Category: Priorities

• Don’t measure your weight; measure the weight of your self-love.
• Don’t measure your influence; measure the care inside your actions.
• Don’t measure your money; measure the wealth of life inside your days.

…Because what gets measured, gets managed. And what gets managed gets your time. And what gets your time… gets your life.

Macro: 8 hours sleep / 8 hours work / 8 hours life.

Which means: 50/50 split either daily or weekly between work tasks (things we do for survival) and life tasks (things we do for fulfillment).

Pro tip: Take life tasks as seriously as work tasks. Make formal blocks for family / friends / nature / adventure / reading / writing / hobbies / doing nothing / etc.

Bottom line: Those who master how they manage their time… become masters over the fate of their lives.

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P.s. Do you struggle over the thought of your life’s fate? My guide The Art of Forward will help.

Think again.

Here are 9 creative ways you can intertwine self-care into your routine:

No 20-minute meditation block?

• Meditate while waiting.
• Meditate while eating.
• Meditate while commuting. Commit to no podcasts, music, or phone use of any kind. Just drive mindfully, focus on your breath, and notice all that’s filling your senses in the world around you.

No 40-minute reading block?

• Try audiobooks instead. “Read” while driving, while doing chores, while exercising, etc.
• Try the 5-page rule. Read no more and no less than 5 pages in the morning, afternoon, and at night… and inside any other pockets of time you can swing throughout the day.
• Read from your phone. Instead of obsessively checking social media throughout the day, download a reading app that allows you to consume books as you would social media. I average ~2 hours of screen time per day… imagine if all of that was devoted to reading…

No 1-hour exercise block? 

• Focus on getting 10k+ steps. Park further away everywhere you go. Do a lap around the office/ neighborhood a few times throughout the day. Take the family/ dog out on a longer than usual walk.
• Exercise in pockets. Pick a bodyweight exercise and do 3-5 max-ish sets throughout the day. Push-ups every 3 hours. Lunges every 4 hours. Sit-ups whenever you enter or leave the house.
• Do an abbreviated workout. You don’t need 1 hour to get an excellent workout. Do 2 exercises every minute on the minute for whatever time you have (e.g. 5 push-ups, 10 squats, done each minute for 10 minutes). Go for a 15 minute run around your block. Do as many burpees as you can in 5 minutes.

When outlining the tasks of your day—identify how many you’re doing for others vs how many you’re doing for yourself.

A day spent only doing tasks for others will leave you empty.

A day spent only doing tasks for yourself will leave you wastefully overflowing.

Like a cup you pour your favorite drink into on a scorching hot day, you want to carefully fill it up first… and then carefully pour out from it second.

Maintaining a mindful balance of both actions—which hold equal importance—is how we quench the thirst of our lives.

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P.s. I also published: 34 Will Smith Quotes from Will on Hustle, Happiness, and Love.

• At 8am: “Every day I exercise is a great day.”
• At 9am: “I become what I consume.”
• At 1pm: “Daily writing is one of the best things I’ve ever done for my mental health.”
• At 4pm: “Teach like it’s the most important class you’ll ever teach—for someone, it might be.”
• At 11pm: “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.”

It’s easy to get lost in the busyness of the day.

Setting a timer on your phone to ring when you’re supposed to be doing a high-priority task—and making the title of the timer a reminder of the “why” that stands behind the task—can help you cut through the noise and refocus your energy, in the moment, on what’s important.

Better that than laying your head down on the pillow at the end of the day, only to realize that it was all a blur and you were barely conscious for anything that happened since you left the pillow earlier that morning. Why rush so quickly through this already short enough life?!

Imagine waking up to a timer in the morning that said: “If I died yesterday, this would be the greatest gift imaginable.” Maybe that would reframe how you went about your day. Because here’s the thing: some did die yesterday. And here you are.

Why not do everything you could to fully embrace the moments bundled inside this gift you’ve been fortunate enough to receive?

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P.s. Here are 25 way daily writing improved my life.