We live in the world of Gary Vaynerchuck, Tim Ferris, Tony Robbins, where – if by the end of the day you haven’t meditated for one hour, taken a cold shower, eaten 30 different supplements, written half a book, closed three deals, climbed up the Everest, pet your cat, earned a million dollars – you feel like you’ve done nothing. And even if you do, well, you should have done it by drinking a special coffee brew and in only three hours, so now you’re a sucker for not having used the right hacks.
There’s nothing wrong with all the teachings and productivity tips some of the great authors usually offer. Most of their routines in fact can work and make a huge difference in your life. As a matter of fact, most people lack the results they want in life precisely for lack of discipline.
So, it does make sense that there are so many coaches and entrepreneurs out there in the market who keep harping on focus, productivity and self-discipline. Because most people come from that end of the spectrum where they completely lack self-discipline and willingness to consistently implement daily routines and that’s why – to be brutally honest – their lives suck.
But once you have gone down the self-development path for a few years and you’ve grown your self-discipline through various challenges, routines, retreats, habits, apps and more, you come to realize that something feels slightly off with this lopsided emphasis on performance and discipline. Also you start to realize that modelling successful people as a recipe for your life is largely ineffective.
What we’re mostly concerned with at Zen @ Wall Street is how to live the most balanced and conscious life, while also being productive. As you can see, this is very different from a one-sided focus on productivity. It’s a much trickier journey; it’s like going out there in a muddy alley and trying to cross to the other side, while keeping your shoes as clean as you possibly can. It requires strategy, balance and careful steps, rather than brute force. And yet, we believe this is the sanest approach to living in our modern capitalistic societies.
After installing a certain amount of discipline and routines in my life, I just came to the point where I realized they wouldn’t work anymore.
My daily meditation would need an occasional break, from a few days to a whole week, because it’d become unbearable, so much that my body would start tensing up before starting the practice and ironically the practice as a whole would backfire. My 1-week challenges would become a torture if prolonged for 30 days. Habits would invariably fall apart after a while, and start to taste like that extra scoop of ice-cream after you’ve had too much sugar already. I felt utterly frustrated as I realized viscerally and physiologically, the limits of my self-discipline. I touched with my hands the glass ceiling of my personal performance. It was physically and psychologically unbearable to keep doing what I was doing: I wasn’t mentally slacking out, but rather I profoundly needed to slack out, with all my being.
Then I started to notice something interesting. Without any consistent routine, while picking up and dropping habits like changing underwear, doing three days of journaling and interrupting, doing yoga only when I felt like it, starting a mantra and forgetting about it after a week, being inconsistent at virtually everything… then all things eventually got done.
I wasn’t mentally slacking out, but rather I profoundly needed to slack out, with all my being
I didn’t even know how. I would just turn back to my past thirty days and notice that: ‘hey at the end of the day, all that I was supposed to do with my life… is done’.
Almost magically, the things that mattered were done. The things I wanted to create, I always created. The results came in. Interestingly, once I’d removed the structure of discipline and routine, I had a lot more room for creativity. Sometimes I’d use that extra time only to surf the internet and waste half of my day. And I had to learn to be okay with that. I had to learn to be okay with eating at random times, wasting time on Facebook, at times making almost nothing of an entire day and not feeling guilty about it.
You see, the culture of self-help has this subtle unintended side effect of making you feel guilty. Guilty when you don’t feel a certain way, when you don’t perform a certain way, when you don’t get the results within a certain timeline. It is unintended, but it’s there.
But those moments of letting loose, slacking out, falling apart were somehow necessary for my psyche to reorganize (as long as they were not completely left unchecked or turn into destructive patterns). A few days later I’d have a spur of creativity and get something brilliant done. Or I’d work for a week straight on a complicated issue, almost effortlessly.
So, I figured there had to be a way to balance the two things. They say that discipline is freedom, and it’s true, but then when discipline takes over your entire agenda, there’s no more you, with your uniqueness, your creativity, as well as your flaws and weaknesses. There’s just an agenda that has replaced you. Personal growth isn’t about becoming this high-achiever, Superman version of a self-disciplined monk combined with a billionaire tycoon. It’s about becoming more YOU.
But those moments of letting loose, slacking out, falling apart were somehow necessary for my psyche to reorganize
In the end the answer was – as always- balance, a middle path, equilibrium. Not too much discipline, not too little.
This principle is so simple that we can easily lose sight of it, but if you’re starting on anything, always picture yourself as a marathon runner.
What’s the point in running the first ten miles at 15mph if you completely burn out midway through the race?
Once I slowed down and gave up most of my routines, it felt uncomfortable because I first compared my seemingly sluggish days with all the momentum I had once built when I was onto my best routines. But then those routines had invariably broken in days or weeks, so what was I comparing with? With something not sustainable.
It’s like comparing the first ten miles of a marathon that you know you can eventually complete at a slow pace, with ten miles of one that you ran at 15mph before dropping out of the race.
So, it became clear to me that the key to being productive at anything is to find your own pace. A pace that you can sustain for a very long time. Because real success is almost always consistency over intensity. And you can only find your pace by tests and trials, sometimes slowing down too much, sometimes picking up too much speed, too early.
But that’s the real key to productivity, the only practical discovery that you have to make for yourself. Yes, momentum is great, but no one can tell your (or sell you) the formula that works for you. All those routines are great, but can you really do them all for months and years on hand? Do you have that pace yet, or will you ever?
Then what is the point? Find your pace first. It’s so difficult, because you can sense if you have it in you to do something for a month, but much harder to gauge in advance if you’ll be able to sustain it for a year. Or two. Or ten. And yet so crucial.
Eventually, what is the biggest takeaway I got from dropping all my routines and just focusing on finding my own unique pace?
That the ultimate edge, the real kicker is what you do in your lowest and shittiest days.
I’ve shifted my perspective. I treat all days as equals: I only focus on doing something to move forward every day, no matter the day. Only something, but always something.
If in my best days I have extra energy and I feel refreshed, well-rested and ready to rock the world, I still do only that something and once I’m done I feel free to surf the web, play ping pong, call a friend or anything that I enjoy, without having to necessarily utilize the extra time and energy. I chill, because I’ve done that something.
But, on my lowest days, when I’m cranky, tired, sleepy, unmotivated, lazy, hopeless, I make sure that – hell or high water – I still get that little something done.
I noticed that by avoiding the plus on my best days, I also find it easier not to score a minus on the negative ones. By avoiding too much yang, I also don’t have to deal with too much yin in return. If I don’t take an extra step forward when I have the chance, I also find myself not having to take two steps back later. It’s so counterintuitive, and yet so effective, at least for me.
The ultimate edge, the real kicker is what you do in your lowest and shittiest days.
If I wake up miserable and unmotivated all I need to think is: just do that something to move towards your goal. It makes the day easy. If I wake up ready to rock the world, all I need to think is still: just do that something to move towards your goal. And enjoy the rest of the day.
In the end, that something, plus something, plus something, plus something just inevitably amounts to visible, great results. It might take a little longer? Maybe. Does it matter? Remember, all you want is to complete the marathon, not the timing. You don’t get any completion award for being ahead of the pack at mile ten and then dropping out.
Use all the hacks you want, try all the routines you want, bath in ice-cold water and sit in a pitch-dark cave for a month if you want, but at the end of the day, just make sure you find your own pace. Your pace is all you need, to enjoy the journey and complete the race. And wherever you are, whatever you do, I believe that’s the sanest thing you can do.
Also published on Medium.
