I Need to Always Be Improving One Thing

So I just read a rather depressing but very honest and introspective post from myself from February this year. In it, I explained how I felt like I hadn’t really been trying all that hard. But I felt like I had rounded a corner, and that 2020 was going to be nothing but good things!

Putting the soul-crushing irony of that belief aside, while the post did bring up some great points and present a good overall picture of where I was (am) at, it didn’t really provide any real strategies for improvement.

As much as I wish it were, “start trying harder” is simply not an effective strategy, no matter what anybody tells you. And neither is anything dealing with “motivation”.

So what do I do?

I’ve talked a lot about the “One thing”, the thing I need to focus on most in my business (or life!) to improve at any one moment. While I’m not strictly saying that I should just, “do that”, but focusing on one area is, in fact, what I’m saying.

I need to always be focusing on improving in one area. I’ve written at length about habits, and how I want to be building one new habit at all times, etc.

As strange as it is to say, the one habit that I need to be building, more than any other is… Building new habits constantly.

So… I guess to start, I’ll need to be building two habits at a time!

But that seriously needs to be it. Even if I’m doing a bad job building whatever habit it is I’m working on, I just need to be doing it. I need to focus every single day on it, and aggressively enforce what I’m doing.

And the reason for this goes beyond “habits are good”.

If I want to get to where I feel like I’m “trying hard”, it’s going to take a lot of work building up the habits and resilience that it takes. It’s going to be improving things, one step at a time.

I’ve written about sleep habits extensively, and so far have just been plagued by failures with those. Maybe that’s a good place to start and just double down on fixing that.

I’m taking a month-long break from alcohol and so this seems like a good time for it. I’ve tried to do just one piece at a time, but maybe I need all of the following to be in sync for this to work:

  • Going to bed early
  • Waking up at the same early time every morning
  • Not using the snooze button
  • Not napping

I have so many years of bad habits with all of these lined up, I may just have to do it all. I might be exhausted initially, but that exhaustion will help me sleep earlier and get better sleep, which will then help with not needing to snooze or take naps, and over time I should even start waking up at the same time.

So… I just need to focus on this, and then the next thing, and then just keep improving.

I’ve Gotten Comfortable Just Running the Business

Don’t let the title fool you: this is a post about something bad.

I just got done reading some of my posts from January and February, when I was excited to grow my business and really work through a ton of marketing things. And then, as you know, the world changed in March.

So for a long time I told myself that it was okay to just worry about keeping things going and not too much on working ON the business instead of IN it.

But it’s been 7 months now, and I’m still just working IN the business. I haven’t gotten around to doing… anything. I just work on the projects we have, as they come, and that’s it. I’ve done almost nothing to advance my company.

am working with a marketing company now, and we are about to embark on a new campaign that may lead to many new clients (or at least I’m hoping!). And in that sense, maybe I’ll just fall over backwards into success without having to do all of the work.

Or maybe, if this works, the takeaway is that if I’m just not putting in the effort or having success in an area: outsource. Why make things difficult for myself? Just outsource and things will be fine.

But I don’t know that yet, so in the meantime, I should really focus on getting back into working on the business again. Even if it’s just for 15 minutes per day, I really need to do it. Things are a little slow right now and that scares me a bit! But it’s also an opportunity.

Take advantage of it.