THE LIFESTYLE ENTREPRENEUR

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Will skipping one day kill me?

Will skipping one day kill me?

That’s a question I’ve asked myself hundreds, if not thousands of times, in my life.

And around the holidays it’s an especially relevant one - as we all fight to maintain a balance between enjoying them, while staying on track with our goals.

We often think about health goals in this regard, but this question - and how we answer it each day - impacts all our goals in life.

So let’s dig into it briefly - hopefully a mini-deep dive can yelp you as you ask yourself this question the next 30-45 days.

Will skipping one day kill me?

Nutrition, exercise, writing, building a company, building a relationship, meditation.

These are just a few areas that come to mind that benefit from a daily practice - which if done correctly, compounds over time to create the changed versions of ourselves where we look back and can’t believe how far we’ve come.

All well-adjusted members of society have accomplished many of these:

• Consistently educating ourselves so that by the time we finish our formal period we have degrees and have hopefully learned how to learn in a way that’ll provide returns the rest of our lives

• A career with expertise built over decades - which at some point yields financial return that starts to exceed our financial needs, and provides excess that will fund our lifestyles until we die

• Relationships with family, partners, and friends that can withstand time and any challenge that comes our way

• Raising children who become productive good quality people who can ultimately live their own productive lives.

All the above are huge wins - and are built from years of consistent effort - whether conscious or not.

Reviewing where we’ve come from shows us we’ve all built great things. And they are a result of a cumulation of daily activities that got us there.

So knowing that we’re all capable of great things - we really are, we just tend to dwell on where we are falling short - did skipping days kill our plans?

No.

We all need days off - and in any area where we’ve had success - we also took days off. From studying, from work, from raising our families - and they didn’t derail our plans.

In fact we can likely all agree that taking days off allows us to recharge to be better at what we’re doing.

So why does it feel like taking days off derails my future goals?

We just proved we can do great things by reviewing where we’ve come from - try that if you’re feeling down, it always works.

So what about the new things we’re trying to do with limited success?

• Getting in better shape

• Eating better

• Starting a new side-gig

• Improving a mental health practice like meditating

Why does it feel like taking a day or two off can completely derail something like this?

One primary reason is our brains are wired to seek immediate rewards for our behaviors - and most of the areas above don’t require notable immediate rewards to see progress.

This lack of positive feedback from our activities, combined with the fact that when building a new habit or practice - we lack confidence to know a day off won’t affect us negatively - causes time off to feel more damaging that it really is.

The risk is high - getting discouraged may cause us to backslide further or give up in general.

A cumulative approach

One way to think about our progress is to think about it as a cumulation of days. How long did it take us to build our career to something that was durable and meaningful? 1000 days? 2000 days? Whatever it was - it was many days of progress strung together to get you where you are.

And while you needed days off to get there - too many days off would simply slow your progress, and enough days off would stall it.

With this way of thinking in mind, one of my favorite ways to approach any goal - what’s the least I can do to make progress today?

This approach reduces my activities to their most basic steps, and allows me to think about the minimal effective dose to make some progress.

• If I’m building a side-gig - what can i do in 30 minutes to feel confident I’m going to stay on track over the next week?

• If I’m trying to eat healthier - what’s a healthy meal I can have before I go out so I know I covered my nutritional bases and don’t go out starving

• If I’m trying to get fitter - what can I do in 20 minutes to make some progress

I’ve found this simple question to keep many goals on track for myself.

One more way to feel better about progress, and also feel more in control - is to increase my level of planning on a weekly basis - and include rest days in my planning.

Workout programs need rest days, why not other programs?

Giving myself a rest day on nutritional discipline, or writing, or whatever I’m working on - feels better for me if it’s part of a week plan, and not just something I’m skipping because I’m tired.

There are many ways to approach things psychologically, but I like to keep it simple and remember a few things:

1. I’ve been successful with many long-term endeavors - if I’m feeling discouraged about a new one I need to remind myself how far I’ve come

2. Success is a cumulation of progress over long periods of time - so one day off isn’t going to derail anything, but if I want to achieve my goals I need to make consistent progress over long periods of time

3. Asking what’s the minimum I can do today to make progress just flat out works - give it a try

4. Planned rest days within a week work better than waiting to get overtired and just skipping things.

I hope I provided some help with this all to common question.

The ideal is making progress AND enjoying ourselves and our time on this world.

My hope is for all of us to find that sweet spot.

Talk to you next week,

Mike