🌱 How to ACTIVATE yourself (right now)

Here’s your 3 insights in 3 minutes. 

☀️ Morning Routine

I’ve tried almost every morning routine.

5am wakeups. Cold plunges. Nootropics. Sunlight timing.

The one thing that consistently works?

Shutting my laptop by 9pm.

That’s it.

I set my Mac to automatically shut down every night at 9:00pm. (Instructions below.)

A hard stop. 

No willpower. No “one more thing.” 

The decision is made for me.

When I did this a few years ago, my days changed. 

Earlier sleep is the lead domino.

7am workouts feel easy. My best early hours are preserved for the most important work. The day feels won before noon. 

The best morning routine starts the night before.

Most people try to upgrade their motivation.
I prefer upgrading the environment.

High performance is built on constraints, not willpower. 

What’s one constraint that would completely upgrade your next 30 days?

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Shutdown instructions (Mac):

Copy this for 9pm:

sudo pmset repeat shutdown MTWRFSU 21:00:00

To check it:

pmset -g sched

🧠 Live First. Think Later.

Richard Rohr has a line I keep coming back to:

Psychologists call this behavioral activation.

Action creates evidence.
Evidence reshapes belief.
Belief shapes identity.

We like to think clarity comes first.

“If I just had more clarity, I’d move.”

But clarity shows up after movement.

You don’t become confident and then act.
You act. Then confidence catches up.

You don’t think your way into discipline.
You keep one small promise to yourself. Then another.

Most of us are over-indexing on thinking. (yes, talking to myself here too.)

More research, more planning, more optimizing…

We tell ourselves we’re avoiding wasted time.

We’re really just avoiding uncertainty. Or even scarier, judgement from others!

And in the process, we waste far more time thinking than we would taking one step.

Forget the 3 year plan. 

Let clarity show up later.

🔁 Who Are You Being?

We say we’re stuck because we don’t know the steps.

That’s rarely the problem.

Usually, we think the answer is getting clearer on what we want.

Marc Andreessen puts it this way:

But it’s not just about knowing what you want.

What you want is the direction.
Who you’re being is the vehicle.

Choose the vehicle first.

Right now, I’m choosing to be: loving, courageous, and fully alive. (Note: yes, these are just words, but I’ve assigned them meaning and therefore feel them.) 

From that place, the next move is obvious.

Send the text.
Make the call.
Ship the thing.

Even if it’s not perfect. In fact, especially if it’s not perfect.

That’s the vehicle that makes real progress.

Salud,
Mitchell

Ps. Moved by this