Category: Productivity

Tackling Resistance

Posted on by Phil Garland

Habit formation takes anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. Even if you go 30 straight days building a good habit, one off day can lead to failure. Mentally, this is from resistance. Our mind gets in the way of us getting back on track.

One thing I’ve learned from blogging is that you have to tackle resistance head on, no matter how out of kilter your habits have become. 

I spent the fourth of July weekend in the mountains. Away from civilization and away from the internet. I could’ve blogged on a notepad each day but instead I turned all of my habits off. I let myself be immersed by nature and enjoyed being around wildlife. Although I shut off my habits for the trip, I promised myself I would blog when I was back. Well, today I am back at it, tackling resistance.

Off Day? Accomplish Something

Posted on by Phil Garland

Even if you’re not at the top of your game, try accomplishing something to the best of your ability. That doesn’t mean doing something difficult, it means doing something productive and doing it well.

Today, I had a sub-par (at least for my standards) day. I didn’t feel like I accomplished anything. But I had a bunch to get off my checklist. So I tackled a smaller project that I knew would make my future self happy. I cleaned my apartment. And I didn’t just scrub for a minute or two, I completely cleaned every corner for over two hours. Each time I finished a small chore, I asked myself “is this the best I can do?” And each time the answer was “No, I can do more.” 

After two plus hours of scrubbing, spraying and wiping, my apartment looks great. My new roommate will be happy! 

Stoic Trainings

Stoicism is a trained mindset allowing one to become at peace with anything that happens in life. If one puts their best foot forward, it doesn’t matter if one wins or one loses. There’s a great cartoon of Stoics competing in track and field. The Stoics high-five each other and jump for joy after every event, even when they didn’t win. The other team is baffled, they think the Stoics are insane. But the Stoics aren’t. They’re happy they did the best they could.

Unlocking this Stoic sense of pride is easier said than done. Training yourself to be happy with any outcome is difficult. Training yourself to be your best at whatever you put your mind to is even harder. The best way you can do that is by doing stuff well even on off days. 

By doing accomplishing your goals to the best of your ability, your mind gets used to the tasks required to be great. Over time, this feeling becomes natural and every task you take on becomes something to take Stoic pride in.

You’re the Average of the 5 People You’re Around the Most

Posted on by Phil Garland

Even though you’re the average of the five people you’re around the most, that doesn’t mean you need new friends. Today, from the power of the internet, I’ve communicated with people across the globe, listened to podcasts of people from all over the world, and have read blog posts from many authors all over the world. And it’s only 7:30 am.

By reading, listening, and interacting with people all over the world, I’ve surrounded myself with thought leaders, peers, and great thinkers all from my phone. The power to improve yourself is in the hands of 2.5 billion people.

Friends of Do-ers

I have written before about having few Facebook friends. A hidden benefit of that is when I login to my account I only see posts from peers who are doing a lot of stuff. They provide me a friend group, without meeting many in person, that I could never have cultivated 5-7 years ago.

The people I follow are all striving for a better tomorrow: Growing their businesses and creating change in the world. When you surround yourself, even if only virtually, with people doing impressive stuff everyday, it’s hard not to join them. Becoming the average of the five people I follow, read, and listen to would make me a high level doer.

Not using the tools at hand, like the power of the internet, to better yourself, will keep you from becoming the person you want to become. Make some virtual do-er friends!

The Secret Ingredient I Forgot About: Motivation

Posted on by Phil Garland

I don’t know about you but I read a lot of entrepreneurial books. From startup culture to becoming a full time freelancer to 4 day work weeks, I have read many books on running businesses and improving work life balance. All of them left me feeling good about myself, about my direction, and improved my thought process. But when I sat back and asked myself, why haven’t I accomplished my goals? I had a wake-up call.

I’m not going to bash reading entrepreneurial books because I enjoy them but I do think my mind shut off. My thinking was off, I thought reading a book would reveal the secret sauce. I forgot what has made me successful at other endeavours. Motivation.

Every great success in my life had an underlying motivation. It might’ve been something as simple as passing a test or something difficult like training my mind and body all year for a championship. Each time I’ve accomplished something I did so with tenacity. With a burning desire motivating my actions.

Thes ecret sauce I was missing was right in front of me. One my favorite phrases is “stay hungry, stay foolish.” The first phrase is literally about motivating yourself but for some reason I forgot.

Since I figured out the ingredient I was missing, I have come to a resolution. No more slacking off. Starting today I’m going to achieve what I set out to do.

I’m setting very short term goals with the end goal accomplishing what I set out to do. Once goal one is achieved, I’m setting another very short term goal. No more 90 day plans, not even 30 day plans. Everything will be 7 days. That’s as long as I can keep my energy up, my tenacity on point, and remember how hungry I am to break this funk.

Be Aware of Your Goals but Don’t Be Hard on Yourself

Posted on by Phil Garland

Common advice in the self-help world is to create goals to achieve and making those goals a reality on a daily basis. I agree with this mindest for the most part, however, achieving your goals is still long-term whereas happiness is mostly short-term. To me, there’s a disconnect between thinking in goals and achieving happiness.

Part of achieving goals is to be committed to the outcome and making decisions with those in mind. But if you’re not achieving everything on your goal checklist, the first thing to eliminate is being hard on yourself. Having an honest conversation with yourself is the better way in goal achievement strategy.

Instead of wondering why I didn’t achieve a goal I set for myself, I look into the factors in my life. Maybe I was traveling. Maybe I was committing myself to too many projects. Maybe my passion didn’t really follow the goals I had set for myself. Having an honest conversation of why I didn’t achieve goals that I set for myself is productive. Overthinking, and being g hard on myself, is the opposite.

Being hard on yourself about not achieving goals is teaching you to take on the victim mindset. You treat yourself as someone who could’ve achieved a goal had you done something different or if the circumstances differed. Instead of looking inward, you concot excuses for yourself.

My best way of staying out of the victim mindset is holding myself accountable for goals I want to achieve and having an internal dialouge about what’s working and what’s not and why. Although I set difficult goals for myself, I shouldn’t lose happiness when I come up short.

Keeping It Simple and New Habit Formation

Posted on by Phil Garland

My biggest issue with getting stuff done is the mental roadblock that only I know exists. I might come up with a cool idea but then I start overthinking the ins-and-outs of how it’d work. I think about all the hours I’d spend on the final product and not knowing if it’d be worth it or not and push it to the side.

I know this is the wrong approach but I forget about a simple rule I was taught as a kid: KISS (keep it simple ____). The simpler the task, the more likely it’ll get done. That is my mentality for this blog going forward and for all the projects I’m trying to work on.

In my blog’s case, I have set up a system of writing in Evernote which will then be added to my drafts in WordPress by using a tool called Zapier. This was a big pain in the butt when I first started blogging. Between writing a post, copying/pasting the post to WordPress, reformatting the post, adding hyperlinks and finding an image, a lot of my time seemed wasted. So this time around, I’m KISSing. Keeping it simple.

My other projects are pretty large and will require attention everyday. These are passion projects that I’ve wanted to accomplish but had gotten too deep into overthinking that I hadn’t come close to accomplishing them. So, in the mentality of keeping it simple, I have started outlining these tasks in detail and will focus on one little piece at a time. Eventually, the pieces will come together for the finished project but I know if I don’t do it that way nothing will get started.

Keeping it simple is a quick and easy way to get into productive habits one step at a time. Instead of worrying about the end goal, I can move forward little by little and actually see my progress. Simplifying everything I want to accomplish is the start of getting it done.