Life is but a collection of days.
A great life is nothing more than a collection of days won.
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I have the habit of thinking about the big picture a bit too frequently.
I’m always thinking about the end game, the dreams and the goals, the life I want to create and the man I’m aiming to become.
There’s good in this, but to constantly have your focus set on the distant future brings you away from the only thing that actually matters, today, the present.
This past week offered a unique opportunity to find clarity and focus in my mission and what I’m doing on a daily basis because I’ve been sick.
It’s been years since I’ve gotten sick for more than a day, but this one’s been rough.
In this case, that opportunity is something I got in the mail the day after the sickness took hold…
Like many of you, the other week I bought The Perfect Day Formula “how to own the day and control your live”, by Craig Ballantyne.
Craig’s a guy I’ve met only a couple times, but followed for years. And not even his fitness stuff, but his work focused on, for the lack of a better term, getting shit done.
Craig is the master at getting shit done and getting shit done at a high quality.
I’ve wanted him to write a book for years because of the value I get from his newsletters and articles.
For example, it was his routine that gave me a blueprint to create my own.
Largely because of his lead I began waking up at 4:30am and going to bed at 8:30 pm. Through his advice I was able to define what distracts me throughout the day and have the ability to focus on the single thing that’s most important to my success, happiness, and effectiveness as a human.
His Gratitude Journals – something he gives you along with the Perfect Day Formula – have helped me create more effective to do lists, but also define specific things within my day that I’m grateful for. The ability to find what I’m grateful for when I’d have otherwise simply went to bed without thanking my Maker for a single specific thing has helped me live a happier life.
Craig’s articles and his advice are always simple, clear cut, and actionable.
He’s figured out how to not only get a ton of stuff done, but to determine what among the myriad of “things” that need to be completed are the most important and demand his – and our – best hours of the day, something he calls Magic Time.
Think about those initial sentences I put at the beginning of this article.
If you’re able to win today, that is, get important work done, spend some quality time doing something you love be it on a hobby, time with your family, or whatever, and you’re able to do this every day because your effectiveness isn’t born from chance but the result of habits that have become second-nature, then you’re going to create a great life.
This is powerful, especially for a daydreamer like me. If I’m able to determine the right goals, spend more time on the most important tasks, get better work done, focus on things that really matter, it’s only a matter of time before those lost-in-the-future-dreams become my reality.
That’s what Craig’s always helped me do in his newsletters and articles. He’s helped me become a more effective human. He’s helped me create the best habits. He’s showed me how freedom requires more discipline and how success really is habitual, and if I’m not creating what I want to create or if I’m not building the life I want to build with the success I want to attain, I only have to look at the decisions I’m making on a daily basis and the habits that make up those days to find the source of my failure.
So as soon as The Perfect Day Formula came out, I bought it.
And since I’ve been sick for the past week, I figured there’s no better time to study, learn, and reflect on the habits I’ve slid back into, where I’m headed, and to point myself back in the right direction by creating the best day possible based on the right habits I need to form.
Even this act of reflection, planning, and re-tinkering my rules is something that should be done habitually.
So, in the quest to create a great life, you must first create, then live, your perfect day, day in and day out without excuse.
Here’s how the Perfect Day Formula will help you do this….
HOW TO CREATE THE PERFECT DAY
1. Your Vision
There are four booklets, one journal, and one calendar or daily planner of sorts that make up the package.
They range from planning big picture things to nailing down the nitty gritty of how your perfect day should go. The big picture stuff is found in the book, of course, but also two booklets, one that focuses on goal setting, and the other that focuses on your bigger vision of who you’re trying to become and what you’re really trying to accomplish.
He asks you questions, forces you to think about both the bigger picture and your more immediate goals and the steps you’re going to take to bring this bigger mission to fruition.
From here, you can really begin to focus on the rules of both your life and your days that will help you become that man and create that legacy.
2. Your Rules
Craig has an awesome 12 rules article you can read here. Ben Franklin had his own set of rules that you can read about here.
Rules are necessary if you’re going to stay the course and become the man you’re aiming, aspiring to become. Rules are who you’re trying to be. They’re what keeps you on track, focused, always improving and accomplishing.
Rules like avoiding gossip prevent you from delving into the idiotic conversations had by small minds. Rules like avoiding email before noon keep you focused only on the work you need to do not the people you need to respond to or keep happy.
He talks about it in the book, which is important to read before you make your way through the manuals, but without rules your days are left to chance, and thus, where you end up in life is more lottery than archery.
3. Your Routine
The calendar he’s created where you write your time blocks, the single most important thing you need to accomplish on a given day, is incredibly powerful and well-laid out.
For those of us who tend to procrastinate, even using research or reading as avoidance, this piece of paper does wonders.
When you know where your time is going and you have only a single focus for each time block, there are no reasons nor excuses to remove yourself from this path.
What you end up with after going through the different notebooks, the book, and the journals, is a day that you can live every day that will both bring you more freedom, far more success, and yield much greater returns for your time.
You’re going to become better by implementing what this book and this package has to offer. It’s impossible not to. It makes you answer questions that we rarely ask ourselves, create rules that we’re afraid to create, and take control of our lives in ways that we didn’t know we could.
Most of us think we’re slaves to our desires, but we’re not. We allow ourselves to become distracted, what’s sad is that most of us will spend our lives in distraction, being pulled away from the work we’re here to do and the life we’re here to lead.
TO LIVE OR TO EXIST
There’s an idea that it seems few are in line with, that life, no matter how our lives are going, is a gift. It’s a gift in many ways, but in one sense it’s a gift because people have died fighting so we can pursue happiness, so that we have some semblance of freedom.
To ignore this gift, to waste it, to slap those who’ve died and sacrificed in the face, is to simply exist. It’s to ignore your choice to work hard, to focus, to make something of yourself in lieu of ease, of distraction, of giving in to temptation at every turn.
It isn’t a right to choose to be lazy or even ineffective. It’s your duty to make the best of the life and the talents and the opportunities you’ve been given by actually accomplishing something day in and day out.
As I read through the pages of this book and began looking at my life, planning it out, mapping out my perfect day, I realized that this stuff shouldn’t be optional, it should be required.
We should teach this stuff in school. But, and there’s good in this, it’s things that are only available to action-takers. Like anything, the businesses we create, the adventures, the jobs, they’re all only available to action-takers.
Thus, I highly recommend you pick up your copy here (action-takers only).
About The Author
Chad Howse: Chad’s mission is to get you in the arena, ‘marred by the dust and sweat and blood’, to help you set and achieve audacious goals in the face of fear, and not only build your ideal body, but the life you were meant to live. He’s a former 9-5er turned entrepreneur, a former scrawny amateur boxer turned muscular published fitness author. He’ll give you the kick in the ass needed to help you live a big, ambitious life.
You can contact him at –
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