Ep. 36 - Winning Habits

When we think of success, we often think of brilliance, risk appetite, luck, and privilege. And although all of those do play a role, I don’t think either one of them is central to winning [or "success"]. Yes, you need a little intelligence, but you don’t need to be brilliant to find success [just ask your local realtor]. You need to have an optimistic view of the future, but I don’t think you need to crave risk and swing for the fence every time. Sometimes luck is better than intelligence, but luck is manufactured through consistent actions - those who are lucky are usually the hardest workers in the room. And lastly, privilege is important but not required to find success. If people spent less time complaining about privilege and instead did something productive, we’d be that much closer to tipping the scales.

So if it’s not any of these items, then what is it? Habits.

Habits are the most important and central theme to success. I understand habits can be detrimental to health and wealth, however, I'm strictly speaking of habits that positively impact one's life. I’m speaking of winning habits. Winning habits are those that allow an individual to move the needle each and every day. It could be as simple as reading a few pages of a novel, writing a few lines of code, exercising, or writing your first blog post.

The key to winning habits is they don't use excuses. This is because it's not 'something' you do, it's who you are. You begin to embody the habits you perform and the narratives you tell yourself. A great example is exercising. You are working on a daily habit of exercising, so at first, it's something you do. But winning habits eventually become your identity [i.e., I exercise, so I'm an athlete, and athletes train daily, so I do as well].

From this vantage point, any excuse seems lame. Lack of sleep, being too busy, and Netflix are not valid excuses because athletes train every day. So, busy day? Winning habits train you to wake up an hour earlier than usual and train. It is actually that simple. Winning habits allow you to simplify life. Things become more manageable as more winning habits are formed.

Goals.

If you saw my LinkedIn post the other day then you’re aware of my ambitious goals for 2022. To summarise, they are as follows:

Learn to code;
Compete in an amateur boxing competition;
Purchase a boring business [storage facility, etc.];
Earn $50k in monthly recurring revenue; and
Location independence [be somewhere warm and sunny > 50% of the year].

These are quite ambitious and looking at them written down again is a little terrifying. However, when I made these goals the first thing I thought of was building habits to achieve them. They looked like this:

Learn to code. I have literally zero background in computer science or computer programming. I’ve never been considered a “techy”. So it will require strong habits and hard work. To begin, I've started with just 1 hour of study every morning and slotted it into my calendar. This will ensure I don’t break the streak, which is crucial when starting anything new. Keep the momentum alive.
Boxing. I’ve been boxing for ~4 months. I know I need to work on certain items (footwork, for example) in order to reach a point where I can compete. So as part of my normal gym routine, I’ve now just added 20 minutes of boxing drills to ensure I'm getting extra practice outside of my regular sessions. It will give me an extra 2 hours of work every week.
Purchase a boring business. This is tough because it requires due diligence and it sometimes feels like there are no concrete steps. So for this goal, I set micro-tasks of 1 hour for research and one outreach to a broker, current business owner, or potential mentor weekly. This will ensure I’m making strides, regardless of whether I close on the purchase.
$50k MRR. This requires being pretty good, every day. I haven't been able to find a great way to ensure I'm making strides beside the following: ensure I'm maintaining excellent client relationships, selective outreach for new clients, utilizing existing capital for income streams [options trading, staking, etc.], and building one new project a quarter. Plus the obvious of tracking actual revenue.
Location Independent. It’s one thing to say, and another to do. "There will always be next year" is a great way to never do anything. So, my partner and I have begun narrowing down destinations and will book our first leg of travel before the New Year.

As you can see, every goal is met with a winning habit. They're clear, concise, and fairly easy to measure. Regardless of whether I reach any of them, I know I will be much, much closer to each one by following the process I have in place.

Goals are great, but goals are often met with arbitrary time periods. Like why do we care about earnings for a year? The only relevance for that is the time it takes the earth to rotate around the sun. Other than that there is literally no significance. Thus, for myself, goals act as a guiding light and allow me to build new habits that will last a lifetime, not just one year, one quarter, or one month.