Dear Chase,
Happy almost-New Year!
This is a super quick email, but I wanted to talk about something that's really helped me.
I've made some good progress this year in all aspects.
I've never really been the most disciplined guy.
I've genuinely done a lot of thinking this year about how I can be more consistent and there's one tip that's helped me a ton.
We all start stuff and never finish it. That's super common.
We all get busy and distracted and it's not the end of the world.
But if there's one skill that we can add to our warchest that'll make us better friends, better entrepreneurs, and better individuals, it's consistency.
The advice I got was from my friend @benhbader (who you should follow on Twitter) who has read the book Atomic Habits 55 times in 2 years and made it his entire personality.
Beware the negative streak.
What's a negative streak?
When building a habit, you're meant to do something for as many days in a row as you can.
You don't wanna miss a day, because that would technically break the streak.
And that's bad, but nowhere near as bad as a negative streak.
A negative streak is when you begin to go multiple days in a row without doing the habit you're building.
And with every day that you skip, you make it harder for yourself to start again.
The tip in this email is this:
When you're building a habit (exercise, daily writing, etc) it's actually more beneficial to plan a day every week or every month to break the streak and take a rest than to try to go every day and fall off the wagon.
I'd rather go 10 days on, 1 day off instead of going 20 days on and then getting so burnt out that I miss the NEXT 20 days.
When you miss 1 day of a habit, you feel a little bit of guilt. And that drives you to get back up tomorrow and do it again.
But when you miss day 2, it starts to normalize.
And then all of a sudden, you're right back where you started again.
So, as long as you are aware of the negative streak, you'll be able to pick up more good habits than you ever thought possible.
Happy New Years, Chase.
Yours truly,
Alex.
Sent from my Party Hat
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