Creating a routine to become better
Did you make meaningful progress on a worthwhile pursuit today?
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life, and you will call it fate.
Carl Jung
Did you make meaningful progress on a worthwhile pursuit today?
This question cuts through the noise and forces us to be honest about how we spend our time each day.
If we’re not intentional with our time, we default to moving through the day on autopilot, filling idle time with mindless scrolling or consumption. Letting days slip through our fingers leaves us feeling guilty and frustrated for wasting the limited time we have.
We should ask ourselves this question each day to keep us honest, force us to reflect on how we spend our time, and decide if our routines and habits are progressing us forward or holding us back.
Asking this question also forces us to define what a worthwhile pursuit is and what it means to make meaningful progress.
Defining worthwhile and meaningful
What makes a pursuit worthwhile isn’t how we feel about it or what area of life it’s focused on. A worthwhile pursuit is something that helps us become a better person.
Worthwhile pursuits can never be accomplished, and we would still invest our time in them if no one else was watching. Becoming a better parent is a worthwhile pursuit, but getting a promotion at work is not.
Defining these pursuits is important, but we also need to make sure we’re progressing ourselves forward within the context of each pursuit.
If all we do is clock in and clock out, it will eventually lead to some improvement, but the progress will be trivial. We can make progress just by showing up, but it won’t be meaningful.
Meaningful progress is taking intentional action to achieve specific and non-trivial advancements in our abilities.
Showing up at the gym each day is a step in the right direction, but to make meaningful progress, we need to intentionally execute a training plan that delivers the specific results we’re looking for.
With a better understanding of where and how we should be spending our time, we can audit each day to spend more time on intentional efforts to become better instead of letting each day slip by in a deluge of mindless consumption.
Accumulating purposeful habits
When we first start incorporating these intentional efforts into our day, it will be difficult to pull ourselves out of the rut of our normal routines.
But if we continue to ask ourselves if we’ve made meaningful progress every day, this prompt will catalyze us to make actions that create meaningful progress a part of our daily routine.
If we stay consistent, our default behavior will turn from mindless consumption to intentional improvement. Over time, we can accumulate new routines and habits in all the different areas of our lives until our autopilot behavior makes us a better person.
The more we can track these efforts and reward ourselves for progress, the more it will stick. Our days will stop feeling wasted and start feeling inspiring.
Instead of lying in bed at night, wondering how we wasted another day, we can sleep soundly knowing that we’re becoming better.
Prompts
Create a list of 5 things that count as “making meaningful progress on a worthwhile pursuit”. How can you make time to do at least one of them every day?
What are your status quo habits that help you make meaningful progress on worthwhile pursuits?
What is one new intentional daily action that you’re working on incorporating into your daily routine to make meaningful progress on a worthwhile pursuit?
Deep Dive
The best-selling book on habits and behavior change.
Thanks for reading! I’ll see you next Sunday.
Kevin