New Year, Real You

New year, real you. That is, who you're here to become, who you can potentially become, who you can be without distraction or waste, without stress, worry, and poor decision-making.

This is the year to be that guy, finally. I'm with you in this. Life is great, there's no doubt. We're alive, we have great things in our lives, but man, we can all be better, and thankfully, there's a formula that'll get us there.

The way to get there is simple and small. No matter the goal. It's the completion of tasks, one on top of another, without distraction. 

It's a workout, with a good meal, with a good sleep, done every night which over time leads to great health and a great physique and strong hormones. It's a task at work completed with focus and attention, and another, and another.

For men, we have to realize a few things that, if we're to be our very best, we have to consider a few areas:

1. Men have that wonderful hormone testosterone. We produce in massively more quantities than women, which means we can be much stronger, faster, and more dangerous. 

As such, it's our duty as good men, to be as strong, dangerous, skilled, tough, and resilient as we can be, so we can serve and protect those around us. 

2. Being a man is about service. Sure, we have our goals and aspirations, but at the same time, everything's done to make the lives of those around us just a little better. We get strong and successful so we can better serve.

Being a man is a thankless job, too. Don't seek recognition or accolades, or a pat on the back. Be great for those around you and allow making their lives better to be the reward.

3. Work is a large part of why we're here. We're here to do and to build, to provide and to protect. It's not everything, that's for sure, but we have to aim to be great at what we do simply because we're doing it, and why not?

4. We have to be great outside of the things we naturally aim to be great at, like work and health and fitness. We have to live, to be dads, husbands, friends. We have to create time to enjoy life on some level. Which is just something to consider for this year.

I'm a routine guy. I thrive on routine. Well, getting outside, hiking, playing sports, reading, these things, for me, need to be worked on because they put wind in your sails, they bring joy, peace, and clarity.

With that said, let's walk through a formulaic way to create the best year of our lives.

Gratitude

Start with gratitude. I'm horrible with this, and I'm seeing the benefits of having it as a practice. The truth is our lives are great - even if they're not. There are things to be grateful for, and we often have to look for them.

Gratitude is a means to clarity, to thinking truthfully, to removing stress and making our pursuits just a little lighter.

You make better decisions when you're happy. Work is easier and more motivated when you're happy. Let me rephrase that, when you have joy. Start your planning for the year by writing down everything in your life that you're grateful for. It'll set the mood.

We all know what we need to work on, that's the easy part, but for men, gratitude is often the struggle.

Start Small

Forget about goals, for a second. We have our aspirations, the things we're trying to achieve, and we kinda innately know them. They're big, audacious, maybe to get in great shape, to be the best in our field at work, to build a house, take a trip, whatever.

What all of these goals depend on are the completion of tasks. A great workout, great meal, and great sleep, over time, will lead to a great physique, health, and hormones. 

Whatever task you're working on with work, do the best job you can do, do only that job without distraction to completion, then move on to the next task.

Building anything, be it a great body or great business, depends on a single task being completed, and then another. That's achievement. That's all that achievement is. 

It's the thing we ought to do next. Figuring out the habits you need to complete as many tasks as possible, as well as you can perform them, is the only thinking and planning we need to do.

For me, rising early, between 4am and 5am, and getting 3-4 hours of work done right away, without checking my phone or email, is how I win. My first break is a walk with Alice, then a workout, then it's on to the next task.

Then, as energy dips toward the end of the day, another workout, usually cardio. Then more, focused, work. 

Figure out how to do what you need to do without distraction, and you win.

But, start small. You're not trying to be perfect on day one, but to have the habits in place so that being perfect on day 365 is innate, even easy.

Start with 1 workout a week. Start with 1 good work session a day where you don't look at your phone. Start as small as you need to start to create the foundational habit that leads to it actually becoming habitual in your life. And do not negotiate with yourself at all on this first, small habit.

A few other examples depending on what you're trying to achieve this year (maybe you're trying to achieve everything, and just be better overall, like I am, so these will help):

- Read 1 page of a book before 8am every day (you can always read a page, this lower barrier of entry will help you form a habit).

- Do 1 push up right when you wake up.

- Wake up 5 minutes earlier - and then 5 minutes earlier next week.

- Write down one thing you're grateful for every week.

- Have one good, high protein, healthy meal per day.

- Do 1 workout per week (and push that to two in two weeks).

- Set aside 1 hour of 'you time' per week, to read, think, journal, even to run, hike, to play a sport (you can even do 1 'session' per month to start).

Set a simple, easy-to-achieve habit in each area of your life that you can get better at. I need to focus better with work, so my first 3-4 hours are phone-free, with a timer set to give me a time to focus. Then I'll add another hour of phone free after that.

Start small, and win the long game. Improvement happens quickly when you're actually creating the habits and finishing the tasks, we just have to create the environment where this task completion becomes habitual. Once a habit is a real habit, it's easy, which means achievement, if we build the habits properly, becomes easy.

Stack Tasks

We covered this already, but it has to be hammered home...

We're not trying to 'get something', but become someone. Whatever it is that we want is dependent on who we are and what we do.

Really focus on stacking completed tasks. Become a machine with the tasks you complete. Love completing them. Humans do benefit from reward, but not in the way we think. We don't actually benefit by rewarding ourselves by buying something when we've done something good.

That actually degrades our ability to achieve in the long term. Our reward is simply acknowledging that we did good work. We tell ourselves, internally, that we did a great job. Acknowledge the work, this is the reward. 

Creating visual checklists helps, too. Write down the things you're going to do in a day or week or month, make them tasks, not results. And check them off or cross them off as you run through them.

If we can get in the habit of completing difficult things in succession throughout the day, we will be victorious in whatever area of life we're aiming to win. It's just a simple fact.

But, again, start small.

Have one important work task, one important health task that you complete, today, and as this becomes easy, make it two.

Be disciplined in staying small and building slowly. This is the way to become the man worthy of the end you seek.

One thing to think about when you're actually trying to figure out what to do and what to do first, is to think about what task, if completed, if made into habit, would have the biggest impact on your health, business, or whatever area you're focusing on.

In work, what 'win', what task if completed, would have the biggest impact on your business? Start with that. Then move to the second biggest task. Same with health, what habit would have the biggest impact?

Remove Distractions

If who we're trying to become and what we're trying to achieve is GOOD, then anything that pulls us away from this is EVIL.

Think of distractions in this pure black and white form. They are evil, because they literally pull you away from 'the real you', the potential you.

We have to rid our lives of these things that destroy us.

Identify them.

Do certain websites distract you? Does your phone distract you? Does having your window open when you work distract you? Does the doughnut on the counter distract you from the steak in the fridge? 

Identify the things that distract you, and find a way to have them not distract you, namely by removing them completely when you're performing a task.

Then, when the task is complete, you can 'reward' yourself with the distraction.

This single move can dramatically transform your year. It removes one of the biggest barriers to achievement there is. If all we have before us is the task we're supposed to do, it's far more likely that we're going to do it.

Stress is a Waste

Finally, of the things that get in the way of our progress, distractions and stress are at the top of the list. 

Stress and worry make us make bad decisions. They make us think these tasks may not get us to where we want to be in life. They make us question our path. Stress degrades energy, it adds weight to our day, it degrades our work.

I struggle with stress, a lot. 

But no matter what form of wisdom you read, what religion you are, every good book - even The Good Book - tells us that stress is just useless. Does worrying add a year to your life? Does despair and fear make you work better? 

Stress is often one of our biggest distractions. It's something we have to work on removing from our lives so we can think clearly. 

The best way I've found to remove stress is to do the work, always, to workout hard, to be outside at least once a week, and to study. Here are the best books I've found on dealing with stress and conquering it:

The Bible (Old and New Testament)

Seeking Wisdom by Peter Bevelin

The Way to Love by Anthony De Mello

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Any book by Epictetus and Seneca

Biographies also help, as you can see men who've dealt with far more stress and danger handle it well. Pick any 'great man' and you'll find someone who had to handle a lot of stress, whether it's Caesar, Napoleon, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Munger, Christ, Teddy Roosevelt, and so on. 

New Year, Real You

We started off by talking about gratitude. Now, let's get real. Thus far we haven't been at our best - often, not even close. 

We've lived as a degraded version of who we can be. We've succumb to distraction, to laziness, to fear, to stress. We've not done the work, in fact, in many ways, we've avoided it. 

The way forward isn't some magical moment or epiphany. It's simply doing what we say we'll do over and over again without distraction. It's doing the work to completion, and then doing the next thing on the list to completion, and doing this every day we're supposed to.

This doesn't mean no days off, in fact, days off are important. They give us time to think and time to remove our brain from the doing of life, the work, so we can think clearly about whether or not we're doing it right. 

This new year isn't about some new you, but the real you, the you that you can be and ought to be. It doesn't depend on motivation or inspiration, but on being a man of your word and doing the shit you know you ought to do without allowing your brain to get you side tracked.

It takes faith, for sure. You have to believe it'll work, but the only way to give yourself belief is to take a leap of faith and to start stacking tasks so you can start seeing results, feeling results. 

Take that leap of faith. Identify the tasks. Remove distractions. And get the fook after it.