Discipline Your Time
“If it’s important to you, you will make the time,” Yalden said. “That’s the bottom line.” Don’t even think about saying that you are going to wait until Monday or that you are going to start on January first. It doesn’t work that way, according to Yalden. “If you say those things, you’re not really committed.” If you are not committed, go back to Day One. If it’s important, you will make the time. It it’s important, you will make this a priority. Discipline yourself to make time to focus on you. “Every single day, I want you to create your to-do list. Every single morning, you look at your to-do list. At night, take another look at your to-do list. Cross out what you’ve completed and rewrite it, or wait until morning and rewrite things then, whatever you do. What is not completed, you move to the next day.” It’s not complicated. Everything that is not completed gets moved over to a new sheet of paper. If you want to go paperless, Yalden recommends the Evernote app. “I love Evernote. Download. Use it. Create notebooks and make all your notes there,” he said. “You just simply, ‘Yep, I did this – delete. What’s next,’ – and just keep a to-do list continually going.” Yalden can’t make the point strong enough when he says that if something is important to you, then you are going to make it a habit. “Listen, folks: Nothing changes if nothing changes. I want you to choose right now to make changes in your life. I gave you 28 Days for you to refocus, reengage and to make a plan. Let’s not complicate it. From the very beginning, I said to concentrate on just one thing.” If you spread yourself too thin with vague goals and halfhearted attempts at productivity, Yalden said you will come to the end of the year and realize you didn’t do anything. In one month – 28 Days – I challenged you to pick one thing. Use the 28 Days to focus on that task and complete that task. At the end of the 28 Days, you can go back and pick another thing. Just use the same method that I gave you from Day One to Day 28. Discipline Your Time with a set wake-up time and a set bedtime. “Discipline the time when you take a lunch break, and even what you do during your lunch break. We discipline time for things like our kids, our significant others and work – but when we have free time, we don’t ever really discipline that time.” Yalden wants you to discipline your free time to get the things done that you have to get done.
- Get your sleep.
- Work on your nutrition
- Exercise
- Be present. Be engaged.