Summary

The author improved productivity by leveraging a sibling's discipline to establish a morning routine of early workouts, leading to increased success in other daily activities.

Abstract

The article details the personal journey of an individual striving for enhanced productivity and discipline. Initially struggling with an unstructured daily routine, the author describes a turning point following a significant loss in a badminton tournament. This motivated a complete revamp of their schedule, influenced by their brother's existing disciplined routine. By waking up early and exercising together, the author not only built the habit of rising early and working out but also experienced a ripple effect of productivity throughout the day, including consistent blogging and a sense of momentum from starting the day with a success.

Opinions

The author believes that personal success can be amplified by leveraging the habits of others for accountability.
They suggest that building one keystone habit, such as early morning exercise, can lead to the development of other positive habits.
There is an emphasis on the importance of starting the day with a success to create momentum for productivity in other areas.
The author acknowledges the role of external motivation, such as not wanting to be less disciplined than their younger brother, in fostering discipline and change.
They highlight the effectiveness of having a family member or peer to hold one accountable in establishing new habits.
The article conveys the idea that consistent small successes, like daily gym sessions, can significantly impact one's overall productivity and goal achievement.

Implementing This One Hack Will Skyrocket Your Productivity

How I completely revamped my daily routine.

Photo by Boxed Water Is Better on Unsplash

Seeing me at home was undoubtedly disappointing a few months ago for someone who writes so much about productivity and being the best version of yourself.

I often woke up at 9 AM, watched videos until 9:30 AM, ate, and then showered. My workdays usually didn't start until past 10 AM.

Technically, I wouldn't even consider my workdays as days that I actually worked. I spent most of the morning watching videos if I wasn't in a meeting. And in the afternoons, I took 2–3 hour-long naps.

The evenings would be better sometimes as I would go out and participate in competitive badminton training. But I would play games or watch more YouTube when I was not playing badminton.

At night, my habits continued to be unproductive. I would continue to watch videos until I fell asleep between 1 AM — 2 AM.

I was complacent. Going on assigned luxury real estate auction projects gave me enough money to cover my expenses for the length of the project, whether or not I was successful.

When I was not on an assignment, I was at home, living rent-free and eating out of mom and dad's pockets.

Living like this won't last me forever, and I certainly didn't want to be in this situation. My goal was to become a professional badminton player and to do that, I needed to train more and achieve the financial freedom to let myself pursue my passion.

I tried to be better. I scheduled work and exercise times and followed my schedule. I meditated, read, wrote, trained, and watched courses. I could always do everything I wanted to do every so often, but never consistently over multiple days.

It wasn't as if I scheduled an impossible work routine. I made my work schedule as stress-free as possible to make things easy for me.

I included naps, gaming times, and flex blocks to do whatever I felt like doing, all in exchange for just 30 minutes of each reading, writing, learning something new, and exercising.

My failure to adhere to these schedules confused me. I could last eight hours in school and spend another three hours after school training or working. Why couldn't I spend two hours improving on my own?

Maybe it was too much. Perhaps I had to start with just 10 minutes on one thing daily.

A couple of weeks ago, I lost in a badminton tournament finals and gained a sudden urge to revamp my schedule completely. I hate losing, but what I hate more than losing was losing when the games were not just winnable, but a game I felt I was supposed to win.

I see these motivation patterns often, though. Something would happen, my motivation would shoot up, and I would be able to be productive for a little bit. But I would never be able to build the discipline and habits to continue pushing my productivity when I was low on motivation.

Luckily, something was different this time.

I wanted to revamp my training schedule. I wanted to do what I did before in Thailand when I was training twice a day, six days a week.

I got together with my brother, who faced an even more embarrassing loss in the tournament, and worked out a training schedule.

My brother was the difference. He was already waking up at 6:30 AM and going to the gym for an hour in the mornings. By making the schedule with him, he was now holding me accountable.

And because I didn't want to be embarrassed that my little brother was more disciplined than I am, I've been waking up at 6:30 AM and going to the gym with him every day for the last few weeks.

Leverage Success To Make More Success

The one habit I've found most challenging to implement in my life is waking up early (before 7 AM) and working out.

After building this habit with my brother, I found that many other desired habits naturally came into my life.

For example, I wanted to be a much more productive blogger. I wanted to write every day and publish something if I could.

Since my commitment to going to the gym in the mornings with my brother, I've been blogging much more often. I've published one blog post on Medium daily for the last four days (soon to be five with this article).

Doing difficult things and starting my day with success has generated a ton of momentum. This momentum carries over into my other daily activities allowing me to become more productive.

There's a reason why so many high achievers have been crediting their success to their morning routines recently. When you start your day with success, that momentum will help you be successful in everything else you do.

It all starts with what you do at the beginning of the day, and you can hack your success by having somebody who already has the habit you desire to hold you accountable.

It's easy for me because my brother lives with me. When he wakes up, I hear it, and it's a daily reminder for me to get up.

There are other creative ways to use this hack if you don't have a family member or roommate helping you.

For example, one way might be to have someone like a trainer call you at a particular time to remind you to go to the gym with them.

Whatever you do, the core productivity hack is to find someone with a desirable habit and commit to doing the desired activity with them, whether that's studying more, writing more, or going to the gym. Then use those successes to fuel the rest of your day.