And it needs to be in one place.
Each time you think of something you need to do, put it in one note on your phone so you know for certain it’s been captured. Then you can come back to it later.
Trying to remember or synthesize multiple locations will leak brain power without you knowing.
The advice you give someone else is often the advice you need to follow yourself.
I mean, I find this is true with everything I write on here…
Cause and effect is important to notice. They say if you don’t measure it, it can’t improve.
Some things are easy to measure. How many words you wrote on a page. How much weight you can lift at the gym. Other things are harder to pin down.
But if we can figure out a way to quantify the things we actually want to improve, to measure them somehow, we start to see the cause and effect of our own actions. When I do this, this happens. And once you can see that, you can adjust.
So what do you want to improve at? And how can you measure it, so you can actually improve it?
Have you ever made a plan with a friend to go out, and in the lead-up you know that if you hadn’t made the plan, you probably wouldn’t leave the house?
It’s cozier inside. Less resistance, less energy spent getting ready. And the truth is, both options are genuinely good. Home is comfortable. Out might mean a great night, a deeper connection, being there for something your friend needs. When both are good, we take the path of least resistance.
You know the feeling when they text an hour before: “can we rain check, I can’t do it”? That rush of relief. Now you don’t have to go out.
That’s the tell. Given the option, most of us will flake, even though there’s so much to gain from doing the thing.
So I think it’s important to make commitments outside ourselves, to people or structures that hold us to things that aren’t easy or comfortable. Because left to our own devices, we’ll take the out every time.
Do you have magic moments in your life?
A magic moment is anything you really, really enjoy. A cool conversation with a stranger. Someone smiling at you for no reason. Sitting down to your favorite show with your favorite snack and just thinking, life is good.
We have to record our magic moments.
And I don’t mean pulling your phone out and filming yourself having a good time. I mean starting a list somewhere, a note on your phone, whatever works for you. So much happens every single day in our lives that our brains simply cannot store all of it. What we want to do is train our brain to remember the things that were actually good.
Because here’s the thing: your life is just a collection of memories.
If that collection is made up of the hard things, the tough moments, the stuff that dragged you down, then you’re going to feel like you’ve had a hard life. But if you start recording the awesome little moments you genuinely loved, you’re training your brain to notice them. You start unpacking your week and suddenly you’ve got ten, twenty of these magic moments sitting there.
And what happens if you keep doing that every single week, for a whole year?
You end up with a whole list of awesome stuff.
We have to record these things. Otherwise, we’re just going to forget them.
Once you know what and why, you shouldn’t ask how.
You’ll end up doing it yourself.
Ask “Who?”
Then find a person to carry out the how.
Every week, I create a habit checklist of all the tasks I want to do across that week. I do it weekly rather than making one master list for the whole year, because life shifts a little each week, and refocusing regularly helps you stay honest about what actually matters right now. Things like a ten minute vocal warmup, a breathing exercise, or journaling.
For a while, I kept this checklist on a wall in my house, but I only did the habits when I happened to see it. I didn’t want it on the fridge either, since guests don’t need a tour of my personal habits. So this morning I found a better spot, the outside of my journal. Journaling is already one of the habits on my list, but it’s also something I reach for naturally anyway. Now, every time I pick up my journal, I see the checklist too, and I’m far more likely to actually do those small tasks, the kind that are easy to complete but just as easy to forget.
So here’s the question worth sitting with. What’s something you already do without thinking, and something you’d like to do consistently? And how could you link the two together, so one carries the other along with it?
I just interviewed high performance acting coach Jon Hunter on my podcast. We were talking about the idea of living the lifestyle of an actor, as opposed to treating it like a career.
What he meant was, instead of compartmentalising the soft skills necessary to be an actor, things like empathy, creativity, listening, playfulness, and so on, instead of saving those for when we have a job to do, we just practice them in our everyday life.
I really love this idea. One, it’s a time saver, but also, the things we need to learn in order to be an actor make us better humans.
I think for many endeavors, creative or otherwise, that we pursue in our lives, there are things that, if we allow them to just exist in our everyday life, they can start to improve our experience of it.
So, what are the things you’re currently compartmentalising that you could actually just live in your daily life?
You need little rewards.
There’s a spreadsheet I follow at each gym session that tells me what I lifted last time and I what I want to lift this time.
It worked fine and then I discovered you can change the colours of the boxes…
So now every time I lift slightly more than last week or increase my reps, I get to change the colour of the box GREEN!
Now when I go into the spreadsheet at the gym, I see green boxes dotted all over the place.
This little visual reward seems to give me the boost I need in those moments.
You need little rewards.
Special things require special places.
A beautiful gift is seen as beautiful because it’s in a lovely and thoughtful box.
We remember to use our tooth brush because it has a little home in the bathroom.
I’m about to begin rehearsing a show and I wondered why my relationship to the actual script wasn’t feeling as strong as other projects.
I realised it was because the script was floating around the house in random places; it didn’t have a home.
So yesterday I hole punched each section and put it neatly in ring binder. Everything I need to do that work is in one place.
When I look at the folder I get a little gleeful flutter. That project has a little home now and I’m much more likely to do do productive work with it.
