The Perfect Day Formula

Focus on what you can control and take action everyday.

Tools: Rules For Your Life, The 5 Pillars of Success, A Vision

The Three Cs

The perfect day formula is created by applying the Three Cs to different parts of the day.

“…remember this mantra: Control your mornings. Conquer the chaos of your afternoons. Concentrate on what really matters in the evenings.”

Control Your Mornings

Structure = Freedom

Rules for your life help you add structure.

“…more structure, created by having a set of rules for your life, liberates you and allows you to achieve your big goals and dreams.”

Habits, routines, and rules make actions automatic so you can stay on task despite things getting chaotic.

Get Up 15 Minutes Earlier

Get up 15 minutes earlier and spend that time working on your most important task.

“Heed the most important lesson of this book: You control your behavior. Your success is your personal responsibility. Take action. Do the first things first. Do what matters even if you don’t feel like it. Get up and give your number one priority the focus it deserves for at least fifteen minutes every morning.”

The earlier you rise, the less chaos and temptations you’ll have to deal with.

Having a good morning requires preparing for it the night before.

Create Rules For Your Life

“Follow the rules as if it were law”

“…your personal rules clearly and concisely outline acceptable behaviors for your life. Your rules state what you will and will not do. Your rules automatically dictate that you make the right decisions, making it easy to overcome obstacles and resist temptation. Your rules replace your reliance on willpower to get you through challenges.”

“Use your rules to create rituals and routines to overcome obstacles, eliminate temptation, and end procrastination in your life.”

Examples: I get up at 6am. I write for 1 hour when I wake up. I am polite. I create todo lists.

Script Your Day The Night Before

You must plan and prepare for your day so you can start the day organized.

Create a todo list everyday. Don’t put too many activities on your list. Make them specific, actionable, and non-conflicting.

Schedule all of your tasks.

Your daily routine is the template for each day that you need to put your tasks into.

Reverse Goal Setting: Set a deadline for your workday and then work backwards to fit everything in.

Start the day by doing your most important tasks. At the start of each day you should know your number one priority and start working on it immediately.

Create a NOT-todo-list: A list of tasks you need to avoid doing. These are things that consistently get in the way of you accomplishing your tasks. For every item figure out two ways to overcome it.

The 10-3-2-1-0 Goodnight Formula

These will help you wake up early.

“10 hours before bed – No more caffeine. 3 hours before bed – No more food or alcohol. 2 hours before bed – No more work. 1 hour before bed – No more screen time (turn off all phones, TVs and computers). 0 – The number of times you will hit the snooze button in the morning.”

Make sure you go to bed on time.

Conquer the Afternoon

The 5 Pillars of Success

1. Planning and Preparation: Overcome your temptations in the afternoon by planning and preparing for them. At the end of the day identify the obstacles and then make plans to overcome them. Make two solutions for every obstacle.
2. Professional Accountability: Find someone who can give you feedback (a mentor). You can also grow yourself by being somebody else’s mentor. A mentor can hold you accountable.
3. Social Support: Find people who will support you. Find people who are trying to improve the same way as you. (friends, family, employees, assistants, mentors – through books, videos, programs, in-person, etc.). Social support will give you encouragement.
4. Incentive: Use delayed gratification. Create incentives for doing tasks.
5. The Big Deadline: Make deadlines for your important tasks. Deadlines will motivate you to take action by creating a sense of urgency. (Parkinson’s Law – Work expands to fill the time available for its completion)

Concentrate on What Counts

A Vision For Your Future

You need to find a vision to direct your work towards something meaningful and important.

Everyday work on something that brings you closer to your vision.

Create a Vision

1. Determine what you want: Pretend you are 3-5 years in the future and write down what you want to have in your life
2. Share your vision with people who can give good feedback
3. Create the final draft

Goals

Goals are the milestones you want to achieve between now and reaching your vision

You should have four goals: Health goal, wealth goal, social self goal, and personal enrichment goal

Process Goals: Create goals that set up the habits and routines to achieve your outcome goals