The other day I sat down to write.

But it didn’t happen.

It just wasn’t there. The words. The momentum. One thought leading into the next. I knew I wanted to say something. I knew what I wanted it to be about. But I couldn’t get much further than that, beyond just a few sentences.

A classic case of writer’s block, right?

Maybe. Except I happen to think that writer’s block doesn’t exist. I’m with Jerry Seinfeld who said, “Writer’s block is a phony, made-up, BS excuse for not doing your work.”

The words I chose above were illustrative:

It just wasn’t there.

What is it?

It wasn’t the muses. Or inspiration. And I’ve never been a genius so that hadn’t abandoned me. What wasn’t there then?

The work.

I hadn’t done the work. Writing is a byproduct of hours and hours of reading, researching, thinking, making my notecards. When a day’s writing goes well, it’s got little to do with that day at all. It’s actually a lagging indicator of hours and hours spent researching and thinking. Every passage and page has a prologue titled preparation.

The solution to my writer’s block that day was not to write at all. It was to stop for the day and go research the topic more. It was to go for a run and a walk. It was to do the prep work.

Success as a lagging indicator is a phenomenon that holds true across most areas in life.

When I look in the mirror and I’m a little flabby, that is a lagging indicator that, for weeks and months, I’ve slacked on eating healthy and exercising. When I’m grouchy and frustrated and anxious or short with my wife, that is usually a lagging indicator that I need to eat (in 2014,  Researchers from Ohio State University found  that most fights between couples are because someone is hungry). When I’m getting sick a lot, that is a lagging indicator that I have not been taking care of myself, working too hard,  not sleeping enough .

Your retirement accounts are a lagging indicator of whether or not you have your financial act together—earning enough, saving enough. Pulling an all-nighter is not a sign of dedication but a lagging indicator of the exact opposite. It means you plan poorly, you procrastinate, you aren’t proactive enough, you don’t know how to effectively manage your work and your time. Not being able to  fully disconnect from your devices  on vacation is a lagging indicator that you don’t have good systems in place. Hitting a personal record on the bench press is a lagging indicator of a lot of discipline and hard work. Receiving a promotion is a lagging indicator of a lot of quality work. Delivering a keynote with confidence is a lagging indicator  of a lot of preparation .

All my books are lagging indicators.  They are a culmination of years of work . That’s actually Robert Greene’s definition of creativity. He says, “creativity is a function of the previous work you put in.” Creativity is not mysterious or romantic. It’s tedious, Robert says. “If you put a lot of hours into thinking and researching and reading, hour after hour—a very tedious process—creativity will come to you.”

But so are their sales.  The Obstacle is the Way  sold in its first year what  Discipline is Destiny  sold in a week. How? Because day after day after day, I worked to build a system, a platform, that has become a flywheel that day after day spins faster and faster. Combined, over a million readers have subscribed to  Daily Stoic ,  Daily Dad ,  The Reading List Email , and this RSS email lists. Of course, I have social media, too (you can follow me on  Instagram ,  Twitter ,  TikTok  and  YouTube ). In other words, I’ve filled a dozen football stadiums worth of “true fans” who I have built a relationship with.

This is what keeps me moving—knowing that I have to keep filling and refilling the creative well. Knowing that creative output is a lagging indicator of a lot of hours of tedious work. Knowing that if I want to publish more books in the future, the only question is, am I doing the work now?

It’s what keeps my priorities straight as a parent. I want to have a relationship with my kids as long as I am able to—which means investing in it now. In twenty years, attendance at Thanksgiving will be voluntary.  Attendance will be a lagging indicator of who I was as a parent today .

It’s true as a spouse too. Fifty years of marriage is a lagging indicator of how quickly arguments are resolved today, how mistakes are handled today, the pressure of (or better yet, the lack thereof) today.

And it’s true of fame and celebrity—at least the good kind, not the famous-from-a-sex tape kind. Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden  would say in an interview  that “fame is the excrement of creativity, it’s the shit that comes out the back end, it’s a by-product of it.” It’s a lagging indicator of years of making stuff that people like and get to know you through.

Even this article is an example. It’s a lagging indicator, a byproduct of a process that started with an idea on a notecard, to an idea I kicked around with others in conversations and with myself on walks, which led to a first draft I spent time on across several days, which I returned to across several weeks whenever I had tweaks and improvements, which was edited by a team, and then finally published.

Nothing comes from nowhere. Not success. Not inspiration. Not the muses. Not writer’s block. Everything is a lagging indicator. Of whether or not you did the work.

It’s kind of crazy to think how recent December 2019 feels. Not that long ago, it seems, we were getting ready for what a new decade might bring us. It’s even crazier when the truth settles in: 2019 was THREE years ago. We are well into that decade.

And so much has changed. So much has happened. But at the same time, so little has changed. We’re still struggling with the same things. The aspirations we had back in 2019—this was the year we were going to lose weight, start that big project, learn a new language, work on our temper—are still there, still waiting to be realized.

How much longer are we going to wait though? How much time are we going to let escape us? Hopefully not much longer.

The main thing is that we stop expecting this to simply happen. In one of the best passages in Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations (check out this awesome leatherbound edition), Marcus tells himself to stop hoping and “be his own savior while he can.” It’s great advice—advice we should follow this year.

And we do that by starting with some foundational habits and mindset shifts. Or at least, that’s what I am trying to focus on as I prepare for 2023.

Think Small

The writer James Clear talks a lot about the idea of “atomic habits” (and has a really good book with the same title). An atomic habit is a small habit that makes an enormous difference in your life. He talks about how the British cycling team was completely turned around by focusing on 1% improvements in every area. That sounds small, but Clear emphasizes that repetitive actions accumulate and add up in a big way over time. Don’t promise yourself you’re going to read more; instead, commit to reading one page per day. Thinking big is great, but thinking small is easier. And easier is what we’re after when it comes to getting started. Because once you get started, you can build.

Lengthen Your Timeline

One of the most important habits, the habit that makes all other habits possible, is patience. This was one of the lessons taught to me through opening my bookstore, The Painted Porch (delayed a year by COVID). It always takes longer than you think it’s going to take. That’s Hofstadter’s law. And even when you take the law into account, you’re still surprised. We want our progress now. We want our success now. We want our rewards now. But if you can practice delayed gratification, if you can understand that all good things take time, that it’s a process, you’re almost always going to be more successful. Think of Marcus Aurelius, who’s told that he’s going to be emperor, that he just has to learn under Antoninus for two or three years. As it happens, Marcus has to wait in the wings for twenty-three years before putting on imperial purple. Whether you’re writing a book, whether you’re being a leader, whether you have kids, whether you’re wanting to lose weight or improve your mile time—having patience is critical.

See Everything as a Challenge

In 2018, we did our first Daily Stoic Challenge, full of different challenges and activities based on Stoic philosophy. It was an awesome experience. Even I, the person who created the challenge, got a lot out of it. Why? Deciding what we want to do, determining our own habits, and making the right choices is exhausting. Handing the wheel over to someone else is a way to narrow our focus and put everything into the commitment.

To kick off 2023, we’re doing another Daily Stoic Challenge. The idea is that you ought to start the New Year off right—with 21 great days to create momentum for the rest of the year. If you want to have better habits this year, find a challenge you can participate in. Just try one: it doesn’t matter what it’s about or who else is doing it.

Do The Important Things First

Hugh Jackman reads right after he wakes up (early) in the morning. As he explained: “I read a book with my wife. So we get up and we read to each other for half an hour. It’s the best. I recommend it to anyone…It’s the greatest way to start the day. Right now I’m reading Stillness Is the Key…I’m really into philosophy. So we read, and we talk, because stuff’s on your mind…That way, no matter what happens through our day, we know that we’ve had quality time together. You always think, tonight; after work; after this; when we put the kids to bed, but that doesn’t always happen.”

Camilla Cabello told me she starts her day by reading the Daily Stoic email (which you can sign up for here) and then one page from The Daily Stoic. Me personally, I try to get some exercise in the morning and I for sure write in the morning. My assistant knows not to schedule calls or meetings in the morning because they make it too easy to let the day get away from you. They sap your willpower early. By tackling writing first, by getting some time outside (with the kids usually) first, I have already won the day and everything else is extra from there. Well-intentioned plans fall apart. Our willpower evaporates. So it’s key that we prioritize the important things and we habitualize doing them early.

Set a Bedtime

All the other habits and practices listed here become irrelevant if you don’t have the energy and clarity to do them. What time you wake up tomorrow is irrelevant…if you didn’t get enough sleep tonight. One thing every parent knows is that kids are a mess when they don’t sleep. But for some reason, we think we’re different. We think we can get away with pulling an all-nighter here and there. We think we can substitute stimulants for sleep. Nonsense. We only have so much energy for our work, for our relationships, for ourselves. A smart person understands this and guards their sleep carefully. The greats—they protect their sleep because their best work depends on it. The clearer they can think and the better their mental and physical state—the better they perform. In other words, the more sleep, the better. The philosopher and writer Arthur Schopenhauer used to say that “sleep is the source of all health and energy.” Certainly, no one is thriving who is not sleeping enough. If you want to have a good year, if you want to be up and at ‘em in the morning, start small, choose a bedtime.

Say No To Say Yes

A few years ago, Dr. Jonathan Fader, an elite sports psychologist who spent nearly a decade with the New York Mets, gave me a picture of Oliver Sacks. Sacks is in his office speaking on the phone, and behind him is a large sign that just says, “NO!” I have that photo hanging on the wall in my office now. On either side of it, hang pictures of each of my sons. I can see them—all three photos—out of the corner of my eye even as I am writing this. I recently added to this motif with a small memo signed by Harry S. Truman, shortly after he became president. His secretary wrote to ask whether they needed to start saying no to things with all the demands he had on his schedule. That is the correct response, he wrote back. I just love the energy of that and the history of it (and the insane fact that it only cost a few hundred bucks to get such a unique piece of history). These physical reminders make it impossible to avoid considering each opportunity and each ask carefully. What’s at stake is my finite resources. So are yours!

Discipline Now, Freedom Later

The famous line from Musonius Rufus was that labor passes quickly but the fruit of labor endures. It’s the same with discipline: the vigilance is temporary, but the fruit of that vigilance can be enjoyed long after the sacrifice has been forgotten. When you’re on the fence about going for a long run or working on a big project, remind yourself: discipline now, freedom later. The labor will pass, and the rewards will last.

Lay Out Your Supplies

Our mornings at home go best when the kids’ clothes have been chosen the night before, sometimes even for the whole week. We get out of the house with less trouble on mornings where the lunches have been packed the night before. When I get to my desk in the morning, the three journals I write in are sitting right there. If I want to skip the habit, I have to pick them up and move them aside. So most mornings I don’t move them, and I write in them. You can use the same strategy if, for example, you want to start running in the morning. Place your shoes, shorts, and jacket next to your bed or in the doorway of your bedroom so you can put them on immediately. You’ll be less likely to take the easy way out if it’s embarrassingly simple to do the thing you want to do. The same applies with meals. Pack your lunch the night before and you’re less likely to order spur of the moment takeout.

Create Positive Peer Pressure

The proverb in the ancient world was: “If you dwell with a lame man, you will learn how to limp.” It’s a pretty observable truth. We become like the people we spend the most time with. In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear talks about the importance of who you surround yourself with. ”One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior,” Clear writes. “Your culture sets your expectation for what is ‘normal.’ Surround yourself with people who have the habits you want to have yourself. You’ll rise together.” As Goethe says: Show me who you spend time with and I will show you who you are.”

Keep Coming Back

The path to self-improvement is rocky, and slipping and tripping is inevitable. You’ll forget to do the push-ups, you’ll cheat on your diet, you’ll say “yes” and take on too much, or you’ll get sucked into the rabbit hole of Twitter. That’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. You’re only a bad person if you give up. As the great Samuel Johnson wrote in his diary near the end of 1775 with a New Year on the horizon,

“When I look back on resolutions of improvement and amendment which have year after year been made and broken, either by negligence, forgetfulness, vicious idleness, casual interruption, or morbid infirmity; when I find that so much of my life has stolen unprofitably away, and that I can descry by retrospection scarcely a few single days properly and vigorously employed, why do I yet try to resolve again? I try because reformation is necessary and despair is criminal.”

No one is perfect. We all have bad days. It’s okay to feel a little discouraged. But to give up? To not even try? That is criminal. “Disgraceful,” Marcus Aurelius would say, “for the soul to give up when the body is still going strong.”

All of us have fallen short in the last year…and the years before that. We broke our resolutions. We made the same mistakes again and again. We were “jarred, unavoidably, by circumstances,” as Marcus said. But now it’s time to pick ourselves up and try again. It’s time, Marcus continues, to “revert at once to yourself, and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help. You’ll have a better group of harmony if you keep on going back to it.”

In other words, when you mess up, come back to the habits you’ve been working on. Come back to the ideas here in this post. Don’t quit just because you’re not perfect. No one is saying you have to magically transform yourself in 2022, but if you’re not making progress toward the person you want to be, what are you doing? And, more importantly, when are you planning to do it?

I’ll leave you with Epictetus, who spoke so eloquently about feeding the right habit bonfire. It’s the perfect passage to recite as we set out to begin a new year, hopefully, as better people.

From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable, or highly or lowly regarded, remember that the contest is now: you are at the Olympic Games, you cannot wait any longer…

One morning in the middle of the second century AD, the most powerful man in the world was awakened by his orderly.

It could have been in his tent on the front lines of the war in Germania.

It could have been somewhere along his frequent and arduous travels across the empire—in Asia Minor or Syria, Egypt, Greece, or Austria.

But chances are it was at the palace in Rome.

It was early. So early.

The sun still hid. It was cool and dark and quiet.

Like any normal person, a deep part of Marcus did not want to wake up, instead wanting to “huddle under the blankets and stay warm,” he would say. It was nicer there. Easier there.

But then he caught himself. “Is this what I was created for?” he said to himself. To feel nice? To have it easy?

“I have to go to work—as a human being,” he said, hauling his feet up and onto the floor. “Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants, and the spiders and the bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can?” he said to himself but also to us. “And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?”

I first read a passage from Marcus Aurelius about this in his Meditations when I was 19 years old. It was before I dropped out of college, and I was having a similar back-and-forth with myself most mornings. Stuck in an early class I could never seem to get motivated for, my lower self desperately wanted to blow it off. So it was amazing to read the most powerful man in the world chiding himself for wanting to stay in bed. A guy reluctant to get out from under the blankets and put his feet on the cold floor—just like the rest of us. I printed out the full passage and put it on the wall next to my desk.

At the time, that advice was a helpful reminder to myself to get off my ass, to stop being lazy, and to work hard. It was an important early lesson in discipline. 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.

It was early, always early, when Toni Morrison awoke to write. In the dark, she would move quietly, making that first cup of coffee. She’d sit at her desk in her small apartment, and as her mind cleared and the sun rose and the light filled the room, she would write. She did this for years, practicing this secular ritual used not just by writers, but by countless busy and driven people for all time.

“Writers all devise ways to approach that place where they expect to make the contact,” she’d later reflect, “where they become the conduit, or where they engage in this mysterious process. For me, light is the signal in the transition. It’s not being in the light, it’s being there before it arrives. It enables me, in some sense.”

But of course, it was as practical as it was spiritual. Because at the beginning of her career, Morrison was also a single working mother of two young boys. Her job as an editor for Random House occupied her days, her children every other minute, and by the late evening she was burned out, too tired to think. It was the precious early morning hours between the parting dark and the rising dawn, before her boys uttered the word Mama, before the pile of manuscripts from work demanded her attention, before the commute, before the phone calls, before the bills beckoned, before the dishes needed to be done, it was then she could be a writer.

Early, she was free. Early, she was confident and clearheaded and full of energy. Early, the obligations of life existed only in theory and not in fact. All that mattered, all that was there, was the story—the inspiration and the art.

There she was, starting her first novel in 1965, freshly divorced, thirty-four years old and struggling as one of the few Black women in an incredibly white, male industry. Yet in her mind, this was “the height of life.” She was no longer a child, and yet for all her responsibilities, everything was quite simple: Her kids needed her to be an adult. So did her unfinished novel.

Wake up.

Show up.

Be present.

Give it everything you’ve got.

Which she did. Even after The Bluest Eye was published to rave reviews in 1970. She followed it with ten more novels, nine nonfiction works, five children’s books, two plays, and numerous short stories. And she earned herself a National Book Award, a Nobel Prize, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Yet for all the plaudits, she must have been most proud of having done it while being a great mother–a great working mother.

Of course, it’s not exactly fun to wake up early. Even the people who have reaped a lifetime of benefits from it, still struggle with it. You think you’re not a morning person? Nobody is a morning person. In the military they speak of sleep discipline–meaning it’s something you have to practice. We only have so much energy for our work, for our relationships, for ourselves. A disciplined person knows this and guards it carefully. A disciplined person knows that getting their 7-8 hours of sleep every night does not negatively affect their output, it contributes crucially to their best work. It allows them to wake up and take advantage of the most productive hours of the day—before the interruptions, before the distractions, before the rest of the world gets up and going too.

Hemingway would talk about how he’d get up early because there was “no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write.” But we can imagine the mornings when he was hungover or exhausted from partying…those were not as fruitful. 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.

Not that it’s all about being clever. There’s a reason CEOs hit the gym early—they still have willpower then. There’s a reason people read and think in the morning—they know they might not get time later. There’s a reason coaches get to the facility before everyone else—they can get a jump on the competition that way.

Be up and doing.

While you’re fresh. While you can. Grab that hour before daylight. Grab that hour before traffic. Grab it while no one is looking, while everyone else is still asleep.

Today, my routine is a little different than it was when I was in college, but I’m still up early. Now I’m not alone in a dorm but in a house with young children. Instead of an alarm clock, the kids wake me up before 6 a.m. My rule is no phone for at least the first hour of the day. I get the kids in the stroller and go for a three-mile walk. Then I journal for fifteen minutes before tackling the hardest task on the to-do list— it’s always something writing related. I write for about three hours then break the intermittent fast I started at around 6 the night before and do some reading over an early lunch. The pandemic was rough for me like it was for many people but one good thing about it was that I really dialed in my routine (I talk about this at length in the afterword of Discipline is Destiny if you want more detail). I think back now to those endless days of being in the zone, of having few interruptions, and as crazy and weird as they are, I have a nostalgia for them.

“I think Christ has recommended rising early in the morning, by rising from his grave very early,” observed the theologian Jonathan Edwards in the 1720s. Is that why quiet mornings seem so holy? Perhaps it’s that we’re tapping into the traditions of our ancestors, who also rose early to pray, to farm, to fetch water from the river or the well, to travel across the desert before the sun got too hot.

When you have trouble waking up, when you find it hard, remind yourself of who you come from, remind yourself of the tradition, remind yourself of what is at stake. Think, as Morrison did, of her grandmother, who had more children and an even harder life. Think of Morrison herself, who certainly did not have it easy, and still got up early.

Think of how lucky you are. Be glad to be awake (because it’s better than the alternative, which we’ll all greet one day). Feel the joy of being able to do what you love.

Cherish the time. But most of all, use it.

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