Finding Order in Chaos: Structuring Your Life for Better Habits

"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. 

So, if you discover that you need seven hours sleep and you want to wake up at 7:00 am, then you need to be in bed by 11:30 pm. (It’s not like we instantly fall asleep when we get into bed) 

Another thing you mentioned, Ali, is you lack motivation at work. That may be a bigger issue. If work is demotivating you, it’s also draining you of purpose. That’s where I would spend some time analysing.

When your purpose is drained, that has a big effect on your mental energy. 

What is it about your work that is demotivating? 

If it’s just a stage—we all go through that at times—what can you do to find some purpose. Perhaps you could set yourself a target. Sell X amount of products, solve a particularly difficult problem for your team or do something to improve your own workflows and processes.

If it’s bigger than that and it’s about the job itself, then it may be time to begin looking at alternative jobs. It doesn’t mean you have to quit your current job, what it means is you begin looking at alternatives. 

What kind of work would motivate you? 

It’s perfectly okay to accept that you made a mistake in your choice of career. That does not mean you are stuck with that mistake. You can change careers at any time. I’ve been a hotel manager, car salesperson, a lawyer and teacher. 

The hardest part for me was accepting that the legal profession was not for me. I’d spent six years in school and training, but after graduating and working in a law office, I soon found myself hating it. 

I felt I was in a day release prison. I had to sign in at 9:00 each morning and was not allowed to leave until 5:30 pm. During that time it felt I was chained to a desk only being allowed to move to go to the bathroom. 

It was hard to accept I had made a monumental mistake. But the thought spending the next twenty-five years stuck behind a desk was terrifying. I had to change my career.

That was when I came to Korea—I told myself it would be for one year and during that time I would think about my future. 

I was lucky, I fell in love with teaching, loved the way of life in Korea and met some amazing people. At the end of the first year, there was no way I was going to go back to the UK. So, when my employer in Korea asked if I wanted to sign an extension to my contract, I ask, where’s the pen? 

Twenty three years later, I’m still here. Doing what I love day in day out. 

Sometimes, we have to do the unthinkable. I remember my friends telling me I was mad to give up a career in law to become a teacher in a foreign land. But I knew deep down I was not cut out to be a lawyer. 

So, Ali, take a step back. Ask yourself what needs to change. Do you have the basics right? Are you getting enough sleep, moving enough and eating right? 

If not, focus your attention there. Build some habits around those three areas. 

Then look at your career. Are you happy? If not, what alternatives could you look at. Remember, you do not have to quit your job to do this. Perhaps you decide to go back to school and learn a new skill, or simply to change the way you work—you processes and workflows. 

I should add, you do not have to rush this. Just getting the basics right will bring you better focus and energy. From there you can decide what to do next that will bring some purpose back into your life. 

I hope that has helped, Ali. Thank you for your question and thank you to you too for listening. 

It just remains for me to wish you all a very very productive week.