Blaz Kos

self-discipline

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  • Manipulating your discipline with transaction costs

    Transaction costs (also known as friction costs) are a very important term in economics and finance, representing costs of participating in the market. In economics, transaction costs are divided into three main categories, such as search and information costs, bargaining costs and negotiations, doing all the legal and paperwork, as well as policing and enforcement costs, representing the legal authorities that make sure everyone sticks to the deal. Transaction costs may also include transportation and communication costs. In short, transaction costs are all the opportunity costs in terms of the time, energy and money it takes to make a transaction on a market.

    For example, when participating in the stock market, you have to pay the brokers’ commission, then there are payments to the bank, government fees, and so on. And if you go to buy one item in a different market-store, because the item is a little bit cheaper there, you have to consider transportation costs, that are again transaction costs and have an overall influence on how good deal you get.

    Logically, transaction costs decrease the net result and financial returns. If you trade a lot, you want to make sure that transaction costs are as low as possible. Because of their impact on the net result, transaction costs play an important role when we’re deciding whether to make a deal on the market or not.

    Very similar every activity that you (want to) do has some transaction costs, and they have a strong influence on your self-discipline. The higher the transaction costs, the more effort and discipline it takes to do a desired activity. The lower the transaction costs, the more easily you take action or enforce a new routine. Knowing that gives you the power to manipulate your discipline by influencing transaction costs. Let’s see how.

    Discipline is like a muscle

    Firstly, you have to be aware that willpower, discipline and cognitive abilities are like a muscle. You have a fixed daily dose of discipline/cognitive power and there’s only so much you can do to stay organized, disciplined, make good decisions and follow your desired daily agenda. It’s totally true that you can train your cognitive abilities and self-discipline (and you should) like you can train your muscles, but a maximum always exists. You aren’t a robot and once you reach your maximum, you simply have to give yourself a break; unproductive or old bad habits will start to prevail, no matter what.

    You probably know the feeling when after following a strict diet for a long time, you say to yourself “I’ve had enough of this s*it” and open a bag of chips.

    As I already mentioned, one way to be more disciplined is to train your discipline muscles. When you’re forcing yourself to do something, whether you like doing it or not, you train your self-discipline. You push yourself to stay more focused and better stick to actions that lead to your planed outcome (goals). The more you push yourself, easier it gets to stay disciplined.

    Discipline and muscle training are very welcome, but a maximum still always exists. Even if you regularly train your discipline, you achieve your global maximum sooner or later. You simply can’t be disciplined 24/7. That’s why you also have to consider the second part of the equation. The less discipline and cognitive power every action takes, the more good actions/decisions you can do/make given your current maximum.

    Let’s say you have 80 units of discipline per day. On average, it takes 5 units of discipline (with transaction costs) to make a good decision and enforce a desired new behaviour. You can make 16 disciplined decisions/actions, but after that, you’re out of willpower. If you train your cognitive abilities and discipline power, you can maybe reach 120 units of discipline per day. That means 24 disciplined decisions, and thus you’re making progress much faster. But if your (global) maximum is 120 units, there’s only one more thing you can do to get even more disciplined. You can lower the transaction costs in a way that every decision takes fewer units of discipline. If you manage to decrease them from 5 to 4, you get 6 new disciplined decisions, that is 30 in total. Going from 16 to 30 means being almost twice as disciplined and productive.

    Low transaction costs

    Transaction costs and your discipline

    The easiest way to lower the necessary willpower and other resources for making good decisions and following a new desired behaviour is by decreasing transaction costs (or, in some cases, increasing them for undesired behaviour). By doing this, you have more willpower and cognitive abilities available to be more disciplined and organized in other activities during the day.

    The formula for manipulating transaction costs is very simple.

    • You want to automate wherever possible, and minimize the number of irrelevant decisions to zero, so there are no transaction costs at all.
    • For a desired (new) behaviour, you want to decrease transactional costs to the minimum, really going as low as possible.
    • For an undesired behaviour, you want to increase transactional costs to the maximum, always putting new obstacles in your way.

    Let’s look at some practical examples.

    You want to get in shape. Having a bag of chips at home means it takes you almost zero energy to start eating unhealthy food. All you have to do is take the chips out of the cupboard, open the bag and you can start stuffing your face with junk food. The transaction costs are almost zero. If you always have chips and cookies on the kitchen counter where you can just grab the unhealthy snack, transaction costs are nearly zero. Having cookies in your pocket means that transaction costs really are zero. You’re constantly tempted and undesired behaviour takes zero effort.

    On the other hand, if you don’t have any junk food at home, the transaction costs are much higher. You have to change your clothes, drive to the grocery store or gas station, decide which junk food to get, buy it, come home, and only then can you enjoy your snack. It takes much more effort and energy, thus transaction costs are quite high. The further you have to drive, the higher the cost. At some point transaction costs are so high, you rather eat an apple than make all the effort to get to the junk food.

    Let’s look at another example from a different perspective. If you live close to the gym, if you always have your training gear near you, if you can just step through your door and start running or jump into the pool, the transaction costs to start exercising are low. It takes a minimum of your willpower, time and other resources to start training. But if you have to drive far to get to the gym, if you always have to call your friends to find a gym buddy, if your sports bag is not ready etc., the transaction costs are high and it takes a lot of effort to start the desired behaviour.

    By decreasing or increasing transaction costs, you can manipulate your discipline a lot, especially in the beginning when you’re enforcing new desired behaviour and developing new healthy habits. Make sure that it takes a lot to perform an undesired behaviour and that there are almost zero transaction costs for the new habits you want to develop.

    Here are some additional ideas for how you can manipulate your discipline with transaction costs:

    • When you get your paycheck, automatically transfer a certain amount to your savings account. Automate paying yourself first.
    • Don’t just impulsively buy expensive things with a credit card when you are in the shopping center. Make a system with many check points that you have to cross in order to buy an expensive item. For example, first you have to put the item on a wish list, discuss it with your partner, wait a few weeks, find the best price etc.
    • Make your files, folders and apps that lead to your progress easily accessible with shortcuts, bookmarks etc., and delete all entertainment apps and folders that are constantly distracting you. You can also install a web-nanny that blocks your social networks if you use them too much.
    • Unplug your TV and change your programs so you’ll never ever turn your TV on again.
    • Always have a book with you and put one next to your bed. You can also do the same with banana.
    • When you’re doing focused work, turn off your mobile phone (it takes quite an effort to enter all the pass-codes and PINs) and make it hard as hell to open e-mail or any other distraction apps
    • Use e-mail templates with Yesware and automation apps like IFTTT.
    • You can dress yourself the same every day, like Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs did. That’s how you’ll save cognitive decisions and willpower for other, more important things.

    There are many other ways of manipulating transaction costs. Think of the behaviours and habits you want to get rid of and make it as hard as possible to get started. On the other hand, make it as easy as possible to start and perform the good habits and enforce new behaviour. If you additionally manipulate habit triggers and rewards, you will become a superhero of self-discipline sooner or later.

  • Level up your game

    I’m a big fan and promoter of constantly improving yourself, of striving after personal linear and rapid improvements that lead to a better quality of life, especially because this increases your capacity to create, connect (love) and enjoy life. You should always challenge yourself, push yourself out of your comfort zone, try new things, and progress towards your ideal self, step by step. But that is just one side of the coin.

    Sometimes improving yourself bit by bit isn’t enough. The improvement process could be too slow and your impatience could lead to you completely giving up sooner or later. Sometimes you wish for something really bad or maybe you simply lag behind so much that you simply have to take a different approach. I call it levelling up your game.

    Usually the story goes like this. You set a new goal, something that really inspires you. You take the first step and you see how much it takes to achieve your goal, how long and demanding the process is. You persist for a few more steps and then you give up. You start whining, bitching and complaining about how shitty life is. I’ve seen situations like this many times. Of course this also happened to me several times.

    That kind of a sharp ascent (motivational bust) and descent (disappointment) especially happen especially when your skill levels are completely discordant with your big goals and, at the same time, you don’t have the patience to follow the process. Your short moment of impatient arousal leads to facing hard reality and your naivety, then anxiety follows until you finally back off. It’s like trying to run a marathon with sprints when you don’t even know how to walk.

    One way to deal with that kind of a situation is, of course, to lower your goals, to take smaller steps and consider the process phases. You take one big step back to make three steps forward somewhere in the future. But what if you want something really bad, what if you’re really impatient and want to speed up the process?

    It’s time to level up your game

    When you want something really bad, something that’s way out of your league and your skills are way behind, you simply have to level up your game. That’s how you speed up the process. You can basically achieve everything you want in the world (considering physical limits), if you approach it from the right angle, with the right mind-set, strategy, focus, skills and persistence.

    Where you are in life and what you currently face is merely a reflection of who you are and how you think. Your past decisions led you to where you are right now. If you upgrade your thinking and your skills, if you become more creative and educated, if you find a new way to achieve something etc., you’re on the path to something I call “leveling up your game”.

    • You want to acquire more wealth. Don’t complain about how there are no opportunities and how hard it is to earn money. Start reading books about money and investing, hell, read one book a day, join investment clubs, save every dollar, do research on how to earn extra money, become a producer, develop a skill that’s in great demand on the job market and so on. Focus on money and wealth, and commit yourself to levelling up your game regarding money. If you’re way behind from where you want to be, that’s the only way to do it. From knowledge to markets, everything is accessible to you, the only question is whether you will put yourself in a position of a victim or a winner.
    • You want to have a more active sexual life or meet your perfect spouse. Don’t complain about how there are no opportunities and how there are no people that fit you. That’s bullshit. There are 7 billion people on this planet. Many of them can really enrich your life and you can experience awesome things with them. But not if you lock yourself in a room, watch TV, eat popcorn and hope that the perfect person will knock on your door. If you feel that you lack love, sex, friends, perfect spouse or even business partners in your life, you simply have to level up your game. Read all available books on how to approach and meet new people, how to have the best sex of your life, what women/men want in a relationship, how to manage arguments, how to contribute to a relationship, and so on. Become a master of relationships.
    • You want a career advancement. Don’t bitch, whine and complain about how life is unfair and how your co-worker got promoted instead of you. Don’t blame life, God, financial crisis or anyone/anything else. Simply level up your game. Study the industry you work in, write down all your creative ideas, analyse the decision makers in your company, make new alliances, contribute more value, learn new skills and competences, bring in new customers (that always helps), learn more executive or diplomatic skills, manage your time better and so on. Simply level up you game.
    • You want to become better looking or get into better shape. Don’t complain and comfort yourself with a bag of chips. Simply level up your game. See yourself as an athlete, one way or another. Raise your standards. Find a sport you like, donate 100 dollars every time you eat something shitty, if you can’t do sports stretching, do yoga or pilates, work out with resistance bands, go for a swim or whatever. Buy better clothes, work on your posture, groom yourself, put a smile on your face, and so on. Start seeing your body as a temple you have to take care of (internally and externally) and start respecting yourself more. If you want to become better at a sport you like, again, level up your game. Learn new tricks, train harder and learn faster.
    • You started blogging and want to have a successful blog. I do and I’m far from the goal of what I want to achieve with this blog. My skills are simply lagging way behind my goals. I could complain and whine about why I haven’t started blogging in English 10 years ago when the market was still new, why I wasn’t born in an English speaking country, and so on. But that’s simply a waste of time and energy. Complaining never got anyone anywhere. If I want to have a successful blog, I have to simply level up my game. From improving my English, spending more time on distribution, becoming better in search engine optimization, connecting my content to search queries better, writing more catchy headlines, doing guest blog posts and so on. If I don’t level up my game, I have zero chances of making this blog really successful.

    Whatever the goal you want really badly is, and no matter how far behind you are with your skills, simply focus on leveling up your game. I like the quote that you’re never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, who cares, what matters is that you believe in yourself and that you believe you can achieve your goals by levelling up your game – becoming more educated, smarter and hardworking, more creative and innovative, better connected, more resourceful and so on.

    Before and after leveling up your game

    How to level up your game

    You want something really bad. The thing you want is way out of your league. You decided to level up your game. Good. Now let’s look at some general guidelines for how to approach the situation when you decide to level up your game. This is how your master plan should look like:

    There is nothing that can come in between

    The first and most important thing is your mindset. The one and only mindset you must have when leveling up your game is that there is nothing that will come between me and leveling up my game. No distractions, no temptations, no obstacles, nobody and nothing. In order to level up your game, you simply have to commit yourself 100 %. You have to put yourself in a state of complete focus.

    Trust me, there will always be temptations, there will be distractions when you decide to focus. You will get invitations to events, you will be tempted by many different goals that seem a lot easier to achieve, and you will even be tempted to give up. But if you really want something badly enough, you will keep yourself focused and disciplined, showing only determination, iron will, and you will give no mercy to anything that could come between you and your leveling up your game. Of course hurting other people, doing any kind of damage to yourself, to others or to the environment isn’t allowed.

    Get educated

    Acquiring and applying knowledge is power. If you don’t have the most advanced knowledge in the area you want to achieve your goal in, you will stay in the amateur league. The rule is simple: go for the best knowledge there is. There is too much information, too many fakes, copycats and misleading gurus. Simply go for the best knowledge there is. It’s not hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.

    The knowledge you acquire should be eye-opening, it should change how you look at the world, your behaviour patterns, your values and beliefs. The best knowledge should encourage you to apply it as quickly as possible. By acquiring and embracing the best knowledge, you should basically feel how your mind is being upgraded.

    When you decide to level up your game, read about a certain specific topic all the time. Focus your information consumption and forget about everything else. Read when you wake up, read before you go to sleep, when you stand in queues and whenever you have a minute of free time. Take a speed-reading course and read even more and faster. Read one book per day, if necessary. Listen to audio books, take online courses or whatever else works best for you. Get educated like a pro.

    Build an environment that supports your leveling up

    When leveling up your game, you need to redesign your physical environment to the point that it completely supports your mind-set and skills being upgraded. Change the wallpaper on your computer, install new apps on your smartphone, always take a book (or Kindle) with you wherever you go, put posters and reminders in your home and car. Build an optimal environment that will support you in leveling up your game.

    In addition to that, manipulate transaction costs. Transaction costs are about how much energy it takes you to start and stop doing something. For example, if you don’t have any shitty food at home, there’s a much bigger probability that you won’t eat it, because you have to get out of your pyjamas, drive to a grocery store, and all that takes time and energy. The transaction cost is high. On the other hand, if you have a bag of cookies in front of you all day, you will constantly be tempted, and sooner or later your discipline will fail. The transaction cost is basically zero. Make sure that transaction costs support your new desired behavior and leveling up your game.

    Surround yourself with new people

    Besides reading, the fastest way to acquire new knowledge and to stay motivated is to surround yourself with new people, with people who have already done what you want to do or are way ahead on the path towards it. Spending time with people who have more knowledge and more experience will put you on a fast-track to leveling up your game.

    The good news is that most people love to help others, and usually all you have to do is ask. Join clubs and online forums, go to seminars, meet up groups, register for trainings, there are many ways of meeting new people and joining new social groups – online and offline. If you aren’t good at socializing, first level up your game in this regard. It will help you a lot with all your other goals.

    Throw yourself into the water

    Last but not least, you have to throw yourself into the water. Not too deep water, so you don’t drown. But the key is to apply the acquired knowledge into practice as soon as possible. You need to start gathering feedback from your environment immediately, you need to start testing new approaches and experimenting with different mind-sets. That is how you will learn the most and progress the fastest.

    You can read thousands of books about riding a bike but at the end of the day, the point is to actually sit on a bike and enjoy the ride. The actual experience is where you learn the most and what the point of leveling up your game really is – playing the game on the master level. You have to remember that it’s not only about the goal or the endgame you want, but also about enjoying the path towards it.

    Failure is not an option

    We’ve started this blog post by talking about the mindset, and so we should also finish with it. When you really commit to something, when you concentrate all your time, energy, stamina, willpower and other resources on one thing, that thing will grow fast. Magic happens. You will be able to see how fast you improve and how you are playing the game on a totally new level.

    When you see rapid progress like that, you simply know that failure is not an option anymore. And that motivates you even more to become an even better master of something. It’s so simple to bitch, whine and complain, and to put yourself in the position of a victim. But that’s such a waste. You only have one life and so much to experience. Instead, decide to level up your game. Decide that you’ll play with the people in the best league the world knows; and for that, level up your game. Start now!

  • Free your mind with your own digital brain

    In order to innovate, create, improve yourself and enjoy life to the full, you need to be as free as possible. You need to be as free as possible on all four levels – physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual. Freedom simply means that you have the power to act, speak, or think as you want; and as you’ve probably figured out by now, we are more often slaves to ourselves than to anything or anyone else; at least as long as you don’t do anything that would be so stupid you end up in prison.

    On the physical level, flexibility, balance, strength and endurance bring more freedom and options. The better your take care of your body, the freer you are from being a slave to yourself. You can reach higher mountains, dive deeper into the oceans, have sex in more positions, do more sports, and so on.

    On the emotional level, cognitive distortions can be the ones keeping you in an emotional prison. Negative thinking very much correlates to negative feelings and negative emotional states. All four levels (body, mind, heart and soul) are connected, and more freedom on one level means more freedom on other levels.

    On the spiritual level, freedom means freeing yourself from expectations, attachments and fear. The greater your capacity for love is, the freer you are. You free your spirit when you realize that having a good trip is better than just arriving. You want to have a trip full of joy, happiness and bliss.

    On the intellectual level, you need to free your mind. One way of freeing your mind is taking control of it. There are only two options: either you control your mind, or your mind controls you. If it controls you, you’re on autopilot, which often leads to cognitive distortions and other mental errors. The best way to take control over your mind is to practice meditation.

    The second way of freeing your mind is getting to know yourself better with reflection. With regular reflection and by analytically thinking about yourself, your environment and your situations in life, you bring things that burden you from the unconscious to the conscious mind. The best way to do regular analytical reflection is to keep journal, and we’ll talk more about that later.

    The third way to free your mind is keeping your brain as unburdened as possible with unimportant things. There are several ways for doing that. One is to keep trivial decisions to the minimum. You have a limited daily cognitive ability, and every decision, thought or worry takes some of that ability away. Entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg and the deceased Steve Jobs even go so far that they wear pretty much the same thing every day, just to keep more cognitive power for decisions that are more important than choosing clothes. You should automate as many things as possible, from what to wear, what to eat and so on.

    Another very useful way is to have your own “digital brain”. With a digital brain organized in the right way, you can free your mind from irrelevant information, you can store things for reference, write down ideas and so on. Not only do you have more cognitive power to allocate for the things that really matter, you are also much more productive and creative; because you don’t lose your ideas, you can find your references really quickly and connect different pieces of information better.

    Don’t get me wrong: having a digital brain doesn’t mean that you become lazy; you just don’t burden your brain with information that isn’t important in a certain moment or with an information overload. There is no way you can create if you only consume. Nonetheless, it makes sense to work hard on your intellectual capabilities. Reading, doing mental exercises, making new yet unknown connections, thinking out of the box etc., are all things that increase your intellectual capacity.

    Your digital brain

    Your digital brain is nothing more than an electronic system for note-taking, brainstorming and archiving.

    The structure of your digital brain should be pretty simple. You should write down or save everything you don’t need in a certain moment but may need someday, save your ideas and, of course, keep everything that helps you to organize your daily life. Below are the things you should store in your digital brain at the least.

    Journal, thoughts and reflections

    The first and most important thing you should keep in your digital notebook (brain) is your journal, especially if you don’t want to keep any paper and want to have everything digitalized. Keeping a journal could mean two things. The first one is actually keeping a journal, meaning writing down what you’ve experienced throughout the day, where you’ve been, who you’ve met and so on. Maybe someday, you’ll want to show that kind of a journal to your kids.

    But an even more important journal type is a journal of your daily thoughts and reflections. It’s about analysing and getting to know yourself, reflecting on your decisions and what’s happening to you and so on. It’s about becoming more aware of your beliefs, values, perspectives, thoughts, mood triggers and so on. Regular reflection is the best way to free yourself from emotional and intellectual burdens as well as to get to smart work, because you become more strategic, proactive and less reactive.

    The good thing about keeping a journal is that you can always go back, look at your epiphanies, cognitions and thoughts, and re-reflect on them. It’s how you grow and improve.

    Here are some types of documents you should keep in your digital brain:

    • Reflection journal – As mentioned, it’s a journal about you, making the unconscious conscious, understanding your motives, desires, frustrations and other psychological traits.
    • Emotional accounting – It’s about keeping a table to rationalize your cognitive distortions. You simply draw a three-column table, where the first column is the automatic negative thought (“I never do things right”), the second one is the type of cognitive distortion (overgeneralization) out of the ten different types mentioned before, and the third one is your rational response (“Not true, I do a lot of things right”). Keeping everything in one place helps you see how you’re improving.
    • Your life strategy – Your thoughts about your life strategy, from your investment and money strategy to your traveling plans, developing competences and so on.
    • Your optimal environment – Keeping thoughts about the people in your life, the situations you face as well as an analysis of your environment, such as your country, macro-economic trends, your office and home.
    • Minimums and maximums – It’s about setting limits in your life, the minimums and maximums you should achieve to keep the balance and different areas in life in check (for example, the minimum amount of times you should exercise per week or the maximum amount of time you should work on average each day).
    • Desired outcomes – Whatever you do, you should start with an endgame in mind. That’s the list of outcomes you want in life, how you’ll achieve them, what could go wrong and how you’ll adapt and adjust your strategy.
    • Personas – It’s a technique that can help you clarify what kind of people you want in your life and the kind of organizations you want to function in.
    • Personal improvement strategy – It’s a list of where and how you want to improve yourself and when you’ll do it. It’s not only a list, but a document with an important life strategic value. This is probably the most important list in your life and has a deep reflection benefit.
    • Personal SWOT analysis – It’s a good tool for identifying your strengths and weaknesses, and can help you make your personal improvement strategy.
    • Traditional journal – It’s also good to keep a regular journal, into which you write about things like what happened to you on a specific day, where you’ve been, what you’ve seen and what you’ve learned. You can just write a few bullet points in your reflection journal.
    • “Thankful for” and “proud of” document – The two documents you should definitely have in life is a list of things that you’re really proud of in your life, like your achievements, strong personality traits, good deeds and so on, and a list of things that you’re grateful for.
    • Other thoughts and reflections – You can also keep all other types of personal documents and your thoughts, like quotes, positive affirmations, messaging archives, personal e-mail archives, dreams, associations and everything else that strongly impacts your life.

    Cloud computing

    Tasks and lists

    The second thing you should keep in your digital brain are various lists. You don’t want to try to remember everything, and you don’t want to torture your brain to recall everything you have to buy in the grocery store or be mad because you’ve forgotten something. If you help yourself with lists in your daily life, you’ll have much more cognitive power at your disposal.

    Lists also help with one more thing, if you write them correctly. They help you with not feeling overwhelmed. The right way to do it is to have all kinds of lists that free you from anxiety and a feeling that there’s too much to do. You only keep one list (or board), showing what’s in process (to-do list) for the following week. With an approach like that, you try to focus on one weekly or bi-weekly sprint, and you try to live in the moment more.

    Here are some lists you should keep:

    • Your vision list – It’s a big list of everything you want to experience in life. It feels good when you look at a list that shows what you’ve already experienced in life and what else you want to live to see. It empowers you and helps you focus on the positive.
    • Your “maybe someday” list – There are some things for which you aren’t sure whether you want to experience them in life or not. You can keep a “maybe someday” list to prevent burdening yourself too much with all the things that exist in the world. If one day you decide that you want to experience something from this list, you put it on your vision list, if not, you delete it.
    • “Not to do” list and distractions list – You should keep a list of things you know you won’t do or don’t want to do in life. It’ll help you stay focused and say no more easily.
    • Being a minimalist list – It’s a simple list of things you don’t need anymore and plan on giving away, selling or dumping. If you don’t do that as you go along, you can keep a list and then do a cleaning every three or six months.
    • Reading list and wish list – A good list to keep is a list of books you want to read in life. Make sure that you cross a book off the list every two weeks, or at least one per month. You should also keep a list of things you want to buy and have. But think twice before making purchasing decisions.
    • Your shopping lists – Simply a list of things you should buy the next time you visit the grocery store.
    • Daily/Weekly To-Do list – You can have a to-do list, but I recommend visualizing your tasks with a Kanban board. If you don’t want to have a physical board in your life, you can keep it electronically. One way to do it is with a software application like Kanbanery. The other ones are notebook applications that also have post-it notes integration.
    • Other lists – You should keep all other kinds of lists in your digital brain, for example a weekly home cleaning and maintenance schedule, gift ideas, things not to forget, things to do with your spouse etc.

    Business and other ideas

    Your digital notebook should also be your brainstorming tool. You can get your business and other ideas (like ideas for blog posts, for example) randomly throughout the day and when you do, you should write them down immediately. We can quickly forget ideas, even if they’re really good. So make sure you write down every idea you get, bad or good. Noticing and identifying your ideas throughout the day will also improve the quality of your ideas in the long run.

    The second way is to take time and brainstorm. You should do that regularly, at least on a monthly basis. It’s how you keep your creative muscle strong. Having good ideas is an important part of success in life. The good news is that everyone is creative, you just have to practice enough.

    Here are two additional resources:

    Mind maps and summaries

    As you reflect on yourself, you should also reflect on the things you read, listen or see. For example, after reading a really good book, you should go through your highlights again, making a summary or a mind map of things that fascinated you the most. You’ll get much more out of it and you can go back and refresh your knowledge anytime. I do mind maps in the Mindjet MindManager and then save them in my digital notebook.

    Notes

    You should also keep notes in your digital brain, all kinds of notes. Notes from team and client meetings, classes, phone calls, sales visits, all other types of meetings, the conferences you attend and so on. The good thing is that you can send a note to all other parties involved to confirm everything you’ve agreed on. It’s part of good communication and it helps keep clarity.

    What you can also use are templates for different kinds of meetings or activities. For example, you can have a business meeting template. The purpose of a template is to first maximize the value of the meeting, making sure that the subject is clear etc. as well as to prepare and share the minutes faster.

    References

    You should also keep all different references and resources in your digital brain. The webpages you like, infographics, blogposts, articles etc. Things you’ve read and want to keep, things that you may need again someday and so on. I call my reference notebook Intelbox and I keep all kinds of useful information and good ideas in it.

    Documents and archive

    Last but not least, your digital brain should also be your document archive. You want to keep everything in one place, systematically organized and easy to find. It’s good if you can digitalize everything and keep a no-paper policy. I know it’s not always possible, especially when it comes to the government, but you should keep things on paper to the minimum. You should digitalize as much as possible.

    Since your archive will become bigger and bigger as you go through life, it’s really important to have things organized from the very beginning; you should also do regular cleaning and organizational updates. Your archive can be the place for storing your personal documents, business documents, bills, medication and medical records, etc.

    It’s also good to have different information you only need sometimes in one place, for example the tax ID number, clothing size, different home measurements (window size, quadrature…), manuals, and so on. You can also keep important phone numbers, insurance policy, a “what to pack” list for traveling and so on in your notebook. There are numerous ways of using your digital brain.

    Advanced uses of your digital brain

    Thanks to technology, applications are becoming more and more powerful. With multiple users, sharing abilities, extensions and synchronization across applications, there are many advanced ways of using your digital brain, either all in one application or with different applications synchronized.

    Here are some examples of using your digital brain in an advanced way:

    • Tracking your time
    • Tracking your finances and investments
    • Keeping a digital rolodex (scanning business cards and keeping contacts in one place)
    • Your weekly menu and different recipes
    • Tracking your calories
    • Your fitness and sports journal with a plan and tracking progress
    • Writing blog posts or your own book etc.

    Recommended applications

    I use the following applications to keep my digital brain:

    • Evernote – Evernote is an extremely powerful and popular notebook tool. It gives you everything you need to organize your digital brain. You can encrypt sensitive data, it’s synchronized across all devices and keeps a copy in the cloud, you have an extensive app market with a post-it extension, for example, and so on. There are also many templates available.

    You can easily enter data, for example capture websites, e-mail documents, synchronize applications, and so on. You can directly scan documents into Evernote, you can make audio notes, save pictures, easily share notes you write down and so on. There really is basically everything you need to keep your digital brain structured and organized. I strongly recommend it.

    • Dropbox – I keep almost everything in Evernote, except files. For my files, I use Dropbox, where I have a directory Intelbox and in it, all the different files I may need as a resource or reference one day. From free eBooks to presentations, papers and other materials. By using Dropbox, you can easily access and view files from all the devices you have. Sharing is also very easy.
    • Google Inbox – Another important part of my digital brain is my e-mail client. I keep an archive of my e-mails in my Gmail account. I try to keep it as clean as possible and I try to write a minimum amount of e-mail. I use the Inbox application, which really keeps things with e-mail productive and simple.
    • Other applications – I also use some other applications as part of my digital brain, for example Pocket, Mindjet Mindmanager, WordPress and Twitter. And I must not forget IFTTT, for keeping things as automated as possible. There are many other specialized apps on the market, but I recommend you to keep things as centralized as possible. Evernote is a good place to start.

    If you’re interested in organizing your digital brain with Evernote, here are some recommendations for further reading: How to organize Evernote for maximum efficiency.

     

  • How people fuck up their lives

    There are generally two ways how people fuck up their lives. Don’t get me wrong, I know that many people living in poverty without access to education don’t have options and are forced to do terrible things that don’t bring any good to them and others. But there are also many adults who have all the options and possibilities in the world and still end up fucking up their own lives or lives of people around them. It’s hard to answer why, but it’s very easy to see how.

    The first way is making one big wrong decision. You marry the wrong person. You take a big bribe. You drive drunk or tired. You cheat. You have a kid when you aren’t ready yet – materially or emotionally. You don’t exercise at all. You rob a bank. One big wrong decision can completely turn your life around, and make a mess out of it. So you should consider all big decisions very carefully and think about the long-term effect that they will have on your life.

    Fuck up your life with one big deciision

    The second way to fuck up your life is regularly making small wrong decisions. They’re called habits. You spend more than you earn. You drink alcohol every day. You stuff yourself with fast food daily. You don’t kiss and hug your spouse. You play Solitaire during working hours. You watch TV instead of reading. You go to a job you hate day by day. Small wrong daily choices accumulate until a crisis occurs. What you choose today has an impact forever.

    In both cases, the worst you can do is avoid the problem even once it’s obvious that you’ve made wrong decisions or are still making them. When you make wrong decisions, decisions that don’t lead towards your progress, improvement and positive (purer) energy, life will kick your butt sooner or later. You get close to bankruptcy. You fall ill or get injured. You’re on the way to divorce. You get fired. You get caught in the act. Once more, the worst thing you can do is to avoid your problems.

    For sure nobody can make good decisions only. After all, good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions. But you have to kill the monster (problem) while it’s still small. If you run a mile away from your problems, they’ll only get worse and they’ll be harder to solve. Don’t stick your head in the sand and hope that the problems will go away. Even if they do, it will only be temporary, life will kick you again sooner or later, this time even harder.

    Fuck up your life with small decisions

     

    That’s how people really fuck up their lives. They wait, feeling powerless and like a victim, until it’s too late. Enough courage and a superior strategy with immediate action are the best things you can do to solve your problems when they occur. You have to make a series of good big and small decisions that prevail over the bad decisions you were making in the past.

    A very important fact you should also be aware of is that this works the other way around as well. You succeed in life because you make some really good big decisions and/or a series of small right decisions. You marry a person that really supports you and empowers you. You find the right job you can shine in. You exercise regularly. You save and invest. You put your integrity above everything else. To make good big and small decisions in life, you need a long-term view and you have to be very clear about what you want in life; you have to fight for it.

    Make the right decisions, no matter how big or small they are. And when you know you’ve fucked up, don’t run away from your problems: the sooner you tackle them, the more control you have over the damage. Face it or you’ll lose by default. Now make as many right decisions as possible.

  • Morning and evening habits and rituals

    You make hundreds upon hundreds of smaller and bigger decisions about your life and your future every day. A lot of those decisions are more or less the same every day. They’re called habits and we are creatures of habits. Our habits are what defines us most, especially in the long term; because they accumulate.

    There are actually two ways of succeeding in your life or messing it up:

    • You make one big right or wrong decision (for example what you study, who you marry, the friends you choose, the markets you operate in, etc.)
    • You make right or wrong small decisions each day (for example you go for healthy or junk food, how much money you spend, do you watch TV or prefer to read etc.). Let’s now focus on these small decisions you make every day, called habits.

    Positive habits, like brushing our teeth regularly, exercising, reading, trying new things, analysing ourselves, etc. lead to our constant improvement and evolution, and thus increase our capacity for productivity, creativity, longevity, income and so on. On the other hand, a lack of positive habits or negative habits like smoking, drinking, clinging to anger or depression, watching TV and so on, decrease our capacity to create, truly enjoy life and contribute.

    Don’t get me wrong, we all need to relax and release some tension from time to time, just let it go. That isn’t a habit, that’s perfectly normal and it leads to better long-term performance. For example, resting and doing “nothing” one day per week makes other six days of the week much more productive, especially in the long run. We all need to give ourselves a break from time to time.

    The problem is a lack of daily positive habits, since for some people they don’t even exist at all. Not doing things that improve your body, mind, emotions and spirit on a daily basis means going back, not forward. It means throwing away your potentials. It means lagging behind and making your position worse. When you take a very passive approach to living in that kind of way, life kicks your butt from time to time – you know, you lose a job, you break up etc. – but it’s usually not enough to really change. It’s just a reminder that you constantly have to struggle, fight and push yourself.

    As already mentioned, positive daily habits accumulate through time. You become a little bit better every day and in the long run, it makes a huge difference. With a new positive habit, you can become a completely new person in a few years. With a new positive habit, you can upgrade your body, mind, emotions and spirit in the long run, and that’s what really leads to a better performance and happiness.

    Of course the big challenge is developing a new positive habit. It’s usually true that motivation gets you started and habit keeps you going. That’s why you first need a strong why and then follow the process through which you also develop new habits.

    Nevertheless, developing habits really is very hard, so let’s look at a few tricks for developing a new habit. Before we even begin with the tricks, remember that you can’t implement too many changes in your life at once; and habit is change. Thus you should implement one new healthy habit at a time. One positive change usually represents an early win and that will motivate you to implement even more new habits. For example, when exercising gives you the first results, you will automatically also be more motivated to eat a healthier diet.

    But now, let’s look at the tricks. Every habit starts with a reminder, a trigger. After the trigger, the routine starts, your subconscious autopilot. At the end, there is the reward. The reward brings you pleasure; but the key question is what kind of a pleasure you’re focusing on. There’s usually a conflict between short-term gratification (immediate pleasure) and achieving long-term goals (true pleasure). If you change focus from the former to the latter, your life will change dramatically.

    Habit 3R
    Source: The Power of Habit. James Clear

    Here are three tricks you should do:

    The first one is having a “why” that’s so strong it puts instant gratification to shame. Your long-term pleasures must dominate your short-term appetites. You have to see instant gratification as pain, and following your true goals as pleasure. Let me give you an example.

    Let’s say that you want to eat a really unhealthy meal and it’s right in front of you. You can get instant gratification from eating it. It smells so good, it tastes excellent and your cravings are strong. The short-term reward you get from eating a fast-food meal is immediate. The pain of getting fat and getting a medical condition is somewhere in the future. And when we’re hungry, our brain couldn’t care less about our long-term goals and our future.

    Now let’s turn things around a little bit.

    Let’s say your goal is to train your body and become really fit. You’ve found the sports you like and the diet your body best responds to in the search mode, you’ve decided to follow and trust the process; and the process doesn’t include eating fast food.

    You have a greasy, unhealthy meal in front of you. With your goals and process in mind, that meal should represent pure pain for you, not pleasure. You should see how not eating that meal is a reward for you and eating it is a big misery. By having a strong enough “why” (why you want to become fit, in this case), that should be easy. But you’re still hungry… and that’s how we come to the second trick.

    The best way to develop a new positive habit is by exchanging a bad habit for a new, positive one. Every time a trigger comes into play, decide for a new routine, have a new personal reward system in mind. That’s the best way to develop a new healthy habit.

    Every time a hamburger is put in front of you, just nod your head, and order a super healthy meal; eat a carrot or a banana or whatever. Every time someone turns on the TV, go read a book. Every time someone orders an alcoholic drink, order yourself a smoothie or a lemonade. Every time you want to buy an expensive latte, put the money in your piggybank instead. Every time you want to buy yourself a new fancy car you don’t need, go study investments you’re going to make.

    The third trick are the cues, triggers. There are two points every day in your life that work great as triggers for your healthy habits. It’s when you wake up and before you go to sleep. Throughout the day, we’re all usually extremely busy, running from one activity to a meeting to another task and so on. Your phone keeps ringing, your inbox is filling up and you face many unexpected events. Daily challenges slowly take away your capacity for discipline and cognitive abilities. It’s quite hard to follow any new serious habit during the day (well, it can be done, for example if you have a no-interruptions day, but it’s harder to do something new).

    But before 9am and after 9pm, everything is quiet and peaceful. They are the two time blocks of a few hours that you can really dedicate to yourself and your long-term goals. It’s even better if you connect the trigger of your routine for waking up and going to sleep with a healthy habit. Then you’ll definitely be a winner in the long run.

    Your own personal rituals

    Your morning and evening habits should be more than just habits. They should be your personal rituals, something, you never miss, no matter what. Your personal rituals for keeping inner peace, focus, personal development, life planning, health and happiness.

    The best thing you can do in life is to first take care of yourself, and your personal rituals are the best way to do it. Because rituals are something divine and nothing should come in the way you of performing your rituals. You should put yourself first. Because if you’re happy, people around you will also be happy.

    • You can call your morning rituals the kick-off routine and
    • You can call your evening rituals your shut-down routine

    Make sure you have visual aids that remind you and help you stick to your morning and evening rituals. Have a Kanban board, a checklist or whatever works best for you. Another very important thing is to have zero distractions when taking time to carry out your morning and evening routine.

    Last but not least, your willpower is the strongest in the morning. That’s why your morning routine can be a little bit more demanding, and your evening routine should be more about relaxation and reflection and calming down.

    Since your willpower is the strongest in the morning, you should also plan to do your most complex and difficult tasks right after your morning routine.

    Ideas for morning rituals or kick-off routine

    Here are some ideas for the best morning rituals you can introduce into your life:

    • Be grateful for a new day and reinforce positive emotions, read a positive quote or two
    • Brush your teeth
    • Drink a glass of water first (with some lemon if that works for you)
    • Meditate for 10 minutes or more
    • Exercise or stretch if you don’t have time to exercise
    • Eat a healthy breakfast
    • Take a shower or a bath (end of the kick-off routine)
    • Daily stand-up meeting for planning

    Ideas for evening rituals or shut-down routine

    And here are some ideas for the best evening rituals you can introduce into your life:

    • Have an alarm on your phone to trigger your shut-down routine (9pm for example)
    • Meditate or do yoga
    • Read, read and, one more time, read (but not on electronic devices, exception being an e-reader); if you read right before going to sleep, read something lighter and not too intellectually demanding
    • Reflect on your day
    • Visualize your goals
    • Take a shower or a bath (end of the shut-down routine)
    • Be grateful for the day you had

    You first make your habits and then your habits make you

    Never forget that you first make your habits and then your habits make you. Your personal culture (values, beliefs, habits…) eats your strategy and goals for breakfast. An important part of your personal culture are also rituals. The more positive rituals you have in your life (in quantity and quality) the better; because you only have two options:

    • You either take good care of yourself or you neglect yourself
    • You either burn more calories than you consume in a day or not
    • You either spend less than you earn or you’re probably accumulating debt
    • You either improve and evolve, or you lag behind and waste your potentials
    • You either go up or out

    Make sure you have daily positive rituals in your life, as they will accumulate through time and lead to the things you want to experience in life. Having strong rituals is an important part of trusting and following the process that will lead you to your goal, your endgame. Strong rituals in your daily life are what prayers are to every religion; they are a must so you can stick to the process more easily.

  • Mind the process phases

    Before getting to any event you want in life, you must first invest into the process. The process is what leads you to a certain event you want in life (getting rich, getting in shape, getting a dream job etc.) and it has specific phases. Most people are simply too impatient and disrespectful of the whole process (and the phases even more so) to ever come to the final event, the outcome they really desire.

    Because it’s not easy. A process means you have to get educated, have a strategy, it takes smart and hard work, you have to fail, you have to overcome setbacks and obstacles, you have to put in effort each day, but you only see results after years of hard work.

    It’s really not easy at all, but it also makes sense. Life owes you nothing, and if you really want something, you have to fight for it. If it were easy, everyone would do it. Life rewards those who master its game, and mastering the game of life means respecting the process.

    Not only do you have to respect the process, you also have to consider its different phases. You have to go step-by-step and patiently focus on different things in different phases. You cannot skip or jump over some of the phases.

    The point of every process phase is to be more focused on the right thing. The point is to not overwhelm yourself. The point of the phases is to not bite off more than you can chew. By considering the phases, you first set strong foundations and then build your thing step by step, strong and still. As I’ve already mentioned, it’s not smart to skip the phases of the process, but sometimes you definitely have to go back one or even more phases. Sometimes you have to take a step back to take two steps forward. It’s how the process work.

    There are five phases in the process:

    • Empathy or the search mode (in lean start-up, this is called customer discovery)
    • Stickiness or finding your fit (in lean start-up, this is called retention)
    • Virality or becoming an evangelist (in lean start-up, this is called referral)
    • Revenue or reaping the first rewards and making a plan (in lean start-up, this is called a business model)
    • Scale or the execution mode (in lean start-up, this is called explosive growth)

    Now let’s look at every phase of the process in more detail and with an example.

    Empathy or the search mode

    The first phase is the empathy phase or, as we know it in the Agile and Lean life, the search mode. The most important thing in this phase is to have an open mind as well as to be very gentle and tolerant towards yourself and others. Your most important skill in this phase is empathy.

    You’re starting something new, you don’t know the territory, you only have assumptions. The last thing you need are S.M.A.R.T. goals pushing you to do something, even though you don’t know if it’s right for you. What you need is to be excited over experiencing new things in life, you have to feel the adrenaline and energy because you’re trying something new; and you have to start experimenting and testing.

    You also have to be very tolerant toward yourself. You need to be aware that you’re going to fail. Some experiments are not going to work. But if you do it right, then you aren’t failing. You’re learning. It’s called validated learning. You try many different things, until you find the right one.

    In this phase, it’s also very important to get educated. You need to read as many books as possible. You have to talk to as many people who already did what you want to do. With analytical thinking, you have to decide what you’ll try and how you’ll measure it. Then as an adventurer, you start discovering new things in life.

    After performing an experiment, you have to make a data-based decision about what you will:

    • Stop doing
    • Start doing
    • Continue doing

    An experiment can usually take from 7 to 30 days and strongly depends on what you’re testing. But that should be enough time to get feedback from yourself (body, emotions, mind) and from your environment (if there’s any outside interaction in the experiment).

    Let’s look at an example.

    You want to get in shape. The bottom line of getting in shape is quite simple. You need to exercise and change your eating habits (what you eat, how much you eat). The most popular way of going on a diet is to read a book or an article about a “miracle diet”, doing it for a month or so, going for a run a couple of times and that’s it. At the end, you’re disappointed that the revolutionary diet doesn’t work.

    You certainly don’t want to force yourself into exercising and you definitely don’t want to go on a short-term miracle diet. You want to do a sport you’ll love, a sport you can’t wait to do, and instead of going on a diet, you want to introduce a new long-term eating lifestyle that won’t cause any cravings.

    So instead of finding a “miracle diet”, you do your research – about your body type, different proven diets that work in the long-term etc. You visit a few specialists (allergy tests etc.), read a few interviews, you start researching what could work for you. If necessary, you also consult a doctor or a nutritionist if you have any medical conditions. Then you start introducing new foods into your life, crossing out others, and measuring how you feel. On the other hand, you make a list of sports you want to try and a list of sports you assume you’ll enjoy the most. Going for a run is the easiest and most convenient way; but maybe you’ll enjoy biking or swimming or hiking more. You need to find a sport you really enjoy.

    While doing your research, you’ll also discover that there are some general things you should stop doing, continue doing and start doing. For example, if you want your diet to succeed, you must definitely limit the amount of junk food and refined carbohydrates (sugar) you eat. On the other hand, you should start eating more vegetables and some fruit. In the middle, there is room for testing and experimenting – you have to see whether the high protein, the high fat (healthy fats) or maybe the vegetarian diet is best for you.

    Your output in this phase should be research, like reading 10 of the best books from the field, talking to at least 10 people and making a list of different things you’re going to try. In the search mode, you should also find your why. It should be a very strong why. In fact, you should start by asking yourself why!

    For example, in our case, the “whys” could be to:

    • Have more energy
    • Look better in a mirror (if that is the strongest why, you should buy yourself a big mirror :) )
    • Get more attention from the opposite sex
    • Live longer

    Stickiness or finding your fit

    The second phase is stickiness. You find something you like. You see the first results and you get early wins. You’re getting the first positive feedback from your body, emotions, mind or even external environment. You’ve found something you want to stick to. It’s called a fit. Nice.

    Now your focus should be on making a system that will help you stick to your new habits. Because as you know, motivation lasts only while you’re on your way to the fridge. You have to systematically think and try to reinforce your positive behaviour, build an adequate positive environment and a bulletproof system.

    You have to take the time to think how you’re going to stick to your new thing. Your enthusiasm will help you, but it’s usually not enough. You need internal and external aids – new habit reinforcers.

    Here is a good visualisation of habit formation that you can help yourself with:

    Habit 3R
    Source: The Power of Habit, James Clear

    Here are some ideas for what you can do to increase the probability of stickiness:

    • Connecting your new habits with old habits (doing something right after you wake up or before you go to sleep; these are the so-called morning and evening habits)
    • Exchanging your old habits for new ones (every time you want to eat a cookie, you eat a carrot or every time someone turns on the TV, you go read a book)
    • Introducing reminders and visual aids into your life (sticky notes, screensavers, goal board etc.)
    • Leveraging technology (applications, gadgets etc.)
    • Joining a new community (coaches, groups, friends with the same values etc.)
    • Getting rid of some things/people and introducing new things/people into your life
    • Rewarding yourself for positive behaviour and getting punished (not like in 50 Shades of Grey) for bad behaviour (for example giving your spouse $20 every time you lose your temper)
    • Surrounding yourself with research materials (books, bookmarks, magazines etc.)

    Now let’s get back to our example. You found foods that make your body happy. You educated yourself on which foods are the worst for you. You found a sport you like. Now you have to build a system that’ll help you stick to new habits. You simply stop buying foods with empty calories. You put fruit and vegetables in visible places in your home. You always have a bottle of water with you. You set a hot athlete as your wallpaper background. You put a picture of a hot athlete on your fridge. You get a personal coach who will help you get through the stickiness phase of the first two months. You spend at least 30 minutes a day reading about healthy living. You join and participate in online and offline groups, and so on.

    The biggest mistake you can make in this phase is sticking to something that doesn’t work for you. I was on a fruitarian diet for one year and I did a lot of damage to my body. So again: you have to be careful, you have to be smart and you have to listen to your body; except when you crave empty calories. The Agile and Lean Life is about having a smart strategy with constant and fast feedback you take into account.

    The second biggest mistake you can make in this phase is giving up. Improvement and change aren’t a linear line, they’re full of ups and downs. Sometimes you’ll slip up, sometimes your discipline muscle will just stop working. Nothing unusual. In a situation like that, you have to give yourself a break for a few days and then start over. Every day is a new beginning, you can always start over.

    The output of this phase should be a new reward system for yourself and visual changes in your environment. While the aim in the phase before the goal was to find the best fit for you, the goal of this phase is to reinforce your new desired behaviour and stick to it. No goals yet, just thinking about what you should do to reinforce your new habit.

    Virality or becoming an evangelist

    Now you know your endgame. You’ve found the perfect fit after testing and experimenting with several things in the search mode. You have inner and outer elements that help you stick to your new habits, like a new personal reward system, habit triggers, regular reminders, and so on. Okay, but that’s still not enough to really get to the result you want.

    The third phase is called virality or becoming an evangelist. That simply means shifting your identity. You have to fall in love with what you do. You have to see yourself as a new person. An athlete. An investor. The perfect husband. An entrepreneur. Father of the year. A good man. Whatever.

    There are two main signs that indicate that your identity shift is happening. The first one is that you aren’t shy and reserved about your new habit or identity. For example, if someone asks you if you exercise, you don’t say “I try to, from time to time”, but you proudly answer that yes, you are an athlete.

    The second sign is that you start encouraging other people to do the same. You become an evangelist of something.

    In our example, that simply means that you proudly tell all the people in your life that you have a new diet that makes you feel great, that you regularly do sports, that you can see the first results and that it feels great. You’re like a talking billboard for the new thing in your life.

    The output of this phase is an identity shift. There’s no way of going back anymore, unless something goes really wrong. You’ve reached the tipping point. Bravo.

    Identity shift
    Source: The Power of Habit, James Clear

     

    Revenue or reaping real rewards

    After a very long and demanding process, you start reaping real rewards. The hard work paid off. You found your fit, you have a new system and habits in place, and you’ve shifted your identity. The world sees you differently now and you see yourself differently as well.

    You’re not at your endgame yet, but now you can set S.M.A.R.T. goals. You have enough knowledge, you have enough feedback, you have a new identity and you know the territory well enough to set measurable goals with a time frame. You have a good picture of how long it’ll take to achieve your endgame.

    In our case, you’re becoming more and more satisfied with yourself. You see your body fat melting off. Your fitness performance is getting better and better. Your “whys” are getting fulfilled – you have a better self-image, you get more attention on the streets from the opposite sex, you have more energy, the sex is better and so on. Now you can clearly see how long and how much it will take to get a six-pack and to achieve your maximum performance. You start feeling good about yourself. You prepare a system for measuring your progress by writing down how many repetitions you can do or you start using different apps that measure different aspects of your performance.

    One dangerous thing that can happen in this phase is scaling too fast. You can become too impatient and go into the execution mode too fast. You have to be sure that your foundations are strong, you have to curb your greed and follow the plan to improve step by step. If you try to scale too soon, you can hurt yourself, experience a setback and you’ll have to go back into the search mode to find a way around your new weaknesses.

    Let me give you an example. You see the first real results of your diet and exercise. But now you want the results faster. You start to overdo everything. You go to extremes with your diet and you push your body too hard. Sooner or later, your body will force you to slow down. You will fall ill, you will injure yourself etc. That’s why you need to make a solid diet and exercising plan in this phase, even with an expert if necessary. You have to push yourself, but you also have to know where the limit is.

    In this phase, the output is a solid and smart plan for how you’ll improve step by step and increase your yield on the investment you’ve made. You should stick to your plan and not overdo things or speed up too fast. If your discipline weakens, you shouldn’t try to catch up, but rather return to your plan the next day.

    Scaling or the execution mode

    We are at the last stop of the process, namely scaling and execution. You want to achieve your peak potential. Your best shape possible, your optimal portfolio. You want to become as unique and valuable person as possible in a relationship, outstanding in your occupation and so on.

    You’ve found your fit, you’ve built a system to stick to new habits, you’ve made an identity shift and you’ve written down a plan. Now you have to stick to the plan with regular intervals, and still listen to your mind, body, emotions and environment. You never stop listening to feedback.

    Sooner or later, you will change (get older for example), your environment will change and you may have to go back into the search mode. Next time, the process will be much easier, because you already have strong foundations, you already have knowledge, and you don’t have to go to the very beginning. But you should always stay agile and lean.

    In our example, the final step is sticking to the execution plan. You have a new diet that works for you and you exercise regularly on a weekly basis. You have goals for improving your performance and you stick to the plan. On your Kanban board, you move your sticky notes from “to do” and “in process” to “done” every week. But you also regularly test and try new things, new superfoods, new exercises and so on. You constantly do linear improvements, but you also search for rapid ones. The process of improvement never ends and neither does the execution mode. The new diet and exercise are now a part of who you are and what you do in life, consistently and in regular intervals. It’s the new you after very long, hard work.

    You need to have realistic expectations about how long the process takes. It’s usually at least a few years. But you have enough time. If you really want it badly enough, you will find a way, if not, you will find an excuse. The key is to really want it badly enough. That’s why you need a strong why.

    So start with the why.