8 Steps That Will Radically Change Your Life in 30 Days or Less, Guaranteed.

[cashis]

Great post! I always thought people were just made a certain way, as in someone loves vanilla ice cream, and someone else hates it. But I guess that applies for personal taste only, the rest are excuses and false narratives.
I also thought I was just not a morning person, until I managed to establish a proper sleep cycle. Now, morning is my favorite time to wake up. I feel more energetic and my mind is clearer as I go about my day.

 

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[Montina Portis]

This article is fantastic! Today I submitted my resignation and some are surprised to know that I made the decision to exit over a year ago. From Dec. 2013 to Feb. 24, 2014 I focused...I was laser focused. I installed a timer on my Mac. I stopped updating my personal FB status. I invested time learning how to leverage social media, build content and courses, write and publish books and make money online. I focused on taking action every single day when I was tired, sick and simply just didn't feel like it. I woke up early, stayed up late, invested in books, trainings, audios and let people go that were not aligned with my future hopes and dreams. Excellent article and I downloaded the spreadsheet, thank you! Success is more about what you need to STOP doing versus START doing. ~MJ

 

[masaldana2]

Thanks MJ!
video games can become very addicting to me...

 

[Thoelk]

Thanks MJ!
video games can become very addicting to me...

I'm in the same boat, to make it even worse... I applied the Fastlane mindset in my gaming experience (making ingame-money through leverage & hustling, instead of mindless grinding = slowlane gaming).. How stupid of me to waste my time fastlaning in a fantasy-world, while I could use the same techniques in the real world...

This book really was (and still is, because of this forum) an eye-opener!

 

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[Benten]

#1: Accept Reality: There Are No Shortcuts. Real Change Requires a Real Process.

Let’s first get the uncomfortable shit out of the way.

Anything worthwhile in life will require a worthwhile effort. There are no shortcuts. There are NO silver bullets, NO magic pills, and NO secret sauces. If you’re still trolling the internet looking for this stuff, move along. You’ve got the wrong forum, the wrong article, and the wrong author.

So lets start with the old guru mantra “take action!”

We say it a lot around here: Take action! Take action!

While action is important, action isn’t what creates change.

Taking action, by itself, is just an event that produces little, if any results. In fact, “taking action” is right behind “do what you love” as one of the biggest guru hoaxes ever perpetrated on the self-improvement industry.

Blasphemy?

Here’s why.

“Taking action” is merely a micro-task to a process, and a process is what precedes real change.

What’s a process? A process is a systematized series of focused actions. A process is repeated. A process is “taking action X 1000" and making adjustments along the way.

Once a process is established it then becomes a habit, which then integrates the process into your mind as automatic, instinctual, and almost subconscious. It actually becomes woven into your existence. The result is a lifestyle which ultimately creates the change you want. The change isn’t fleeting or short-lived, but permanent. Short-cuts are short for a reason— they don’t last.

Unfortunately, most people leverage “taking action” into some sort of mental masturbation trick designed to give us a fleeting "feel good" moment. It’s a temporary exercise orchestrated to fool yourself into thinking that you are doing something, when in actuality, you’re just painting lipstick on the pig. You’re committed to the idea of change, but not committed to the process of change.

Hit the gym the first week of January. See all those people? They’re committed to the idea of change (which are just fleeting thoughts) but not committed to the process (which is the focused action). By February, 95% of them will be gone.

View attachment 6828

You see, going to the gym constitutes “taking action”. However, if you never return, will anything really change? Not a damn thing except for that moment of “feel good” which is now, long gone.

Want to eat better and shed a few pounds? Great— for lunch you have steamed halibut and broccoli. Awesome choice. Healthy and nutritious, a perfect decision for your goals. Unfortunately, for dinner you’re back at the old double-bacon cheeseburger with fries. Again, absolutely nothing has changed despite “taking action.”

Ever hear someone say “I’m on a diet?” What they’re really saying is this:

I am NOT committed to permanent change.
I am NOT committed to the process.
I am NOT committed to a transformation from action, to habit.

The word diet implicitly means FAIL. Diets are event-driven based on “taking action” — but the word implies temporary, which implies failure of process.

Diets die and only succeed when they become lifestyles, making the diet, no diet at all— but a simple way of living.

You see, your lifestyle is what produces the real change you seek. That’s how you make a difference in your life. No pill, no diet, and no book can give you the “secret” — the secret lies within yourself, your process, and your expectations of that process.

Focused action > Committed and Repeated > Habit > Lifestyle.



#2: Identify What You Want

What exactly do you want?

Envision yourself time-shifting 1 year into the future at a New Years Eve party. Envision yourself celebrating the year that was, the year that changed EVERYTHING. Take a moment and reflect on the accomplishments you are celebrating in this moment.

Do you want to lose 60 pounds and did it? Did you eat better and got your cholesterol down to 180? Did you enter a fitness competition and placed in the top three? Did you start a new business and doubled your income? Quit your job? Met your soulmate? Complete a full length novel?

Identify EXACTLY what you want to feel in this moment and envision yourself there.

If you don't know where you want to go, you don't know the road that will get you there.



#3: Apply Mathematics To That End Goal, If Possible

Now that you’ve envisioned how awesome your new year will be, attach a numerical figure to your goal.

If “lose weight” is the goal, this would translate into “Lose 25 pounds” or “Get to 15% bodyfat”. Likewise, if your goal is to “start a business” you would need to identify a numerical number, say sales, profits, or # of customers.

The mathematics of the change is crucially important as subjective milestones cannot be measured, and often are action-fakes for real progress.

For example, if “start a business” is the goal, what measure identifies meeting the goal? The moment you get business cards? Or a fancy logo? The moment you launch the website?

While these milestones are apart of the process, they are merely circle-jerking action-fakes designed to make us think that we’ve accomplished a goal, when the real goal should be a sustainable mathematical momentum that keeps us moving toward habitual and addictive producing results.

If it cannot be sustained, it isn’t real — it isn’t habit and it isn’t lifestyle.



#4: Segment The End Goal Into It’s Daily “Take-Action” Step

After you isolate what you want to achieve and quantified it, break down that achievement into it’s core “take action” component, or what I call “the daily target”. What daily routine will get you there?

For example, if you objective is to write a novel, your daily target could be to write 500 words everyday, or a minimum of 2 hours. If your objective is 12% body fat and six-pack abs, your daily target would be to either workout and/or eat no more than 2,000 calories. The important thing here is to isolate the micro-task that builds the process.

If your goal cannot be measured, use a daily accounting instead. For example, on my attached spreadsheet I have an end goal as “education” — I want to expand my knowledge. In order create change in this area, I will strive to learn something new everyday. Doing so completes the task.



#5: Identify What Threatens The Daily Target.

In other words, you need to identify what IS NOT working. What can and will threaten your daily target? There’s that old adage: The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing while expecting different results. In other words, the choices you made this YEAR resulted in the CONSEQUENCES you have NOW.

In order to hit the daily targets you’ve set, you’ve got to identify exactly WHAT will stop you from achieving them. Why have you failed for the last 10 years? What things do you need to stop doing to make this happen THIS YEAR? Success is more about what you need to STOP doing versus START doing.

• Are you spending 5 hours a day on Facebook playing the latest and greatest game?
• Are you jumping from one idea to the next with no focused action or plan?
• Does your ego require an expensive BMW? Which then requires you to maintain your 60 hour a week soul-sucking corporate job?
  
• Are you giving into false narratives (I have no money! I have no skills! I'm not a morning person!) that preclude you from making a change?

In order to tackle the hardest part of process, which is “committed and repeated”, you have to dig down into your life and expose everything that is thwarting process.

It all boils down to one thing: Your choices.

"Greatness is a lot of small things done daily."

​

What are you choosing instead? What bad habits are stealing your time and derailing your progress?

The bottomline is, if you don’t have what you want, its because of one reason only: You’re simply not making the required sacrifice. You are choosing actions not correlated to your goal.



#6: Target Threats By Identifying Where the Battles Are Won and Lost.

Most people fight their wars on the wrong battlefield, resulting in loss after loss. If you only knew WHERE and HOW to fight, you would have a fighting chance to create the change you want.

For example, if you want to lose fifty pounds, you have to first identify where the battle is won and lost.

Most people think the battle is won at the refrigerator. As you open up the door, the battle begins:

• “OMG, don’t eat that ice cream! Pick something else!
• “Oooh, look at the cheesecake! Should I eat a few bites? No don’t!
• “Mmmm, I would love an ice cold Pepsi right about now… but I shouldn’t.
• “Don’t eat that block of cheese! OMG I can’t stand it!
• “No, don’t grab that gallon of ice cream! Oh, just a little dish won’t hurt…

Sorry champ, but you’ve already lost.

The war you’re fighting isn’t fought at the refrigerator, its fought at the grocery store. The moment you put this crap in your shopping cart, is the moment you’ve lost the war. You’re fighting a war with sticks and stones while your enemy has an AR-15.

Been spending hours watching mindless reality television? The battle you need to fight isn’t on the couch with the remote control, it’s on the telephone. Pick up the phone and cancel the freaking cable TV.



#6) Attack bad habits with inconvenience and/or pain.

Once you identify the battlegrounds, your bad habits are now ripe for attack.

How do you attack them?

By leveraging your natural human instinct which is to seek the path of least resistance. In other words, make your bad habits a royal pain in the a$$ to continue. Make them invasive. Inconvenient.

In our refrigerator example, if you’ve won the war at the grocery store, you now have attached inconvenience to the bad habit. If you want ice cream, you’ve got to hop in your car, drive to the store, troll the grocery aisle, buy it, and drive home. Not super complicated, but certainly not super convenient.

If you’re trying to stop playing video games, pack up your XBOX console and sell it. Or throw it in the attic. Now if you want to play, you’ve got to climb a ceiling ladder and crawl through a dusty attic to unpack it, wire it up, and play.

Again, not very convenient.



#7) Reward Daily “Action-Taking” Accomplishments with a Physical Cue.

I don’t know what it is, but I’ve learned that crossing-off line-items on my to-do list is addictive.

It feels good.

I love seeing that “X” being marked off as it gives me a sense of reward. If you can do the same with your daily “action taking” we can encourage process and habit changing behavior to take place.

I’ve attached a spreadsheet that can help us accomplish this. It also outlines this entire exercise in procedural change.

Going back to our “lose weight” example, your daily ritual should include a visit to the gym and a better diet. Each day this is done successfully, mark down its accomplishment in a journal or a spreadsheet. On my spreadsheet, it’s achievement is marked by an X.

The objective of the spreadsheet is to create a mental map of your “action taking” so it eventually forms a process.

The goal is to get vertical with the X’s as much as possible for each goal target. If you target ONE X MINIMUM for each day for each row, you will experience KAIZEN, or constant improvement.

Over the course of thirty days, you will see noticeable results.

In a year, you won’t recognize yourself!!!

Optimally, you want to create columns of Xs on consecutive days for each objective. The minimum goal should be at least one X on each day— this means you are improving yourself every single day. To get started, I suggest a simply 30-day challenge, or baby steps, a 10-day challenge.

Pick a goal, line up some “X”s and see how to goes for you.

On my spreadsheet, I have several categories. Each are designed to improve my life in a different facet. This challenge also exposed an interesting "false narrative" in my life ... The last 2 weeks, I've been getting up at 4:15AM and hitting the gym. While the early days were a struggle, I'm to the point now where I discovered that "I'm not a morning person" was simply a narrative I told myself so I didn't have to exert the discipline to get up.

So, who wants to change their life in the next 30 days?



KAIZEN: Japanese for "improvement" or "change for the best", refers to philosophy or practices that focus upon continuous improvement of processes.

​

This is pure church, not mass media standard ranting. This is where the rubber meets the road. By the way MJ when is your next book coming out? Give us a teaser as to the topic. A suggestion for you is "OWN YOUR LIFE" OR "Starting From Scratch" The no holds bar to personal growth and achievement.
This way people get a practical step by step guide(checklist) that can be applied to attain success and acomplish anything they choose. Something to Consider MJ. Amazing information in a no BS format.

 

[masaldana2]

I'm in the same boat, to make it even worse... I applied the Fastlane mindset in my gaming experience (making ingame-money through leverage & hustling, instead of mindless grinding = slowlane gaming).. How stupid of me to waste my time fastlaning in a fantasy-world, while I could use the same techniques in the real world...

This book really was (and still is, because of this forum) an eye-opener!

I get what you're saying specially RPG games.... but thanks to MJ's book and B&D I uninstalled all my PC games last year and start living my life, awesome things happened since then!
-got more muscle
-more confident
-pitch my idea to investors
-got uncomfortable
-learned copy and human psychology
-1 year to finish my engineering degree

 

[Phenom]

Great post MJ! Just the kick in the arse I needed!!!

 

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[beatgoezon]

Thanks so much for an eye opening article... I've been getting sloppy with my discipline and habits and this has helped me get my vision cleared up

 

[Eskil]

Didn't see this until now since I was at B&P, but wanted to say - Excellent post! Marking off steps in a spreadsheet with an 'X' is something I've been doing for a while and I can attest that it really works. Really gives you that rewarding / satisfactory sense he's talking about!

After a while, it becomes habit, and you want to strive for more and more things done. Almost like when playing a video game, we want that feeling of more and more accomplished (like more game points or whatever). Checking off things in your action list feels the same way and it really does get addictive.

 

[anthonylau]

Great Post from MJ. Let us start doing it and see changes and respond in 30 days.

 

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[fishnukin]

I'm all up for the 30 days challenge!
Thanks for sharing great tips & excel spreadhsset MJ!

 

[AndrewKent]

MJ, I started doing this on Feb 20th when you first posted it. It's amazing what self-accountability can do for you. There were a couple days in the last few weeks when I didn't feel like doing what was on my "daily list," but just knowing that I'd have to sit down at the end of the day and not put that "X" in box made me stick to it.

This has taught me a few things, but there's especially one thing I want to share with anyone who is a side-walking fool like me, and I'd like anyone with some real sidewalk experience to chime in here as well.

Here's what I've come to realize, and I feel so dumb because I've heard it a million times over, but...

Start where you are, no matter how insignificant you think it is.

My example: I'm a broke SOB. I am a side walker. I have been for a while now, even though I knew all about the traps of the sidewalk when I first read the Millionaire Fastlane a few years back.

I recently realized that much of this is from my impatience and from my unwillingness to endure the sacrifices required to build lasting habits that would one day lead to my success.

I want to go back in time and slap the shit out myself now. Seriously, three to five years ago, if I would have implemented just half of my current daily habits, I highly doubt I would be sitting here writing about how broke and dumb I am now.

The past couple of years, I've made some terrible financial decisions, one of which was falling out of the habit of saving. I know I have to get back into that habit if I ever want to climb out of this godforsaken hole I'm in now.

So now, every single day, I put at least $1 in a savings account.

You might laugh at this and tell me I'm a slowlane fool for it, but I'm not fooling myself thinking this will get me rich (ever). I'm trying to build the lasting habit of saving, so I'm doing it every day in any way that I can. Being a side-walking idiot for so long, I figured that if I wanted to make lasting, habitual change, I should start where I could and I should start with something that I knew I could manage and make into a habit.

Not only is it working for me, I get reinforcement every day that the small things I do (in all areas of life) can have a substantial long-term impact. That's something that never sunk in for me previously.

I remember quite distinctly in the Millionaire Fastlane book the parts about how each and every dollar you put away is a "freedom fighter" and how you need to develop habits of saving every day--habits like emptying your change into jar and putting it into a savings account.

That's essentially what I'm doing. Of course, this isn't my strategy for building wealth; it's simply my strategy for building a long-term habit that will help me down the road.

So, I challenge anyone who is a side walking fool like me--nothing in the bank, not a dime to speak of, just drifting through life--to put $1 a day into savings for the next year, and more if you can.

I figured if I can't even save $30 a month, there's no way I'm ever going to be able to save $300, or $3000, or $30 million, for that matter.
I'm working daily on other areas of my life as well, but I thought I'd share this in case anyone else finds it helpful. Would love to hear what you think.

 

[andviv]

Tell me how I can get rich like the WhatsApp developers! I want overnight success and I want it tonight!

The WhatsApp developers is not an example of overnight success. There was a process behind this. See, this is one of those examples where 'overnight success' took years in the making.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

So now, every single day, I put at least $1 in a savings account.

Awesome to hear this.

Some spectators might be thinking, "Ha! A buck a day? That's not going to make you rich!!!"

While that may be true from a dollar perspective, what they don't realize is that it is NOT the buck a day that's important, it's the discipline to do it to the point where it becomes HABIT. Then when you start bringing in a bigger income, perhaps 5 or 6 figures monthly, you will have the skill to save most of it, and that's where it really matters.

At some point, the Xs on the spreadsheet stop and become irrelevant. Why? Because the action, or behavior, is now a habit. The habit is what creates the change.

You only need enough discipline to create and burn the habit into your life. At that point, the required discipline for maintenance is marginal, if not non-existent.

 

[ryanjk]

Awesome article, this reminder is exactly what I needed to get me back on track.

A great tool I use to form habits is an app called chains. The website is chains.cc. It is basically a daily to do list that builds up over time and you build these "chains" of habits, really effective way to build and maintain habits.

 

[mentalic]

Awesome post, I am building my Kaizen sheet right now!

 

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[ExecutionisKing]

Once a process is established it then becomes a habit, which then integrates the process into your mind as automatic, instinctual, and almost subconscious. It actually becomes woven into your existence. The result is a lifestyle which ultimately creates the change you want

You’re committed to the idea of change, but not committed to the process of change.

I am NOT committed to permanent change.
I am NOT committed to the process.
I am NOT committed to a transformation from action, to habit.
The word diet implicitly means FAIL. Diets are event-driven based on “taking action” — but the word implies temporary, which implies failure of process.

I have to comment here, because out of everything else I want to comment on, this just kind of blew my mind. I'm in great shape and healthy, by my lifestyle choices, but wow, I've never thought of a diet as setting yourself up for future failure. That's a revolutionary perspective to me.

If you don't know where you want to go, you don't know the road that will get you there.

If it cannot be sustained, it isn’t real — it isn’t habit and it isn’t lifestyle.

After you isolate what you want to achieve and quantified it, break down that achievement into it’s core “take action” component

the choices you made this YEAR resulted in the CONSEQUENCES you have NOW.

Success is more about what you need to STOP doing versus START doing.

if you don’t have what you want, its because of one reason only: You’re simply not making the required sacrifice

Most people fight their wars on the wrong battlefield, resulting in loss after loss. If you only knew WHERE and HOW to fight, you would have a fighting chance to create the change you want.

In other words, make your bad habits a royal pain in the a$$ to continue. Make them invasive. Inconvenient.

I'm to the point now where I discovered that "I'm not a morning person" was simply a narrative I told myself so I didn't have to exert the discipline to get up.

So many great nuggets here... I thought I was in a gold rush. Such an exhaustive set of insights and guidelines for making yourself great, as cheesy as that sounds. Totally agree with all this, and identify with a lot of it too. I'm going to print every one of these out on a different piece of paper and post it all around my room. Surround myself, for a constant reminder, so that escape is futile.

Read it a few days ago, but had to come back to digest it all. I want to just comment on each line. Agree with it. Give it my meaningless stamp of verification. But I'm going to shut up, before I tarnish the aura of your post, most of which I can't even find the words for.

More than deserving of Rep Speed. All of mine. Wish I had more.

 

[Jak]

I just downloaded the Kaizen worksheet, and can't wait to start on it. Video games are my biggest trouble, so I have deleted them from my computer. I also completely agree with AndrewKent, and "So now, every single day, I [will] put at least $1 in a savings account." I have neglected starting a savings account for too long, and I'm going to open one as soon as my bank opens.

 

[ik5837063]

Thanks so much.For some reason alot of things coming from you make so much sense to me.Thanks for this

 

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[Paul714]

This is some great advice for kicking habits that constantly deter me from my goals. Definitely implementing this today and for sure going to kick my fingernail biting habit for good. Thanks!

 

[Deleted0x8687]

#1: Accept Reality: There Are No Shortcuts. Real Change Requires a Real Process.

Let’s first get the uncomfortable shit out of the way.

Anything worthwhile in life will require a worthwhile effort. There are no shortcuts. There are NO silver bullets, NO magic pills, and NO secret sauces. If you’re still trolling the internet looking for this stuff, move along. You’ve got the wrong forum, the wrong article, and the wrong author.

So lets start with the old guru mantra “take action!”

We say it a lot around here: Take action! Take action!

While action is important, action isn’t what creates change.

Taking action, by itself, is just an event that produces little, if any results. In fact, “taking action” is right behind “do what you love” as one of the biggest guru hoaxes ever perpetrated on the self-improvement industry.

Blasphemy?

Here’s why.

“Taking action” is merely a micro-task to a process, and a process is what precedes real change.

What’s a process? A process is a systematized series of focused actions. A process is repeated. A process is “taking action X 1000" and making adjustments along the way.

Once a process is established it then becomes a habit, which then integrates the process into your mind as automatic, instinctual, and almost subconscious. It actually becomes woven into your existence. The result is a lifestyle which ultimately creates the change you want. The change isn’t fleeting or short-lived, but permanent. Short-cuts are short for a reason— they don’t last.

Unfortunately, most people leverage “taking action” into some sort of mental masturbation trick designed to give us a fleeting "feel good" moment. It’s a temporary exercise orchestrated to fool yourself into thinking that you are doing something, when in actuality, you’re just painting lipstick on the pig. You’re committed to the idea of change, but not committed to the process of change.

Hit the gym the first week of January. See all those people? They’re committed to the idea of change (which are just fleeting thoughts) but not committed to the process (which is the focused action). By February, 95% of them will be gone.

View attachment 6828

You see, going to the gym constitutes “taking action”. However, if you never return, will anything really change? Not a damn thing except for that moment of “feel good” which is now, long gone.

Want to eat better and shed a few pounds? Great— for lunch you have steamed halibut and broccoli. Awesome choice. Healthy and nutritious, a perfect decision for your goals. Unfortunately, for dinner you’re back at the old double-bacon cheeseburger with fries. Again, absolutely nothing has changed despite “taking action.”

Ever hear someone say “I’m on a diet?” What they’re really saying is this:

I am NOT committed to permanent change.
I am NOT committed to the process.
I am NOT committed to a transformation from action, to habit.

The word diet implicitly means FAIL. Diets are event-driven based on “taking action” — but the word implies temporary, which implies failure of process.

Diets die and only succeed when they become lifestyles, making the diet, no diet at all— but a simple way of living.

You see, your lifestyle is what produces the real change you seek. That’s how you make a difference in your life. No pill, no diet, and no book can give you the “secret” — the secret lies within yourself, your process, and your expectations of that process.

Focused action > Committed and Repeated > Habit > Lifestyle.



#2: Identify What You Want

What exactly do you want?

Envision yourself time-shifting 1 year into the future at a New Years Eve party. Envision yourself celebrating the year that was, the year that changed EVERYTHING. Take a moment and reflect on the accomplishments you are celebrating in this moment.

Do you want to lose 60 pounds and did it? Did you eat better and got your cholesterol down to 180? Did you enter a fitness competition and placed in the top three? Did you start a new business and doubled your income? Quit your job? Met your soulmate? Complete a full length novel?

Identify EXACTLY what you want to feel in this moment and envision yourself there.

If you don't know where you want to go, you don't know the road that will get you there.



#3: Apply Mathematics To That End Goal, If Possible

Now that you’ve envisioned how awesome your new year will be, attach a numerical figure to your goal.

If “lose weight” is the goal, this would translate into “Lose 25 pounds” or “Get to 15% bodyfat”. Likewise, if your goal is to “start a business” you would need to identify a numerical number, say sales, profits, or # of customers.

The mathematics of the change is crucially important as subjective milestones cannot be measured, and often are action-fakes for real progress.

For example, if “start a business” is the goal, what measure identifies meeting the goal? The moment you get business cards? Or a fancy logo? The moment you launch the website?

While these milestones are apart of the process, they are merely circle-jerking action-fakes designed to make us think that we’ve accomplished a goal, when the real goal should be a sustainable mathematical momentum that keeps us moving toward habitual and addictive producing results.

If it cannot be sustained, it isn’t real — it isn’t habit and it isn’t lifestyle.



#4: Segment The End Goal Into It’s Daily “Take-Action” Step

After you isolate what you want to achieve and quantified it, break down that achievement into it’s core “take action” component, or what I call “the daily target”. What daily routine will get you there?

For example, if you objective is to write a novel, your daily target could be to write 500 words everyday, or a minimum of 2 hours. If your objective is 12% body fat and six-pack abs, your daily target would be to either workout and/or eat no more than 2,000 calories. The important thing here is to isolate the micro-task that builds the process.

If your goal cannot be measured, use a daily accounting instead. For example, on my attached spreadsheet I have an end goal as “education” — I want to expand my knowledge. In order create change in this area, I will strive to learn something new everyday. Doing so completes the task.



#5: Identify What Threatens The Daily Target.

In other words, you need to identify what IS NOT working. What can and will threaten your daily target? There’s that old adage: The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing while expecting different results. In other words, the choices you made this YEAR resulted in the CONSEQUENCES you have NOW.

In order to hit the daily targets you’ve set, you’ve got to identify exactly WHAT will stop you from achieving them. Why have you failed for the last 10 years? What things do you need to stop doing to make this happen THIS YEAR? Success is more about what you need to STOP doing versus START doing.

• Are you spending 5 hours a day on Facebook playing the latest and greatest game?
• Are you jumping from one idea to the next with no focused action or plan?
• Does your ego require an expensive BMW? Which then requires you to maintain your 60 hour a week soul-sucking corporate job?
  
• Are you giving into false narratives (I have no money! I have no skills! I'm not a morning person!) that preclude you from making a change?

In order to tackle the hardest part of process, which is “committed and repeated”, you have to dig down into your life and expose everything that is thwarting process.

It all boils down to one thing: Your choices.

"Greatness is a lot of small things done daily."

​

What are you choosing instead? What bad habits are stealing your time and derailing your progress?

The bottomline is, if you don’t have what you want, its because of one reason only: You’re simply not making the required sacrifice. You are choosing actions not correlated to your goal.



#6: Target Threats By Identifying Where the Battles Are Won and Lost.

Most people fight their wars on the wrong battlefield, resulting in loss after loss. If you only knew WHERE and HOW to fight, you would have a fighting chance to create the change you want.

For example, if you want to lose fifty pounds, you have to first identify where the battle is won and lost.

Most people think the battle is won at the refrigerator. As you open up the door, the battle begins:

• “OMG, don’t eat that ice cream! Pick something else!
• “Oooh, look at the cheesecake! Should I eat a few bites? No don’t!
• “Mmmm, I would love an ice cold Pepsi right about now… but I shouldn’t.
• “Don’t eat that block of cheese! OMG I can’t stand it!
• “No, don’t grab that gallon of ice cream! Oh, just a little dish won’t hurt…

Sorry champ, but you’ve already lost.

The war you’re fighting isn’t fought at the refrigerator, its fought at the grocery store. The moment you put this crap in your shopping cart, is the moment you’ve lost the war. You’re fighting a war with sticks and stones while your enemy has an AR-15.

Been spending hours watching mindless reality television? The battle you need to fight isn’t on the couch with the remote control, it’s on the telephone. Pick up the phone and cancel the freaking cable TV.



#6) Attack bad habits with inconvenience and/or pain.

Once you identify the battlegrounds, your bad habits are now ripe for attack.

How do you attack them?

By leveraging your natural human instinct which is to seek the path of least resistance. In other words, make your bad habits a royal pain in the a$$ to continue. Make them invasive. Inconvenient.

In our refrigerator example, if you’ve won the war at the grocery store, you now have attached inconvenience to the bad habit. If you want ice cream, you’ve got to hop in your car, drive to the store, troll the grocery aisle, buy it, and drive home. Not super complicated, but certainly not super convenient.

If you’re trying to stop playing video games, pack up your XBOX console and sell it. Or throw it in the attic. Now if you want to play, you’ve got to climb a ceiling ladder and crawl through a dusty attic to unpack it, wire it up, and play.

Again, not very convenient.



#7) Reward Daily “Action-Taking” Accomplishments with a Physical Cue.

I don’t know what it is, but I’ve learned that crossing-off line-items on my to-do list is addictive.

It feels good.

I love seeing that “X” being marked off as it gives me a sense of reward. If you can do the same with your daily “action taking” we can encourage process and habit changing behavior to take place.

I’ve attached a spreadsheet that can help us accomplish this. It also outlines this entire exercise in procedural change.

Going back to our “lose weight” example, your daily ritual should include a visit to the gym and a better diet. Each day this is done successfully, mark down its accomplishment in a journal or a spreadsheet. On my spreadsheet, it’s achievement is marked by an X.

The objective of the spreadsheet is to create a mental map of your “action taking” so it eventually forms a process.

The goal is to get vertical with the X’s as much as possible for each goal target. If you target ONE X MINIMUM for each day for each row, you will experience KAIZEN, or constant improvement.

Over the course of thirty days, you will see noticeable results.

In a year, you won’t recognize yourself!!!

Optimally, you want to create columns of Xs on consecutive days for each objective. The minimum goal should be at least one X on each day— this means you are improving yourself every single day. To get started, I suggest a simply 30-day challenge, or baby steps, a 10-day challenge.

Pick a goal, line up some “X”s and see how to goes for you.

On my spreadsheet, I have several categories. Each are designed to improve my life in a different facet. This challenge also exposed an interesting "false narrative" in my life ... The last 2 weeks, I've been getting up at 4:15AM and hitting the gym. While the early days were a struggle, I'm to the point now where I discovered that "I'm not a morning person" was simply a narrative I told myself so I didn't have to exert the discipline to get up.

So, who wants to change their life in the next 30 days?



KAIZEN: Japanese for "improvement" or "change for the best", refers to philosophy or practices that focus upon continuous improvement of processes.

​

#2 is what I struggle with the most. I've always been a generalist with many interests.

Its hard to narrow things down and choose one direction. I read others' success stories and feel like I should be doing something similar.

But thanks for a great post MJ.

 

[Jak]

Its hard to narrow things down and choose one direction. I read others' success stories and feel like I should be doing something similar.

That's because you're thinking with an "event" mindset. The next time you see someone do something successful, instead of looking at his product and thinking you should be doing that too, look at his process and ask yourself how you can incorporate it into your own business.

 

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[Deleted0x8687]

I see your point Jak but to clarify, not saying I would copy that product or service. Trying to decide what I want to do is the hardest before I can even committ to the process. I've been writing and lifting most every day and is the only process I have going for me now but it won't pay the bills next month.

 

[Jak]

Naw, I didn't think you would copy anything. But you need to see that the idea really isn't a huge deal. Look up one of the idea extraction threads, it should help. PM me if you want to continue talking, I don't want to hijack MJ's thread.

 

[Deleted0x8687]

Cool, thanks man.

 

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[IAmTheJeff]

For bill paying pains, look at this thread: https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/guide-to-hustling-the-book.47963/
Pre order the book, pay the extra $25 for @RichKid's personalized advice, and read the original thread here:
https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/co...s-guide-to-buying-and-selling-anything.35889/

That's what I'll be working on until my real Fastlane product is ready for the market.

 

[AubreyJ]

This post was really helpful, and I love the spread sheet checklist idea. Great post, and great advice!

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Ok, fess up time...

Who completed 10 days of Xs? 30? Any new habits started?

 

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[Rem]

My newest habit has been going to the gym. My goal was (is) to lose a total of 45 lbs by Fall or I guess by October 1. I started with something simple as 5 lbs per month minimum. Very doable. I knew I would lose more at the beginning than towards the end. It's been 2 months and I am almost half way there. Lost a total of 21 lbs. I have shifted my goals to reach my ideal weight by August and will then beginning to take the focus off weight loss and sculpt my body into a MACHINE!!

I use MyFitnessPal as a tool with my daily goals and changed my eating habits to include more healthy dishes and less CRAP, and reduce my caloric intake to appropriate sizes.

 

[funkj25]

Ok, fess up time...

Who completed 10 days of Xs? 30? Any new habits started?

I didn't follow your plan step-by-step in terms of marking x's down, but I did recently break up with one of my girlfriends. Little Debbie. She and I had gotten close, really close over the last 6 months. I'm talking eating like several boxes a week by myself. I work out 16-17 hours a week so physically it's not like you see them on me so to speak. It's easier to not think about it when you're still in really good shape compared to the rest of society.

I knew I needed a change to get my brain in gear to really do all I want to do with business and athletics. Going strong, workouts feeling better and my brain isn't so full of fuzz as at the end of the day. So #6 really resonated with me as it was my exact problem and there's no looking back now.

Hoping some others have some success in recent changes.