In How Champions Think, Bob Ruttella and Bob Cullen write, “Exceptional people tend to have habits that help them achieve what they want. People who are struggling tend to have habits that undermine them.” Achievement is not an accident. Winners rarely trip their way to the top of the podium. Improvement is built on intentional effort.
Thomas C. Corley writes in Change Your Habits, Change Your Life, “Our daily habits are the reason we are happy or unhappy.” Corley continues, “That’s how important habits are. If you want to change your life you must change your daily habits.” Our habits help or they hurt our happiness. Corley reinforces the power of our habits noting, “These daily habits unconsciously control our lives. Our daily habits, as boring as they may be, are the secret to success, failure, or mediocrity.”
“Habits are powerful forces in our lives. When we act from habit, we don’t need the grit-your-teeth type of willpower. We just do something without thinking much about it. It’s almost a reflex,” write Bob Rotella and Bob Cullen in How Champions Think. Helpful habits become routines we can ride to take us up the escalator of excellence. Rotella and Cullen continue, “Exceptional people tend to have habits that help them achieve what they want. People who are struggling tend to have habits that undermine them.”
Habits aren’t just forces in our lives that can help us build strengths, they become the essence of who we are. James Altucher writes in Reinvent Yourself, “Habits. It’s the 5×5 rule. You are not just the average of the five people around you. You’re the average of the five habits you do, the things you eat, the ideas you have, the content you consume, etc.” We want to work on becoming intentional in developing our habits so that we can pursue them as a personal process.
Developing your own process is a privilege. It’s a way to choose what you do to become who you want to become. Be the boss of you and decide what you’ll do. William Blake acknowledged, “I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s.” If we don’t pick our own process, we’ll become a cog in someone else’s.
Behind success lies pursuit of a process. A sound process sows the seeds of progress. Without a process, things are more likely to become a mess. A process provides a path that helps us determine what to do. It’s a series of helpful habits. Making progress isn’t a miracle. It’s the application of simple approaches. Simple as in straightforward. Not, simple as in easy. David Allen writes in Getting Things Done, “How hard is it to write something down, decide what the next step is to move it forward, record the reminder of that on a list, and review the list? Most everyone admits he or she needs to establish a practice like this, and few do it consistently enough to feel good about it.” Doing these little things is an indication of your commitment. An indication of giving yourself a chance. Doing speaks louder than words. We like to say we’re serious. We like to say we’re a professional, but our actions all too often simply don’t reflect this. You can never do the big things well until you nail the little things. Creating a checklist or putting a process into practice is a small thing that can build direction and progress into your days.
For example, if you’re just trying to live a life that allows you to be healthy, feel good, and add value where you can consider a process that involves three factors: move, improve, and groove. Seek to find twenty minutes daily to do something that involves movement, improvement, and relaxing/having fun. Alternately, if health is something you want to SEE, then Sleep, Exercise, and Eat are your three tasks to tackle. As a third example, James Altucher suggests a process which is straightforward but not easy which will help you come up with great ideas. He writes in Choose Yourself!, “The way you get good ideas is to do two things: 1) Read two hours a day. 2) Write ten ideas a day. By the end of a year, you will have read for almost one thousand hours and written down 3,600 ideas. One of these ideas will be a home run.” Your checklist or process becomes to read two hours and write ten ideas daily. Do these two and a great idea you’ll be due.
It’s worth considering a question posed by Brendon Burchard, “What professional routines help you stay focused, energized, creative, productive, and effective?” Almost as if he’s answering Burchard’s question, in his book The 3 Alarms, Eric Partaker writes of five actions that if done daily mark a productive day. Partaker considers these actions his “peak-performance routine.” He created a checklist listing these five actions against each day. The more of these actions he is able to check off on a given day, the better that day is in terms of productivity and satisfaction. His five tasks include a solid night of sleep (8 hours), doing distraction free work of 90 minutes before 7:30am, exercising at least 20 minutes before 8:30am, stopping work efforts by 6:30pm, and putting screens aside by 8:30pm. Completing these daily dos are good for Partaker regardless of our direction.
A nearby happy place for me is a mountain just a few kilometres from our home. I can drive, bike, jog, or walk to the base of the mountain and then explore from there. It’s great fun to be able to quickly get away from the day to day work grind and find peace and quiet in the great outdoors. Regardless of how I get there, once the base I’ve found, the options up the mountain abound. There are several designated hiking trails, there are bike trails, there is a gravel road one can drive, bike, or walk. There are numerous animal trails winding their way around and up the mountain. Some paths are steeper at the outset, then level off. Some are steady for most of the way. Some are longer while others are shorter. Some are singletrack while others are wider offering an opportunity to walk side by side with company. Some have views or lookout points while some meander through the shaded trees. Your options are limited only by your wishes and creativity. I know of one ambitious fellow that while training to represent Canada for several years at Red Bull’s XAlps paragliding and mountaineering event would forge his own path straight up the mountain.
As disparate and diverse as these directions are, they all end up at the same place, the top of the mountain. It’s a great metaphor for life. The path to success or the top of your mountain is not singular. Many people have pursued different paths on their way to progress. Authors have achieved success by writing in very different ways. Their outcomes may be similar though their approaches varied. In a prior article we noted that much time is spent looking for the formula instead of crafting our own. At the end of the day, there’s no right way. There’s just your way. A Hindu Proverb supports this idea noting, “There are hundreds of paths up the mountain, all leading in the same direction, so it doesn’t matter which path you take. The only one wasting time is the one who runs around and around the mountain, telling everyone that his or her path is wrong.”
Goal setting can become secondary to pursuing a process. Developing daily disciplines is a proven path. There are many habits that those that have achieved success have in common. These, too, have been proven across domains and periods of history. If we mirror our actions to follow the process of those that have succeeded, we will make progress. We may not know in exactly what domain we’ll succeed, but we’ll be creating competence which both moves us forward as well as demonstrates us as someone capable of achievement. Progress is available to any of us, anywhere, anytime.
Guy Kawasaki offers in Enchantment three reasons in favor of checklists. To Kawasaki a checklist serves as a plan, a basis for action. When we have a checklist in hand, we’re not deliberating or deciding, we can get busy doing instead. A second value of checklists is that they evidence your interest in getting things done. Those with checklists mean business. They have taken the time to plan ahead and think about what needs to be done. This is an attractive attribute. Third, checklists serve as motivation. People are oriented to specific tasks and can take satisfaction in making progress as each item on the checklist is accomplished and checked off. The marks serve as momentum moving us forward.
Checklists are an example of how we can help ourselves. Take time to create a checklist. Determine your to dos. Ditch your dreams. Get up and relish your routine. It’s rewarding. It’s a way of giving yourself a chance. It’s doing things which will move you in the desired direction. The more control you have over setting your day, the more productive and satisfied you will be.
Past articles related to the power of a process:
Rock Your Routine: Crates and Closets
Follow to Focus Follow to Focus – Broker Builder
Moto Mayhem (routines rescue)
