Automate your success! You can lay a foundation in your life that radically accelerates and amplifies your success by automating the processes that support and drive your success!

00:02
Hi, I’m Mark Farmer, Life Success Engine. I want to just to hit a quick video, real quick. Make sure that you “Subscribe,” “Like,” it and comment, please. I do better with some comments. Let me know what you’d like to hear about next. But make sure and smash the “Like” button and the “Follow” button – would be a lot of fun to have you along on the journey.

00:19
Today I wanted to talk about automating success, how to lay a foundation underneath you; have some automatic success and to make you reach farther and higher in your life – to streamline that process. Look in a couple of months for my upcoming book, automated success, or “Automatic Success Systems: Habits and Rituals of Success. “This talks about some of the things that you can turn more mindless, so they don’t eat up your timing, energy, mind power, or decisions. And that allow you to focus your limited resources – mainly your time, to some extent money (although that’s a replenishable resource), but mainly your time and energy, your limited amount of those two things each day on what propels you farthest ahead.

01:18
So we’re going to talk about habits first – that’s one of the primary stepping stones. We’ve all heard the idea of 21 days to build a habit. To be honest, there has been no legitimate psychological research that says that it takes 21 days to build a habit. I liken it more to winding up a yo-yo or coiling a rope: the more you coil that rope or the more you wind up the yo-yo, the stronger that habit gets. A habit, really, is nothing more than deciding a new behavior or decision that you’d like to implement within your life.

01:56
One of the best ways to implement new habits is to have some kind of self-executing reminder. You can do something artificial like set a reminder on your watch, or on your smartphone to go off at a certain time, to remind you to take your medication or to go for a walk or to journal. But it’s possible to come up with other kinds of self-automating reminders. It might just be that when you wake up, one of the first things that you do is get down on your knees and pray. Or when you wake up, you automatically put on your workout shorts and go for a quick run or for a seven minute workout.

02:35
And so, being very conscious about that is one of the ways to implement these types of habits. But as you habituate habitual ties [mispronounces “habituate”] as you build a habit, it relieves you of having to remember to do that every day. So the more that you do that – say the first time takes you 10 minutes past [your original time you wanted to do it,] waking up to remember that you promised yourself that you’re going to go for a run. And then begrudgingly putting on your shorts. And then begrudgingly heading out the door for your run.

03:20
After a certain amount of repetition, it becomes much more automated. Whereas the very first run that you do in building this habit ends up taking, you know, 45 minutes or an hour out of your day before you actually get the run in.

03:33
With repetition in practice, you can get in that run. If your promise to yourself is just to go for a run for 10 minutes, you can get that run banged out, you know, within the first 15 minutes of the day: Wake up, grab a sip of water, put on the shorts and head right out the door and be back home within 15 minutes.

03:53
So those kinds of habits help to lay the foundation for whatever kinds of success that you’re looking for. I don’t know if that’s you know, writing for an hour in the morning on your first novel. If that is going for a run because you wanted to lose 10 pounds. If that is studying for extra half hour before classes or reading a new book. But you can build those habits that build towards larger success. And in my book “Automated Success,” we’ll talk more about how you use habits as a building block.

04:23
#2) Systems. Systems are just a proscribed way that you’ve decided that you will do things. They can be very elaborate, multi-step systems that can be very simple systems. But systems, again, automate and pave the way for your limited resources to be devoted towards the things that take you focusing on it that take you being present minded; that take you thinking about it.

04:50
And so one of the systems that I use is something that I call a “+1” system. So for ordering things around my house – pantry items that need to be on hand – I usually use a “+1” system. That is, if I use us I use a lot of cinnamon – it’s supposed to be really good for your digestive system; supposed to be have a lot of benefits. And so I have one bottle of cinnamon on hand that I use, and one bottle in the pantry. Bath soap, I usually – because I buy that in in packs – I have a pack of Bath soap that I’m using, and one pack behind. Bathroom tissue: I usually buy a case of bathroom tissue to be using and have one case of bathroom tissue [in reserve] on the side.

05:41
Trying to think of what else that I that I use… oh: coffee. You know, if we’ve got… it’s more for… you can use it for more than just staples: light bulbs. You know, I keep a pack of flood lamps, which my apartment uses, on hand. And when I’m down to the last one, that tells myself to order the next one. That’s how the “+1” system is used.

06:05
But you can come up with your own systems. “+1” system is just one of my methods of making sure that I never run out of lightbulbs, toilet paper, toothpaste – that if I’m using a tube of toothpaste, I have one more in the pantry. If I’m using my saline solution for contact lenses, I have one more in the pantry. And you can think of this idea of plus one also with a gas tank of your car,. You know select that arbitrary limit when your gas tank gets to half done, you go and you fill it up. That way you never end up running out of gas.

06:37
Calendaring items, it was just talking with my partner about how I calendar items. I have a system of calendaring items: When I have a due date, say February… let’s say April 30. I’ll set a due date for April 30. And that is my “dead end” that task has to be done. But I always set a due date two days before that. So I put on my calendar, I’ll put it on the 30th when it needs to be done, but I put [my deadline] on the 28th. And that’s MY mandatory “has to be done” date, it’s usually two days before it actually has to be done.

07:15
I find that I do far better without the stress of worrying about things last minute or using adrenalin to try to get things done. But then I also set a third calendar date a week ahead of time. And that’s my targeted completion date. So really any large item that needs to be done in my life, will have THREE completion dates on it: the eventual dead end, two days before that – which is my absolute dead end – it has to be done by then, because I’m not gonna wait for the last minute, I don’t do well with a stress. And then a week ahead of time is when I aim to getting it to have it done.

07:53
If I’m able to complete it a week ahead of time, awesome! I cross off [all] three [reminders], so I don’t have to see it again. I don’t get reminded of it again, it’s done interned in; completed submitted to the client.

08:04
If I don’t get it done by that week ahead of time. In fact, I’ve got the luxury of time, I can tell myself, Well, you still got a couple extra days, and you’re still ahead of schedule, then so that lets me know to hurry it up. And if I get to my eventual deadline, which is two days ahead of the actual deadline, then at that point, I feel like I’m scrambling. But inside, I still have the cushion of knowing that I actually have a little bit of time.

08:28
But that’s my dead[line]. Then there are a couple of other systems that I use that I’ll go into greater detail, but I’m working to keep these videos for under 10 minutes.

08:36
The last one is rituals. Rituals are just things that kind of bring a little flourish of style and peace to your life. And I love the idea of rituals. After dinner, one of my rituals is to have evening tea, and usually a light… my partner would laugh when I say, you know, a light sweet, because I actually have had a heavy [sweet], tooth, so. But I’ll usually have a little bit dessert with tea. And that kind of completion of the night and everything is done and I finally get to relax. It’s a wonderful ritual that brings a little bit of peace and a moment respite within my life.

09:17
In addition, I’ve got a bedtime ritual for getting to bed. And I’ll go into it in some other videos or in the book with greater detail, but in essence, I’ll review my day in the mirror: I usually think of one thing that I could do better. I don’t, you know, I think all of us, particularly those of us that working for high achievement, we can criticize ourselves. And we do criticize ourselves far too much. So I don’t want to come up with a list of 15 things that I screwed up for the day. I just want to come up with one thing that I can do better, because I would like to improve tomorrow. And so, one thing that I could do better I’d like to come up with three things that they did right.

09:59
I literally do this in the mirror, looking at myself, a way to connecting with myself, slowing down for the day and wrapping up today for tomorrow: I think of three things that I did right. sometimes these are small things. It’s been on more than one occasion that one of the things that I did rigt was remembered to have conversation with myself in the mirror, about three things that I did right.

10:24
And then finally, you know, I’ll think of what I would like to accomplish tomorrow. And I’ll have this conversation with myself as my way of wrapping up the day. There’s a lot more to my bedtime ritual. I’ll describe that in the book.

10:37
Please do Be on the lookout in next several months for “Automatic Success Systems: Habits and Rituals of Success: How you can make your life easier and automatic. It will be coming out in a few months.

10:49
I’d love to hear your thoughts down in the comments below. Talk about your system, your rituals, your habits and how you build them. Make sure and subscribe to the channel. I look forward to seeing you. Take care!

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
habits, rituals, systems, bedtime ritual, automatic, life success, calendaring