From James Clear to Tom Bilyeu,  Mel Robbins to Darren Hardy, Marie Forleo to Alex Hormozi… Personal development experts across the world all agree that there’s one thing that will most transform your life. For anyone who is setting a goal, trying to get rid of a bad habit, or trying to make positive changes to their life, 9 times out of 10 this is going to be their first recommendation.

And the craziest thing about it is, I bet it’s something that you’re not doing right now: Behavior tracking.

There’s a psychological principle called the Hawthorne Effect that states your performance improves in an area simply by being observed. Literally documenting and reflecting on what you eat makes your diet healthier. Reporting your social media usage will cause you to spend less time on your phone. You’ll even smoke less cigarettes if at the end of the day you had to fess up to how many you had.

The reason tracking drives improvement so fast is because it creates awareness. Rather than going about your life in the old pattern you’ve always had, awareness gives you the opportunity to challenge those patterns and choose different ones. 

But just because it works doesn’t mean it’s easy. Maybe you’ve downloaded a habit app before, used it a few times, and then lost touch with it. Or you committed to start tracking your meals and it became too much work so you stopped. 

Tracking isn’t fun, but it works. Which begs the question - are you willing to do the things that will generate the results you want in life?

Fortunately, there are ways to make your tracking easier, better, and more consistent. Accountability makes it more difficult to ignore and skip. Gamification rewards you for completing it. Having clarity of what you’re looking to improve ensures that you only track what’s critical and don’t get overwhelmed trying to track it all.

Simply put, you can’t improve what you don’t measure. That’s what tracking offers you - a clear measurement of how things are going that you can compare to how you want them to be. 

The value of tracking is undisputed. And whether you know it or not, the most successful people in the world have their own tracking systems. So rather than trying to figure out how to effectively start tracking on your own, you can bypass a decade of trial and error and use my system.

In the 21 Day New Year Challenge I’m hosting that starts on Monday, you will implement the exact same performance tracking system I use on a daily basis. The Challenge gives you step-by-step instructions to create a new routine so that you can do it consistently, and gives you daily accountability from me so that you actually take it seriously.

Learn more about the Challenge, and incorporate tracking into your daily routine, at www.newyearforgood.com.

We know that the most successful, achieving, high-performing and impactful version of ourselves is the most disciplined version of ourselves. A person who is consistent, resilient, self-motivated, and does the things they are committed to. But that level of follow through isn’t easy. It’s energetically demanding and comes at a cost. 

Because it’s so demanding, it often leads to burnout. Willing yourself up early in the morning to get to the gym wears you down. Sticking to a strict diet requires effort and can be inconvenient. Hitting your minimum sales call number, or following through on your schedule of difficult tasks, takes a toll on you when you do it day in and day out. In many cases, discipline isn’t sustainable.

So where does that leave you when you want to hold yourself to a high standard, but doing so is unsustainable and stretches you beyond your capacity?

You need to fuel your discipline from a different source. Rather than using will-power, hustle, grit, and “mind over matter” to get yourself into action, you can use your environment to support you in sustaining high-quality consistency without it wearing you down. 

Things like accountability. Instead of forcing yourself into the gym, you have a gym buddy who’s counting on you to meet them there. Things like building systems. Where instead of toiling over who to call, you have a prepared list of your hottest prospects to run through. Things like having clarity. Instead of waffling about whether to have that slice of pie or not, you have a standard of not eating sweets after 9pm that you can more easily enforce.

Discipline becomes easier when you don’t have to do it and the environment does it for you. Yet many people don’t know how to create that kind of accountability and consistency on their own. And because of it, being the best, most-disciplined version of themselves is way harder than it needs to be.

If you want to start 2025 by taking the easier path to being at your best, that’s something I can help you with. Starting Monday, I’m leading a 21 Day New Year Challenge that walks you step by step through implementing a new life structure that makes self-discipline virtually automatic. I’ll be coaching you through it, so it’s not free, but every dollar of the program cost is being donated to charity so that you can start your 2025 with life change that lasts and makes a difference.

It’s called New Year, New You, For Good!

Happy New Year! Are you ready for 2025 to be the most successful, impactful, unstoppable year of your life? Well guess what? It all starts today, so let’s get to work!

I don’t know about you but I’m fired up! I know that January 1st is just another day on the calendar but for me it feels different. There's a tingle of possibility, hope, and anticipation in the air and it’s causing me to dream bigger!

But I also know that this moment isn’t going to last. Soon the dust will settle and all will return right back to how things used to be before the New Year excitement all began. But that’s not to say it needs to be that way! We can take action from the motivation, inspiration, and energy we feel today that locks in lasting positive change when the motivation goes away.

What we get at the beginning of a New Year is an enriched environment. An enriched environment is a short-term state that positively influences your energy levels, mood, and self-belief, which leads to thoughtful choices and disciplined actions.

The opportunity is, you can leverage the way you feel today by making a pre-commitment that holds you to a higher standard tomorrow. It’s a way of hacking your future and extending the impact an enriched environment has on you.

I’ve used this technique to help with things as big as writing the first draft of my book, and as small as limiting my snacking at a party. And since I’m feeling the inspiration myself, I’m going to take advantage of it by announcing: I’m going to bring back interview episodes for my podcast! 

There I said it! And now I’m held accountable to it, even when the enriched environment goes away and all of the excuses get louder. And that’s exactly the point!

Now it’s your turn - I bet you want to make 2025 the most successful, impactful, and unstoppable year of your life, right? Well it’s never going to feel more doable than it does today. So what are you going to do about it? Because if you choose to make big and bold choices today you dramatically increase the likelihood you’ll get bigger and bolder results tomorrow, and every day.

If nothing comes to mind, let me make a recommendation:

On Monday January 6th, I’m leading a 21 Day New Year Challenge that is designed to help you build the foundation you need to be consistent in your health habits, laser-focused and productive in your work, and more disciplined than ever. You can take advantage of the motivation you’re feeling today, to build the foundation you need to get results every day, by signing up for the Challenge right now. 

Plus, 100% of the program cost is a donation to charity. It’s a win for you and a win for the world. So don’t overthink it or give yourself the time to talk yourself out of it. Take action before you make excuses about why you can’t or shouldn’t. If you really want 2025 to be your breakthrough year, you’re going to need to do something different. And I’m telling you, this 21 Day New Year Challenge to start 2025 by installing 6 New Super Habits, is it!

Happy New Year! I’m fired up about everything that 2025 has in store and I want to make sure you’re set up for success. We can’t afford to go another year without the consistency, focus, good habits and high-performance we know we’re capable of. With that in mind, let’s make one very important correction.

In their self-improvement, many people are focused on acquiring more information. People are putting so much time into listening to podcasts and audiobooks… And they feel like they’re doing the right things because they’re investing so much time in their self-improvement. But after a few weeks or months pass and they have nothing to show for it, they get frustrated that they’re not getting the results or positive life changes they think they deserve.

That happens because real life change requires behavior change. Actions generate results.

If you run more often you’ll be able to run further and faster. If you write 3 things you’re grateful for every day you’ll actually start to see the world more positively. Learning about how to run, or about the benefits of gratitude won’t change your life. Sure, being more educated improves the quality of the actions you take, but that value is completely lost if you don’t take the action.

The metaphor I like to use is that of a car. Knowledge is power, right? Perfect, then consider information to be like fuel in a car. You need some to go, but the fuel alone won’t do anything. And given how readily available information is these days, fuel isn’t the limiting factor. Yet that’s where so many people are investing their time.

The limiting factor to our success and performance is our ability to do more with what we know. In other words, we need to upgrade our engine if we want to go further, faster, and be better in our lives. 

But what does that mean? It’s installing systems that lead to consistent good habits. It’s structuring your environment to support your priorities. It’s becoming clear on the standards you’ll hold yourself accountable to, and awareness of how you did on a daily basis.

As good as it feels to feel knowledgeable and sound impressive in conversations about self-development, what feels better is living up to your fullest potential and letting your actions speak louder than words.

To kick off the New Year I’ve put together something really special. Starting next Monday, January 6th I’m hosting a 21 Day New Year Challenge to help you start 2025 with better habits, routines, more life-structure. It’s a radical upgrade of your self-improvement engine that walks you through how to take consistent, high-impact actions that radically transform your health, productivity, and mindset. And the best part, 100% of the program cost will be donated to charity.

It’s called New Year, New You, For Good - and if you want to start 2025 in the best way possible - with life change that lasts and by making a difference in the world, sign up for the Challenge today!

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In personal development people have an obsession with building good habits - to get into the gym consistently, to practice portion control, to get up first thing in the morning without hitting the snooze button, to meditate in the morning, to get some movement in throughout the day, this list goes on and on.

And for good reason. Having good habits is arguably the best thing you can do to live a happier, healthier, more impactful life. If actions create results, then consistent good actions will generate the results you want in life.

But as good as having good habits are, don’t waste your time building them. You should build good systems instead, and the habits come as a natural byproduct.

When most people think of habits they think of being disciplined, of doing what you said you were going to do even when you don’t feel like it. But that’s an uphill battle of relying on willpower to make yourself do the things you’re telling yourself you need to do. 

It doesn’t need to be that hard. In fact, by definition habits are meant to be automatic, unconscious, and habitual. They’re supposed to be effortless. What’s way more effective and sustainable is to put your time and energy into building systems where the natural output of the system is the desired behavior.

The reason systems breed true consistency is because they are part of the environment. Good systems change the path of least resistance in a positive way, making positive action automatic.

This is the difference: Imagine you’re in a canoe on a river. Without any effort, you will float wherever the river is headed. That’s the environment. If you want to go somewhere else, if downstream is not desirable, then you need to paddle and change course. This is using will-power. Building a system is like digging a moat or putting up a dam that changes the direction of the current, so that it naturally pulls you where you want to go.

The biggest opportunity for you to be more consistent in your life, and actually have good habits, is to update the systems in your life.

If you don’t know how to do that, but you know that your inconsistency is holding you back from reaching your fullest potential - it's time you become a consistency, productivity, high-performance, change-making machine. All you have to do is start 2025 by doing this!

I can’t attest to how true this is, but my grandma told me that in the New Year there’s a new state law in California where you can’t park within 20 feet of a crosswalk. And it’s not like cities are going to paint every curb red that this affects, it’s on us to remember this new law and change our behavior accordingly.

This is most likely how it’s all going to go down: People either haven’t heard about the law, or forget about the new law, so they’ll park as they usually do and get a ticket. Each ticket will interrupt their pattern, offer a short-term pain that slowly encodes as a lesson until our everyday behavior changes. What won’t happen is people preparing to adjust their behavior in advance so that they don’t get into trouble once the law is being enforced. 

It’s the difference between being reactive to the consequences and proactive about preparing to do it right. It’s human nature to only make something a priority once it becomes a problem in an effort to conserve energy and do things in familiar ways. 

At the core of it, it’s this same bias that is responsible for moments where we lack self-control and give in to immediate pleasures over what benefits us the most. Like over-splurging on dessert, scrolling too long on social media, getting angry at a friend, or purchasing something that makes us feel good about ourselves.

Those that are proactive, and choose to invest in learning the lesson or making the changes before they’re needed, are less wasteful of their time, energy, and resources. It’s those who can think ahead and prepare today for what comes tomorrow that are in a better position to maximize the opportunities headed their way. 

Ultimately, being proactive over reactive is the result of two things: Awareness to know what you should be doing that most serves you, and discipline to follow through on that plan even when you don’t feel like it.

I call that living intentionally, and when you have a thoughtful reason for everything you do, with an understanding for the good and bad that could come from it, you start taking action in empowering ways that build the life you desire.

During a Holiday break, you might start to feel guilty about your choices. You’re on the road and not in your normal environment, and it’s more likely to miss your workout a few times. Big family gatherings involve lots of tasty food and you let yourself splurge more than you’d ideally like to. Maybe the TV is on more than it usually is at home and you find yourself stuck to the couch. Speaking from experience here…

But unfortunately this could be something that slows you down and causes you to lose the positive momentum you had. If you don’t want that to be the case, here are a few things you can consider doing.

First is to earn small wins. Maybe you can’t get into a gym on Christmas Day, but you could go for a walk to get some movement in. And maybe you’re off your diet a little and not eating as healthfully as you usually do, but you choose to eat mindfully and keep yourself from over-snacking or getting seconds unnecessarily. 

While it doesn’t seem like much, these little moments do a lot for your momentum. Instead of zeroing out and going back to the beginning, getting yourself to do even the smallest fraction of something that contributes toward your goals helps you to stay aligned with them. Rather than the Holiday trip being some major step back, you find ways to generate control that keeps you moving forward. Of course ideally you hold yourself to the same high-standard you have for yourself, but if you can’t do that it’s really beneficial to hold yourself to a standard.

Then second, the more obvious point of intervention is to transition quickly back into your normal routine. There can be a ‘Holiday Hangover’ that comes as a result of previous poor choices. Bad food and more TV makes you feel more sluggish. In order to shake it off, you need to reassert yourself back into the standard you’re committed to maintaining. It may require more will-power and self-control than normal, but it’s worth the investment because it gets you back on track.

At the foundation of it all, you need a few things: Awareness of how you did and the state of your choices, accountability so that you can be honest about your level of performance, and grace to know that growth is a process that is not linear but always trending up as long as you show up for it.

If you need help incorporating any of those things  - so that you can hold yourself to a higher standard and stop undoing all of the progress you make when you step out of your normal routine - then you should check out this high-performance system that keeps you consistent even when life has other plans. It's the same one I've been using for over a decade!

While this all centralizes around the Holidays, it's true year round. A change at work interrupts the rhythm you've built in the gym. New responsibilities at home make it harder to meal prep. If you want to make 2025 a year where you hold yourself to a higher standard regardless of all the chaos and changes that are happening around you... This is the missing piece!