ThinkWeek #3 — Day 2
We’ve arrived at Day 2! Woo hoo!
I woke up with two main goals this morning:
- Finish “Find Your Why” from yesterday — namely firming up my “Hows”.
- Crush “The Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs”.
So, how did I do?
Wrap up “Find Your Why”
After getting some sleep (and letting some emotions die down), I felt really strong getting in to this.
I’ve wrapped up my “HOWs”, and iterated on my WHY from yesterday — resulting in:
To inspire people to take effective action
So that we can all find our freedom.
It’s simpler, cleaner — and the bits I dropped felt better wrapped up in a “HOW”.
I’ll do a full post on my WHY and HOWs at a later point, but I feel there is one HOW that I would like to share.
After a moment of reflection today, I feel it’s one that will really, really help me:
Feel proud of progress.
I am so, so quick to criticise myself, and I should regularly take time out to be proud of any progress made.
Sure, my original intent was to use that as a driving force to inspire — but it also gives me a double-whammy of making me think about moving forward. Rather than constantly looking over my shoulder and beating myself up for any faults made, it’s such a drain.
So — feeling pumped after this! Nice! Moving on…
Crush “Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs”
Following on from my comment yesterday about “Ruthless book reading” — I came at this one like a man on a mission! My eyeballs seemed to be attacking the key words like hawks and picking apart the poor thing.
Firstly, I’d like to say that Hal Elrod et al have done an amazing job on this book. They’ve done a wonderful job of pulling together a lot of information and actionable steps into a single book.
So, if you’re looking to get started with crushing your morning routine, get this book.
I came away with six pages of notes — much of it “ready to go”, here’s my key take-aways:
Surround yourself with GREAT people
These guys are about the 9th entrepreneurial “thing” I’ve been in contact with that has said “GET MENTOR(s)” and/or “JOIN MASTERMIND(s)”. I really need to get on that. Open to suggestions!
‘Well-oiled machine’ over ‘method’
From the book (emphasis mine):
To achieve more, we need to become more — not do more.
This really resonates with me. After spending years on diving deep with all the “productivity” systems etc. I realise now, that they are really a micro-optimisation.
On a related note — another book that was really a good kick up the ass for me was “How to Have A Good Day” by Caroline Webb. She talks about the “Mind/Body Loop” and that really got me thinking — “well maintained machines may be less efficient but running reliably with a higher power output yields much more overall”.
Prime the pump before bed
I’ve also seen the “set intentions/goals for the next day before bed” a few times now. Belief is that your sub-conscience chews things over while you sleep. Bonus benefit of “clearing head” to help clear any residual worries from the day. “Don’t worry, it’s on the list for tomorrow, brain”.
Beef up the morning routine with ‘Life SAVERS’
SAVERS is an acronym for:
- Silence
- Affirmations
- Visualisations
- Exercise
- Reading
- Scribing (They openly admit in the book this was thanks to a thesaurus ;)
If you’re interested — check these out on Hal’s Site.
Key things that jumped out at me here:
- I tried, failed and gave up with affirmations — but this book offers an alternative method for creating them, worth a shot.
- Visualisations are proven to be effective (talk to any athlete — plenty of examples on Tim Ferriss’ Podcast), yet for some reason, I’ve never picked it up as a habit.
- I’ve done journaling in the past — personally finding great success with The Five Minute Journal, but it’s fallen by the wayside.
So — I’ve block-booked 1.5 hours in my calendar each morning moving forward to get my SAVERS routine going!
You’re better than you’ve ever been…
This line is what I think smashed with thoughts from yesterday and led to this post on Instagram:
You’re better than you’ve ever been because of who you were, and who you will be is because of what you do next.
Frankly, I’ve got some bad memories — and I give them too much credit for “making me strong” etc. Well, they also make me a paranoid, fearful, approval seeking wreck at times, and I hate it.
This beautiful line hit me line a ton of bricks, and gave me a moment of clarity so powerful that I would have paid the book price just to see that in large print. I’m actually thinking of getting it put on to a canvas on the wall.
It’s about “what’s next?” It’s always about “what’s next?”
Commit to result-producing processes.
This reminded me of Scott Adams’ (author of “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big”) awesome method of using systems not goals.
Commit to a process that yields results rather than getting bogged down with the results themselves.
Naturally, you may want to have check-points of how well the process/system is performing, but this won’t bog you down on a daily basis.
It’s also much easier to improve a system or process than it is a goal/fixed number. Trust me, I’m a programmer ;) My job is to literally wave a magic wand and make systems fit ridiculous goals! (We can get this by Tuesday, right?)
Have a “Vivid Vision”
Sadly, this wasn’t “get on the ayahuasca train and prepare to get your mind BLOWN”. But still, good stuff.
As previously mentioned — I don’t spend any time visualising goals etc. It’s time to do this not only at the daily/micro level, but at the 3-year/macro level.
Delegate 80% of your work
This one is quite fitting, as the “80/20 Principle” is another book I would like to devour this week.
In short — work towards delegating 80% of your tasks, so you can focus on the 20% that require your unique talents.
It may take some digging to get to that (book gives some nice pointers on that too) — but 80% of your time back? Seems like a worthwhile investment, no?
So, another productive day! I’ve got some great take-aways and tasks to follow up on once I get back home.
Big thanks to Hal Elrod et al for the great book!
