My Principles for the New Year
I know it's already February, don't remind me
This line has been beaten to death already but this past year of 2020 has certainly been something else. With the advent of a new year and an (intended) fresh new start for all of us, I wanted to share some of the principles I'm bringing with me into the new year.
My intention is that by sharing these with you, I can keep myself somewhat accountable for following these principles to the best of my ability. Not only that, but constant reflection on our world-view and what principles we use to define, measure, and make sense of the world around us is always a useful and enjoyable exercise. Self-reflection is a rare quality these days. Let's do it together.
Principle #1: Ambition and Discipline is All You Have.
I was having a discussion earlier with someone I met on Ladder (sign up link), an online forum for remote students and recent graduates. The discussion was around switching from pre-health to consulting and whether or not it's difficult to do so when after you graduate vs while you're still in school.
Like myself, the peer that I was talking to transitioned from being pre-health to consulting. One of the things that I added was that one of the comforts of being pre-health is the clarity of the career pathway. You want to become a doctor? The path is relatively clear - you get X experience, you take this text, you get Y experience, you take another test, on and on until you get your MD and your residency match. But with consulting and most other career paths, the path is so much more foggy because of how open ended it is.
Many people, including myself at the beginning, found that fog to be disconcerting at best, paralyzing at worst. On top of that, I stopped being pre-health without a planned direction to pivot towards. For a time there, I literally just stopped caring.
But at that crucial moment, you can either decide to sink or swim and thankfully, I found the friendly support and internal energy I needed to swim. When you know the potential paths in front of you have been trod before but the fog is preventing you from even seeing them, the two things that can guide you are ambition and discipline.
The discipline to keep to a steady routine, even more important now with the pandemic, and the ambition to ask your friends for help, leverage whatever connections you have for assistance, and message that one person who could make a difference in your life.
That isn't to say this new road I took wasn't rife with missteps and failure. I remember distinctly my first networking "coffee chat" I had with a Linkedin connection. It was a stumbling mess of a conversation despite my best efforts. I also remember my first job applications to non-medical related positions. The amount of red ink on my resume after I had given it to a friend to proofread could have written it's own book. These failures are common and necessary.
But in the inspiring and timeless words of Rocky Balboa that I strangely remembered as I write this article,
But it ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward; how much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!
Principle #2: One Percent Better Every Day
This principle of "one percent better every day", I got originally from Ali Abdaal's book review about James Clear's book, Atomic Habits. In Clear's book and in Ali's video (link to book and video), the principle of "One Percent Better Every Day" is exactly what it sounds like. Focusing on getting better just a little bit, every day. The way I see it, the power of this principle manifests itself in two forms.
The first one being that what matters in the long term is the positive trend line. When you're trying to establish a good habit or get rid of a bad one, the individual performance from a single day isn't the performance that matters. What matters is the performance over days, weeks, and months of time. I'll give you a personal example.
One of the habits that I suck at and that I find the most difficulty trying to establish is exercise. But after learning about this "one percent better every day" principle, I tried something new. After learning about a 3x3 workout from Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky in their book, Make Time, I decided that was the bare minimum that I was going to be okay with. I was going to see how many push-ups I could do in a minute, how many squats I could do in a minute, and how long I could plank for in seconds. Three workouts for three minutes.
Above is my progress so far. I do this exercise every other day when I can. I've only gotten 12 workouts in since my start date in January. But you'll see with my plank numbers, I've got a slight, but steady positive upward trend (my push-ups and my squats have plateaued so I'll be experimenting with tougher variations or more sets rather than "under a minute").
I know this doesn't seem like much, but this brings me to the second benefit of "One Percent Better Every Day" - focus.
I dedicated myself to only doing this work-out. I would take a walk after work ends if I wanted to but I wasn't going to feel bad about not doing more workouts. I wasn't going to feel bad about not doing a "real workout". I wasn't going to allow myself to feel bad about any of that because what was the main problem I was trying to solve from the very beginning? I can't seem to stick to an exercise habit. So I'm going to be satisfied with being a complete amateur when it comes exercise and I'm going to be satisfied with myself when I do my 3x3 workout for the day. That satisfaction, that joy that I get to experience from being slightly better every day - that's what is going to keep me doing this in the long run. Not disappointment. Not self-loathing. Satisfaction.
Principle #3: You Don't Really Want Something Unless You Pray in the Night for It.
Spoiler alert: I'm Muslim, which means I'm a believer of the Islamic faith. One of the most recommended acts of worship in my faith tradition is waking up in the middle of the night and praying to God during that time. At this time of the night, when you're asking God for something, it's incredibly likely that whatever you're asking for will be accepted. It's so highly recommended to do this, to my understanding, for a simple practical reason.
That reason is "do you know how hard it is to wake up in the middle of the night before dusk?". I'm talking like 4 or 5am. This is night-time hours. This is deep-REM sleep time. This is the hour in the night when not even the people who have a nightlife are awake. To say that it's difficult to wake up at this hour is an understatement. But that's precisely why it's highly looked upon in my faith. It's difficult and yet you're doing it.
“The world is quiet here” - Lemony Snicket
I bring this up because one of the best lessons I learned from an Islamic scholar was that if you're not willing to wake up in the middle of the night for it, then you don't really want it. When you think about that, it's so true. How much difficulty and hardship are you willing to go through for something that you care about? The amount of B.S you're willing to put up for something or someone has a direct correlation to how much you care or want that particular desire.
While the example and principle I give here seems exclusive for Muslims, it's not. Reflect on something that you want. Reflect on how much you want that thing. Reflect on what you're willing to go through for that object of desire. If there's a disconnect between your supposed desire for something and the amount of B.S you're willing to go through for said thing, then you probably don't want it as badly as you think you do. That's my point. Find the things you really care about. Really dig deep for them because once you find them, you can forget about everything else. By doing that, you're not only cleaning your life of the baggage you happened to grab but it's not actually yours. You're also keeping yourself nimble, focused, and satisfied.
Hope you enjoyed these principles I'm taking with me into 2021! I write about stuff like this *gestures broadly to own life and hobbies* on my blog, Introvert But Loud. Feel free to check it out and follow me! Let's go on a journey together :)