These Six Simple & Boring Habits Will Help You 10x Your Life and Business Outcomes

You first make your habits, and then your habits make you.

“Successful people aren’t born that way. They become successful by establishing the habit of doing things unsuccessful people don’t like to do.” ―William Makepeace Thackeray.

Do you know what separates world-class athletes from their talented but average competitors?

Their daily habits.

An ethnographic study in 1989 of Olympic swimmers found that what separated elite athletes from the average came from their daily habits rather than any innate talents.

The best swimmers continually executed the boring activities better than their average counterparts. Day in, day out. Without fail.

Is talent important? Of course. Especially in sports.

But most people sabotage themselves long before talent ever becomes a limiting factor.

For most domains outside of sports, you can rise to the top 10% relatively easily.

Here’s the formula for success in any field:

Consistency + time + rate of improvement

If you can be impatient with your actions but patient with your results, while constantly improving, you’ll outlast those who choose intensity over consistency and thinking over action.

People are naturally lazy, so there is actually less competition at elite levels than there is at average levels.

Besides sports, it’s actually harder to be mediocre than it is to be elite.

As Tim Ferriss writes in his blog,

“The fishing is best where the fewest go and the collective insecurity of the world makes it easy for people to hit home runs while everyone else is aiming for base hits.
There is just less competition for bigger goals.”

If you can execute these six daily habits, you’ll build a foundation for success.

Boring Habit #1: “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” — Jim Rohn

Your rate of growth will never exceed your rate of learning.

I prioritize my self-education above everything else. I will frequently skip going out with friends and family so I can have 1–2 hours every day to learn and study.

Why? Because learning makes me a better friend, brother, and son.

Taking time to develop myself allows me to relate better to others and provide better value for my clients.

My system for self-learning:

Reading 1 book per week
Reading 1 research article per week (while taking notes)
Taking 1 online course per month
Listening to a podcast every day
Watching an educational YouTube video every day
Curating my social media feed with people I admire and respect

I am constantly leveraging the free resources available on the internet to learn new skills and abilities.

None of these habits will change my life, but together they allow me to stay at the cutting edge of my field. All the times I’ve stagnated in my life have come when I stopped learning.

If I don’t look back at the person I was a year ago and think, “that guy was a complete idiot”. I haven’t really grown enough.

Double down on your rate of learning and watch your growth explode.

Boring Habit #2: Anything you want your mind to do, make your body do it first.

I exercise not just for the physical benefits, but also for the mental clarity and energy it gives me.

The aesthetics are a welcome bonus.

After a walk in nature, a hard gym session, or a Jiu-Jitsu class, my brain works differently. I am far more relaxed and calm.

“Establishing and maintaining clarity for yourself and what you want is the starting point for success.
The problem is that most people maintain a mediocre level of clarity, which inevitably leads to a mediocre level of success”
— Hal Elrod

A stressed mind blocks the creative mind.

Movement is the antidote to stagnation.

Find an exercise that sparks joy. It can be anything so long you get your blood pumping, your limbs moving and your brain engaged.

Move and improve.

Boring Habit #3: Find your morning flow and protect it at all costs.

Protect your mornings at all costs.

Research has proven that you are at your most productive and creative in the morning.

Use the first 4 hours of your day to find your flow. Tackle your most creatively-demanding tasks first thing in the morning.

The four-hour workweek might be just a pipe dream, but the four-hour workday is a real possibility.

If you’re able to focus deeply without distraction for four hours, you can produce more value than most people could in eight hours.

Unless someone is dead or dying, 5:00 am — 9:00 am is my non-negotiable time. Even when I travel I make sure I give enough time to myself to get my mind and body right.

I’ll use this block of time to exercise, meditate and work on my most valuable tasks for the day.

Put the phone away. Ignore all emails. Block out time to double your rate of output.

Boring Habit #4: Build a community of like-minded people

How many people know the saying, “you are the average of the five closest people to you” but still decide to hang around losers?

Your social environment is infectious. And unlike a bat virus, there is no vaccine besides social distancing.

You might think you’re immune, but hang around negative and pessimistic people every day and you’ll notice how much your mood and thinking start to change.

Spend enough time with five losers and you’ll quickly become the sixth.

I don’t like to say that people are toxic.

People are doing their best with the tools they have available. But sometimes their best isn’t enough and you need to move on.

It’s not your job to fix or change people. But it is your job to surround yourself with the best people you can.

As Maya Angelou once said, “when people show you who they are, believe them the first time.”

I’ve cut a lot of people out of my life that didn’t align with my values. I saw them make low-integrity decisions to close friends. It was only a matter of time before they f*cked me over too.

Since I’ve jumped head first into entrepreneurship, I’ve been actively building a community of other entrepreneurs to who I can relate but also provide an environment to challenge and provoke me to grow.

If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together.

Boring Habit #5: Mindfulness

“What I value most from my seventeen years of full-time spiritual training is that I no longer believe my every thought. That’s my superpower.” — Bjorn Natthiko Lindeblad

Work on your mindset every day.

Interrogate every thought that comes through your mind.

I’ve found that the greatest period of external achievement has come after intense periods of internal growth.

Meditation and therapy have been the best investments I’ve made in my self-development journey.

The biggest lessons I’ve learned?

I don’t have to believe every thought I think.

I’ve still got a long way to go, but I’ve worked through lots of my childhood trauma, insecurities, and limiting beliefs that had the potential to keep me stuck in my life.

It’s taken me years to go get to this point in my life. And probably even more years until I work through the hardest bits.

Life is a game that is won or lost in your mind.

Boring Habit #6: Become so consistent that people can’t ignore you.

I am not talented at anything.

It’s taken me more than 2 years to make four figures (AUD) on Medium. I’ve seen writers come here for a couple of months and run laps around me.

But the one trait I do have is consistency.

I am the master of showing up. Even when it sucks. And boy, it can suck.

I continued to write every day and publish every week when most of my articles got less than 50 views. Some even got 0.

But I wasn’t to be beaten. I kept going. I showed up every day. Without fail. I’ve seen people more talented than me come and go. They couldn’t keep up with the consistency of writing every day.

When I want to achieve something, I become like a bad smell people can’t get rid of. I’ll go to every event. Read every research article. Put my thoughts out in public.

Become so consistent that people can’t ignore you.

Just by showing up, opportunities become attractive to you. Not magically, but as a result of your sustained effort.

I have friends who can’t do one consistently for more than a couple of months. They get motivated to do one thing and then get distracted by the next shiny object.

The stop-start approach to their goals prevents them from achieving anything meaningful.

Consistent actions produce consistent results.
Sporadic actions produce sporadic results.

Here are my final thoughts…

There is no secret to success. It’s all out there for anyone to see.

Everyone has the same goals in life, but few people have designed systems to help them achieve them.

Even fewer regularly execute on their systems.

All these habits are easy to do, but they are dead boring to master. And that’s why so few people will do them.

If you can master the boring, you can master anything.

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