Walking The Fine Line
How often have you decided to grab some unhealthy snack or leftover pizza to satisfy a craving, appreciated it for the 20 seconds while eating & subsequently felt like a waste of square footage for the next hour? Fast forward & the rest of your day is spent fighting stomach aches, procrastination, laziness & general worthlessness.
In contrast, how often have you felt uncommitted but pulled yourself together to do a hard workout, felt amazing in 45 minutes, crossed several items off your to-do list, chin up and confident for the rest of the day? Or grabbed a book vs. a remote, felt energized & present, went for a refreshing walk and felt truly fulfilled?
The choice between snack or shoes, book or remote and other critical choices walk a fine line between a crappy & awesome day. Layered on top of each other, these choices can impact your week, month, year or life – positively or negatively.
This is the power of inflection points & the importance of navigating them wisely.
Whack-A-Mole
Being an overachiever and an underestimator, I’m constantly biting off more than I can chew. In the past, my days were chaos. Largely completed with that feeling that nothing that needed to be done, got done. The strategic lack of clarity around who & what I wanted to be was just one problem. But the tactical lack of clarity around minute to minute judgement calls was yet another. Like a constant game of playing whack-a-mole.
At the end of the day, one pop-up navigated the wrong way can lead to a 1-hour rabbit hole, throw off your day, create anxiety, stress & more bad decisions down the road.
While each inflection point is a decision in & of itself, I’m confident the outcomes of each are highly dependent on those before them – like a snowball effect.
Let’s take a look at a day we’ve all lived before…
The Angel vs. The Devil
You wake up and feel great.
After a cup of coffee & your morning routine, you’re ready for a nice workout. But, the time comes and because you’re feeling momentum in whatever you’re working on, you skip the workout. “No worries, I’ll just do it tomorrow!”
Carry on – it’s 2pm, you’re hungry. You go upstairs for a snack. You know there is a bag of chips in the cabinet – already opened. There’s also an apple in the fridge. The problem is that it’s unwashed, still in the plastic bag from the produce section, and it’s tied in one of those damn knots. What’s it going to be? Chips are easy & the apple + knot + bag takes some work.
Of course you go for the chips – we’re all naturally lazy. And you can’t have just a few – they’re chips. Then the stomach flips over, you start feeling lazy and maybe watch a little TV rather than doing something productive. Anxiety starts to creep in. You procrastinate. You ignore calls or texts. Get more lazy. More anxious. Full-fledged spiral.
Inflection Chains
So why did we go for the chips? This could be the result of basic human desire for immediate satisfaction or a direct impact from skipping your workout earlier in the day. If you did the workout, wouldn’t your choice to eat the apple be that much easier?
In any event, multiple items stacked up to cause a fail. Here are some other areas to watch out for as you play whack-a-mole with your day.
- Your Morning vs. Other People’s Morning – My mom often reminds me about something I read in a book Eat the Frog! about how the first thing you should do each day is the biggest, ugliest, most important item on the agenda that you DON’T want to do. A great way to get yourself on somebody else’s agenda vs. your own is to read & react to emails in your inbox before tackling something important.
- Meal Prep vs. No Prep – We don’t need to define why meal prep is so effective. 45 minutes on a Sunday night is the difference between tasty & healthy lunches and something that you regret.
- Break vs. No Break – Bottom line, if you feel like you’re ready for a break, you probably are. As hard as it is sometimes, peel yourself away & treat yourself to this “you-time.”
- Read vs. Tik Tok – Inspired by James Clear’s book Tiny Habits, I’ve got books all over the house – and contrary to what you believe, I am reading all of them. It’s a great way to stay off the phone, drive positive habits & stay productive.
- Refresh Inbox vs. Close Email – We’ve all been victim to constantly refreshing our inboxes, opening our phones for no reason, or clicking the email button even when we’re positive nothing’s there. Instead, try simply closing your email, throw your phone across the room, and grab your to-do list. “What will I regret not doing if I don’t do it RIGHT now?“
- Sleep vs. Bonus Netflix – Did you really need to binge those last 3 episodes of Ozark last night? What did that get you today?
- Skipping vs. NOT Skipping the Chip Aisle – It’s the greatest aisle on earth – unless we’re talking about the ice cream aisle. Grab your eggs and milk, do a u-turn, and head to the register.
Moving Forward
I’ll be the first one to tell you that I’m definitely not going to stop treating myself to potato chips, Instagram, & binge out on some ridiculous show until 10pm once in a while. We’re all human and you’ve got to live a little.
While we’re not here to be perfectionists or machines everyday – we need to make better choices in the grand scheme of things, both large and small. It’s a key to living a more balanced, fulfilling & healthy life.