If you wake up and “wing it”—you’ll always fall victim to what’s urgent and distractionary.
If while you’re winging it, however, you discover there’s something important that you missed, could’ve done better, or did too late… and you create a reminder or system for next time…
Then suddenly you have a strategy.
And the next morning, when you wake up and follow it—you’ll likely notice a few things:
1. You’ll feel a pull to go back to what’s urgent and distractionary. Quick dopamine will always have an appeal, but at the expense of doing what’s meaningful long-term. Keep your prior lessons at the forefront of your mind.
2. You’ll discover something else that’s important that needs to get prioritized. And so the iteration goes. Slowly but surely, you’re strategy will grow and improve and become a productivity force to be reckoned with.
3. You’ll start to feel a little better about what you got done during that day. Quick dopamine wears off and leaves you feeling empty. Getting done important stuff leaves you with a lasting feeling of goodness.
Here’s the thing: we all start by winging it.
…It’s how we figure things out when we don’t have any experience or guidance to reference or fall back on.
But, continuing to wing it is a choice.
And not turning learned experiences into a strategy is a choice.
The question is: What kind of choices are you making in your day-to-day?
P.s. I started uploading quotes from The Win Within by Bert Mandelbaum today. You can grab a copy and read along here.