My Sixth Principle: No Zero Days
Have you ever had a day where your time is entirely spent in meetings or answering emails? The kind of day where you look back and feel like you haven't done anything worthwhile? I think those days are the worst. I hate feeling like my day was wasted.
Avoiding that feeling is the main goal behind my "No Zero Days" principle. The idea (which I initially found on Reddit of all places) is simple - every day, I do at least one thing to improve myself or move closer to a goal. As long as I do one thing, I can go to bed feeling satisfied that the day was not a waste. What sort of things count as my "one thing"? These days it includes things like exercising, writing or editing a blog post, conducting a podcast interview, reading a book, or taking an online class.
You are probably thinking "One thing? That seems like you're setting a low bar for yourself." The idea is not to do only one thing - it's to do at least one thing. The reality is that we won't have the same level of productivity every single day. We will have days where we feel like we can conquer the world, but we will also have days where it's all we can do to drag ourselves out of bed. No matter how low I feel during the day if I can get at least one thing done I can allow myself to feel accomplished.
There are two key advantages to this principle:
Consistency: We've all heard the story of the tortoise and the hare. Working every day consistently will help you progress much further than burning yourself out in a one day sprint. This quote by the author Anthony Trollope describes this idea well: "A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules."
Compounding: Over time, even a 1% improvement every day will grow to become significant. You may not feel like you're making progress on a day-to-day basis, but when you look back over weeks or months those repeated actions will pay off significantly.
What do you think? Feel free to send me an email.
Missed my earlier principles? Read them all here.