The Ultimate Test To See If Your Life Is On Track Boils Down To This Question
Protect your attention in the morning like your life depends on it — because it does.
What was the first thing you spent your attention on this morning after you got out of bed?
Tell me the first thing you did this morning after getting out of bed and I’ll tell you where you’re going — if you’re on your desired path or off of it.
Is that time spent on something you hold sacred or is the morning something you don’t consider?
This is the test to determine whether or not your actions are aligned with who you want to become and if you’re on your way to achieving your personal and professional development goals (the two are tied together).
Introduction
“The grass isn’t greener on the other side. The grass is greener where you water it.” — Sam Ovens
For two years, even while launching a VC backed start up from a world renown lab (what I considered to be an epic opportunity), I was reading and writing on human engineering every single morning as the first thing I did.
I’d do what I do now, wake up at 4:30am and kick off by reading several books until I got inspired to write something — sometimes spending 2–4 hours.
- Not obsessing over our product.
- Not reading up on growth or some of my day to day weaknesses that could have used sharpening up.
I deluded myself into thinking personal development and becoming a master at people and writing about it would help me perform at my company, and in some ways it did, however it wasn’t the main thing I needed to be focusing on.
Not surprising the thing I watered the most is what I ultimately became and why I write and coach on peak performance full time now.
Now that I write and coach full time, I have to balance my writing schedule to my business generation activity.
Given I love writing that much more than selling, I knew if I wanted to crush my business generation goals, it needed to be the absolute first thing I did every morning.
Eat that Frog as Brian Tracy’s said over the years.
It now is the first thing I do every morning, and as I’ve been ‘watering’ this activity each day, I’m loving it — especially as I see results come in.
We all talk about ‘why we do what we do’ and how ‘serving others’ and changing the world lights us up out of bed.
Most importantly, there’s no better drive than being great at something and doing an activity that builds confidence.
In a recent FB live, best-selling author and #1 writer on Medium.com, Benjamin P. Hardy was asked what drove him and his simple yet profound response was: “It’s fun to be good at something”.
So What Was The First Thing You Did This Morning?
“Tell me how you spend 5–7am and I’ll tell you how you spend your life.” Benjamin Hardy
If it wasn’t thought through at all, your life isn’t thought through at all.
If it is thought through, but you’re distracting yourself prior (mobile/email/random news headlines to “see what’s going on”), it’s not intentional enough — it’s not meaningful enough to you.
Why? Two things:
Our time and attention are our two most precious and scarce resources.
Both of which are in a race against you if you’re not in control of them.
From the moment you wake up it’s easy to have your time and attention run for you by your physical environment and devices.
That sucks up precious resource one, which makes you unknowingly take up precious resource 2.
Whereas the top performer who’s on their way to where they know they’re going — end up devoting everything they have to own their time and attention.
This is hard in today’s world.
In today’s world of endless options being a mobile device away, it makes deep intentional work ever more valuable.
In today’s world of endless options being a mobile device away, it makes deep intentional work ever more difficult.
In today’s world where it’s so easy to get sucked into reaction mode the moment we open email which further makes it hard to get back to being focused, makes it that much more important to be intentional about the very first activity you spend your time on after you get out of bed.
Take advantage of that fresh time and attention and do the one activity that will get you where you want to go.
Take advantage of that fresh time and attention and do the one activity that will make you who you want to become.
Tell me what you did first thing you rolled out of bed this morning and I’ll tell you what your standards are.
Tell me what you did first thing you rolled out of bed this morning and I’ll tell you if you’re a top performer.
Tell me what you did first thing you rolled out of bed this morning and I’ll tell you if you’re resilient.
What was the first thing you did this morning?
What are you going to do first thing tomorrow?
Be intentional about it and treat it as the sacred thing it is.
You’ll get to where you want to go and become who you want to become.
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