You’ve finished making a big meal.

Preparing, cooking, and putting the finished product on the plate.

You’re done!

Or so you think.

There still is that dirty pan staring back at you. The last thing you want to do is clean the pan. It’s dirty, you’re hungry, and it can wait. It can always wait.

You’re given a choice: Clean the pan now or wait until later.

The longer you wait, the more difficult it will get.

If you clean it right away – before the grease hardens – it’ll be easy. If you wait until after you eat the meal, it’ll be a little more difficult. But if you decide to do it tomorrow? Forget it. You’re going to spend what feels like an eternity scrubbing away on that damn pan.

A Metaphor for Life

Cleaning the pan might not seem like a big deal.

Except that it represents many of the challenges of life.

The longer you put off a problem, the harder it will get to solve. Which will lead you to put it off some more, which will make the problem harder. And then you’ll put off solving that ridiculously hard problem.

It’s a never-ending, vicious cycle.

Imagine the person who doesn’t pay their credit card bill.

If he pays it right away, he cleaned the pan.

But if the same person spends months (or years!) without paying his bill, he will have a difficult problem on his hands.

The credit card company will increase his debt exponentially. His credit score will plummet. When he goes to get a mortgage, he’ll find it impossible (unless the year is 2007).

Can he still clean the pan? Of course. It’s just going to take more effort than the person who paid his bill the day it was due.

It’s Never Easy

Exercise, business, reading. Anything else you’ve been filing away in the cabinet of “I know I should do this on a regular basis but I don’t.”

Cleaning the pan is about choosing the difficult path over the easy one.

A simple concept in theory, but there’s always something that comes up. There are always reasons that inch you towards not cleaning the pan. These factors pop their little head up and say, “Hey, wouldn’t it be better if you just ate the meal? Why does it always have to be so hard? Take it easy for once.”

But then you eat your meal. And then you enjoy your favorite show plopped on the couch. And then you go to sleep.

You’ve been sucked into the trap of cleaning the pan tomorrow.

The Cycle

When you cook at home, the food is typically cheaper and higher quality.

So by cleaning the pan right away, it makes it easier for you to cook tomorrow.

If you saw a dirty pan on your oven, odds are you would just call the nearest place for delivery. Pizza sounds good. Or maybe McDonald’s.

Cleaning the pan right away means your next meal is going to be cheaper and higher quality. Cleaning the pan keeps you in motion.

The next time you want to cook… You have a clean pan you can cook with.

In Summary

Cleaning the pan isn’t a big event. It’s a small, often forgotten, task.

It’s never easy to clean the pan.

Because you’re hungry. Because it can wait. Because it doesn’t seem like it’s important.

But this is true for so many of little tasks in your own life. Finishing the last set. Paying the credit card bill on time. Doing five minutes of meditation daily.

Cleaning the pan is about more than just a pan.

It’s about living a life focused on the details.

“Don’t fear the man who knows 1,000 techniques. But fear the man that has practiced one technique 1,000 times.” –Bruce Lee

Consistency.

Everybody knows it’s important. Everybody knows you need it if you want to achieve whatever you set out to achieve.

But we don’t typically look at it as a skill.

We look at like an attribute.

To show up every day is a skill though.

Why is consistency so difficult?

It’s difficult because we are constantly changing.

Often in subtle ways we cannot even comprehend.

Are you the same person today as you were yesterday? You might have done similar tasks but you didn’t do the same tasks at the exact same time. You didn’t speak the same words. You didn’t consume the same foods.

Which means you changed.

This is clearer the longer we extrapolate life. It’s hard to see how you were different five days ago. But if you compare yourself to five years ago, you can probably notice a stark contrast. Time gives us perspective.

Each subtle change to ourselves makes it harder for us to be consistent. Because we are changing every day, our priorities change as well.

This is a scary reality because it makes consistency hard to accomplish.

How To Cultivate The Skill

If we know we are going to change, are we completely helpless?

Of course not.

People have remained consistent for long periods of their lives and reaped tremendous rewards. Companies have remained consistent while growing and changing.

Here are some ways you can make sure you’re using consistency throughout the changes: 

Have purpose

My purpose is to make the world happier, healthier, and wiser. It helps me get out of bed in the morning. It is more important to me than money. It is something that lights me up.

Having a purpose can keep you consistent because it reminds you why you’re doing it.

Commit to what you can control

You can’t control the weather. You can’t control the feedback. But you can control your own effort. Set a specific amount of time.

For example, for this website, I am committing to posting twice a week (Monday and Thursday) for one year straight and then judging the results.

Use a routine

Routines help. They make it easy for us to do the desired actions over and over again. They help make sure we’re acting the same way day after day. Throw someone’s routine off, they’ll often be a completely different person. You can use this to your advantage. Set yourself up for success by using routines.

Linking

Similar to routines is linking. This is when you do something and link it to something else. This is a helpful way to stay on track because it does not require you to think.

For example, if you linked putting on your sneakers to working out, it would take the thinking out of the situation.

“Should I work out or should I not?”

It doesn’t matter. Since you put your sneakers on you will do your workout.

The Ten Minute Rule

Decide to do an activity for ten minutes. Then, if you want to quit… go for it. Oftentimes the hardest part was just getting yourself to start.

Stay in motion

You’re either pushing forward and building momentum… or you’re not.

By staying in motion, it leads you to tackle more, achieve more, and be better than you were yesterday. 

Just like an object, staying in motion will help you do more than you ever thought when you started. You’re building on your energy, efforts, and achievements from yesterday to build more energy, efforts, and achievements. A beautiful, never-ending cycle.

Get right back up when you fall

You might not be able to stay in motion forever.

One key insight from a study on habits was that: “Missing one opportunity to perform the behaviour did not materially affect the habit formation process.”

Meaning if you do mess up once, it’s okay. Just get right back on track. The one slipup won’t effect you if you don’t let it ruin tomorrow’s results.

In Summary

If you want to be successful, start viewing consistency as a skill.

Life will change. You will be pushed in new directions. You will be a different person a year from now than you are today.

But using the tactics in this post, you can successfully form whatever habits you want to form to remain consistent.

Jim Collins has been experimenting on himself before it was cool.

Jim is a world-renowned author – author of Good to Great and Built to Last.

But perhaps Jim is less known as a life-optimizer. Not only is he an avid rock climber and hiker, but he has also conducted decades worth of investigations on… himself.

Today, there’s no shortage of people experimenting on themselves. Trying to be the best version of themselves. Trying to find out the ways they can optimize their performance.

Jim Collins has been doing it forever.

Jim has a few quirky habits.

Before he introduces these principles, he lets people know… “well, you know, I’m is not quite normal.” For anyone in pursuit of becoming the highest version, this makes sense.

Those of us who are obsessed with improvement? We’re not exactly normal. We’re making the decision to make the most out of our one life.

So here are some of Jim Collins’ quirky habits.

The 50/30/20 Rule

He carries three stop watches with him at all times.

The first stopwatch is to track the time he spends on creative work.

The second stopwatch is to track the time he spends on teaching.

The third stopwatch is to track the time he spends on “other stuff that he just has to get done.”

The 50/30/20 Rule states that 50% of his time should be spent on creative work, 30% of his time should be spent on teaching, and 20% of his time should be spent on everything else. Oddly enough, this is similar to the Pareto Principle (80/20).

For many years, Jim actually kept track of the time he spent on these activities.

Today, Jim carries three stopwatches with him, but he doesn’t actually use them. He merely uses them as reminders.

The reason why?

He figured out the 1,000 Hour Rule.

The 1,000 Hour Rule

At some point, Jim stopped tracking these stopwatches and instead realized the creative work portion was the most important. And he figured that for every 365-day cycle, his creatives hours must exceed 1,000 (averages out to around 2 hours, 45 minutes per day)… “no matter what.” That means February 26 to February 26. Or August 2 to August 2.

So what counts when he’s calculating these creative hours, exactly?

Any activity that has a reasonably direct link to the creation of something that is new or potentially durable. If he was an artist, he would count getting the paintbrushes ready. Sometimes, he counts activities that he doesn’t expect, like conversations.

But in general, he errs on the side of caution. It’s better to be a hard counter in your long march.

This rule also bears an interesting similarity to Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 Hour Rule (highlighted in Outliers). It’s likely Jim has spent more than 10 years applying this 1,000 Hour Rule. Which would mean he has spent way more than 10,000 hours doing creative work… and would help explain why he’s become such a prolific author.

Day Ratings

Humans have awful memories.

Ask someone what they had for dinner two weeks ago and they will have no idea.

So, at the end of each day, Jim rates the day on a scale from -2 to +2.

• +2 = great day
• +1 = good day
• 0 = average
• -1 = bad day
• -2 = really bad day

Here’s the common theme of +2 days: Jim spends them alone working on a difficult problem and/or with people he loves.

Of course, just because these are the conditions that optimize Jim’s life doesn’t mean you will be the same. You need to figure out when you are having +2 days.

Everyone has good days and bad days. Because Jim tracks them, he is aware how to make more good ones and have less bad ones.

Tracking takes less than 5 seconds and probably gives Jim great data on how to optimize his own life.

Think of this as an easier form of journaling.

Sleep Monitoring

Jim went to a sleep specialist in order to optimize his sleep.

Similar to the 1,000 Hour Rule, he has found that for his body, he needs to average 70 hours of sleep every 10 days (average seven hours per night).

Jim believes you can function on no sleep. People pull all-nighters and are able to operate.

But can you function on no sleep for two or three days in a row? Probably not. Jim believes this is because he is dipping too far below the 70-hour average mark.

With that said, he knows people are different. He cautions that this is just what’s worked for him.

The 20 Minute Rule

If Jim wakes up in the middle of the night and can’t fall back to sleep within 20 minutes, he gets up and starts his day. Then, he ideally takes a nap from 7am until 10am, where he can begin work again.

Jim finds mornings are the best time to work for him. His mind is free of distractions, people don’t need him to do anything, and he can simply focus on work.

He loves days where he wakes up in the middle of the night because it means he gets two mornings.

This is a great way to take advantage of the time you would be up anyway and put it to good use.

Because Jim loves his work, this is easy for him.

Bug Book

Jim kept a Bug Book in college. It was basically a journal.

Except slightly different.

The premise was that he would observe himself in third person.

For example, in college he wrote:

“The bug Jim really loves to make sense of something difficult, breaking it down into understandable pieces, and teaching it to others.”

This is a pretty astonishing realization to be made as a college student, especially when taken in the context of his career. This is exactly what Jim ended up doing!

The Bug Book was doing experiments on himself to figure out what he liked to do and how he reacted to specific situations. By keeping a Bug Book, Jim was able to view his tendencies as a neutral observer.

Then, he would review his entries and come up with conclusions.

You can do the same by keeping a journal or Bug Book. Make sure to review your entries every week or month to really get the most out of it.

In Summary

1. Spend at least 1,000 hours yearly doing creative work.
2. Rate your days.
3. Make sure you are averaging more than seven hours per night.
4. If you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t go back to sleep, get to work.
5. Keep a journal where you look at yourself in the third person.

These rules were all taken from Jim Collins’ interview with Tim Ferriss. To access all notes on the podcast, click here.