Monday, March 11, 2013

Rule 3: Finishing strong

One of the best feelings in the world is to wake up just as motivated as you were the night before. I remember nights where I got randomly motivated right before bed but as soon as the next morning came I went right back to my old habits. I hated these moments. I just couldn't figure out why my motivation didn't carry through to the next morning. Well I narrowed it down to two reasons. One of the reasons I covered in my last post, about inspiring yourself every morning, the other reason I'll cover in this post: The art of finishing your day feeling great.

I'm 11 days into my experiment and I feel much better then when I started. Of course my progress is an accumulation of months of trying to get my act together but this experiment really forced me to buckle down. My days are more productive now and I've found resources that maximize what I do everyday. For instance I started using the program LifeRPG which is a genius productivity tool I found on Reddit.  It funneled the obsessive method I used in gaming to my everyday tasks, and I'm already seeing results. I also picked up coding as another possible interest to pursue. None of this progress would be possible if I didn't constantly remind myself of my goals every single day. Both in the evening, and in the morning.

Have you ever wondered why New Years resolutions often go unfulfilled? Well think about it this way, repetition is the only way you can make something a new habit or lifestyle. If you just declare a new goal for one day without a plan or a reminder of that goal there is no way you can build enough momentum to escape your old habits. Reviewing your goals at night is the best way to remind yourself of the things you aspire to do and it lets you reflect on everything you did that day. My nightly ritual is to first reflect on everything I did that day, I look for mistakes, things I could have done better, and anything out of the ordinary. Then I review the goals I've set for myself for the near future and I write down some ideas for what I can do the next day. Once this is all finished I just relax and go to sleep.

During sleep your subconscious mind works on everything you thought about right before retiring, this often leads to insightful dreams and waking up with key insight on the problem you were having the night before. Make use of this function by directing your thoughts productively each night so that you can wake up refreshed and ready for the day ahead.








1 comment:

  1. Loving the connection between this and the last blog entry. So true.

    ReplyDelete