A Successful Day is Determined Almost Entirely by How it Starts

in this video I want to talk about dropping the idea of having a good day or attempting to have a good day and instead focusing solely on starting your day well It can be very frustrating trying to have a good day because there are so many parts and it can be very overwhelming and you know any one of those things those intentions or plans goes wrong We find up uh find ourselves having a bad day But it's a lot easier if we start to focus on how to start the day well And there's a very good reason for this It's to do with something called exponential decay um or positive momentum we could say Now let's say you know we we all know about this willpower we have and the um it's like a store of energy and you have so much decision making power willpower in your day But let's say for instance you're starting off your day and you have a decision to make the first thing you want to address in your day And I often ask people how sure are you that you're going to do that how sure are you that you're going to show up for yourself and and do that and people will often say maybe 50% chance that I'm going to do it They don't feel certain about it at all So that's where we're starting So let's say there's a 50% chance that the first thing that you do the very first the start of your day there's a 50% chance that you do it If you don't do that thing that you intended to do what are the chances that you will do the second thing that you intended to do it's no longer 50% It drops to about if we're using this thing called a uh exponential decay model So it's kind of a mathematical theory or uh function A lot of things in in the world have these um decay models like the battery power in your in your phone tends to go down obviously right but it goes down sort of in this direction Maybe it's linear I'm not exactly sure But humans it's not linear It gets the rate of decay that things get worse not linearly but exponentially faster in other words So this the chances of you actually doing the second thing after not doing the first thing is no longer 50% If you started off at 50% it drops to about 35% If you don't show up for that one it drops to about for the third thing that you intend to do it's 24.5% The fourth attempt we'll say if you uh have failed to show up for three before that you're now at 17.15% And the last one I'll give you is 12% chance So the fifth thing that you've attempted to do and this is the nature of procrastination you start off at 50% let's say there's five start times that you're going to uh attempt If you don't do the first four there's about a 12% chance that you do the last one Okay so can you can see that instead of focusing on how can I get everything done today how can I have a good day the real battleground here almost all of it is in the first thing that you engage with in the day Now the opposite of this is also true So let's say this this person is starting off with a 50% chance that they're going to show up uh for the first thing that they intend to do on in the day If they do show up for that the chances that they will show up for the next thing are about 60% The third thing it's about 72% the fourth thing is 86.4% Which is interesting right because you're getting more and more tired as the day goes along But what this is describing is you could call it exponential reinforcement or you could call it psychological momentum The last one the fifth thing it's about 100% Likelihood and that's actually possible People think it's impossible to to get to a point where you're 100% likely to show up for something but it in my experience it is absolutely possible to know with certainty that you're going to show up for yourself to do something I think that's what we should aim for I think it's is I know it's possible So you can see the difference here The the idea of this video is stop trying to plan the perfect day That's too broad right get narrow in your focus and come back to this whole thing really could be boiled down to how do I start my day and I'm sure you've heard many many people online talking about start your day well What I'm trying to show you here that the the the factor of psychological momentum and exponential decay are really showing us that this is where it's at in terms of trying to have a good day And it's also a feature of procrastination in general Like let's say a person is working on a project for their manager at work or something and they're procrastinating on it You will almost always find them thinking to themselves if you ask them like what are your thought process on this how am I going to get this thing finished i need to get it finished When will it be finished or a person in university doing studying for their exams When am I going to finish study and I have to get it done or finish their assignments a big feature of procrastination is a focus on finishing things And that is the worst thing you could do What you should be always trying to train yourself into is focusing only on starting things again So when do I start my project when's the next uh decision I'm going to make because that brings you into empowerment If you have like a 5,000word assignment to do you can't finish that in one go You can start in one go and you could just subsequently you just keep committing to starting and only focusing on starting So that thing about uh focusing on the end it's like this It's like the same thing we do when we're focusing on having a good day It's too much to take on But you can get super focused on how do I start my day now I don't necessarily mean that you have to jump out of bed and get into action What I mean is you're deliberate in how you start your day So for you it could be I feel that I'm not really great in the morning so when I wake up I need an hour and a half to chill out But then after an hour and a half I'm going to do this Right that's perfectly fine That's being deliberate and being intentional with it What I'm really saying is is not being intentional with how we start our day It could be that you you decide soon as I wake up I'm going to get out of bed I'm going to go and do something right that's absolutely fine it's each person has their own individual idea of what will work for them and in that sense there is no plan that will work but what does work is showing up for the first thing in the day because that will create the psychological momentum so when we don't we experience um exponential decay things get harder it gets harder and harder to engage with things once we have procrastinated on them And that has been my lived experience Like when I was you know chronically engaging with procrastination I would have like multiple times and I'd attempt to do it The by the time I'm on the fourth one a part of me already knows it's not going to happen even though I'm telling myself there's this intention to do it According to this model probably was about um a 17% chance that I would do it Now that could be different for other people This is assuming that you're starting off with a 50% chance that you're going to show up It could be higher than that It could be lower than that but many people say it's kind of a 50/50 thing for them So the take away from this me this this video is only focus on starting your day and really try and keep it doable Don't overwhelm yourself with it but be intentional That's really where the the big changes can take place if you can get good at mastering the first thing you do on a daily basis and you will experience the rewards of psychological momentum if you do Hope that's useful If you want to learn more I have a book on procrastination You can find it The link is below Or you can reach out to me if you're interested in onetoone uh therapy My name is David and uh thanks for being with me and I will see you again very soon Take care Bye-bye [Music] [Applause]