MM#48--Its Ok to Suck, Its Not Ok to Skip

Welcome to the theory to action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately, and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now, here's your host, David Kaiser.

Hello, I am David and welcome back to another Mojo minute. So for the last two weeks, I have been getting back in the swing of things since my COVID Scare. Over the last two weeks, I've been accustomed to thinking about how many of those little habits I've structured into my life that kind of run on autopilot in the background. And I'm sure you have the same types of habits in your life. For example, before COVID, I get up every morning and read the Bible and say my morning prayers, you probably have some sort of reaching out to God yourself. And some acts of gratitude, most people do. 

And for the past 10 years, I'm almost sure I never missed more than a day of reading from some type of book. Even if it was just a page or two. I'm almost never skip a day. And I'm almost sure some of you probably have similar practices yourself. Maybe not around reading as a habit, but around something, you know, a daily crossword puzzle or a favorite comic strip. Or perhaps just checking into your daily YouTube fix from your favorite content creator, you get my point. And so all of this brings me to this nugget of wisdom today about surrounding those good habits. 

And it's whatever you do, don't skip a day. And if you do happen to skip a day, definitely, definitely do not miss two days. Because this if you do check this out. It's called habit suicide. Habit suicide. Yep, you got it. All the gains that you made with that good habit, installing it, getting it up and running, you know, the 21 days to install a habit. They're slipping away on day two. And they're slipping away really fast. Now you might demand and pound your fist on the table and say how so. And that brings me to enter our wonderful book of the day, superhuman, by habit by Tynan, the best selling author. 

And as always, let's go to a quote there. Let's go to the book for a quote. I was talking to a friend about a daily habit that I had. And he asked me, What did I do when I missed a day? I told him about my strategies and how I tried to avoid missing a day. What do you do when you miss two days? He asked. I don't miss two days, I replied. missing two days of a habit is habit suicide. If missing one day reduces your chance of long term success by a small amount like 5%. missing two days reduces it by 40% or so. And three days missed. 

You might as well be starting over. At that point you have lost your momentum and have made it too far easy to skip in the future. Unquote. How fantastic is that? nugget of wisdom or always so easy to let or to compromise with our schedule or to compromise with our habits that we simply say it's going to be okay, I can skip today. And then today becomes tomorrow and tomorrow becomes the next day in your than your three days in. You've lost all your mojo, you lost all your momentum. So let's recap. If you miss a day again, I understand it happens. Let's make getting your habit back on track. Super important. I mean like Mojo minute, super important. schedule that habit and then the next day rocket because the fact is if you miss that second day in a row, you're in trouble. And if you miss three days in a row, you run a strong risk of losing all the hard work you've done installing it, getting it up and running and then you'll basically need to restart from ground zero. 

So let's not do that Let's keep our mojo going. And if you miss that first day, don't go negative. But take this wisdom from time.

The solution is to plan your day around the habit for the next day, rather than say, I'm definitely going to do it tomorrow. Decide specific specifically when you're going to do it and come up with a solution. And solutions to the problems in advance, particularly whatever problems stopped you from executing in the first place. Unquote. That's some fantastic sage advice right there. 

So in today's Mojo minute, when you're tempted to skip a day, remember, it's okay to suck. But it's not okay to skip. Because even if you have a terrible workout, or a terrible meditation, or a terrible reading of a book, or a terrible crossword or whatever it is. You might feel that you made no progress whatsoever, but in fact you did. Because it's way better to suck than to skip. So how about it? What habit? Can you put this tip and nugget of wisdom into practice today? Now let's put theory into action and get on it.


Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this theory to action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at T Mojo academy.com where we have everything we discussed in this podcast as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your mojo on