How To Live on 24 Hours a Day

Time.

It’s easy to take for granted. But, when we stop to think about it for a moment we see that it really is a “daily miracle.”

And time is the ultimate democracy. Everyone gets twenty-four hours. Can’t buy a minute more.

The only question is: What will you do with that precious, replenishing twenty-four hours a day?

Helping us Optimize that is, of course, what the book is all about. Now that we’ve taken a moment to reflect on the grandeur of that new day, let’s look at some Ideas on how to live on 24 hours a day.

P.S. This exercise from Todd Henry’s Die Empty remains one of the best I’ve ever read and always worth the reflection: “Imagine for a moment that you will have a guest accompanying you throughout your day tomorrow. This person’s task will be to follow you around from the moment you wake up until the moment you fall asleep. They will take copious notes about your schedule, how you interact with your family and friends, how you engage in your tasks and projects, and your mind-set through it all. Once the day is over, this person will spend the next few days processing their observations, draw conclusions about your motivations, and compile their notes into a book about you that will stand as the definitive record of your life and work.

How would you act differently tomorrow if you knew that your actions and attitude on that one day were going to be a permanent testament to your life? If you’re like many people to whom I’ve posted this question, you would probably get up a little earlier, pay extra attention to your family and the barista at Starbucks, be fully vested in every meeting, be meticulous in every task, call up an old friend for lunch, reconcile with an alienated colleague, and generally wrap up loose ends.

Next I ask, ‘How does your imagined behavior compare with how you are actually living your life today?’”

That’s from a chapter called “Precautions Before Beginning.”

Note: If you’re not ready to roll up your sleeves and do the hard (!) work of Optimizing your days, then, and I quote: “Lie down again and resume the uneasy doze which you call your existence.”

Arnold has a way with words, doesn’t he? (Laughing.)

So, Step 1: We need to know that there’s no magic secret formula that’ll make it super easy for us to start rocking it immediately. (Sorry to break the news.)

We need to embrace reality. Which reminds me of Ray Dalio and Tal Ben-Shahar.

First, Mr. Dalio. What’s Principle #1 in his book, Principles? “Embrace Reality and Deal with It.”

Sub-principle 1.1 “Be a hyperrealist.”

Here’s how Ray puts it in Principles: “Learning how reality works, visualizing the things I want to create, and then building them out is incredibly exciting for me. Stretching for big goals puts me in the position of failing and needing to learn and come up with new inventions in order to move forward. I find it exhilarating being caught up in the feedback loop of rapid learning—just as a surfer loves riding a wave, even though sometimes it leads to crashes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still scared of the crashes and I still find them painful. But I keep that pain in perspective, knowing that I will get through these setbacks, and that most of my learning will come from reflecting on them. Just as long-distance runners push through pain to experience the pleasure of ‘runner’s high,’ I have largely gotten past the pain of my mistake making and instead enjoy the pleasure that comes with learning from it. I believe that with practice you can change your habits and experience the same ‘mistake learner’s high.’”

That’s one way to approach embracing reality, eh? Jump so fully into the “feedback loop of rapid learning” that our failures create a “mistake learner’s high.”

Then we have Tal Ben-Shahar. In The Pursuit of Perfect, he tells us how much he struggled as a perfectionist who ignored the constraints of reality. Here’s how he puts it: “The first step was to accept the reality that I could not have it all. While it seems obvious that you cannot work fourteen hours a day and remain fit and healthy and be a devoted father and husband, in my perfectionist fantasy world, nothing was impossible.”

Yep. Accepting reality is good. We shift from being a Perfectionist to being an Optimalist: “Taking the constraints of reality into consideration, the Optimalist then works toward creating not the perfect life but the best possible one.”

See Conquering Perfectionism 101 for more. And remember that Optimalist and Optimize come from the Latin word optimus—which means “the best.” (Not perfect, the best!)

We’re still in the chapter on “Precautions Before Beginning.” :)

One more precaution: Set yourself up to win.

As Tynan puts it in Superhuman by Habit, when you’re thinking about how you’re going to change your life and create new habits, you want think about how you’ll rock it on the HARDEST days, not on the easiest ones (in the beginning when you’re all fired up!): “Start small, become consistent, and increase at a manageable pace. That’s how you optimize for the finish line, rather than for the starting line.”

Which reminds me of Teresa Amabile’s The Progress Principle. Create wins!!

Then we have Sean Young’s book on how to Stick with It. He tells us it all comes down to managing seven psychological forces that he captures in the handy-dandy acronym SCIENCE: Stepladders + Community + Important + Easy + Neurohacks + Captivating + Engrained.

Check out the Note for more. For now, know this: Two of those seven principles are about making the whole process easy for you: the Stepladders and Easy. He says: “Science shows that people have a better chance of success by focusing on small steps.” And: “Small means tiny.” “People often think they understand easy, but they actually don’t.”

So, when you think of Optimizing your life/days, what’s the #1 thing you know you could be doing that you’re not doing? Maybe you tried to install the habit before and it didn’t quite stick…

Well, what’s one thing? A keystone habit?

And… How can you make it E A S Y to win?

No… That’s too hard. Make it EASIER!!!!

P.S. I can’t read that brilliant line about having too much “ardor” in the beginning and not think of the ancient idea of being a hero in the beginning.

In Passage Meditation, Eknath Easwaran tells us: “It helps to know at the outset that you will be running a marathon in this program, not simply jogging once or twice around a track. It is good to be enthusiastic when you sit down for meditation the first morning; but it is essential to be equally enthusiastic, equally sincere, at the end of the first week, and the end of the first month, and for all the months to come.”

He also tells us: “There is only one failure in meditation: the failure to meditate faithfully. A Hindu proverb says, ‘Miss one morning, and you need seven to make it up.’ Or as John of the Cross expressed it, ‘He who interrupts the course of his spiritual exercises and prayer is like a man who allows a bird to escape from his hand; he can hardly catch it again.’”

Then we have Gregg Krech quoting Easwaran is his great book The Art of Taking Action: “It’s not really the feeling of excitement itself which is the culprit here, it is the loss of excitement which then prompts us to abandon our efforts towards fulfillment of our dreams — dreams which were, at one time, very exciting to us. If anticipatory excitement moves us to action, the loss of excitement often prompts us to stop. Action dissolves into inaction.

Meditation teacher Eknath Easwaran tells us of a Sanskrit word — arambhashura — which means ‘heroes at the beginning’ — people who take up a job with a fanfare of trumpets but soon find that their enthusiasm has tiptoed down the back stairs.”

That’s from a chapter called “Controlling the Mind” in which we meet the average early 20th century guy who wasted his trip to the office mindlessly walking and then reading his newspaper.

(Alas, what would Arnold have to say about our modern worker whose attention is consumed by an onslaught of information?!)

So… We must, as Arnold so wisely says, put our minds “through its paces”!

His idea was to focus your mind on the wisdom from a book you read the night before. He recommends Marcus Aurelius (he says he never leaves home without him!) or Epictetus. I like the man’s taste in fine wisdom!

That’ll work… And, so will all the other ways we can put our minds through its paces: meditation, focusing on one task, eliminating distractions, etc.

I’m reminded of this line from The Telomere Effect: “The iPhone mind-wandering study showed that when people are not thinking about what they’re doing, they’re just not as happy as when they’re engaged. As [researchers] observed, ‘A wandering mind is an unhappy mind.’”

“The wandering mind is an unhappy mind.”

<— That’s a (really!) powerful statement.

Solution? Blackburn and Epel tell us: “You can start to renew your telomeres, and your cells, right now. One study has found that people who tend to focus their minds more on what they are currently doing have longer telomeres than people whose minds tend to wander more. Other studies find that taking a class that offers training in mindfulness or meditation is linked to improved telomere maintenance.”

That’s from one of the final chapters “Dangers to Avoid” in which Arnold gives us a bunch of things to keep in mind including this gem on maintaining *just* the right amount of elasticity.

We need to be flexible. Like that river that flows between the banks of structure and spontaneity—without flooding either side into rigidity or chaos! (+1 on that theme here.)

But, first and foremost? Arnold tells us we don’t want to become a “prig.” Defined as “a self-righteously moralistic person who behaves as if superior to others.”

As he playfully puts it: “Now a prig is a pert fellow who gives himself airs of superior wisdom. A prig is a pompous fool who has gone out for a ceremonial walk, and without knowing it has lost an important part of his attire, namely, his sense of humor.”

The best prig protection?

Rule #6. Don’t take yourself too seriously!!

As per Roz and Ben Zander’s great book The Art of Possibility: “Two prime ministers are sitting in a room discussing affairs of state. Suddenly a man bursts in, apoplectic with fury, shouting and stamping and banging his fist on the desk. The resident prime minister admonishes him: ‘Peter,’ he says, ‘kindly remember Rule Number 6,’ whereupon Peter is instantly restored to complete calm, apologizes, and withdraws. The politicians return to their conversation, only to be interrupted yet again twenty minutes later by an hysterical woman gesticulating wildly, her hair flying. Again the intruder is greeted with the words: ‘Marie, please remember Rule Number 6.’ Complete calm descends once more, and she too withdraws with a bow and an apology. When the scene is repeated for the third time, the visiting prime minister addresses his colleague: ‘My dear friend, I’ve seen many things in my life, but never anything as remarkable as this. Would you be willing to share with me the secret of Rule Number 6?’ ‘Very simple,’ replies the resident prime minister. ‘Rule Number 6 is ‘Don’t take yourself so g—damn seriously.’ ‘Ah,’ says his visitor, ‘that is a fine rule. After a moment of pondering, he inquires, ‘And what, may I ask, are the other rules?’ ‘There aren’t any.’”

(Hah!) Here’s the final comment from the book: “The last, and chief danger which I would indicate, is one of which I have already referred—the risk of a failure at the commencement of the enterprise. I must insist on it. A failure at the commencement may easily kill outright the newborn impulse towards a complete vitality, and therefore every precaution should be observed to avoid it. The impulse must not be over-taxed. Let the pace of the first lap be even absurdly slow, but let it be as regular as possible.

And, having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense.”

Amen and let’s do this! Set a pace you can sustain. Optimize and enjoy the miracle that is today’s twenty-four hours!