How To Actually Stick To A Schedule (Even if you lack discipline)

 

I’ve planned every hour of my day in a pocket notebook for over 1200 days in a row.

But I used to struggle to actually to stick the schedule and be productive.

That was until I built this 3 part system that I’m going to break down in this email (it’s another long one so strap in).

The first part is reduce friction, the second part is increase reward and the third part is use momentum.

 

01: Reduce Friction 

 

Some work is harder than others, but all work has friction - An internal feeling preventing you from starting the work.

In general, the harder the task, or the less meaningful the task, the more friction it has.

And if you want to stick to your schedule and get anything done, you need to minimise this friction.

So when building this system - I made this part 1.

 

1.1: Have Your Schedule In Front Of You 

 

A problem I used to run into was forgetting all about my schedule.

I would plan my day, close the notebook, and set it to the side, ready to work on my first task.

But after that, I would just go through my day and do whatever task I felt like doing or do anything else - even if it wasn’t work.

All because once I spent 60 minutes doing a certain task, it was easy to forget that I had a plan to follow and often, I would just go with the flow, doing whatever I thought I should do next - which was rarely what I knew I needed to do.

This is even more true if you have an important task that you’re avoiding since we, as humans, will always try to conserve the most energy possible by going down the path of least resistance, unless we have a reason otherwise.

So to fix this, I started keeping my notebook open and beside me on my desk at all times.

This way, it’s staring me in the face and I can’t avoid or forget about the schedule and it reduces the friction for me to check what I have to do next.

This is also why I recommend planning your day on paper - not only does it take more effort to create than if you use a calendar app and therefore you’re more likely to stick to it, but it’s hard to have a calendar app open on your screen all day, every day, especially when you’re using that screen to work.

It also reduces temptations or excuses for you to pull out your phone to check what you’re doing next and end up scrolling TikTok for 30 minutes.

Either way, regardless of what you use to plan your day, find a way to have your schedule in front of you at all times so what you have to do is obvious and is in plain sight, rather than hidden in plain sight.

 

1.2: Understand flow

 

When I did sit down to do the work that I scheduled, I would always try to do it in a state of deep work - undistracted, fully focused for 60-120 minutes at a time.

But more often than not, I would end up avoiding the work and procrastinating or if I sat down to do it, I would get up and quit after 20 minutes because I would tell myself “I couldn’t focus”.

But really, I just didn’t understand flow and focus.

That was until I read the book The Art of Impossible by Steven Kotler.

When you’re trying to work on important tasks, you want to do it in a state of deep work simply because of how deep work facilitates both flow and focus.

Flow is a hyper-focused productive state where your levels of dopamine, acetylcholine, and norepinephrine skyrocket to allow you to produce your best quality work in the most efficient and effective way possible.

Focus is a pre-requisite for flow, your full attention must be on the task you’re trying to complete.

But what I didn’t realise is that to enter flow and truly focus on a task, it takes anything between 15 and 30 minutes for your brain to essentially warm up and enter flow.

And this warm-up stage is uncomfortable.

Your norepinephrine levels are increasing, causing you to feel agitated and uncomfortable.

I used to take this as a sign that I couldn’t focus - so I would get up and quit which meant I wasn’t sticking to my schedule and since I had quit, I felt guilty and I wouldn’t stick to my schedule for the rest of the day either.

But when I started reading about flow and focus, this all changed.

The first 15-30 minutes when most people sit down to work but get demotivated and quit, deviating from their schedule is the warm-up period for your brain.

Think about the gym.

If you were going in to hit a 1 rep max, you wouldn’t just throw on 3 plates and start bench pressing, you would warm up first.

Your brain is no different.

When you sit down to work, and you’re struggling to focus and you feel agitated - remember, that this feeling isn’t resistance, it’s not that you can’t focus and do the work.

This feeling is your brain warming up for you to be able to focus and enter flow.

So lean into it.

Don’t let the agitation of your brain warming up cause you to stop working and fall away from your schedule.

Understand how flow and focus works and push through the first 20 minutes of discomfort, even if you don’t get much done in that time, because if you push through you’ll enter flow, but only if you’re willing to endure.

 

1.3: Create Meaning

 

Having your schedule in front of you will reduce the friction of knowing what you need to do next.

Understanding flow and focus will reduce the impact of the friction of starting the work.

But what if you can’t stick to your schedule because the friction to sitting down and following it is still too high?

This happened to me all the time and was because of 1 of 2 reasons;

1. The work I was doing had no meaning or

2. I didn’t remember the meaning of the work

As humans, we’re hard-wired for the path of least resistance.

We will always take the easier option so that we can conserve as much energy as possible - unless we have a reason to take the harder path.

Avoiding the work that you know you need to do is the easier option - at least in the short term as you’ll conserve more energy - but in the long run, it eats at you from the inside and fills you with anxiety and guilt.

The path of least resistance always sounds good in the short term, but in the long term, it’s a slow death.

If I wanted to take the harder path, the path of doing what I knew I needed to do, and the path of sticking to my schedule, I needed a reason to do it.

That reason is meaning.

So I asked myself “How can I create meaning in what I schedule so that I stick to my schedule?”

Well, first I needed to understand what meaning is.

Meaning is voluntarily shouldered responsibility of achieving something that you value.

If I wanted to create meaning in my schedule, the things that I scheduled had to help me shoulder the responsibility of achieving something I valued.

Ideally, this meaning will have multiple layers.

For example;

Let’s say you have a task called task 1.

This task is meaningful to you because if you show up every single day and shoulder the responsibility of completing that task, you will over time achieve a goal that is meaningful to you.

The goal is meaningful to you because it helps you achieve at least 1 of 3 things;

• Your dream life

• Your dream day-to-day schedule

• Becoming all you could be

So to create meaning in my schedule and my life, I asked myself 3 questions harshly and then answered them honestly;

1. What does my dream life look like in every area?

2. What does my dream day-to-day schedule look like?

3. If I could be all I could be, what would that look like?

Once I had the answers to these questions, I set a goal that if I achieved would push me toward at least 1 of them - and when you’re doing this, that goal doesn’t have to be huge and life-changing.

You can start small, you can lower yourself to the rung of the ladder that you’re able to reach so that you can get onto the damn ladder in the first place instead of trying to reach the top without even being on it.

From that goal, look at how what you’re scheduling each day will help you achieve that goal - creating meaning in the work that you’ve scheduled since the work adds up to a meaningful goal that adds up to a meaningful vision for your life.

If none of what you’re scheduling each day will help you move toward your goal, figure out 1-3 daily tasks that will help you achieve your goal and make them your priority each day.

Your schedule now has meaning as following your schedule will help you voluntarily shoulder the responsibility of achieving something that you value - your goals and visions for your life.

And if your schedule has meaning, you have a reason to stick to it, to follow it.

All you have to do now is remember that meaning, which I did by having a note on my desk that said “Why is this work important” and “Remember the meaning of the work”.

This way, whenever I felt like procrastinating or felt like not sticking to my schedule, I could look at that note and remember why I had to stick to the schedule and why it was my responsibility and duty to rise to the level required of me to do the work that I knew I needed to do.

 

02: Increase Reward

 

As much as you can try and reduce the friction of the work, you can never completely remove it.

Doing the work and sticking to your schedule will require energy and effort.

Even if that energy and effort is small, it’s still there and hence, there’s still friction.

That’s why part 2 of this system is to increase the reward and make overcoming the friction more worthwhile.

 

2.1: Take a break after every work block 

 

I’m all for working hard.

In fact, you need to work hard and for most people, you need to work harder than you can imagine.

But, working hard doesn’t equate to working 16 hours a day with no breaks, especially when you consider the law of diminishing returns - where after a certain point for each extra unit or effort, your outcome decreases - essentially, you’re getting worse results.

I never put this together in the context of work until I read about flow and focus.

Your best work will be completed in a state of flow where all your cognitive abilities are at their max.

But flow is caused by an increase in neurochemicals - of which you have a limited supply - meaning after a certain period of time, that supply decreases below what’s needed to enter flow and your quality of work decreases - ruining your results.

This typically happens every 90-120 minutes, meaning if you work for 3 hours without a break, potentially 50% of that work is at a quality lower than your best and hence, it’s counterproductive to complete.

So what I decided to do was to follow the principles of deep work and schedule every hour of my day.

This way, I could plan my important tasks in 60-120 minutes blocks of time and after each task is complete, I could take a 15-30 minute break.

I work in line with the science of flow and focus, allowing me to work less but get more done and get it done to a higher quality.

If I don’t stick to my schedule, that can’t happen - I end up falling behind and having to work more to catch up or I just don’t do any of the work and feel anxious and guilty, neither of which I want.

This gives me an incentive to stick to my schedule, by giving me the opportunity to work less but get more done and therefore do more of what I want to do in life, making sticking to my schedule even more worthwhile.

 

2.2: Schedule time to do nothing 

 

We often make sticking to our schedule harder than it needs to be by not giving our mind time to recover.

Think about the gym.

You wouldn’t work out and train hard today, neglect recovery and then expect to train to the best of your abilities and make gains tomorrow.

Your mind is no different.

If you want to make the work you do more enjoyable, that way you’re more likely to do it - make sure you let your mind recover each day.

For your mind to recover, it needs time to do nothing.

It needs time to sit and breathe and think.

I used to think that meant I could just sit there and watch Netflix or scroll TikTok but that’s not recovery, that’s hyperstimulation.

Your mind, for it to recover, needs silence and to make sure you get it, you need to schedule time to do nothing.

I personally schedule up to 1 hour a day to do nothing.

This 1 hour doesn’t have to be all in 1 block, it can be split up into 10 minutes here, 20 minutes there and 5 minutes here - the main thing is that you get around 1 hour of doing nothing each day.

In that time you can just sit there and think, you can meditate, you can journal or you can go on a walk but you can’t do anything else.

When you first do this, it feels uncomfortable, it feels as if you’re wasting time - but once you start to see the benefits and carry over in how you feel and the amount and quality of work that you get done, this time to do nothing becomes one of the best parts of your day.

 

2.3: Do something you enjoy each day

 

But with that, not only do I schedule time to do nothing so that my mind can recover - I also schedule time to do something that I enjoy each day.

However, I schedule it for when after all my work is done for the day, this way its a reward for completing the work and sticking to my schedule, because if I don’t stick to my schedule, I fall behind and I’m not able to do the thing that I enjoy doing.

Whether it’s a walk, whether it’s going out for meal with friends, whether it’s reading a book, or whatever else.

However, there is a caveat here.

This thing you enjoy shouldn’t be something mindless and distracting.

It shouldn’t be scrolling your phone and preferably it shouldn’t be playing video games or watching Netflix as you want to limit these mindless activities as much as possible.

If you are going to use the likes of Netflix as the thing you enjoy, don’t schedule 4 hours of it. Give yourself 1 hour and instead of spending your time glued to a screen, go live your life.

And when you do schedule the thing that you enjoy, make sure you schedule it for after all your work - and use it as a reward for sticking to your schedule.

 

03: Use Momentum

 

It’s much easier to move forward if you’re already moving forward.

This is the basic law of momentum.

If you’re already sticking to your schedule and doing the work that you know you need to do, it’s much easier to keep going.

This means the hardest step is the first step, the hardest part is starting and if you can overcome it, you can use momentum to help you stick to a schedule, even if you lack discipline.

 

3.1: Win the morning, win the day

 

But momentum works in both directions.

It can push you forward, but it can just easily push you back.

The momentum you carry through your day always originates from how you start your day - because how you spend the morning, sets the tone for the rest of your day and builds momentum - either for you or against you.

With this idea, I realised that if I wanted to stick to my schedule through the whole day, I had to start my day by sticking to my schedule - I had to start my day with a win.

And so that’s what I did.

I used to start my day by lying in bed scrolling on my phone - which would only set me up to spend the rest of my day in a distracted, cheap dopamine-seeking state.

I would start my day on a loss with momentum pushing against me and so I would never stick to my schedule.

But that all changed when I started my day by waking up and immediately getting out of bed to do what I had to do.

 

3.2: Do your hardest task first 

 

And with that, I also started to schedule my hardest task first.

The idea here was that I wanted to start my day with a win and the biggest win I can have is doing my hardest task which will create the most progress for my goals first.

That way, I got it done and dusted meaning I didn’t have to worry about doing it later in the day, and everything else I had to do after it seemed easy.

What I used to do was leave my most important task as long as possible as a form of procrastination.

I would plan to go through my entire and do everything else I had to do from uni, to work, to the gym, and then do my most important task at around 8 or 9 pm.

But this created multiple problems;

• Discipline and focus are both limited, as you go through your day you use them up and by the time I was sitting down to do my important task, my discipline and focus were depleted so I was more likely to procrastinate that task and tell myself I’ll do it tomorrow - which I never did

• Life was much more likely to throw a curveball by 8pm that meant I couldn’t do it that night

• I had to go through my day knowing I had this task to do and the weight would push down on my shoulders constantly

But when I started doing my hardest, most important task first, this all changed;

• I was doing it as soon as I woke up, meaning my discipline and focus were at their max so I was much more likely to do it and not procrastinate but also do it to the best of my abilities

• I was getting it done in an undistracted state since the world was still asleep and there was nobody to distract me or nothing that life could throw at me to stop me from doing it

• I would start my day proud of myself, knowing I’ve just got a massive win and everything else I had to do was easier than what I just did

I had momentum and I was feeling good, so I was much more likely to carry on my day sticking to my schedule.

 

3.3: Finish your day by planning tomorrow

 

This idea of waking up, sticking to my schedule, and doing my most important task immediately relied on 1 crucial concept.

That I would finish my day by planning tomorrow.

Humans are drawn to taking the path that requires the least amount of energy.

If you wake up without a plan, without a schedule to stick to, and decide to either wing it or make your schedule that morning, you’re going to either consciously or subconsciously schedule your day with a task that requires less effort.

It also ruins the momentum of your day as you have to start the day by planning your day.

Which on the surface doesn’t seem like a bad thing but when you start your day with your hardest task, you start with the boulder at the top of the hill and everything else is easy, when you start your day with any other task, you’re starting at the bottom of the hill, with that hardest task still to come, still looming over you.

So I started taking 5 minutes to finish my day by planning tomorrow.

This way I was clear-headed and not influenced by the innate human to take the path of least resistance.

I could go to sleep and wake up, sit down at my desk, and know exactly what I had to do.

 

3.4: A good evening routine to recover 

 

However, if you want to wake up and attack the day, you need to wake up feeling good and with energy.

If you wake up feeling tired, feeling crappy and low energy, not only will it be so much harder to stick to your schedule but you’re only living life at a fraction of the quality that you could be.

But a good nights sleep doesn’t happen by accident.

So I developed a simple evening routine that would guarantee I fell asleep fast and got high-quality sleep.

This routine is simple, but there can be quite a bit of nuance and detail in the details - so I won’t go into it in this email.

But here’s a quick overview of the routine;

• 8-9 hours of sleep

This is step 1. If you want to wake up feeling good so that you can stick to your schedule as easily as possible and enjoy life to the max, you need 8 to 9 hours of sleep.

And here’s a pro tip:

If you want 8 hours of sleep, you need to be in bed for 9 hours.

You won’t fall asleep instantly, so if you’re going to bed at 10pm and wanting to wake up at 6am, you’re not going to get 8 hours sleep.

• Cut out caffeine 10 hours before bed

Caffeine plays with adenosine system and not only prevents you from feeling tired but disrupts the quality of your sleep.

If you want caffeine to be out of your system by the time you go to sleep, cut out caffeine 10 hours before bed.

• No food within 3 hours of going to sleep

Eating within 3 hours of going to sleep will disrupt your sleep quality and timing because of how food affects your energy and insulin levels but also how your body has to redirect blood and energy to digest it.

So if you’re going to bed at 10pm, don’t eat after 7pm.

• No blue light or bright lights within 1 hour of going to sleep

Bright lights and blue lights signal to your body that it’s daytime and therefore prevents the release of melatonin - the sleep hormone.

If you cut out bright lights and blue lights 1 hour before you go to bed, this won’t happen.

So turn off your phone, TV, laptop and ipads and turn of any over head lights and instead read a book, journal or meditate.

Like I said this sleep optimisation system can be quite a bit more detailed and nuanced than this, so if you want me to make a newsletter on this system, let me know by replying to this email.

And if you want a guaranteed way to stick to your schedule, click here.

- Ross

 

 

And when you’re ready, here’s how I can help you:

• Achieve Self-Mastery, unlock your true potential, and smash every goal you set with MasteryOS

• Join the waitlist for cohort 2 of Done In 4

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