Habits &
Rituals

Winning the Day

One of the biggest keys to winning over the long-term is the ability to win everyday.  Habits help you do that.

The Great Separator

Daily habits are one of the main things that separate successful people from average or unsuccessful people.

For habit-sculpting newbies:

Let’s start with the best advice up front.

Just get started.

The longer you maintain your current habits, the harder it will be to change them.

That’s just how the brain works.  It’s both an advantage and a disadvantage.

Automatic behaviors require less neurologic resources, leaving more room for Critical Thinking and Decision Making.  If you’re able to make positive behaviors your modus operandi, that’s a good thing.  But when negative behaviors are the default, it’s a bad thing.

That’s fairly obvious.

What’s less obvious is how to transform your behaviors permanently.

Some studies show that it takes 20-odd days to wire in a new habit.  Other studies say it’s more like 60.  So the science is still out on how long it takes.  However, most High Performance experts agree that it’s important to build daily streaks out of new behaviors to make them the norm.  It’s most effective not to take any days off, especially at first.

After all, the things you do everyday are the most important—even if they seem mundane.

It’s not always easy, especially if you’ve been doing things the same way for 10, 20, or 30 years.

However, it’s undeniably worth it.

Great habits are the building blocks of success.  Without them, it’s hard to create a great life.  Your habits impact your health, finances, emotional state, and pretty much every other area of your life.

Brushing your teeth.  Showers.  Your morning cup of coffee.

These things are probably second nature to you.

But so is browsing social media, watching television, and eating junk food.

Some of these negative habits are plain to see.  Yet there are also many things that are acceptable in modern society that you may not not realize are hurting your quality of life.  For instance, a sedentary lifestyle wreaks havoc on your brain chemistry and is a major contributor to the widespread depression we see across the Western world.

Unfortunately, you can’t “unwire” the connections in your brain.  Instead, you have to overwrite them.  Therefore, it’s not so much about quitting your negative habits as it is about creating positive habits to replace them.  Even then, the prior associations will still be there.  That’s why it’s so easy to fall back into old patterns.

Thus, Discipline and Self Control will always be important.

You’ll probably go through waves of better periods and worse periods.  That’s normal and okay.  So don’t judge yourself to harshly.  Generally though, it does get easier to maintain new habits over time.

It’s wise to start small.

Making dramatic changes in a short period is very difficult.

Sure, dramatic change may be a worthy goal.  But human beings aren’t designed to flip our behaviors on and off like light switches.  Instead, progress is incremental.

Plus, you can build momentum by making and keeping small promises to yourself.

For example:

It’s easier to start with ten push ups a day than a two hour work out.  It’s easier to eat one salad a day than to completely transform your diet overnight.  It’s easier to commit to one daily hour of Deep Work than to jump to an 80-hour work week.  It’s easier to move the start of you day back 15 minutes than to join “the 5AM club” right away.

For some people, it is actually possible to make massive changes all at once.  But there’s no need to beat yourself up if you aren’t one of those people.  Such radical change usually requires a personal crisis as a catalyst anyway.

Perspective is vital.  Don’t worry about other people.  Compare yourself to who you were yesterday.

Ultimately, it’s all about two things:

1. Erasing your most negative habits
2. Establishing new “Keystone Habits”

I learned about the concept of keystone habits from Brian Johnson.  It’s extremely powerful.  The most important stone in an arch is called a keystone.  Without it, the whole thing falls down.  Masterpiece days are the same way.  Certain habits help support the entire structure of a highly productive day.

As you begin to develop new habits, you’ll notice that certain habits have a disproportionate impact on the quality of your days.  These are your keystone habits.  They won’t necessarily be the same for everyone.  But there are a handful of behaviors that most high achievers have in common.

Examples include:

• morning workout
• journaling
• meditation
• low-carb diet
• nightly review

Moreover, it is useful to create groups of habits that build on each other.  By doing the same things repeatedly, you can tie them together in your brain.  Start one and the others fall into place like dominoes.  That’s what makes Morning Routines, work routines, and nightly routines so powerful.

In the end, refining your habits can be something of a never-ending journey.  They’ll never be perfect.  You can find better systems to implement.

The main thing is to find what works for you and execute on it consistently.

There’s no better way to ensure a great life.

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