Twenty Twenty-Four
Level 4: Serious Player
Future Guardian,
It’s Friday, which means it’s paid post day and it’s the last official post of the year. 2024 creeped up on us quickly and now it’s right around the corner.
A new year means a flood of new people jumping on bandwagons they are are doomed to fall off of in short order. Rushing to the gym, starting to new diets, opening new businesses…
…as if the completely arbitrary date of Jan. 1 has somehow changed everything - as if they have a higher probability of succeeding by starting now than they would have starting any other time of the year.
If that’s you, more power to you and we truly hope you reach your goals.
Most won’t.
Every New Year millions of people swing from a life of “chaos” to a plan of extreme “rigidity” over night. When the rigidity becomes too much handle, they rebel against their own plan and swing back into chaos - because they’ve never developed the skills, habit or expectations to sustain anything they are attempting to accomplish.
It looks like a version of this:
No time to follow a process, look for shortcuts
Arbitrary date arrives (New Year, Birthday, Family vacation)
Choose an arbitrary, rigid strategy out of desperation
Follow the strategy until it becomes maddeningly frustrating, throw up your hands, say F*ck and and go the extreme other direction (many pizza’s, drinks, and tubs of ice cream have been devoured in this stage)
Repeat
This is yo-yo dieting…in all areas of life.
The bad news is most humans will continue to do this for the rest of time.
The good news is that you have a choice. You can slowly, methodically and intentionally opt out of being most humans if you decide to do so. But deciding to do so it only the first step. It’s the easiest one. Once you’ve made the decision, you have to do the work - the boring, not-so-sexy, fundamental and mundane work.
If you can master the mundane, a whole new world opens up and expands - as long as you continue to maintain the mundane.
Many Guardians have broken the yo-yo life cycle, and we’re lookin forward to seeing many more do the same.
To celebrate the end of 2023 and the beginning of a brand new year… we’re going to put the fundamentals back in front of you - the top of the inbox. Below are the reminders and accompanying resources we find to be the most helpful for mastering the mundane and breaking the cycle.
A bunch of them are above the paid line ’tis the season.
“The Process Is The Shortcut” - Nic Peterson
The process is the process because it is the shortcut. If and when more reliable way, faster or cheaper to achieve an outcome is proven, it will become the process. Falling in love with the process will consistently yield better results than falling in love with the idea of the results.The Process is the Shortcut - TGA Article
Growing Trees - Nic Peterson Article
Open Loops, Learning and Intelligence:
Remember that our definition of learning is: “same circumstance, different behavior” and our definition of intelligence is: “The ability to get what you want”. If it doesn’t change your behavior in a way that increases your ability to get what you want - it hasn’t made you more intelligent - you haven’t learned. As you approach new things in 2024, it might be helpful to pay attention to and think about how your behavior must change under what circumstances to get the benefit you are seeking.Frequency, Intensity, Purpose
Learning something new is hard. You’re not going to be good at it for a while. It’s all part of the process - staying motivated and learning to find “flow” is a skill you can develop. Here’s a short [6:14] video breaking down our process:Thinking About Setting Sustainable Goals (A Process)
Nic has a simple process for reaching goals in a sustainable way. It’s a behavir modification model, and it’s broken down in the replay below:
Now what?
It won’t take you long to get through all the content above.
But…
“Finishing” the content doesn’t do anything for you. Knowing about it, being able to quote it, agree with, disagree with or test well in it will. not. change. a. single thing. for you.
We encourage you to take what is useful and apply it to the things that are most important to you.
Disregard the rest. You can always come back later and revisit.
Now… we’re going to go a little deeper.
Below is an excerpt from the V3 Letter (plus a printable version) and a mind boggling training from Dr Jeff Spencer. We got permission to share the excerpt and video below, but The Letter is $147 a month, so we can’t share the entire thing…
Behavior Modification Deep Dive
Excerpt From The Letter, December 2023:
My Personal Goal Achievement
Behavior Modification Framework
Full disclosure: I don’t set New Year’s Resolutions.
Most of them are arbitrary goals on arbitrary timelines; a great strategy to turn yourself into a ticking time bomb. I do, however, strategically modify my own behavior in an attempt to increase the probability of favorable things happening to me using a five-step behavior modification process.
My brain maps everything to familiar shapes and frameworks, so this process is mapped to Maslow’s Hierarchy. Like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the requirements of the lower levels must be met before focusing on the level above it.
For example, one cannot achieve safety (personal security, income or resources) if one does not have access to food, water or air. That makes access to food, water and air (the physiological needs) by far the most important thing to focus on achieving. Because if you can’t meet those basic needs... nothing else matters.
The pyramid structure implies a few things:
The lower level tiers have a greater surface
area because the returns are far greater. You can live without being self-actualized, you cannot live without water or air. In other words, the returns diminish as you climb levels or tiers. This is super important to understand when setting goals. Highlight it, I’ll circle back to tie it all together shortly.
The lower the tier, the more of the foundation it makes up, making it more important to the entire structure. Lower tier = more important. Our brains sometimes struggle with that concept. Skipping steps is like trying to build the tallest skyscraper possible, starting at the top and without a foundation. (It’s probably not gonna work out the way you want)
Read through the above section a few times, I’m cramming a lot into the next few pages. It won’t make much sense without being on the same page about the above. (This will become a mini-book you’ll get later on). Okay, here we go:
The Behavior Modification Pyramid
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has “Physiological” needs at the base. Without them, nothing else will matter. When it comes to making meaningful changes in our lives, what is the thing that needs to be true or nothing else will matter?
In my experience it’s:
ENOUGH:
How much of a thing do we need to do?
Regardless of your goal there is a certain amount of something necessary. If you do too little or too much, nothing else will matter. Want some examples? K.
If you’re eating far too little or far too many calories, it doesn’t really matter what the food choices are. Macronutrients, meal timing, supplements, rigid eating schedules... none of those will move the needle for you if you’re grossly over or under eating.
If you’re starting an organic video campaign you might put a lot of time, effort and resources into worrying about what to say, how to say it, how to edit it, production quality, and things like the timing of posting videos. If you can’t sit down and get the number of videos you need done, none of that stuff will matter.
If you’re trying to close more sales calls for your business, nothing will move the needle for you unless you have enough conversations on the calendar.
It might seem like common sense, but it’s not common practice. Until you have 1) figured out what enough is and 2) consistently achieved it, it doesn’t make sense (to me) to do anything other than work on “enough”. Because until you figure that out, nothing else will matter. Using the examples above:
If your plan is to eat an average 2,500 calories a day, focus on that and just that until you average 2,500 calories a day. At the end of the week, if you’ve failed, explore the reasons you were not able to do it, remove the obvious constraints and then try again.
Rinse and repeat until your behavior actually matches the plan, because until then, nothing else matters.
Until you have removed the constraints preventing you from consistently doing “enough”, how can you justify putting resources into doing other things? Especially since “other things will almost certainly have diminished returns.
If your plan is to make three videos a week or have five sales calls a day, don’t worry about the content of your video or your sales script. For realz. Not until you have evidence that you can consistently make three videos a week or get five conversations a day. Because if you can’t... nothing else will matter.
What you’re doing is building a foundation of skill and behavior until it becomes engraved in you. Once it’s engraved as a habit it becomes significantly easiest to maintain, allowing you to redirect resources to the next thing.
Once you consistently achieve “enough” you can move up a tier, if you choose:
BALANCE:
How is “enough” distributed?
Once we have developed the habit of doing “enough” of something, we can focus on the distribution of the “enough”. Need examples, again? K.
Once you consistently eat an average of 2,500 calories per day, you can change the distribution of those calories. For example: Average 2,500 calories per a day, with at least 180 grams of protein. **If you can’t figure out “enough” (calories) consistently, there is no way in hell you will be able to figure out “enough” (calories) and “balance” (macronutrient distribution) simultaneously.
Once you consistently make three videos a week, you can start to tweak the kind of content. For example, three videos a week and one that makes a strong offer. **If you can’t figure out how to get three videos published, there is no way in hell you’ll be able to figure out how to get three videos published while also being specific about what they need to be.
Once you can reliably get five sales calls a day, you can practice the different methods you’ve learned. **You get it by now.
If you’re successful in implementing the first step of balance, you can add another if you choose. Examples:
2,500 calories, at least 180 grams of protein and less than 40g of fat.
Three videos a week, one call to action video, and one humorous video to show off
personality
The key here is that you take the smallest step possible and then prove to yourself that you can do it. If you can’t do it, that’s okay. You need to know that so that you can remove the limits to achieving it before adding complications. Hang with me here, I promise this will make sense soon.
Once you have earned your way to the balance you want, you can move up another tier, if you choose:
STRUCTURE:
Adding structure to the system.
Once you’ve mastered enough and have a sustainable balance, you can choose to add structure. Examples? K.
Once you consistently eat 2,500 calories per a day, with at least 180 grams of protein and less than 40 grams of fat, you can set meal times to be the same every day.
Once you are making three videos a week with one call to action video and one humorous video, you can commit to a posting schedule and a filming schedule.
A lot of people start with structure, which is a reason a lot of people fail. Building a structure around something with no evidence it can be done consistently is a recipe for anxiety. For example, a lot of people will start the new year with something like this:
“I downloaded this new diet, I’m going to eat 2,200 calories a day, eliminate alcohol, eat six meals per day and get at least 120 grams of protein in each meal.”
...with zero experience in doing any of the things that make up the plan. Uh.
Do you have any idea how difficult it is to learn how to do ANY of those things consistently, let alone all of them at the same time? Building structure before it is necessary decreases flexibility tremendously. Start ups are applauded when they are lean and agile; when they have less structure, which allows them to account for the unknown and unexpected.
Think of your new goal or initiative as a start-up. Don’t add structure until you have mastered “enough” and “balance” - otherwise whatever structure you create and commit to is just a guess. Guessing is rarely the best plan. Before we move onto the next tier...
... I am going to give you a pro-tip (It’s Top-Secret):
I know you want to jump straight to the more complicated stuff. I get it. With this model, you can get there quickly. Here’s how:
Week 1: Prove you can do enough 100% of the time
Week 2: Prove you can maintain enough, but with the desired balance 100% of the time Week 3: Add structure while maintaining enough and balance.
In other words, if you think you can handle the complicated stuff, great... earn it through your behavior.
And the harsh reality of it is this:
If you cannot sustain “enough” for a couple of weeks, what on earth makes you think you can sustain anything more complicated for any amount of time? Again, if you want to do more complicated stuff, earn it. If you can’t earn the next step (through your behavior), put all your effort and resources into the current step until you can.
Not because I’m a stickler, but because the returns diminish as you climb tiers. Mastering a lower tier will have a greater impact on your results than jumping up a tier will.
The right number of calories, alone, will produce better results than the best timed meals and supplement protocol in the world if you are grossly over or under eating.
Now...diminished returns are still returns, so onward we forge:
NOVELTY:
Do Your Thing (make it interesting).
Once you have a structure in place that works for you consistently, introduce some novelty. You know the whole “master the rules so you can break the rules” thing? That’s novelty. At this point, you are sustaining enough, it’s balanced and has a structure. Since all of those things are true, you can isolate variables and have some fun or introduce some variety. More examples:
You’re eating an average of 2,500 calories a day, with a protein minimum and max fat goal. Maybe by now you have all three of your macronutrients dialed in. Can you fit a beer in? What about squeezing in a couple ice cream cones with your kids?
You’re making your videos on schedule consistently, what happens if you push the boundaries on the humorous video? What happens if you make that video you’ve been thinking about making but since it has nothing to do with your offer, you haven’t made it?
By developing the skills, behaviors and structure to sustain the foundational stuff, you have given yourself the ability to try new things in a safe, controlled environment. You can break the rules, because you have mastered them.
And then, if you choose, you can bump yet another tier. Like Maslow’s “Self-actualization” it appears to be the sexiest tier. In reality, it’s the most complicated and the lowest returns. But again, diminished returns are still returns so...
COMPLICATED STUFF
Exactly What It Sounds Like
Supplements, meal-timing, advanced and complicated funnels, tripwires, NLP techniques, etc. That’s all complicated stuff.
Complicated stuff requires significantly more energy for much smaller returns. In my experience, most people fail because they start their “resolutions” with complicated stuff baked in from the start. The juice is not worth the squeeze, so they quit, unaware that most of the juice is coming from the basics and most of the squeeze is going into the complicated stuff.
That’s a goofy feedback loop.
Here’s the kicker.
Unless you’re an Olympic athlete, the extra 1-2% you get from “complicated stuff” will probably not change your life in a meaningful way.
And the whole purpose of The Letter is to improve your life in a meaningful way. So the objective is not to make it to the top and stay there. The objective is to master each step and spend time in a state of receptivity as you go
through it...
So that you can determine at which step you are living your best life.
What most “resolutioners” do is live their life like on a giant yo-yo diet cycle. They go “all-in” and try everything at once, get overwhelmed and then swing back to complete chaos.
Your best life is almost certainly not at either extreme, but somewhere in between. By methodically going through each step and staying receptive, you will be able to discern what is most sustainable and enjoyable for you. I can’t tell you the answer, I don’t know your sweet spot.
What I can tell you is that an overly rigid and arbitrary plan starting on a completely arbitrary date (like Jan. 1) is likely going to prevent you from discovering it. You have to go through your process and experience it.
It’s a vibe thing.
I know it’s a lot. Don’t worry, mini-book incoming. In the meantime, I did a video breakdown of this for Nicsmas 2020. The mini-book will be far better than the replay, but the replay is available to Letter subscribers
You certainly don’t have to adopt my process. Or Lukas’ process. But I hope this Letter gave you something to think about.
- Nic
PS: Please do not mistake my examples as being prescriptive. “Enough” is different for each person, their personalities, their goals, their unique disposition, starting position and desired
outcome are all unique to them. This is getting dangerously close to becoming a rant about “group indexing” and online calculators or cookie cutter plans.
TDL;DR: Just don’t.
A New Year, A New You?
Maybe.
It’s more like a new decade, a new you.
Nothing explains the way we change decade to decade and the internal conflict it can create like Dr. Jeff Spencer. This is something we recommend you watch every year, just to be cognizant of what to expect and how to navigate it:
The Life Lens Progression with Dr Jeff Spencer
Have a great and safe New Year
Here’s to 2024
Guardian Academy
Live to Learn. Give to Earn.
Fantastic way to start my day. The term "Enough" when I first read it in the newsletter just summed so many things in my experience. Great post and I hope people take heed of the core message(s) here.