Clough, it is their capacity to “control their focus of attention effectively.” Concentrating on the right thing, especially under pressure, can be learned through setting goals, removing distractions, and using routines to better embed knowledge.
Finally, when it comes to goal setting, using clear, realistic, and achievable goals can focus and energize you, and provide long-lasting motivation. In other words: Chunking the bigger challenge into smaller manageable components that can be tackled individually, is key. In his book Achieve the Impossible, Greg Whyte, a former Olympian and professor of applied sport and exercise science at Liverpool John Moores University says, “irrespective of the size and complexity of the challenge, one overarching truth remains: success is not a chance event. Each challenge must be broken down into a set of manageable sub-tasks.”
A robust mental toolkit can help you overcome stressful challenges while ensuring consistently high levels of performance. But, like any skill, even one that you’re born with, mental toughness must be developed and maintained.
I wouldn’t say that I’m particularly a morning person, so it’s quite ironic that I’m writing this post. In fact, for the first 20 years of my life I loved sleeping in — and to be honest, I still enjoy it every now and then to this day.
However, it’s no secret that many high-performers wake up early so that they can get a head start over everyone else. So, I quickly realized that, as an entrepreneur, I was leaving a lot of performance potential on the table when I’d start my workday later than I could, and when I’d let my mornings go unstructured.
Even though I’m not a part of the 5 AM club, I’ve become more of a morning person over the years and I actually start my days in a productive, motivated and energized way — which is the complete opposite of how I used to start them years ago.
In this article, I’ll share the 7 easy hacks that helped me transform from being someone who hated mornings to someone who actually enjoys his mornings.
Morning Hack #1: Put Your Alarm In A Different Room
While living in a new apartment for a few weeks now, I dropped one of my most important morning habits (new environments have the tendency to change your behaviour), which is putting my alarm far away from my bed. No wonder that I had a lot of trouble with waking up early over the past few weeks.
For many days in a row, I fell back into my old behaviour of snoozing and sleeping in until an unacceptable time. Needless to say, my productivity and performance suffered from it. Fortunately, I realized that it was because I didn’t put my alarm far away from my bed.
Normally, I put my alarm in a different room so that I have to get out of bed in order to put it off. And when I’m already up and in a different room, there’s no way I’m going back to bed. In other words, this little hack is my fail-safe method to prevent myself from snoozing and sleeping in — and it will help you do the same.
Instead of putting your alarm next to your bed, put it somewhere where you physically have to go out of your bed and walk for a bit in order to put the alarm off. This will prevent repeated snoozing. As soon as I started doing this again a few days ago, I had no trouble waking up early anymore.
If you use something like a wake-up light as an alarm (just like I do), I recommend you set a second alarm on a different device (such as your phone or a classic alarm) which you place in a different room. This way, you combine the best of both worlds.
Morning Hack #2: Immediately Drink 2 Glasses of Water
After being without water for about 8 hours, your body is dehydrated and you absolutely need to fuel it with water as soon as possible. The reason why most people feel tired, foggy and unmotivated in the morning is simply that they are dehydrated. And when you’re dehydrated, the performance of your body and brain decrease dramatically.
The brain consists of 75% of water, so it’s no wonder that we start to experience immediate effects when we don’t drink enough water. I always ask people who feel sluggish, unfocused and low on energy if they drank enough water and the answer is almost always no.
In short, drinking enough water makes sure the energy production of the brain is functioning well, while not drinking enough leads to lower energy production, leaving you to feel foggy, fatigued and not sharp. All of which leads to unpleasurable mornings and heavily decreased productivity levels.
So, right after waking up, drink 2 solid glasses of water to kickstart your energy production and make you feel more awake and energized.
Morning Hack #3: Move With Your Body
Another energizing morning hack is to move with your body for about 2–5 minutes. Whether it’s jumping, push-ups, kettlebell swing (my personal
favourite), some yoga or doing a few sprints, it doesn’t really matter.
The important thing is that you do something that elevates your heartrate so that your body starts to produce cortisol (which helps you to wake up) and your blood flow increases (which helps to transfer energy throughout the body).
Personally, the difference in my ‘awakeness level’ is like day and night after doing 25 kettlebell swings. I no longer feel sluggish and foggy. Instead, I feel energized, awake and ready to tackle the day, and it merely takes me a minute to do.
Morning Hack #4: Do 1 Round of Intense Wim Hof Breathing
This morning hack may seem a bit unfamiliar, but it truly works wonders for feeling more awake and energized.
According to recent findings in the bio-hacking field, your breath has a strong influence on your health, energy and mental state of mind. It turns out that, by using only your breath, you can influence anything from your immune system to your creativity and your energy levels.
But for now, let’s just focus on how your breath can help you feel more energized and awake so that you can actually enjoy your mornings.
By breathing deeply through the belly, you inhale a lot more oxygen compared to what you normally do when you breathe on autopilot (in fact, the way most people breathe on autopilot is one of the leading causes of low energy and diseases).
In a nutshell, more oxygen equals more energy. And when you have more energy, you’ll feel much more awake.
I do one round of this breathing exercise to feel more energized and awake each morning
If you want to experience the energy-generating benefits of breathwork right away, you can try the following exercise (which is from the Wim Hof Method), which I do on a regular basis to instantly get into a peak state:
For 10–30 seconds, inhale and exhale strongly through your mouth, without any pauses in between the breaths. It’s important to breathe through your belly instead of through your chest.
Important: you will probably start to feel light-headed, which is completely normal. Always make sure you do this exercise in a safe environment and never do it while driving or while swimming.
Now notice how you feel. You might even feel tingling sensations in your body, and you probably feel a bit more lightheaded. But overall, you feel energized. You’ve flooded your body with oxygen, and that means that you have generated a ton of energy. If you’re like me, you feel hyped and ready to tackle whatever is in your way.
So far, I’ve never experienced that I didn’t feel motivated or energized to go out and crush it after doing this breathing exercise. Try it for yourself!
Morning Hack #5: Don’t Look At Your Smartphone For The First 20+ Minutes
One of the worst morning habits that most people have adopted nowadays is that they immediately check their phone upon waking up. The problem with this habit is that doing so immediately puts you in a reactive and distracted state of mind. All the messages, emails and notifications that you’ve received during the night immediately pull for your attention.
Instead of proactively deciding what you are going to do with your morning, you’re forced to reactively act on the things other people have thrown your way. This immediately puts you in a (mild) state of stress, distraction and overwhelm from the getgo. That’s not really an empowering start of the day, is it?
Instead, it’s much better to leave your smartphone untouched for at least the first 20 minutes (preferably longer) until you’ve proactively decided to engage in more empowering habits such as meditation, planning your day and setting goals & priorities.
If you use your smartphone as an alarm, put it on flight mode the night before. This way, you won’t see any of the notifications from social media, email or instant messaging.
Morning Hack #6: Do Something You Enjoy
If you hate everything you need to do in the morning, you won’t look forward to waking up and it’s hard to really enjoy your mornings. Instead, include an activity in your morning that you actually enjoy and that you look forward to doing. This will make waking up earlier a lot easier and you’ll find yourself becoming more and more of a morning person.
Personally, I really enjoy my 15-minute morning reading session combined with a delicious cup of coffee. It’s truly my moment while it also contributes to my personal growth (which is one of my most important values). Merely because of the anticipation of this enjoyable moment I wake up with more ease and I actually enjoy the morning.
Morning Hack #7: Get A Good Night’s Sleep
One of the most obvious, yet most neglected ways to become more of a morning person is to actually get a solid night’s sleep. And this doesn’t just mean that you sleep enough hours (although that’s important too), but you should also get high-quality, deep sleep.
When you actually get a good night’s sleep, you’ll feel much more energized and awake in the morning. No longer do you have to feel like you’ve been hit by a truck. Furthermore, it helps you to become more productive and focused throughout the day.
Here are some tips to get a good night’s sleep:
Cool down your room
Avoid blue-light emitting screens 1–2 hours before going to bed (phone, tv or computer) or get blue-light blocking glasses
Use your bedroom for sleep and sex only — not for TV or other forms of entertainment
Journal before bed to get rid of distracting thoughts
Go easy on sugar and caffeine during your day
Sleep at least 7 hours
If you’re interested in learning how to upgrade your sleep quality, I recommend you read the book ‘Sleep Smarter’ by Shawn Stevenson and check out my article about how to improve your sleep quality.
Now Do It
As I said before, I used to have a very hard time waking up early and I never really considered myself a morning person. And even though there are many others who wake up much earlier than I do, these 7 morning hacks truly helped me to enjoy the morning a lot more than I’d ever thought I would. Slowly but surely, it helped me to become more of an early riser — which has a powerful effect on my productivity and performance.
Therefore, I highly encourage you to try out at least 4 of these habits for yourself in your very next morning — and let me know how it went for you!
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