No time to coast

The holiday season is upon us with Thanksgiving mere days away, and Christmas only a few weeks beyond. 

It can bring a lot of stress and drama into your life. 

What to get everyone and how to make every person you know feel loved and special?

The slow depletion of your bank account or ever accumulating debt adds to this stress. 

But these are not acceptable reasons to coast these next several weeks. 

Coasting is the temptation most face between now and the New Year. 

It is in the air this time of year. Everyone it seems is shifting things into neutral and waiting for 2017 to end and 2018 to begin. 

Don’t let that be you. 

Resolve to hold the line. 

To remain vigilant and consigned to the disciplined path. 

Discipline won’t allow you to coast. It forces you to stay in the game and keep moving forward. 

Does that mean you can’t relax and recharge? No, it means you don’t waste your time the next 6 weeks. 

It means you keep getting up early and grinding it out. 

It means you don’t blow all the hard work you’ve put in this year by letting it all go right before you cross the finish line. 

Let everyone else take time off. Let the whole world coast these next few weeks. 

You’ll be busy getting after it and taking ground. 

Waste not your days in idleness

“Ye lads whose age is fitted for reading,” Alcuin said, “learn! The years go by like running water. Waste not the teachable days in idleness!” 

The years do pass by like an ever-flowing stream. 

And you're faced with one sobering reality—your days are numbered and you don’t how many you’ll get. 

So why waste them? 

Why spend them binging on entertainment and frivolous pursuits, when bigger, better and greater things are calling? 

You want to squeeze every drop you can out of life. To be the best and most remarkable version of yourself you can muster. 

You don’t slack and take your eye off the ball on purpose, it’s just the easiest thing to do.

One compromise here or there, and you slowly drift into idleness. 

You must fight compromise and idleness at every turn, especially on things that seem insignificant. That’s where your battle is won or lost. 

Big things are easy. It’s the small things that don’t appear the matter that in the end matter most of all. 

Reading is like that. It is a small habit that avoiding or forgetting doesn’t appear to impact your life today. And one day without reading doesn’t set your course for destruction and ruin. The problem comes when one day turns into two, and two becomes three, and so on and so forth until you look up one fine day and realize all the opportunities to learn and grow you've missed. 

It’s the same with what diet, exercise and a whole host of tiny habits and routines that don’t appear important on the surface. Their magic isn’t found in the days work, but in the compounding effect, they’ll have if you’re consistent over time. 

So stick to the path. 

Stay the course. 

Don’t allow slack and idleness to creep into your easy chair. In fact, throw out your easy chair and get after it because seizing the day ain’t easy. 

It takes constant vigilance to hold the line on even the tiniest of things.    

Systems

There is a difference between knowing what you want to do, and actually making yourself do it. 

What helps you move things from one category to the other?

The discipline to spend more time focusing on systems than thinking about goals. 

A system gives you a tangible method that requires regular—if not daily—activity. For example, writing a novel is a goal, but writing 500 words a day is a system. It’s the small daily habit and, not the grand idea, that wins the war. 

Goals are great in the short-term but systems win over the long haul by placing your focus where it should be—the process. 

The process doesn’t come with deadlines, and most days you won’t be able to immediately see your progress. But over-time they’ll get you where you always wanted to go.

Discipline doesn't care

Discipline doesn’t care if you’re tired. 

It doesn’t care if you were up all night. 

Or if you don’t quite feel up to it. 

Discipline doesn’t care about these things because life and your enemies don’t either. 

It wants you to be ready and equipped for when they come calling, so it pushes you through discomfort. 

Discipline may seem like an insensitive jerk when it tells you to get up early or to do one more rep, but in the end, you’ll find that he’s had your best in mind all along.