Mark Manson

Like I can't tell you how many times I have convinced myself that I have to reorient my entire life.

I'm gonna start waking up at 4.30 and I'm gonna go to the gym for 90 minutes every day and I'm gonna start meditating for 30 minutes and I'm gonna sign up for this new program that costs $1,000 and I try to do it all at once and of course I do it for three days and then I fail.

Whereas what has actually worked for me is something as simple as

putting my gym shoes by the front door so that it reminds me, hey, you're supposed to go run, asshole.

That's why your shoes are there.

For me to put my shoes on, it is easier to just walk out the door than it is to not walk out the door.

That has probably done more for me than like all of the drastic major changes I've ever tried to make in my life.

Every change requires a certain amount of energy.

And it's, especially if you're exerting willpower, there's almost like a budget of energy

Emotional energy that you can dedicate into something.

I mean, what makes this error worse, too, is that if you if like all those changes, right?

If you just took them one at a time, right?

Accomplishing the first one will make the second one that much easier, right?

So it's like if you just address your sleep.

simply by going to bed an hour earlier, waking up an hour earlier, you're going to be more rested, have more energy.

Your metabolism is going to function better, so you're going to make better decisions.

You're not going to be as tired during the day, so you're going to have more energy to actually

actually go to the gym when you want to go to the gym, right?

So people should line these up sequentially rather than trying to do them all at once.

The boringness of it or the sexiness of like some big dramatic change, like that's a piece of it.