Why Your Habits Will Make or Break You

In this newsletter, I would like to discuss the importance of daily habits. I believe they are everything. Let's get straight to it.

I.

A few years ago, I came across a quote by strength coach Dan John:

"If it is important, do it every day. If it's not important, don't do it at all."

This is as succinct a recipe for success as I have ever seen.

The things you do every day, without fail, determine who you become in the future:

If you work out every day, five years from now, you will be lean and strong.

If you cold-call a dozen clients each day, five years from now, you will be wealthy.

If you talk to an attractive stranger every day, five years from now, you will have sexual abundance.

But if you implement a new behavior, then stop, then continue, then stop, etc., it will be as if you had never started in the first place. There will be zero gains.

There is no point in doing things occasionally. You might as well stop doing them altogether.

II.

This fallacy of starting and stopping is best illustrated by the survivor analogy (an idea I stole from Jeff Olson).

Most of us live life like we are the survivors of a shipwreck.

At first, we tread water.

But then we get lazy from the constant effort. Slowly, we sink beneath the water level.

At first, we are fine. We still have some spare breath. It actually feels nice to let go and relax.

But at some point, we realize we can't continue like this or we will drown. "It's action time! I gotta turn things around!"

So, laboriously, we work our way up to the surface again. "Ah, that's better. Fresh air!"

But what happens next? You guessed it. After a while, we start to sink under again.

This is how we waste our lives away — going up and down, up and down, ad nauseam.

But we never reach the darn shore. We never set foot upon the island nearby, where we would thrive.

It's insanity.

III.

You can only do so many important things every day. That's because your energy fluctuates.

Some days, you will be bursting with energy. You will easily get around to all your important habits and still have gas in the tank.

But on many other days, you will have less energy. Maybe you didn't sleep well. Maybe you are mentally exhausted because of an argument. Maybe work is killing you.

Yet, you must still execute those important habits, or otherwise, there won't be long-term gains (see above).

This will only work if your chosen habits are manageable, even under adverse conditions.

That means fewer daily habits.

It also means making peace with the fact that you won't get around to everything in your life.

If you apply yourself, you can become outstanding at one thing. If you are an absolute workhorse, you might manage to get decent at an additional 1–2 things. But you will be mediocre or bad at most other things.

And that's okay. It's the price of excellence.

There are a million more things I want to say about the importance of habits, but it has been a busy week. I'll save those for another newsletter.

But I am never too busy to hear from you! If you have comments or questions, please reach out to me.

Until next week,

Niels