Time excuses, consistency failure, the ingredients of discipline, habit rewiring, and why imperfect progress still wins.
- Thinking you don’t have time to get done what is required is a lie
- Why most people fail at achieving their goals
- The definition and ingredients of self-discipline
- You change when your habits change
- You either want it or you don’t
- 0.01% progress is better than 0% progress
1. Thinking You Don’t Have Time To Get Done What Is Needed Is A Lie
When you tell yourself and others there is not enough time, you’re lying to yourself.
There is always time.
We choose what we do with our time, and what we do with it is the deciding factor on what our results are.
If you genuinely feel like you don’t have time, start tracking every single task you’re doing down to the minute. I guarantee, you will identify different ways to eradicate time wasters.
Action Required:
List out your top priorities for the day and no matter what, commit to getting it done.
Do not compromise on your top priorities that will push you towards your mark.
This will likely mean you need to cut off and deprioritize other tasks, responsibilities, and obligations.
This is the price of salvation. To accomplish any worthwhile goal, sacrifices must be made.
Easy places to cut and give yourself back time:
- Social media scrolling. If it’s unrelated to business, kill it.
- Anything that can be outsourced: Meal prep, pet duty, cleaning.
- Draining relationships. These are taxing. Cut them immediately.
Remember there is always time, but using time productively requires strategy. Commit to prioritizing and getting done what is needed at all costs. Be prepared to make sacrifices.
2. Why Most People Fail At Achieving Their Goals
Results come from consistent execution.
Consistent, focused, unwavering effort day in and day out — without fail — is where champions are made.
How committed are you to your goals and dreams?
A lot of people think they are more committed to their goals than they actually are.
Your consistency communicates to you how serious you are.
If you’re consistently skipping daily actions on your goals, you’re not committed.
Consistent action is the greatest predictor of results.
People think it might take talent, intelligence, luck, looks, notoriety, money, etc., to make their dreams happen, but consistency is the most reliable trait to help anyone succeed.
But are you ready to be consistent?
Consistency requires pain, discomfort, and inconvenience.
Until you’re ready to sit in these day in and day out, you will never reach consistency.
Reminder
Don’t get too caught up with results.
And don’t expect results immediately.
Instead, focus on daily execution.
The more you invest in daily execution, the more inevitable your results. At some point your results will reveal themselves, but you’ve got to put in the work.
3. The Definition and Ingredients of Self-Discipline
Self-discipline is the ability to consistently do what needs to be done regardless of mood, comfort, or external conditions, in service of a long-term objective.
The Ingredients of Self-Discipline
- Dedication
- Diligence
- Pain
- Patience
- Persistence
- Resilience to failure
- Self-restraint
Self-discipline is all of these things.
Much of society experiences mediocre results because they lack the ingredients of self-discipline.
Why?
Self-discipline is inconvenient.
Self-discipline is painful.
Self-discipline is not something an average actively partakes in.
The average person may want to be self-disciplined, but they never take the required actions to deliver the results of self-discipline.
And it makes sense.
Why would you want to implement self-discipline when you can feel at ease, relaxed, and not in pain right now?
The results of self-discipline are always long-term. It’s a long play that sometimes does not pan out for years…or decades.
But it’s what determines whether people tap in into their potential and end up at the mile yard line when it’s all said and done or end up in another dimension because of how far self-discipline was able to take them.
With consistent self-discipline, you will tap into their potential.
Without it, you will reside and die in mediocrity.
If you’re ready to implement self-discipline, here is a snapshot of what it will look and feel like when you first get started…
At first, it’s very painful. It’s inconvenient. You will question why you’re even doing it when you were doing alright without it. You will feel more tired than usual. You will feel more distracted than usual. Everyone and everything will all of a sudden require more time from you. Life might even start falling apart.
It will likely be a dreadful experience at first.
There will be many days you fail. You will not accomplish all you need to get done. You will feel guilty. You will think you’re a failure. You will think you’re a fraud. You will want to quit.
But you just got to keep going.
And as you continue, it will start to feel easier — even good.
You will become more productive. You still start to get more done. Eventually you will start to get done everything you committed to.
At some point, self-discipline will become your new addiction. Your new habit. Your new framework of operation. There will be no going back at this point.
Remember:
- Discipline is pain. But pain gets results.
- Discipline only favors the long-term commitment most.
4. You Change When Your Habits Change
It’s easy to want change.
It’s easy to intend to change.
It’s easy to tell people you have changed.
It’s easy to fool yourself into thinking you will change.
But nothing will change in your life until your habits change.
Your decisions are creating your habits. Your habits are creating your results. Your results are creating your life.
You are the sum of your choices, and your choices are creating your present and future.
If you ever want to change anything about yourself or your life, start with your decisions.
Remember:
Your decisions are like investments. They compound. The better choices you make, the better your returns will be. And your choices don’t need to be macro. Micro choices, create macro results.
Start changing your life one micro decision at a time.
5. You Either Want It Or You Don’t
Whenever I don’t accomplish my goals for the day, I remind myself if I’m not consistently executing, then I don’t want it bad enough.
Most of us want things, have desires, and have goals.
But do we make it happen?
One of my favorite sayings is: Commit once.
That’s it.
Screw starting and restopping.
Just stay on the train and don’t get off.
People keep getting off the train because exhaustion happens, life happens, loss happens, rules happen, failure happens, inconvenience happens, regulations happen, distraction happens, limitations happen, and other endless circumstances happen.
And whenever they allow life to deter them, they are communicating they don’t want it bad enough.
If you want it, you’ll execute.
If you don’t want it, you won’t execute.
6. 0.01% Progress Is Better Than 0% Progress
Perfection is not required for the pursuit of your goals. It’s the enemy.
Don’t focus on perfect progress.
Focus on perfect execution.
Commit once.
Execute without fail.
Over time, you will become a better executor.
Over time, you will make more progress if you stay on the train.
People beat themselves up because they aren’t making much progress, and they forget that consistency is a quiet compounder.
If you focus exclusively on execution, you will end up somewhere you wanted to be.
If you focus exclusively on perfection, you will never end up anywhere.
More than anything, focus on consistency.
It’s the one game changer that will outperform perfection every single time.
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