Use this trick to 180 your life
Photo by Brandi Redd on Unsplash
You know it means you’ll have to scramble, but you hit snooze one more time before getting out of bed. When you finally do get up, you launch into sixth gear to pack your things, get dressed, and make coffee.
Then as luck would have it, you hit two extra red lights on the way to work and–womp womp–you’re late to your first meeting. Again.
You might get things together after that, but chances are you feel a little behind the eight ball for the rest of the day.
As soon as the late train starts rolling, it’s hard for me to get it back. And it spills over to other areas of my life. When I’m late for things, I also have a tendency to:
Feel more scattered and less focused
Breathe shallowly
Eat quickly
Crave quick dopamine hits from social media
Feel more drained and exhausted by the end of the day
In fact, if there were one key indicator of how quickly a client will achieve his or her goal, it’s this one: being on time.
If you want to feel more focused, less stressed, make better choices, and get what you want in life, BE EARLY.
Here are 5 key traits of an "early person" and how to develop them.
Plan ahead
I like to arrive 20 minutes early to my first group coaching session at 5:45am. This requires me to arrive at the gym at 5:25am. In order to do that, I have to leave my house at 5:15am. That means I must get up at 4:30am. I like snoozing twice (sue me), so I set my alarm for 4:15am.
In order to get 7 hours of sleep, I must be in my bed at 9:00pm. And in order to be in my bed at 9:00pm, I set a reminder for 8:30pm to wind down.
Did you see that?! I had to work backwards six steps just to figure out how to arrive 20 minutes early to my first appointment without being a sad, low-energy, sleep-deprived zombie.
I know what you’re thinking: that’s not that hard. You just work backwards.
And you’re right. The fact that it’s easy and tedious is exactly why you (and me, and many many people I work with) fail to do it. It’s not big or glamorous enough to capture your imagination or attention.
You have other things to do that seem more urgent than planning your bedtime.
And this is exactly what habit change often is. Small, tedious tasks carried out with robotic consistency.
2. Anticipate challenges
You know how it goes: the one bike ride when you don’t bring your spare tube is the ride you pop your tire. Damn Murphy’s Law.
Being early requires that you anticipate challenges by building a buffer. You have five stop lights on your route to work, and each has the potential to add 30 seconds to your trip. Plan on hitting all 5 red lights and build a 2.5 minute buffer into your travel time.
Done.
Achieving the big goals you have for yourself will depend on your ability to identify and plan for obstacles. Otherwise, the obstacles will (inevitably) arrive and you will blame them as the reason your goal didn’t pan out.
The cool thing about this is when you do plan for them, you feel like a freaking superhero. Come at me, potholes. I brought my tube.
3. Prioritize your time
I get it. Being early isn’t the only thing that’s important in your life. You have a job, a partner, kids, pets, a house… a phone you can’t stop looking at.
When you turn the dial up on one thing, you inevitably have to turn the dial down on something else.
When you shift your attention to being early, you have to shift your attention away from whatever things you were doing that were making you late.
Going after your big goals will require you to do this… times ten. So better get some practice with the training wheels.
4. Overcome inertia
Newton’s first law of motion is inertia! Not the second. Not the third. The FIRST. The important one!
This means that an object at rest will stay at rest, and an object in motion will stay in motion unless acted on by an unbalanced force.
In order to be early, you have to disrupt the inertia of what you are doing in order to move in a different direction.
Now assuming you are late to things and not just canceling them (don’t do that), you are already doing this. But you’re doing it too late. You’re doing it when you have to, not when you choose to.
When you have big goals, you have to get used to deliberately choosing where you invest your time and energy.
5. Make decisions based on your future self (and not just your present self).
Here’s what I want to do when I get home from work: lay down. Zone out. Scroll Instagram.
Which is fine for a few minutes. But somehow a few minutes so easily turns into an hour. Then dinner is a little behind, my evening routine is a little behind, and I put off packing lunch until the next morning.
And before I know it, I’m rushing through the morning, spilling my coffee, and… I’m late for my first meeting.
Making decisions based on your future self means doing things that are a little uncomfortable now so that your future self has it easy.
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Being early requires that you plan ahead, anticipate challenges, prioritize your time, overcome inertia, and make decisions based on your future self.
These skills are necessary for getting to the dentist ten minutes early, and for achieving the biggest things you want to achieve in your life.
So I challenge you–before you take any other steps towards your big, hairy, audacious goals–to commit to being 5 minutes early to your job, to all of your meetings, and to all of your appointments for the next 10 days.
That’s it. Just be early.
Not only will that put you in a better position to fire on all cylinders during your day, but it will also allow you to demonstrate to yourself that you are in control of your time.
Because here’s the deal:
Once you deeply appreciate that it is you and only you who has power over your time, then you can assert that power and make things happen (not wait for them to happen).
And THAT is what ultimately separates the wheat from the chaff. The men from the boys. The people who win from the people who play.
So get going. And don’t be late.