For 2,130 consecutive games, Lou Gehrig played first base for the New York Yankees—a streak that would stand for five and a half decades. He put up a career .340 batting average. He was a two-time MVP, seven-time All-Star, six-time World Series Champion, Hall of Famer, and the first player ever to have his number retired.
All from a man who wasn’t born an athlete. As a boy, Lou Gehrig was so uncoordinated that a friend joked his body “behaved as if it were drunk.” He made himself into the Iron Horse—day by day, action by action—not with some special gift, but with a handful of perfectly reachable habits. He went to bed early every night. He didn’t drink or smoke. He showed up even when he didn’t feel like it. He never made excuses. He trained on his own. He saved his money. The only thing he ever asked of the staff was a stick of gum on his locker before a game. Two if it was a doubleheader.
Nothing particularly groundbreaking or dramatic. But strung together, day after day, year after year, those small things added up to one of the greatest careers in the history of the sport. And that’s what the path to greatness almost always looks like: small, ordinary actions, repeated for a very long time.
That’s how I’ve tried to build my own life. (It’s also what we built the Habits for Success, Habits for Happiness course around at Daily Stoic. It’s an awesome six-week experience—inspired by the best habits of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus, as well as my own—that thousands of people have now gone through).
And so that’s what I wanted to share today—the handful of ordinary habits and practices that, repeated again and again, have had an enormous impact. On my work. On my health. On my happiness. And most of all, on who I am.
– Wake up early. I get up early, between 5:30 or 6am.The mornings are the most productive hours of the day—before the interruptions, before the distractions, before the rest of the world gets up and going too. Toni Morrison found she was just more confident in the morning, before the day had exacted its toll and the mind was fresh. Like most of us, she realized she was just “not very bright or very witty or very inventive after the sun goes down.” Who can be? After a day of banal conversations, frustrations, mistakes, and exhaustion. As I said in Discipline is Destiny, this decision we make in the morning, it not only determines how our day will go but it determines who we are.
– Protect the best part of the day. The novelist Philipp Meyer (whose book The Son is an incredible read) told me on the podcast, “You have to be very careful about to what (and to whom) you’re giving the best part of your day.” My assistant knows not to schedule anything before mid-morning because early calls and meetings don’t just take time—they sap the energy needed for the essential work. I want to give my best self to my most important things. Everything else can come after.
– No phone for the first hour. My rule is no phone for at least the first hour of the day. Some days, I don’t touch it until lunch, and on those days I’m happier and more productive.
– Journal. I’ve been keeping a One Line a Day journal for nine years now (you should keep one, they’re amazing). One line. One sentence. What did I think about today? Where did I go? What happened? That’s it. It sounds like nothing—and in a way it is—but the words accumulate. It’s weird how much you don’t remember, even of your own life. Most of what’s in there I’d completely forgotten. Without those pages, it would all be gone. With them, I can flip back and I see the person I was. I can see the person I am becoming. I can see the person I want to be again. I can see mistakes I don’t want to make anymore. I can see all the small things that have added up to who I am.
– Just a little progress every day. As I wrote about recently, my writing habit was all-or-nothing for a long time—either I wrote a lot of words or I didn’t. Over time, I’ve lowered the stakes: now the question is simply, “Did I make a positive contribution to my writing today?” Sometimes that means writing, sometimes editing, adding, deleting. Sometimes I’m home and it’s in my office, sometimes I’m on the road and it’s on a plane or in a hotel room. Sometimes it’s a big contribution, sometimes it’s a little contribution.
– Carry a book everywhere. People often assume I’m a speed reader. It’s the most common email I get. They see all the books I recommend every month in my reading newsletter and assume I must have some secret, some trick for reading so fast. The truth is, even though I read hundreds of books each year, I read at a pretty slow pace. In fact, I deliberately read slowly. But I also read all the time. I always carry a book with me. Phone, wallet, keys—and a book. I’ve brought one to the Grammys, NFL games, kids’ practices, restaurants, the DMV, Disneyland, the White House, backstage before talks, and into the waiting room before surgery. Every time I get a second, I crack it open.
– Take a walk. I take a walk twice a day. I don’t think I have ever taken a walk without thinking, after, “I am so glad I did that.” We rescued a dog last year and that’s been the best part. It’s “forced” me to do something I love to do. It’s not about burning calories, but for the philosophical and psychological benefits. As Nietzsche would later say: “It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth.”
– Strenuous exercise. I also go for a run or swim just about every day. “We treat the body rigorously,” Seneca said, “so that it’s not disobedient to the mind.” That sounds a little aggressive, because in my experience, the physical practice is actually quite kind to the mind. Some days, it turns it off in a very restorative way. Other days, it lets it wander and work on things. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought of a great line or solved an intractable writing problem while running or swimming. Exercise is also an easy win every day. Writing can go poorly, but going on a run or swim always goes well.
– A simple to-do list. When we were working on What You’re Made For, the late George Raveling told me that when he became Nike’s Director of International Basketball at 63, having no prior corporate experience, he was overwhelmed by self-doubt. Until a mentor gave him a simple system: “When you leave the office every day, leave a yellow pad in the middle of the desk, and when you come in the morning, write down the three most important things you gotta get done that day in that order. That day, do not do anything else but the first thing on the pad. And if you get the first one, then you go to the second one.” As for me—every day, on a notecard, I write down 5-6 things I want to get done that day. Every day, I cross these off and tear up the card. That’s it. That’s the system.
– Don’t drink. “Why don’t you drink?” is a question I’ve been asked probably eight thousand times in my life. The real answer is boring: I don’t like the taste. But even if I did, I still wouldn’t. Heraclitus’s line was that “a dry soul is wisest and best.” He’s right. Have you ever done anything you’re really proud of while drinking? Is anyone their best selves while drunk? Of course not.
– Don’t drink calories. This is one I got from Tim Ferriss. Along with not drinking alcohol, I don’t drink soda, smoothies, juice, milk, anything. It’s just a simple way to help keep your diet on track.
– Focus on process, not goals. As I wrote about recently, I don’t have goals. When I write, I don’t focus on finishing books—that would be overwhelming. Instead, I focus on my notecard system and writing for a couple hours every day. The books emerge from that process naturally, over time.
– Think about death. Shakespeare said that every third thought should be of our grave. Perhaps that’s too much. One thought per day is plenty. I keep a coin in my pocket to remind me of this and touch it at least once a day. Death doesn’t make life pointless but rather purposeful. And fortunately, we don’t have to nearly die to tap into this.
– Review the day. “When the light has been removed and my wife has fallen silent,” Seneca wrote, “I examine my entire day and go back over what I’ve done and said, hiding nothing from myself, passing nothing by.” He’d ask himself: What bad habits did I cure? What temptations did I resist? In what specific way am I now better than I was yesterday? I spend some time every night on my own version. Did I follow my plans for the day? Was I prepared enough? What could I do better? What have I learned that will help me tomorrow? These simple questions make an enormous impact. So I spend some time every night answering them.
– Sleep with the phone in another room. Ben Sasse used to give his young staffers old-school alarm clocks—not because he wanted to make sure they were on time for work, but so they wouldn’t have an excuse to sleep with their phone on the nightstand. If your alarm isn’t your phone, your phone can go in the other room. And if your phone is in the other room, you can’t check it at night. Which means I won’t know if a text or an email comes in. I won’t be tempted to scroll. I’ll have to lie there with my own thoughts, read a book, or maybe even go to sleep at a reasonable time.
– Go the F*ck to Sleep! I follow the advice of a book I love to read to my kids: Go the F*ck to Sleep! All the other habits and practices listed here become irrelevant if I don’t have the energy and clarity to do them. In the military, they speak of sleep discipline—meaning it’s something you have to be good at, you have to be conscious of, something you can’t let slip. We only have so much energy for our work, for our relationships, for ourselves. Knowing this, I guard my sleep carefully. I try to get my 7-8 hours of sleep every night.
