Here's my gym schedule from last year and then from recent months.
Embarrassing:
Better:
That's at 7:30am, every time. In addition to this, 2-3 days a week of MMA.
The only difference? My friend moved closer to me and we agreed on a lifting and training schedule.
I pick him up every morning.
If I'm late, I get a "where tf are you?" text. Doesn't matter if I'm hungover, if I'm tired, if I'm sore. It's the schedule.
Everything in life is like this.
There are some people that would do this without having any accountability partner, or system. They just wake up and stick to the gameplan every single day. Good for them, I have never been that consistent. Some days I will be fired up. Other days I am stuck to a computer working on my business and don't want to ruin the flow. Is that laziness? Maybe.
If I was perfectly disciplined, I wouldn't need any accountability or system. But I rarely rely on my own discipline. I use discipline to make difficult decisions that are impactful that allow me to do the hard stuff, but for small daily decisions I rely on something else.... setting up my environment.
In all areas, I focus on setting up my environment first before ever worrying about discipline. It is easier to make one smart decision that makes all of your other decisions easy.
Examples:
1. Diet: I don't rely on discipline to eat well. I have the bulk of my groceries delivered and they are things like lean meat, eggs, veggies, etc. If I mindlessly want to eat food, I can go eat a hard-boiled egg with some mustard, then back to work. There are no donuts in my house, no leftover pasta, no cereal, etc. If there was, I would absolutely eat it, but it's not even there.
2. Business: When I started my home services company, I knew that if I did projects, I would slack off and not always be motivated to hunt for more work. I knew that if instead I signed people up for recurring services, it would force me to get the work done. And I was right. We now have a shit ton of work to do that never stops. There is zero opportunity to not be productive. It would be insane to just not show up to scheduled work. But, if the only work you have scheduled is what you constantly go out and hunt for, it's easy to be lazy. Now, we have employees. They have a responsibility to show up and work. I have a responsibility to give them enough work to do.
3. Business investors/partners: If growing the company is up to me, it's easy to wait until next year for some things. There's no pressure. With partners, they send me texts that say "I hope you're ready for handling 4 more crews for my location this year, I'm going to spend a shit ton on ads, you better be able to handle it". It forced me to create a customer portal and app, It forced me to create an instant quoting system. It forced me to change our main office systems and hire more people.
I could go on and on.
But the end result is that I wake up and know exactly what NEEDS to be done. BUT, you should only setup pressure for things you WANT to do, but want to make easier to do. Don't create obligations for bullshit you don't want. Create accountability for things you DO want.
If you don't have systems, or an accountability partner, or a way to build habits, it's still your fault if something doesn't get done. Discipline is great, and it will get you far. I just know myself, and I know that if I don't have someone to meet at the gym on a regular schedule, I am much less likely to go on scheduled days. If there's pizza in my fridge, I am probably going to eat it. If I had no work already scheduled for tomorrow, there's a higher chance nothing will get done. It's about making decisions once up front, so that every subsequent decision is much easier. At the end of the day, your discipline will not create results, your actions will, whether it was an easy decision or a hard one.
Think about everything that you want to do, and think about people who are in environments that make it easy to get that stuff done. Try to replicate that in some way in your life. When I look around, I am usually not surprised where people end up in life. The guy who hangs out with navy seals is in great shape. The guy with a business owner friend group has his own business. etc. Think of ways to make it easy on yourself. That will probably be the thing that actually changes your life, not deciding in an emotional state "enough is enough, I'm going to be more disciplined!" Maybe it lasts, maybe it doesn't, but it will likely last a lot longer if you make it easier on yourself.
The more specific, the better. Joining a group with a similar interest will not do much by itself. If the group schedules regular meetings, the only thing you will do regularly is have meetings.
But if your friend is a business partner with you, and he puts pressure on you and sets revenue goals, you will hit them. If your friend rides with you to the gym 3 days a week, you will show up. Accountability partners that just have meetings will just have disappointing meetings. "Yeah, I forgot to go to the gym, sorry". That doesn't do much either. Now you just feel guilty. Fat and sad, great combo.
Better to create an actual obligation to do the literal thing you need to perform more consistently. Turn it into a job, or an appointment. Something you have to show up for.
Embarrassing:
Better:
That's at 7:30am, every time. In addition to this, 2-3 days a week of MMA.
The only difference? My friend moved closer to me and we agreed on a lifting and training schedule.
I pick him up every morning.
If I'm late, I get a "where tf are you?" text. Doesn't matter if I'm hungover, if I'm tired, if I'm sore. It's the schedule.
Everything in life is like this.
There are some people that would do this without having any accountability partner, or system. They just wake up and stick to the gameplan every single day. Good for them, I have never been that consistent. Some days I will be fired up. Other days I am stuck to a computer working on my business and don't want to ruin the flow. Is that laziness? Maybe.
If I was perfectly disciplined, I wouldn't need any accountability or system. But I rarely rely on my own discipline. I use discipline to make difficult decisions that are impactful that allow me to do the hard stuff, but for small daily decisions I rely on something else.... setting up my environment.
In all areas, I focus on setting up my environment first before ever worrying about discipline. It is easier to make one smart decision that makes all of your other decisions easy.
Examples:
1. Diet: I don't rely on discipline to eat well. I have the bulk of my groceries delivered and they are things like lean meat, eggs, veggies, etc. If I mindlessly want to eat food, I can go eat a hard-boiled egg with some mustard, then back to work. There are no donuts in my house, no leftover pasta, no cereal, etc. If there was, I would absolutely eat it, but it's not even there.
2. Business: When I started my home services company, I knew that if I did projects, I would slack off and not always be motivated to hunt for more work. I knew that if instead I signed people up for recurring services, it would force me to get the work done. And I was right. We now have a shit ton of work to do that never stops. There is zero opportunity to not be productive. It would be insane to just not show up to scheduled work. But, if the only work you have scheduled is what you constantly go out and hunt for, it's easy to be lazy. Now, we have employees. They have a responsibility to show up and work. I have a responsibility to give them enough work to do.
3. Business investors/partners: If growing the company is up to me, it's easy to wait until next year for some things. There's no pressure. With partners, they send me texts that say "I hope you're ready for handling 4 more crews for my location this year, I'm going to spend a shit ton on ads, you better be able to handle it". It forced me to create a customer portal and app, It forced me to create an instant quoting system. It forced me to change our main office systems and hire more people.
I could go on and on.
But the end result is that I wake up and know exactly what NEEDS to be done. BUT, you should only setup pressure for things you WANT to do, but want to make easier to do. Don't create obligations for bullshit you don't want. Create accountability for things you DO want.
If you don't have systems, or an accountability partner, or a way to build habits, it's still your fault if something doesn't get done. Discipline is great, and it will get you far. I just know myself, and I know that if I don't have someone to meet at the gym on a regular schedule, I am much less likely to go on scheduled days. If there's pizza in my fridge, I am probably going to eat it. If I had no work already scheduled for tomorrow, there's a higher chance nothing will get done. It's about making decisions once up front, so that every subsequent decision is much easier. At the end of the day, your discipline will not create results, your actions will, whether it was an easy decision or a hard one.
Think about everything that you want to do, and think about people who are in environments that make it easy to get that stuff done. Try to replicate that in some way in your life. When I look around, I am usually not surprised where people end up in life. The guy who hangs out with navy seals is in great shape. The guy with a business owner friend group has his own business. etc. Think of ways to make it easy on yourself. That will probably be the thing that actually changes your life, not deciding in an emotional state "enough is enough, I'm going to be more disciplined!" Maybe it lasts, maybe it doesn't, but it will likely last a lot longer if you make it easier on yourself.
The more specific, the better. Joining a group with a similar interest will not do much by itself. If the group schedules regular meetings, the only thing you will do regularly is have meetings.
But if your friend is a business partner with you, and he puts pressure on you and sets revenue goals, you will hit them. If your friend rides with you to the gym 3 days a week, you will show up. Accountability partners that just have meetings will just have disappointing meetings. "Yeah, I forgot to go to the gym, sorry". That doesn't do much either. Now you just feel guilty. Fat and sad, great combo.
Better to create an actual obligation to do the literal thing you need to perform more consistently. Turn it into a job, or an appointment. Something you have to show up for.
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