"The real magic lies at the intersection between eating, moving, and sleeping. If you can do all three well, it will improve your daily energy and your odds of living a long, healthy life," 

That’s a quote from Tom Rath, author of Eat Move Sleep. The three most important factors in you becoming more productive, focused and motivated each day.

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Script | 385

Hello, and welcome to episode 385 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show. 

Don’t skip the basics. For me, this was a hard lesson to learn. I used to stay up late to finish work or watch TV. I’d skip my exercise or allow myself to get involved in meetings I didn’t really need to attend—just to feel a part of something. 

And I would eat rubbish—cereal for breakfast, sandwiches and rice or fries for lunch and pizza for dinner. 

And I felt it. I was tired, unproductive, and did not know where I was going. My weight kept going up and up, and every day felt like a drudge. I would wake up, feel horrible, go to work, come home, collapse onto the sofa, turn on the TV, and escape the real world. 

It was easy to blame everyone else. My boss, my colleagues, my customers, the weather, where I lived, the company, etc. 

Yet, it wasn’t anyone else’s fault. It was mine. 

I had allowed myself to wallow in self-pity. That was a choice. 

I cannot say there was a particular moment that changed me. It was more a gradual change. 

What I learned, though, was that creating an enjoyable, exciting, and fulfilling life started with getting the basics right. 

And that is what this week’ question is all about. What are the basics, and why do they matter? So, with that said, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Ali. Ali asks, hi Carl, my life’s a mess. I stay up all night watching TV or YouTube videos, and then wake up late and have to rush to get to work. Then at work I feel tired and unmotivated all day. What can I do to have some better habits? 

Hi Ali, thank you for your question. 

The first step would be to read James Clear’s Atomic Habits. It’s a brilliant book, that explains how habits work, how to create your own and does all that in a simple step by step approach. 

The next step is to understand some time tested basics.

One of the many reasons why anyone would feel demotivated about the day is they are not clear on what is important to them. 

Not everyone wants to be supremely fit and sporty and that’s fine. You don’t have to be. But it’s equally true no one wants to die prematurely. 

As Steve Jobs said in his famous commencement address in 2006

"No one wants to die... even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there"

To find your purpose, or simply the motivation to jump out of bed each morning go through the Areas of Focus workbook. It’s free and you can download it from my website. 

This will give you the eight areas of life that should be in balance. 

Those eight are:

Family and relationships

Career or business

Health and fitness

Finance

Lifestyle and life experiences

Self development

Spirituality

Life’s purpose

Now, when I say in balance, it means defining what each one means to you. For example, for your finances area of focus could be something as simple as “I live within my means and not over spend on trivial things” or your lifestyle and life experiences could be “I live in a clean and tidy home”.

Getting these eight basics of life in balance will give you some purpose each day. Living in a clean and tidy home may mean that before you leave to go to work, you make your bed and wash the dishes. 

To keep your finances in check, you may decide to do a weekly or monthly budget to track how you are spending your money. 

That becomes a habit. It’s a must-do. 

None of these takes a lot of time, but they help to keep your areas of focus in balance. 

Now onto another important factor. One of the things I’ve noticed about highly motivated and successful people is they have some structure in their lives. 

They wake up at the same time each day, they follow a morning routine and have some structure for the rest of the day. That could be exercising at the same time each day or just going for a walk at the end of the day to decompress.

Apple’s Tim Cook, for example, starts his day with an extremely early wake-up, around 3:45 AM, to read emails from customers and employees before heading to the gym for an hour of exercise. He eats a healthy breakfast, gets coffee, and then begins his workday.

I recently wrote about Hercule Poirot, the Agatha Christie detective in many of her novels in my weekly newsletter. 

Poirot was obsessive, it’s true. He was immaculately turned out at all times. Yet he had structure to his days. Breakfast was at the same time each day and he had his famous tisane (a kind of herbal drink) served in the same glass. 

What draws me to Poirot is that fastidiousness. Nothing was rushed. The only things that ever bothered him was if his routines were interrupted. Perhaps not a good thing, but it did enable him to have a purpose each day.

If he was taking a holiday, he refused to entertain any work. He was resting his “little grey cells” and that was the purpose of the holiday. 

When he was working he was engaged completely. He actions were methodical and deliberate. I know Poirot is a fictional character, but in fictional characters there’s always a grain of truth somewhere. 

Perhaps Poirot’s obsessiveness for order and structure, was motivated by someone somewhere. 

The one thing I’ve learned is if you’re not getting the basics right, then everything else falls apart.

The basics are your daily routines. Your sleep schedule, what and when you eat and stepping away from screens and moving. 

They are not difficult to do, but without one essential ingredient, you won’t do them. That ingredient is self-discipline. 

You need discipline to get out of bed on a cold, wet morning. You need discipline to say no to that plate of unhealthy food, and you need discipline to turn off the TV and go to bed at the right time. 

I often shy away from advising people to develop their self-discipline because it’s hard to do. And these days I find many people have simply given up and just tell themselves they have no self-discipline and that they never have had. 

They will look back in their lives to find examples and use that to prove it to themselves. Ignoring the fact that there will also have been examples of them being disciplined. 

It’s complete rubbish for anyone to say they lack self-discipline. It’s innate and inside all of us. But, like a muscle, if you don’t use it, it will weaken. But never disappear entirely. 

Strengthening your self-discipline isn’t particularly difficult. As Admiral McRaven said in his Texas University Commencement address—begin the day by making your bed. Is that so difficult? It’s one thing, but it’s the start of strengthening your self discipline. 

Now you mentioned that you want better habits. What would you consider to be “better habits”? 

That would be the place to start. 

I’ve never been a good sleeper—as a consequence I fell into the trap of believing it was “just the way I was wired”. Of course, that’s not true. 

In January I made a commitment to myself I would be in bed no later than midnight. It was a struggle, but I persisted. Now, nine months later, I’m in bed consistently at midnight and my sleep is better than ever. 

It took a bit of self-discipline for the first week or two, but soon it was a habit. 

Changing your sleep habit is straight forward. Calculate how much sleep you need, then decide what time you want to wake up, and work backwards. </