Something that is deeply motivating for people, myself included, is the idea of keeping a streak. It urges us to take action when we don’t feel like it, compels us to build our days around specific core activities, and brings out a level of consistency that few other tactics manage to do.

We all know this to be true, but the real question is… Why?

As you’d expect, the answer resides in human psychology. 

First, the reason our minds respond well to gamification is because of our hardwiring for immediate gratification. As James Clear explains brilliantly in “Atomic Habits”, the final step of the Habit Loop is to get a reward. Essentially, experiencing a reward indicates that whatever action you took successfully satisfied the need of the craving you had. This craving is an unmet need that was prompted by some cue in your environment.

Here's the things - We have a constant need for self-actualization, to become all that we can be and maximize our potential. So much so in fact that it’s at the top of Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs and something that is impossible to fully satisfy. Our 'impossible to meet' need for self-actualization operates as an underlying force that is always pulling us to want to achieve and improve. Maslow himself says “If you deliberately plan on being less than you’re capable of being, I warn you, you’ll be unhappy the rest of your life.”

Gamification offers a solution to that. When we earn points, level up, or keep streaks, it helps us perceive progress toward our insatiable need to self-actualize.

The second explanation for a streak’s impact on us is rooted in our identity. When we take consistent action on something to the extent that we build a compelling streak, we reshape our belief system. Aristotle says “We are what we repeatedly do”, suggesting that consistent action literally has the power to redefine our self-image. Unconsciously we do things that are in alignment with our identity and resist doing anything else. So keeping a streak becomes a function of you following through on what your mind expects of you and not an effortful demand to your day.

Because the mind prefers familiarity, you literally talk yourself into keeping your streak (even if you’re tired or it’s inconvenient). To tie it back into the Habit Loop, the idea of not maintaining your streak (cue) creates a need to stay in alignment with your identity (craving). The uneasiness motivates you to take action (behavior) so that your streak is kept intact (reward). 

In understanding the psychology at play, now you’re better prepared to leverage streaks to support you in doing the things that make you feel and perform at your best!

Something I see a lot of people not taking seriously enough, and because of if they feel disempowered and static, is that were are born to create. No matter your religious beliefs, something that we all agree on is that at some point something came from nothing. Some unexplainable miracle happened somehow, somewhere, that has given us the experience we have today.

Even if you think about our personal existence - We as humans were created. Two people provided cells that merged into one and created a new life. We were born as the byproduct of creation, and infused with the intention to create ourselves.

When you think of it that way, “Life itself is an act of creation.”

Everything about the future is undetermined. Nothing is guaranteed. That means that we play an active role in creating what happens. This is true both in our personal lives and the things we experience, as well as the way we contribute to society. Yet many of us neglect to accept this powerful role we have and instead live as the victim of our lives rather than the hero.

Being the victim is on the opposite side of creation. It’s a mindset that things happen to you. But the day you take ownership of your life, and accept that you’re responsible for the good and bad that surrounds you, you become a creator.

You can enjoy a better marriage or friendships by creating more moments for connection. You can live your dream lifestyle by creating a solution to a big problem in the world and being compensated well for it. You can create the body and daily energy that makes you feel unstoppable by being more discipline with your exercise, diet, and sleep.

At one point our planet didn’t exist and the world was empty. Everything around you was created at some point. Nothing has changed except our willingness to participate in it.

Even the thoughts going through your mind right now - It’s the result of me producing a message to share with you, and your choice to nurture your mind and hear it. It’s not an accident, it’s perfectly designed, and the more you tap into your creative potential the more you’ll get exactly what you want from life.

There’s a lot of focus in personal development around doing the new things that create new results. And necessarily so because many people are feeling held back or stuck and need support getting started.

However, the majority of improvement doesn’t happen by going from doing nothing to doing something... It happens when you take doing something to doing something a lot better.

This is the process of optimization. Optimization uses feedback to implement adjustments that improve the results produced. It’s an iterative process where, one attempt after the next, you learn a bit more about what works and what doesn’t. To fully embrace optimization, you need a growth mindset. Those who see ‘failure’ and falling short as a lesson and not criticism can take the insights of falling short to be better prepared for the next attempt.

Optimization is the far better route to getting high-quality results, especially when compared to the alternative of starting and stopping. Fits and starts stalls progress and causes you to not acquire the lessons, awareness, skill development, or experience you need to actually improve. You start from square one over and over again instead of building off of the traction you already have.

For just about anything in life, it’s not a matter of if something works or not. It’s about how well something works. And through optimization you can fine-tune your approach to make it work better.

If anything, this is another reason why it’s important to get started before you’re ready. It’s the trial and error of the process of doing it that makes you more ready. Those learnings compound over time, but they don’t even get the chance to start growing if you don’t get started with them.

So this is the overall recommendation to create improvement in your life: Get started before you’re ready and stick it out for longer than you think, because you’re picking up incremental improvements along the way that are positioning you to succeed very soon.

This is what it takes to become world class! No secrets, just doing more of the right things more often.

As a powerful, purpose-driven person in this world, I’m sure you have some big ambitions. You have visions to complete that incredible athletic feat, elevate to the top in your career, lead a world-changing movement, go on the trip of your life… The list goes on.

But from the context of the here and now that day might feel many days away. It’s something that you’ll put effort into someday, one day, when the time is right.

That far off ‘someday’ goal doesn’t need to wait. In fact the only way you get there is by taking steps toward it every day until you’re there. Just like taking action tomorrow will always be a day away, achieving your ‘someday goal’ will always elude you if you don’t pursue it now.

One of my favorite goal-setting practices is Gary Keller’s “Goal Set To Now” process that he features in his book “The One Thing”. Essentially You first  get clear on what that macro ‘someday’ ambition is and orient your entire life around it. You do so by determining what needs to happen in the next 5 years to be on path for your ‘someday’ goal…

What needs to happen in one year to be on track for your 5 year goal…

What you need to do this month to reach that goal you set for the next year…

The goal for the week to achieve the goal for the month…

And finally the goal for the day to meet the goal for the week.

That is “Someday, One Day Goal Setting”. Not ‘one day’ as in a day way off in the future, but setting a series of one day goals every day of the week as you work your way forward. This gives you a clear action to take and plan to execute, so that every day you take one step toward your ‘someday’ goal.

This is what my “Goal Set To Now” process looks like today: My ‘someday’ goal is to be Time Magazine Person Of The Year. My ‘one day’ goal is to finish following up with the impact organizations I want to partner with.

There’s no secret to living an extraordinary life and making an extraordinary difference. It happens as the byproduct of consistent, highly-aligned, hard-work. And the best way to orient what you need to focus on today is to make sure your actions connect to the overall goal in a way that you believe in.

In the graduation commencement speech at the University of Texas, Austin in 2014, Admiral William McRaven shared 10 points to changing the world. One of those points was to make your bed in the morning. 

McRaven commented on how you can set the pace for the day by knocking out the first task with discipline, and no matter how poorly the day goes you return to the promise of a new day and a fresh start. It’s a life-changing insight in what has become one of the most renowned speeches of the century.

But let’s take it one step further. Last week I was talking to my friend Arozo and we got into the extra implications of making your bed. Yes, making your bed is a positive signal at the end of the day, but equally important to consider is how not making your bed can be a negative signal.

As Jack Canfield says, our unconscious mind operates off of a simple formula: E + R = O. Event + Response = Outcome. What happens throughout the day (without us realizing it) is that we are exposed to different stimuli, experience different events, and unconsciously respond to them to produce an outcome.

The example of an unmade bed demonstrates that potential harm in this: 

Event - You get home after a long day, you’re tired and a co-worker is upset with you, and you see that your bed isn’t made.

Response - Based on the emotional context and your prior belief systems, you attribute an unmade bed to your own character flaws of lacking discipline and not being able to do anything well.

Outcome - You take an additional hit to your self-confidence, you have less hope for yourself, and you show up the next day to work more defensive and on guard, which makes you more likely to respond poorly to the events you encounter.

It’s a self-defeating cycle that gets amplified and reinforced over time. That is, unless you do what James Clear of “Atomic Habits” recommends and “make the cue invisible”. If you make your bed, the event doesn’t happen, the thought spiral doesn’t occur, and you don’t receive that negative outcome.

Not only should this bring awareness to the importance of making your bed, but encourage you to be more proactive and disciplined. You never know how your environment might trigger an event that you unconsciously process.

Every day is an opportunity to become more aware of how things work. It all serves you in being better moment to moment.

A great tactic you can use to become a better active listener is called ‘mirroring’. I first heard about this from negotiation expert Chris Voss, who describes mirroring as literally repeating the last thing someone else just said to you in the form of a question.

Beyond what you say, Voss mentions that the intonation of it really matters. Instead of having your question come off as condescending or challenging, your response can be full of curiosity and interest if it’s stated the right way. People just want to be heard, and stating back what they said to you in a non-critical way signals that you were listening.

It’s also a great tactic to get people to share more information. If someone’s explanation about something isn’t complete, you can use mirroring as a way to prompt them to share more. But the great part is you don’t need to come up with a creative question, just pausing on one specific point curiously helps them fill in the blanks of why you might be inquiring.

For example, last week I was talking to one of my coaching clients and he shared that his life is busy right now. “Busy?” I responded with interest. He then elaborated on how busy is good, how he likes to be busy, and overall it was a positive response.

I got so much more information from him simply because I paused and mirrored what he said to me.

The applications of mirroring are throughout communication: 

If someone has a problem with you and something you did, you can take their words and mirror them as an invitation to elaborate.

If you’re trying to understand someone’s core motivation in a sales or business setting, mirroring makes them reflect one layer deeper on where their hesitation might be. 

If someone gives you instructions for something but it’s not clear to you, you can mirror and they’ll go on to explain what they want you to do further.

Overall, consider mirroring to be an effortless tool you can use to further conversations and get to the heart of what lies under an initial statement. Give it a try once or twice in the next few days and see what you find!

You grew today. Grew today? Yes, by learning this now you’re better prepared to build stronger and more meaningful relationships. See!

This one might come as a bit of a surprise to you... Don’t get me wrong, I fully value the power of ‘no’. It’s by saying “no” more that you can make sure you’re staying focused on the things that are most important to you, and not get caught up in things that don’t add value to your life.

It’s such an important detail that Warren Buffet, one of the wealthiest people in the world,  is known for saying “The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything".

Notice how he articulated that - “Really successful people say no to almost everything". This means that there are some very important, specific things that they say “yes” to. 

What you ‘say yes’ to is what aligns with your values, which are the things that are most important to you, the life you want to live, and the causes and character you want to stand for. Anything else that pulls you away from that alignment and distracts you from what matters most deserves a ‘no’. And trust me, we need more of those.

But when those moments do come up, that are fully aligned with your best self and your best life, that’s when you say “yes”. But many of us shy away from it. Often these opportunities are inconvenient, expensive, risky, complicated, or challenging. There's a compelling argument for why, logically, “no is the right decision.

It’s by overcoming this resistance and accommodating the things that are most important to us that we infuse our life with purposeful and fulfilling fire. Like making an effort to be at someone’s graduation even though it makes no sense for you to be there. Or making sacrifices to lead that nonprofit initiative you really care about but don’t have the time for. Or spending your money on that once in a lifetime experience rather than investing it in something that builds up your future.

Again, these things need to meet an exceptional criteria. But when they do, you can’t miss them! This is what gives life it’s meaning. This is what it’s all for. And this is what you’ll regret if you don’t do it.

One of the best qualities about my wife Irene is how far she’ll go to be a part of something important to her. She’s clear on her values, particularly prioritizing the people in her life, and she’ll go to the end of the Earth for them. 

It’s inspiring, but it’s hers! What are your values, and what moments do you need to absolutely be a part of?

I don’t know about you, but I know that I’m having a good day when I transition from one thing to the next at a fast-pace.

I enjoy the surge of fulfillment that comes from having momentum move me from one priority to the next. As someone who has studied effective task transitioning to maximize it for myself, I wanted to share a few things I’ve found to be true.

First, it helps to allocate time for transitioning. Instead of expecting to tackle tasks and commitment immediately back to back, give yourself the expectation of a 5 minute buffer. This means that when that buffer time comes, you have time to do what you need to do to reset your energy, and take care of small distracting tasks like checking your phone. 

Ultimately, rather than judging yourself for being off task and deflating momentum, you stick to the plan and keep momentum while affording the space to address some of the things you can’t plan for. 

This all requires that you have a plan for the day, so that’s my second recommendation for fast transitioning - Keep a detailed schedule. Rather than diluting your energy and focus getting caught up on what to do next, you’ve already decided what to do next and it’s time to execute. 

I recommend 30 x 30 minute timeboxing with specific tasks so that you can know in detail what is on task and what’s not. “You can’t call something a distractions unless you know what you’re being distracted from” is a brilliant insight from Nir Eyal’s book “Indistractable”. A schedule is your stated plan for what you’re meant to do at any given moment of the day.

Which transitions (pun intended) into the third recommendation - Prevent distractions in your environment. Put your phone on ‘Do Not Disturb’. Close your email and Slack windows, and hide the other projects and tasks you’ve been working on. 

Doing things that we didn’t plan to do makes us fall behind. When we fall behind, we make up for the time required to do something in the next timeblock, and before you know it you’re completely off your schedule. Without the clarity of what to do next, there’s more space to negotiate how quickly you make your transitions. 

Here's my personal system for transitioning fast and making the most of every day. Check it out!