Day 1

Your life is a real-life interactive non-fiction adventure game. The game clock begins the moment you begin reading these words and your first ‘life’ expires in 90 days.

Where you are is not as important as who you are. If who you are is a bestselling author, where you are now may not reflect that. What matters is who you are. My goal is to help reveal who you already are (in the shortest time possible). Let’s get the who & where on the same page. Let's spend some time getting clear on who we are so we can begin to run the program to get us there.

Two books have been written. Book one is who you are. Book two is where you are. When the two become one, you feel more energized as you begin to close the gap and tap into your potential.

Life can be understood by looking back, but it must be lived forward. - Merlin

What we complete must be done within the constraints of time. You don't find time, you make it. What we do with the 12 hours we are given from 8 am to 8 pm impacts the results we generate. Where we are today is the result of how well we spent those precious 12 hours. Use it or lose it, either way, by tonight those hours will be history. Where you are now reflects how you spent your time. It’s Who you are being now that sets the tone on where you’ll be in the future.

Who you are is a bestselling author. Where you are may not yet reflect that. Putting your focus on who you are, and where you are will eventually catch up.

Plan your work, then work your plan.

When you plan, you zoom out and see the entire 12-hour day. Zoom further and see the month. A month of 12-hour days gives us 360 hours. A year of 12-hour days provides us with 4,380 hours to work with! When it comes time to work your plan, you zoom in to each day and focus on what you’ve planned. Expect that it will rarely go according to plan and can take 3x longer than expected! Expectation is the seed of discontent.

A great gamification strategy to get yourself past your comfort zone is something known as ‘Don’t Break the Chain.’ It was made famous by Jerry Seinfeld (although he didn’t invent it). I’ve tweaked it slightly. The idea is that you have a sheet with 8 weeks on it. A total of 56 days. Each day you complete the goal, you get a X. The game is to complete all 56 blocks and never miss a day. If you do, you have to start over. Just like you have to start over on a level when you die. I’ve created a blank 8-Week success chain you can download at https://read.pubwriter.com/pdf/8week-chain.pdf.

Here are some ideas of ways you can use the 8-week chain:

• Income/Savings
• Health (Carbs, sugar, etc.)
• Meditation
• Gratitude
• Ukulele
• Publish/Write

Focus comes from having an obsession on whatever it is you are doing. To become obsessed is to embody the act you are engaged in.

When an idea becomes a project and that project becomes your obsession, an outcome is inevitable. Stay committed to the original intention, but unattached to a specific result. Set the destination and trust that the path will appear. No one can say when, where, or how… and it rarely appears without more work than we expected in the form of obstacles, setbacks, and failures. We often need to remind ourselves of the destination because those ‘bright shiny objects’ will constantly attempt to pull us off course. Your path will never be the same as anyone else's, but stay on it and know that it is the right path for you.

John Mayer and Will Smith are examples of creative superstars who dedicated years to their craft to the extent they cut out everything else that would distract them from it. You could say they kept their eye on the prize. Will shares that he didn't go out or have a single drink for 12 years. I read that John Mayer didn't have a drink until he was well into his twenties. By then, he was already well on his way to super stardom. Even Mark Wahlberg, you might be surprised to hear, goes to bed by 7:30pm every night.

How long it will take? How long what will take? A clear outcome must be backed up by milestones with deadlines. Deadlines drive action. At the beginning of each week ahead, you’ll find a form to create milestones and assign deadlines. Each major accomplishment will have several smaller milestones that must be scheduled. Our journey begins once we you put milestones on our daily calendar. Committed to time & space, it begins to happen.

Distractions are detours we don't need to take.

To avoid getting derailed by distractions, I use a timer and find ways to turn the completion of tasks into a game. I commit to 3 objectives to my accountabilibuddy and I track my progress on a leaderboard that I review with him at the end of each week. Turning it into a game (a.k.a. gamification) leads to higher productivity and improved focus. Without a clear objective, it’s impossible to objectively monitor progress. When we judge ourselves subjectively, we are usually harder on ourselves. Metrics provide a pathway to a greater sense of accomplishment for the tasks completed. Success begets success. When we see progress being made, we are more apt to work harder!

Keep your main objectives visible. Give your source code a bright cover so it grabs your attention. Keep it by your bedside. Make it hard to ignore by design. Set reminders. You can build a good plan on the computer, but print it out to keep it top of mind.

Show me your calendar and I’ll be able to tell what’s important to you. Where we spend our money and time reflects what’s truly important to us. We may talk a good game, but until we commit to a place & time, we’re playing it safe. Putting our money behind it means it's important enough. Example: I had the best of intentions to meditate for years, but until I paid a meditation teacher, it never happened.

Your daily agenda should incorporate the items you identify in this playbook and tied to your AuthorDock milestones.

Ideally, before the end of day, you’ve already established the milestones you’ll work on tomorrow or next week. Until we have a system we can trust, the volume of incompletes related to a project becomes mental static that reveals itself as procrastination.

One of the benefits of a tool like AuthorDock is that it allows you to look back and see the actual steps (the process) and time it took to complete.

Keeping track on your progress and using a checklist allows you to see with greater clarity how far you’ve come and what remains between you and completion.

Note your objectives in time and space. Assign a deadline, and when appropriate, delegate through to completion.

How do you get from one end of the Sahara to the other? One barrel at a time. You can't see the next barrel until you get to the next. The idea of crossing the entire Sahara may seem insurmountable, but it’s doable when you limit your focus to finding the next oil barrel. How do you run a marathon? One mile at a time.

Life is about growth and progress. We can lose motivation when we begin to feel we are no longer making progress. Create a leaderboard and log your progress! My accountabilibuddy and I use a leaderboard ot track our daily commits. I personally strive to achieve 3 primary objectives each day (tied to my milestones) and ideally pick 3 things I have control over and that I can complete by noon. When other things come up (see Killer B’s below), I put them into the ‘afternoon’ bucket and stay focused on the 3 prime objectives.

Killer B’s are an analogy to explain what happens when the task we are working on (task or thought A) gets interrupted by task or thought B. The Killer B is how we let thought B become more significant than the thought A. It’s not unlike when someone new walks into a room. Unexpectedly, our attention is pulled away from the task at hand and put on the person. Killer B’s can also show up when ask ourselves “Is what I’m working on the most important thing I should be working on right now?” When we question whether it is the top priority, it ceases to be. It kills momentum. We know what we resist tends to persist, so the more we ignore it, the more it begs for our attention. One solution is to keep a Killer B notebook at arms-length so you can jot down those B’s and put them in a jar to battle later.

You don't find time to practice, you make time to practice!

If I want to know what's important to you, your calendar will likely tell me. We make time for what's important to us. Is there time scheduled to publish & promote your book? If not, it's unlikely you'll actually find the time for it.

Although I played guitar for most of my life, I rarely played with others. As a result, my skill plateaued early. Until you play with others, you'll be limited by your own ability. Surround yourself with others in the field. You will continue to improve year after year. It's like any sport... playing with others better than yourself will force you to improve. If you want to become a better writer, get with a group of more accomplished writers. When Jon Maberry began his career, he would rewrite every line in a bestselling book until his own work measured up to it!

For me, this has been a revelation. When you teach others what you have learned, you improve your ability to do it.

Step 1: Learn a new skill.

Step 2: Practice until you become skilled at it. If you fail, try again, and again, and again. Do it until you've mastered it. Trial and error exist to teach you what you need to know.

Step 3: Teach your newly acquired skill to others. Teaching others requires you to fully assimilate what you've already learned. It's similar to having to explain an idea to someone. You may think you know it, but it's not until you have to explain it to someone else that you discover what you don't know.

If you are not achieving the results you desire, these four questions may help you understand why.

Q1. Have I allocated the necessary space & time to complete the task?

If not, what can I eliminate to make space for it?

Q2. Do I possess all the necessary knowledge, prerequisites, or resources to complete the task?

If not, do I know enough to at least partially complete the lesson? Is it time to ask for help?

Q3. Are false beliefs, false fears, or misinformation leading me astray?

The work will teach you how. Trust the path and remember that the result you are getting is always the right result. Accomplishment often follows failure, so redefine failure as progress! Let go of any attachment to the outcome. Remember, expectation is the mother of frustration. Accomplishment often follows failure, reframe failure as progress!

Q4. Have I let myself get distracted?

Have I let something, someone, or my own lack of discipline get in the way? Has my energy and attention been pulled to the latest ‘bright shiny object’?

Be honest in your answers. Don't beat yourself up. Honor where you have the power to pivot.

If you want to dramatically increase the speed of learning, speak (or teach). When others are listening, you will be hyper-tuned to any mistakes you make. A performance can be a podcast, a speaking engagement, an interview… anything that gets you outside your comfort zone and puts you in front of others.