By Matthew Bow
Hi, it’s your friendly neighborhood commo guy, and today I’m talking about ways we can allow ourselves the best chance to succeed. In this post, I share a few things that work to help keep me in the best shape, both mentally and physically.
Like cars, humans can use a tune-up from time to time: recognizing places where we wish we could do better and working to implement changes to continually learn, improve, and grow. That’s what life’s all about!
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I titled this post “How to Make Yourself a 2010 Honda Civic” because, like cars, humans can use a tune-up from time to time: recognizing places where we wish we could do better and working to implement changes to continually learn, improve, and grow. That’s what life’s all about…and mindset plays a huge role in all of this, as I’ve blogged about before.
We are all different, and have needs, priorities, and goals, so feel free to take my below experiences and insights with a grain of salt; but if you’re interested in learning more about my personal life hacks, keep reading.
The first is repeatable habit – consistency. Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, once said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
I like to drink coffee in the morning to start my day. Caffeine wakes you up by blocking your brain’s adenosine receptors to promote wakefulness. Adenosine makes you sleepy, so when caffeine binds to adenosine receptors and blocks adenosine activity, that’s what gives you a jolt of alertness.
When it comes to caffeine, it’s more about timing than the amount of caffeine that we drink. The US Army has created an online tool that one can use to determine the ideal timing for your morning cup(s) of coffee. What we usually do is drink caffeine as soon as we stir from our slumber. However, new studies suggest three hours after being fully awake is the perfect timing for coffee.
My perfect cup of coffee contains grass-fed butter, full-fat creamer and medium chain triglycerides or MCT oil; throw in some collagen peptides, too. Reason being is if you combine coffee and fat, the fat slows the absorption of the caffeine, lengthening the coffee’s staying power. For me, that prevents crashes in the afternoon or the general “Case of the Mondays.”
When you first wake up, you can make your bed and perform the small tasks needed to prepare you for the day. This allows you to feel accomplished. In the military, we had high general standards of cleanliness, because if you can wash and shave your face, you can do anything. Simple, mundane tasks allow us to do amazing things because it breaks down the tasks of the day into smaller to-do items. In the military, we segment days into chow times (meal times) and end of day formations, when all scheduled training is done for the day.
Nutrition is a very controversial subject, and I have lost more weight and gained due to depression than I can count. I have learned from my own experience that mental awareness, or the en vogue term, mindfulness, can and will help you lead an overall better life. There are many ways to be more mindful in life, whether it’s by doing a meditation podcast, taking a yoga class, or exhibiting sensory awareness: being attuned to the sights, sounds, and other aspects of your environment. Mindfulness can be as simple as savoring a cup of coffee (if, like me, you are a coffee aficionado) and being present in the moment.
In the Army, we normally did fasted physical training in the morning, from 0630 til 0800. It was customary to drink a couple of cups of coffee before that 90-minute period, in which we stretched, did the training for the day, and then did cool down exercises. This is still ingrained in me, so I drink one to two cups of coffee before making or getting breakfast on my own.
Now that I’ve talked about my nutrition, caffeine intake, and touched on really basic supplementation, I can get to the fun part: gamification of life. Games are engaging because they are fun and draw you in, and the idea of gamifying one’s life is to help make the mundane aspects of life more tolerable. Sometimes, gamifying your life can take the shape of small successes that build on each other. That can be very motivating.
Allow me to share an example of what I’m talking about. Until recently, I forgot one of the core tenets in the military: keeping one’s area neat. A lot of people who are motivation gurus will say make your bed because it allows you to accomplish at least one thing in a day. We as humans forget that it’s rewarding to accomplish a goal, which can spur on future successes.
If you live with kiddos or your partner, at least make your own zen garden, per se. Remember the quote that “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” If you can wash your face, make your bed, and maintain your zen garden, you can handle the day, because you are already in problem-solving mode.
I suffer from ADHD, which makes it difficult to concentrate for long periods of time. People often talk about having ADHD, and the acronym is overused in society, but it’s also understated in a way. Managing my ADHD has forced me to come up with effective time management strategies to be productive.
You, too, can optimize your work schedule for the limitations of the human mind. Chunking is one time management technique I have used to be productive. Human beings work best in two or three hour chunks with fifteen minute breaks. So my thoughts are: have what I call a meme break, smartphone reading time, or whatever, for those fifteen minute intervals.
I also suggest after lunch work on something outside your wheelhouse – if allowed – at your job. Human beings have to be mentally challenged in order to do the best work. When you get out of your comfort zone to learn a new skill or work on an unfamiliar team, the challenge is good for your brain. Your brain thrives on newness: new ideas, new imaginations of what’s to come. Plus, you will learn some new stuff in the process.
Finally, I want to talk about why I titled this article as living “an 85% lifestyle” as the last tenet I’ll mention: forgive yourself when you feel like you have not given your best work for the day. Murphy’s Law states that anything bad can and will happen. It’s why you, as the reader, and myself, as the writer, have to consistently reevaluate how hard we are on ourselves.
Fancy Comma, LLC 
