Category: Psychology

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The Power of Having a System

I’ve started seeing rapid gains in my weight-training. After something like 7 or 8 years of little-to-no progress, that really is something!

And you know what really changed?

I have a system.

Historically, I’ve always chosen a handful of movements, and basically just lifted until I couldn’t anymore. Next week I would try again, and hopefully be able to do more reps.

It worked great in the beginning, when it’s easy to grow your untrained muscles. But within a year or two, it stalled almost completely. And I had no system to get me through roadblocks.

But now I have one! It tells me how much weight to lift each week, how much to add for the next workout, and what to do if I fail. It anticipates those failures and outlines a systematic plan to alter the weight I’m doing, grow stronger, and then break past barriers.

And it has been wildly effective. In a month or two I’ve improved more than in the last several years. It really is incredible.

It turned out that the problem wasn’t lack of effort, diet, sleep, form, or any of the other tiny details that can be totally overwhelming. It was just that I needed a system.

Of course, once things start going well, you tend to do everything else right, too. I’ve been eating better, getting enough of the nutrients needed, and being much more consistent in my training. The success is extremely motivating and it’s easy to do the harder things when you know they are going to be successful.

But now I’m thinking: where else can I apply systems to my life to have these kinds of impacts? How can I apply it to how I’m running my business?

I mean, what is my system for improving my business?

That’s a rhetorical question. I obviously don’t have anything remotely resembling a system to improve my business. And that’s bad!

In fact, I think I’ve been relying on this blog to be my “system”, which is almost exactly like how I used to weight train. I have a lot of good ideas, things that can really help. And I’m trying things here and there, hoping something sticks. But ultimately, they don’t lead to results.

Maybe the one thing I’m missing is just a system to guide my actions and hold me accountable. I’m at the tail-end of many months of essentially doing nothing to improve my business. Maybe I just need some structure.

I know I’ve read plenty of books that outline specific systems for doing exactly what I’m describing. I think it may be time to dust those off and take them more seriously.

Because while things are actually going decently in my business (all things considered), I’m really not improving right now. And if I could replicate the success of my weight training with my business, I think it would be extremely motivating and actually lead to even more success.

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Successes Within the Last Year

I think I need to take a step back and acknowledge the successes I’ve had over the last year that maybe I haven’t really mentioned here too much.

Too often I only focus on the failures and things that need to be improved, while rarely pointing out all of the things that have gone well. That should change!

So here are some successes I’ve had over the past year or so:

  • Drastically reduced or eliminated time spent on social media
  • Drastically reduced time spent browsing the news
  • Eliminated non-productive time on my phone
  • Replaced it with productive activities
  • Learned the name, location, capital, and flag of every country in the world
  • Learned the name, capital, and location of every state/territory in Canada, the US, and Mexico
  • Learned every US president in order, including the years they served, their party, and their presidency number
  • Grew my English vocabulary by about 300 words
  • Put on a significant amount of muscle and figured out a new workout routine that is yielding consistently positive results
  • Got into the habit of running, and reduced my one-mile time from over 8:30 to nearly 6:30
  • Have greatly improved the time in which I get up every morning, and minimized how late I sleep when not using an alarm
  • Started drinking less
  • Played drastically fewer video games
  • Greatly improved Spanish skills with drills, continued practice, and watching Spanish-language television instead of English shows
  • Learned a lot of history from reading and watching documentaries
  • Finished renovating my house and rented out the bedrooms
  • Paid off student loans, all credit card debt, and a business loan
  • Purchased a company and successfully migrated all of the clients to my services
  • Started investing money for the first time ever
  • Improved my yard and lawn considerably and harvested my first black raspberries
  • Caught the biggest snapping turtle I’ve ever caught

Honestly there are way more things than I thought there would be when I decided to make this list! That’s why it’s good to do it, to really get a sense of where you’re at and what’s going right.

I can’t help but feel like, while I did all of these things, there are many other things I should have been doing but didn’t. And while there is always room for improvement, it doesn’t all have to come at once. I think most of these fall into the category of self-improvement which I firmly believe will roll into improvement in all areas.

So I think I just need to keep it up, and good things will come!

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What if We Never Stopped Playing?

All mammals (and even many other animals) play when they are young. It’s how they learn.

When they aren’t afraid to try new things and fun with new experiences, their brains (and bodies) develop and they are able to grow to where they will be successful adults.

And then, in animals just as in humans: it stops. Instead of investing in more growth, they stop playing and they focus on survival and raising young.

From an evolutionary point of view, it makes sense that they would only spend so much time developing and then, when ready, would devote all of their time to raising new copies of their DNA.

But let’s say your primary goal wasn’t just to pass on your genetic material, and you weren’t simultaneously facing all of the challenges of caveman life. Is this really the best way to go about life?

Of course it’s not.

Life is very different now, I’m likely to live much longer than a caveman, and my priorities differ greatly. I think it’s extremely obvious that development should continue long past our mid-twenties.

Now, I’m well aware that primary brain development stops around 26, and that seems to coincide closely with when most people stop “playing” much. I’m not sure to what extend it’s possible to keep learning like a child beyond that time.

But my gut tells me that if you approach new experiences and challenges with child-like enthusiasm and interest, you are very likely to learn new things and develop yourself at any age.

So while I know the “grown-up” thing to do as one ages is to become more serious, stop trying new things, and to focus strictly on production, I just don’t think that’s for me. I think it’s a huge shame to stop playing and trying new things. And it might just be halting development that could easily continue, too.

It may even be possible that the rate of development and improvement enjoyed by children and young adults could by matched long into more advanced ages. It seems to me that if you managed to do so, you would have an incredible advantage over your peers by the time you were middle-aged.

So I think I’ll keep playing!

 

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News Diet Update and Reflections

It’s been something like 9 days since I gave up reading the news and all forms of social media feeds. And it feels… strange!

The first thing is that it’s really odd just how quickly something that seemed so important and relevant can feel so completely distant and irrelevant.

I’m speaking, of course, of the pandemic. So far I’m fortunate enough to not have suffered any losses personally or professionally as a result. And my day-to-day is virtually unaffected, since I already stayed at home most of the time to work even before the pandemic, and most of the activities I do for fun aren’t really impacted either.

So in any given day, it really feels as though there is zero impact to my life as a result. And when I’m not reading about it or talking about it, eventually it ceases to feel important.

I’ve also been extremely productive during this time. In addition to having more time to do things, I also feel better and am more motivated.

So I’m really starting to wonder about the actual cost of reading and caring about the daily news.

Clearly I’m not advocating total ignorance, but really, the vast majority of news has no impact on me at all, and of the remainder, I typically have no ability to change.

So ultimately, the rewards of keeping up every day are virtually non-existent, but the cost is extremely high.

While I think I’ll still check in from time-to-time, I think I just need to acknowledge that following most news is just another form of mindless entertainment with no benefit other than killing time; just like social media, most television, and (in my humble opinion) sports viewership.

I am better off without it.

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New Habit – Getting out of Bed When I Wake Up

I’ve spoken at length in the past about how important habits are and how I should constantly be developing them.

I don’t think I’ve really been focusing on one in a while, and it’s time to start!

At the moment I’m doing a good job of waking up without hitting snooze. I’m also on a news diet and am avoiding Facebook and other sources of current-event information as well.

And Imgur is blocked on my phone.

So there isn’t much pointless entertainment left on my phone, which means I don’t even have anything to do in bed after I wake up.

Why not just get up?

I’ve wanted to do this for many years, and I think now I’m finally ready for it. It will add a ton of productive time to my week, and will let me finish things way faster.

So, I’ll do it! I’ll post more about it here as I progress.

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Time-Blocking Everyday

In the last post, I developed my plan for what I need to do. The most important thing I can do now, everyday, is to work on that and move all of those things forward.

So to that end, I think it’s time that I dedicate predetermined chunks of time to only doing those things.

Again, this is something he says to do in The One Thing, but I think it’s a great idea. If I’m only spending 10 minutes per day on the most important things, how can I ever move forward?

In the book he recommends 4 uninterrupted hours of this. Now, I’m not saying that 4 hours is too much. However, I don’t know that I can transition into doing that all at once. So instead, I’m going to try to commit to 2 hours every day.

During this time, I think it’s important that I:

  1. Put my phone on silent and face-down
  2. Exit any email tabs
  3. Exit any text messaging tabs and WhatsApp windows
  4. Commit to only working on my “Own Thing” for the day

It won’t be easy, but hopefully it will be quite effective.

So how do I schedule this?

I’m thinking that I should have a set schedule throughout the week. Obviously my week varies a bit but I can definitely schedule 2 hours that are always the same on a given day of the week.

So right now, I’m physically adding them to my calendar. I’ll try out the time slots that I’ve created for a while and see if they work for me!

I think I can still be flexible with this arrangement, but if I have to move the time slot, the point is that it needs to be rescheduled! I can slide it later but I can’t avoid it entirely.

Realistically, this is an entirely new way of thinking and of spending my time, so I don’t think it’s going to be easy to implement.

But it’s so important. I think it could be absolutely crucial to advancing in my business.

Whereas in the past I feel like I’ve just reacted to things and improved marginally over time, this has the potential to help me take control and achieve rapid growth in very little time.

Here we go!

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Knowledge, Experience, and Insight – Turning Mazes into Staircases

In reviewing my old blog posts, I came across this “classic”. And I had some new insights.

In it, I argue that most real-life goals can’t be attained in the same way as climbing a simple set of stairs to get to the top. Instead, there are countless maze-like paths to choose from. Some will get you there eventually, some won’t. Some might even have tons of extra obstacles you’ll need to overcome.

I still agree with that, but I missed out on discussing something that I think is really important to note: with increased knowledge, experience, and insight, you can effectively gain an overview of those “maze” paths and make things much easier.

I know I’m going to risk taking this analogy too far, but I think that with enough knowledge, experience, and insight (I’m just going to say KEI from now on), you can really simplify everything.

Imagine that the maze leading to your goal has multiple entrances and countless paths running through it. Only one leads to your goal.

Without any KEI, you’re just guessing where to go. You power through, you try everything, and there’s no way to know which one will get you to the end. The only way to the top is to just try everything and figure it out.

But with enough KEI, you might get an overhead-view of the maze. You can see which paths go where, and eventually trace through which one leads to the top. Imagine how much easier it would be to get there!

Sure, you’ll still have to put in the work of actually taking that path, but you’ll be armed with the confidence of knowing you’re on the right one, which will allow you to power through it and waste minimal time on other paths.

I think that we intuitively know this is all true. When thrown into a totally new situation, things are often overwhelming. If you are lucky enough to even know what your goal is, there’s a good chance you have no idea how to get there. You have some things you can try, but you don’t know which will work.

But after many attempts, you start learning. Through experience, you learn things that don’t work and eliminate those as possibilities. You start to develop a sense of how things will work out before even trying them.

You might even read books and research methods and concepts, which will increase the knowledge you have on the topic. This also will guide your decision making.

And through both of those things, you gain insight into difficult problems. That all helps you figure out the best way forward.

After time has passed, you end up gaining confidence and an understanding of how things work, and suddenly achieving those goals doesn’t seem as daunting.

Within my own career, it is very much true. When I first started and clients would report problems with their websites, I would often have no idea what was wrong. All I could do was try things and hope they worked. If they didn’t, I’d keep trying and researching util I found something that did.

Over time, through making mistakes, researching, and reading, I gained KEI. And now, it’s very rare that a client will bring me a problem I can’t solve quickly. And if I don’t know the solution right away, I’m always confident that I can do some research and figure it out.

So what do I do with this knowledge?

I think it’s important to maximize KEI as quickly as possible. Here are some ideas for doing that:

  1. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Experience comes from both successes and failures, so both can be beneficial to maximizing that experience.
  2. Gaining as much knowledge as you can from external sources is critical. Reading and learning are so important.
  3. Above all, action is key. If you aren’t applying your knowledge, then you aren’t getting experience and it is essentially wasted. Sometimes it’s better to act instead of seeking more knowledge, and it’s almost always better to act instead of becoming paralyzed when you aren’t confident enough to make a decision.

I think these ideas are particularly helpful for accomplishing more nebulous goals such as “being successful”.

It’s just so hard to know what path to take, but knowing that the path will become more clear with more knowledge and experience should be key to actually achieving it.

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Focusing on Blog and Habits Works!

So over the past month or so I’ve made an effort to do more of these blog posts and also focus on improving some of my habits. And it works!

Lately I’ve been sleeping better, getting up way earlier, being way more productive, and just generally doing better.

I’ve said before that the blog is the most important thing I do. The reason for that is it’s the only place where I put down some introspective thoughts and then follow-up later to track everything.

Focusing on it helps be focus on growth and self-improvement and holds me to things that I’ve resolved to do. Without it, I feel like I don’t really improve at all, I kind of just limp along.

Specifically it leads me to trying out things that really help me improve. For instance, I’ve been working on establishing a new habit lately. I would say that I should always be trying to establish a new one at all times, and I really hadn’t in a while.

The one I’m working on now is to get up after the first alarm without snoozing at all. For many, this probably isn’t a challenge. But I’ve been doing it for like 20 years. Breaking that habit (which I think is basically the same as creating one) is extremely difficult.

But I’m like a month in now. It was extremely difficult at first, but it’s getting easier and easier. And only good things have come from it.

And a few days ago I did something that isn’t really a habit, but I should have done a long time ago. I tend to waste a long time on the site imgur.com, and I realized that I don’t even really enjoy it. So after years of wasted time, I installed an app on my phone and blocked the website.

Problem solved!

The interesting thing is that this one doesn’t even really require willpower because it’s blocked… There’s no choice there. That’s a good subject for another blog post, but it’s quite fascinating.

So now I instantly have a lot more time each day because I’m not on that site. I move on to other things right away instead of wasting my time.

I’ve even started doing Spanish studying on Anki again. When I’m twitching on my phone and bored, I don’t really have anything else to do now so I just do it! It’s great.

In conclusion, it’s really important to keep doing this. Keep it up.

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It’s Arrogance and Ignorance to be Too Idealistic About Yourself

I’ve only just started to realize as I get older how much of self-idealism is really just arrogance and ignorance.

When you’re young you think you’re always going to have perfect self-discipline in all areas and that where all other falter, you will succeed. And that was me for most of my life. And probably to a large extent still is.

But over time you see that you keep failing in the same ways. That you can’t just overcome all of your own natural instincts and desires and accomplish whatever you want whenever you want.

And finally you realize that you were just arrogant and ignorant. Arrogant because you thought you would succeed where everyone else repeatedly fails. Ignorant because you hadn’t learned the full extent to which we are all animals who, in many ways, are still just slaves to our biology.

You only have so much willpower. You can only push yourself so far. You will sometimes give in to temptations. You will fail yourself in countless ways that you haven’t even imagined yet.

To think anything else, and especially to plan for anything else, is to be like an arrogant and ignorant child.

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Plan the Work for your Future Self to Do

It’s simple enough, and it seems like you’re sort of tricking yourself… But it works!

I’ve realized that it’s much easier to plan your work and actions — and, by extension, actually do it — if you know you don’t have to do the work right away.

I think the reason for this is that, let’s say you know you have some large task you’re going to do. If you decide to come up with a quick plan to get it done, and then immediately do the work, it seems like a huge investment of effort. And I think that’s because you’re essentially committing a project that is unknown (because you haven’t planned it yet), and you kind of just assume that it’s going to end up being the worst-case scenario.

Whereas it’s super easy to just commit to planning. Especially for something where the planning isn’t going to be that complicated.

You just set aside a few minutes, write it down, and you’re done! There might be some tricky decisions in there but it doesn’t take much time, so you can commit to it easily.

And then when it comes time to actually do the work, you already have your plan and you know exactly what it’s going to consist of. It’s much easier to get started and just go and finish it.

So I think going forward, it’s important for me to create plans for most tasks ahead of time. If I plan it, and I have a set of steps to complete, I know that I’m going to do it.

And it’s almost always okay if it doesn’t happen the same day.