Since I was 19, I spent a large amount of time each week focusing on self-development. Some years have been more productive than others, but it has always been a focus. Whether through podcasts, books, going to seminars, I always liked the feeling of learning something new that could help me become a better husband, father, business owner. Clearly nearly 20 years of self-improvement hasn’t been enough, I have a very long way to go, but that’s the beauty of this process…it’s an ongoing journey.
One area I’ve always struggled with is figuring out how to learn, remember, recall, and apply the principles learned along the way. And to be very transparent, that was the biggest reason I picked up Nick Hutchinson’s book Rise of the Reader. I’m very aware that this is something I struggle with, and was excited to find a book that may help me fix that shortcoming.
Applying the 1% Improvement rule to my life…
While reading the book, I came across a section that was very intriguing. It’s a concept I have heard about before, but the way Nick talked about it in his book brough on a new way to look at it. Most call it the compound effect. In my previous blog, I talked about this and the 1% improvement concepts in more detail, so check that out if you want to get some additional information on it.
I decided to start applying this concept in different areas of my life. For several years, I’ve tried to focus my time and energy to what I call the 5 Fs – Faith, Family, Fitness, Finances, and Fun. For me, these tend to be the areas in my life that are the most important, and I have found that I am at the best version of myself when I find a good balance of time among these 5 areas. Balance isn’t always an easy thing to create in life, and often we have to focus more time and energy on one of the areas, but my goal is to continuously work towards balance.
I started to find ways to put into practice…
Putting the 1% Improvement into practice, I started focusing on these five areas. For me, here’s how it has been looking:
Faith – Read my Bible and Pray every morning before going to work. Takes me about 10 minutes to do this.
Family – Take 2-3 minutes at bedtime to ask my children about the highs and lows from their day. I have 6 kids, so this can take about 20 minutes, but still been very worth it.
Fitness – Fitness for me is more about general health, not just working out. So I’ve been trying to work on better sleeping habits. So the first step here is trying to follow the 10-3-2-1-0 rule I heard from Gary Brecka. No caffeine 10 hours before bed; no food or alcohol 3 hours before bed; no work 2 hours before bed; no screen time 1 hour before bed; and zero is the number of times we snooze the alarm in the morning.
Finances – I started cutting out all of the wasteful monthly subscriptions we are spending money on. I don’t want to lose too much credibility here by spelling them all out, but there was a lot of them.
Fun – This for me is doing something that I enjoy doing for myself. Something outside of family time that brings some joy. I’ve always enjoyed writing. Although far from a great writer, putting my thoughts down on paper is something that has always brough me enjoyment. So I started writing these short blogs daily. This can take anywhere from 20-45 minutes.
I’m still in the middle of this process, and won’t know where it takes me for several more months, but I can say the inner feelings they are starting to develop are already impactful. These are also just small steps. Every one of them is something I could easily put into practice, and don’t take up much additional time. But isn’t that the whole point of making a 1% change? That small steps, in a positive direction, compounded over time, will make a big impact…
