In Book Four of his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius wrote:
Before ten days are over, you will seem a god to those who presently view you as a wild beast or an ape, if only you return to your principles and your reverence for reason.
Aurelius then followed that powerful precept up with this:
Do not act as if you have ten thousand years to live. The inescapable is hanging over your head; while you have life in you, while you still can, make yourself good.
When thinking about all the ways I could make this year stand out from all the ones that preceded it, I kept Aurelius’ maxims in mind.
- What actions could you take (because actions are what matter most, actions are what maketh the man) that would elevate you from beast to god within ten days?
- What could you do on a daily basis that would make you an entirely different, objectively better, person by the end of the year?
- What could you do, keeping in mind that this year is not one of ten thousand but one of eighty (if you’re lucky), to make yourself good now?
Here’s a spitball of ideas, some profound, some basic, some seemingly stupid on the surface.
I’ve no doubt if you could execute these consistently (80% of the time) throughout your year, you would not be the same person by the end of it.
You would transform.
1 – Write your principles and adhere to them.
When everything else is taken away, what are you left with?
When you’re imprisoned like Viktor Frankl and your life’s work is destroyed, you’re stripped bare, your family is separated from you and murdered, your personal freedom is less than that of a rat… What remains?
The one thing no one can ever take from you is your principles.
If you put your sense of well-being in externals (another person, things, etc), you will always be destroyed when they are taken away.
Ultimately you only have you and your reason. It sounds sad on the surface, but it’s actually liberating. In the darkest of times, you will always have something solid to rely on to get you through and guide you.
But you won’t have this if you don’t know what your principles are in the first place.
Principles change over time. And they aren’t immediately obvious or clear.
It takes a lot of thought to come up with a list of core principles that speak to you as you are now. But it’s worth putting in the work to find out what those principles are. And once you have them, the hard part is trying to live them every day and not cross them.
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2 – 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight.
It doesn’t matter what my fitness goal is at the time. Whether I’m trying to diet down to see my abs or bulk up and get some mass on my frame.
Whenever I adhere to this principle, I always end up looking and feeling better.
When I don’t, it’s a toss up.
Protein keeps you satiated. Great for reducing cravings to binge on crappy carbs. If you nail this, your other food choices seem to fall into line much easier.
The best way to nail this every day is to make sure you get a bulk of your protein in your first meal of the day.
Four chicken breasts with some decent BBQ sauce are pretty easy to eat and you’re talking 100g of protein just in that. If you make it a habit to eat a bunch of chicken for your breakfast, you don’t have to struggle to fit the rest of your required protein into the meals for the rest of the day.
3 – Do something for these things every day: health, wealth & love
Consistency over time beats intense short bursts.
It’s the principle of compounding interest. 1% every day.
If you feel unbalanced in your life it’s usually because you’re neglecting one of these areas or one of these areas is out of whack.
What you decide to do in each of these areas is up to you.
But if you had a day where you performed an extra sales call than usual, caught up with an old friend you haven’t spoken to for a while, and went for a morning run through the woods – that would be a pretty awesome day alone, not to mention what it would be like on top of what you’re already doing (e.g. following your principles, working on something meaningful).
4 – Write
Keep a journal. Start a blog. Put down ideas for a book – either a story you can read to your kids or the next bestselling thriller or a manual on an area you’re an expert in.
Writing is a reflective activity that forces you to understand your position on different things.
Writing is part of the considered life.
It will keep your demons at bay, exercise your creativity, keep your mind nimble, is a hell of a lot of fun, and might just do some good for someone other than you.
I recommend 500 words a day of something, anything, for everybody.
5 – Fix your weakest points systematically.
You probably already know what your weaknesses are. But because they seem like such a flaw to you, you don’t want to admit it even to yourself.
I’ve kept my flaws and weaknesses in the background of my mind my entire life.
I’ve picked a couple of weaknesses over the years that I was comfortable enough revealing to a highly select amount of people, but even then I watered it down, obscured the weakness and downplayed it. I’ve done this to myself too, deluding myself that these weaknesses aren’t having the impact on my life they actually are and that strengths can compensate for them.
Obviously there’s something to be said for maxing out your strengths. But there’s also something to be said for us only being as strong as our weakest part. No one says you need to bring your weakest part up to the level of your strongest. But if you have a weakness that’s basically making you lame, you need to get it so you can at least walk again.
Take the Understand Myself personality test offered by Jordan Peterson and you’ll soon have your weakness smack you right in your face.
If you rank high percentile for neuroticism or low in conscientious, you immediately know where you need to put systematic plans in place to counteract them.
If you’re high in neuroticism, you could plan daily meditations that happen at the same time. And you could use a powerful habit creation system like Spar to make sure you actually stick to them. And when you stick to them, you’ll notice your feelings of anxiety drop. Then maybe you’ll want to try something else. Push yourself a little bit. Try going for a public speaking course for example.
If you’re low in conscientiousness, you might schedule a plan to take Thomas Frank’s productivity system course and follow along with it. Then you’ll make time every day to review your schedule and calendar.
6 – Have a power hour.
Stephen Covey calls it a power hour. Hal Elrod calls it the miracle morning.
The name doesn’t matter. The principle is this:
Before you do anything for anyone else, you try to snatch some time away for yourself to improve yourself (“sharpen your saw”) physically, mentally, and spiritually.
Wake up earlier and spend some time in meditation or prayer.
Read a few pages of a book that will benefit you or covers something you want to learn.
Get the blood flowing with a run or some yoga or calisthenics.
Then get into your day with energy.
7 – Have a “big project” that is quantifiable.
Years blend together and become a homogenous blob of nothing if you don’t pick a “big play” each year.
It’s up to you to define what “big” is. My definition would be it has to feel big to you. Not so big that it’s impossible. But big enough that it makes you a little scared, despite the fact that you know you can probably do it with some effort in a year.
Big moves might be:
- Doing your first stand-up comedy gig
- Switching careers/getting promoted
- Taking a course in public speaking
- Making an independent film
- Starting a new charity
- Starting a side hustle
- Throwing a big party
- Becoming a parent
- Publishing a book
- Getting a six pack
When you look back on this year, what do you want the “big thing” of the year to be?
What would you be happy having as part of your life’s hall of fame?
8 – Develop a new skill.
Alongside a big move, you should pick a brand new skill to develop.
Sure, there’s something to be said for being the best in something. But being the best takes a lifetime of dedication and commitment to one area and the competition is relentless and your chances are low.
But you can get into the top 10% or 5% or even 1% fairly easily if you practice every single day (using deliberate practice) for a year.
Pick a skill that will either build on the other skills you already have or is something you’ve always been drawn to or you think you’ll enjoy and just go for it.
I love Scott Adam’s list of worthy skills in this book, How to Fail at Everything and Still Win Big. He cites sales and persuasion and golf and public speaking as a few worthy skills.
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9 – Read a book a week.
What I really mean when I say read a book a week is to commit to focused consistent reading that culminates in roughly 50 books a year.
I don’t mean pick books that are small and easy and trashy and read them at breakneck speed just so you can get a quota for 52 books by the end of the year.
If you read for 30+ minutes a day consistently, it doesn’t matter if you fall short of the goal.
If you’re reading big books like Moby Dick and War and Peace or you’re reading Aurelius’ Meditations and taking notes, it doesn’t matter if you fall short.
You get my drift?
Read hard books consistently and try to read a lot of them.
10 – Deep work
Finally, have a project that you are passionate about completing and commit to batching long uninterrupted periods of time every day to complete it.
This is called deep work and it’s the reason we were put on this planet.