Simple. Foolproof. Effective.
The best health advice is usually the simplest.
- Wash your hands.
- Get 7-9 hours sleep.
- Eat plenty of protein.
- Drink a lot of water.
- Avoid eating shit.*
* (Okay, but we’re talking best advice, not the most nuanced or eloquent).
Pictured is a “cutting edge, clinically tested apparatus based on groundbreaking research by surly Soviet scientists that will re-shape your life and physique while eradicating your worst progress destroying habits.”
In reality, it’s a super simple tool anyone can to hold yourself accountable.
It won’t win me any likes on Instagram. It’s so simple I’m embarrassed to even post it.
But I’ve used this to help men and women lose a LOT of fat, gain muscle, write their first book, renovate their basement, and, at the risk of getting ahead of my skis, kick alcohol, drugs, porn, and procrastination.
It starts today. Actually—tonight, before you go to bed.
- Get a pad of paper. (Screw all this electronic shit for once. Your life is worth a tree.)
- On the top, horizontally, write today’s date and the next six days.
- Vertically, write 3-5 habits you absolutely want to do every damn day. (Choose things that will both make you happy AND bring you closer to achieving a meaningful goal—you do have meaningful goals, right?)
- Finally, underneath the good habits, write a few bad ones you really wanna kick. Stuff that either triggers destructive behavior or directly undermines your goals. (For example, if you’re trying to lose fat, “snack while watching TV at night” would be a wise one to dump. You get the idea.)
Now, here’s how it works:
- Every night after you change into your jammies, take 5 seconds and whip down the list.
- Mark an X by items you successfully did or didn’t do.
- End of the week, you look at your pad. It should be nothing but strings of XXXXXXX.
- If it is, you add another good habit to the list. Or, even better, another bad one you gotta kick.
- If you see one broken string, like XX_XXXX, then thats a fail. Try again next week.
Do this for the rest of your life. Or, more realistically, until you have a full 4 weeks with no broken strings.
Once you reach that milestone you’re likely WELL on your way to accomplishing damn near anything, especially if you chose to-dos/not dos that directly affect achieving something meaningful. So be smart about this.
This system works so well I wish I invented it.
No such luck.
Jerry Seinfeld did something similar in the early stages of his career. He wanted to write a joke a day, and I guess things turned out okay for him.
– Bryan