Word Count: 795 NF Difficulty: Beginner
Work has been kind of hectic in a good way, so I didn’t get a chance to start thinking about today’s blog until late yesterday afternoon. I had no idea what I was going to write about when the perfect concept literally dropped itself into my email inbox. Tim Ferriss, life hacker extraordinaire, had just posted a blog with the same title (HIGHLY recommended reading by the way) as the one I chose for today. Hopefully he doesn’t mind, but I stole his blog title simply because it’s something you should be thinking about every day. “Level up your life” isn’t this blog’s motto for nothing.
Are you better than yesterday?
If you can find at least one thing about yourself to improve upon every day (fitness, diet, work, health, family, video games, starting a company, etc.), then you will always go to sleep a better person than you were the day before. As long as it’s something, no matter how small, you get to enjoy a small victory and build upon that success for the next day.
How about your diet? If you decided to throw out everything in your fridge and switch to 100% fruits, vegetables, and nuts, you’re probably going to freak out and quickly give up because you’re used to eating frozen pizzas, big macs, and cupcakes. However, if you try every day to eat just a little better – drink one less soda than yesterday, make one less trip to the vending machine, bring in a healthy lunch once a week rather than going to Firehouse Subs – in a few months you’ll have a completely different diet and probably a different pant-size. No more COSTCO sweatpants for you!
If you’re a programmer and you come across bug-riddled software, you make a list of what needs to happen to fix the problems, and then you slowly move down the list and check things off. Eventually, no matter how small the corrections are each day, you will have a solid, bug-free program. What are the bugs in your life, and what are you doing to troubleshoot them? Do you have a list?
I used to play Everquest 2 with my buddies; for those of you who don’t know, EQ2 is a massive multi-player online RPG (like World of Warcraft). Between working a full time job and exercising regularly, I didn’t have a lot of time to dedicate to playing (which is probably a good thing). Luckily the game is set up so that I could log on and play for 20-30 minutes, finish a few small quests or kill some mobs and after a few days level up my character. Life is no different.
Just saying “I want to get in shape” is far too vague and won’t give you any direction. You need to give yourself quests and goals to accomplish. Decide at what point you get to declare yourself You 2.0. What accomplishments and achievements do you need before that happens? Maybe something like this:
- I want to lose 50 lbs
- I want to do 10 pull ups in a row
- I want to run a mile without stopping
- I want to look down and see my toes.
Make your goals as specific as possible so you can measure yourself to make sure you’re getting better. If you want to do 10 pull ups in a row, you’re going to have to increase your back, bicep, and forearm strength. If you can only do two now, that’s fine. Next week, go for three. After that? Go for four. If you eat right and work on being just slightly stronger than yesterday, eventually you’ll be doing 10 pull ups with ease. Baby steps, son!
The best way I’ve found to gauge your success is to keep track of EVERYTHING. Take a picture of yourself every Monday morning; write down everything you eat, and keep track of every single set, rep, and amount of weight for each exercise. How are you going to know if you’re better than the day before if you don’t remember what you did? Day to day it’s tough to see small changes. However, if you find a way to better yourself every single day, I guarantee you’ll see major changes over time, as long as you keep track of where you started.
Are you better than yesterday? Hang this phrase on the back of your bedroom door. Set your Google calendar to ask you every morning at 8 AM. Add it to your desktop background. Do whatever you need to, but find a way to remind yourself to be better today than you were yesterday; then, find a way to be better tomorrow than you are today. Level up your life, one day at a time.
What are you going to do today to become You 2.0?
-Steve
