Last year I had an off-year. I wasn’t my best self and I was self-aware of it. As I mentioned in my last article, How to Excel in your 20’s (8 Ways to Thrive Today), my first year out of collegiate athletics was strenuous. During my time in football, there was always a clear playbook for success. I was told when to show up for work, to be 5 minutes early for team/staff meetings, they served us food, I knew exactly what I had to accomplish during practice/games, and through reps became a pretty damn good recruiter.

We ran a militant-based organization and took pride in building an effort-based culture. One of my favorite lessons from working in football was “Level of Effort = Level of Care.” Working in football provided so many great opportunities and experiences in my life. The people were my extended family and the lessons I learned from them I will carry with me forever.

Why does this story matter?

Well, when I transitioned out of working in football, the strict structure that I had become so accustomed to, crumbled. The rug was pulled out from underneath me, I had to work through an unforeseen roadblock. I found that the structure enabled my ability to make decisions for myself, and when I began to dissect it further I realized there are parallels to that in how we grow up. For most of us, up until the age of 18, all of our decisions are made for us. I would even argue that though college provides slightly more autonomy, it still handcuffs a majority of us.

After taking my new job, for the first time, I was in the driver’s seat. Something I have been aching for because I do believe that my past experiences have set me up to flourish. But now I had the option to not start my day at 6 AM. I started asking myself questions like, “Was I waking up at 6 AM because that is who I am or because that was life. Maybe I am more of a night owl and do better work then?”

Through failure and A LOT of self-reflection by the end of the year, I started to put the puzzle pieces together. I realized that it was structure and discipline that I was lacking. I will preface that my lack of discipline wasn’t showing up as much at work as it was in the other phases of my life. I had to take accountability and find a solution by creating weekly, monthly, and yearly habituals that will push me toward what I was striving for in life.

Today, I will share my 4-step process for building those habits and my number one (1) hack for keeping myself accountable.

Step 1: Set goals.

I’ve talked about goal setting quite a bit in past articles. I believe it’s almost impossible to accomplish anything worthwhile without goal setting. However, before goal setting, I like to set pillar priorities.

The three (3) pillar priorities I set to start this year were learning, health and mindfulness. Every goal that I set has to feed into these priorities.

Feel free to go through this exercise with me. Write down your priorities on a piece of paper or in your notes app.

From my experience, I believe that one should try to minimize their priorities down to about 3-5 things that you can hyperfocus on. Anytime that I try to extend myself further than that, I feel spread thin, it becomes unsustainable and in turn, I don’t reach my goals.

The activities I chose to feed into my pillar priorities are listed below.

Learn

Piano
Read

Health

Workout
Box
Drink Water

Run
Cycle

Mindfulness

Cold Shower
Yoga
Journal

Now, this is a start but these goals are not super tangible and research says that the less tangible the goal the less likely we are to accomplish the mission.

Instead of saying, “I’m going to read every day,” you should say, “I’m going to read 30 minutes per day.”

Please don’t feel as if you have to be a hero right out the gate. If your goal is to get in better shape. Set the goal to show up to the gym for 20 mins per day. That is attainable. As you begin to enjoy the process and you start seeing the results and falling in love with the process it will get easier to expand your capacity.

The small change of getting granular in what your goal is, the easier it is to curate a plan because you know exactly how much time you need to account for reading.

Below is what my tangible goals look like.

Learn

Piano for 30 mins per day
Read 5 chapters per week

Health

Workout 3x per week
Box 1x per week for 20 mins
Drink 75 oz of Water per day

Run 5 miles per week
Cycle 10 miles per week

Mindfulness

Cold Shower 1x per day
Yoga 2x per week
Journal 2x per day (Morning + Night)

Note: I set daily and weekly goals. I will talk about it more in the planning phase but this gives me flexibility as life throws us curve balls. I do think you can set monthly goals but I work better in smaller increments.

Step 2: Curate a Plan

Setting goals, in my opinion, is the easiest part of my habit-building process. Most people can attest to having some sort of goal or idea in mind for what they would like to accomplish. The difficulty is curating a plan that can be easily executed.

Pull out your calendar. Block off your work hours. You can’t change the time spent at work. (Though, you absolutely can use this same method for what you’d like to accomplish at work).

Block yourself some time in the morning, I call this my morning stack. Then block yourself some time in the PM, late night stack. I like to leave myself 1.5-2 hours in the morning and about 2 hours in the PM.

Now, your everyday goals are your non-negotiables. These are your daily disciplines.

Your weekly and if you have monthly goals are the activities that you can play around with. For example, my goal is to run five (5) miles per week. You can run that in one shot or I can run one (1) mile per day. It’s whatever fits your schedule best. I find this flexibility helpful in not getting overwhelmed with what I want to accomplish during the week. If I am traveling or if I have an event to attend, I can easily front load or back load tasks during the week.

Below is how I plan my typical week. When something pops up I pivot accordingly.

Sunday

Read x1 chapter (Morning Stack)

Journal (Morning Stack)
Piano (Morning Stack)
Yoga (Morning Stack)

Cold Shower (Morning Stack)
Run 10 miles (Late Night Stack)
Journal (Late Night Stack)

Drink 75 oz Water

Monday

Read 1x Chapter(Morning Stack)

Journal (Morning Stack)
Piano (Morning Stack)
Cold Shower (Morning Stack)

Workout (Late Night Stack)
Journal (Late Night Stack)
Drink 75 oz Water

Tuesday

Read 1x Chapter (Morning Stack)
Journal (Morning Stack)

Piano (Morning Stack)
Cold Shower (Morning Stack)
Bike 10 miles (Late Night Stack)

Journal (Late Night Stack)
Drink 75 oz Water

Wednesday

Read 1x Chapter (Morning Stack)
Journal (Morning Stack)
Piano (Morning Stack)

Cold Shower (Morning Stack)
Workout (Late Night Stack)
Journal (Late Night Stack)

Drink 75 oz Water

Thursday

Read 1x Chapter (Morning Stack)

Journal (Morning Stack)
Piano (Morning Stack)
Cold Shower (Morning Stack)

Yoga (Late Night Stack)
Journal (Late Night Stack)
Drink 75 oz Water

Friday

Journal (Morning Stack)
Piano (Morning Stack)

Cold Shower (Morning Stack)
Workout (Late Night Stack)
Journal (Late Night Stack)

Drink 75 oz Water

Saturday

Journal (Morning Stack)

Piano (Morning Stack)
Cold Shower (Morning Stack)
Box (Morning Stack)

Journal (Late Night Stack)
Drink 75 oz Water

Step 3: Execute

All the goal setting, strategizing, and planning are done. It is time to execute. As you can all imagine this step is the hardest part.

It’s easy to say you are going to do things but will you hold yourself accountable for the follow-through. When you hit a roadblock will you continue forward or fold. Only you can answer that.

“Motivation gets you going, but discipline keeps you growing.” – John C. Maxwell

I have two big pieces of advice.

Keep going. Even when the sh*t sucks or you’re tired, fight through it. You’ll build a mental callus to do what’s difficult and discipline is almost always fruitful.
Exercise Empathy. If for some reason you get sick. Or you absolutely can’t get it done that week or that day… have empathy for yourself. You don’t have to be perfect, it’s okay. Get back after it tomorrow.

I know it’s kind of funny. These two pieces of advice are somewhat contradicting, but they work for me. I go until absolute failure. If If I fail, I forgive myself and choose to fall forward.

Step 4: Rinse & Repeat

Lastly, rinse and repeat the process. Every three (3) months evaluate your priorities and time. It is cool if you have to make adjustments. Just make sure you give yourself enough time to give the new habit a chance to stick.

I’ve noticed in my own experience that starting in small increments and then expanding my capacity overtime has led me to the most success in building new habits. During my evaluation, I get a better understanding of what I have the most interest in so as my priorities shift I can better align added activities.

#1 Habit Building Hack

Drum roll, please! My #1 hack for building habits is the app Habit Tracker. I share this thing with almost anyone who is trying to build new habits or disciplines in their life. It’s an extremely easy way to track your progress. Just takes a few minutes a day.

The UX design I love because as you are making progress, the bars fill up and for me, that is just a fulfilling feeling and keeps me motivated.

My favorite part about the app is the compounding effect. The app keeps track of everything you have ever logged. This is awesome because 30 minutes a day of the piano seems like nothing, but after 5 months of playing, I’ve played 50+ hours. Pretty sweet!

Anyway, appreciate everyone who tuned into this article. I know it is a bit longer than some of the previous ones, but building habits is not easy. Please use the comment section below to share how you build habits. Everyone, along with myself, can benefit from your perspective.