Do What Works.
September 19, 2025
Do what works. Don’t do what doesn’t work.
It’s astonishing, someone once wrote, how people will figure out what works, and then stop doing it. I’m very prone to this.
I tend to immerse myself in one area, then jump to another and completely forget the previous. This applies to daily habits, hobbies, and productivity techniques, to name a few.
I spend time working on a habit, building up the routine and the muscle of repetition, and enjoy the experience of how it works for me. But then I stop! The good habit is forgotten in the haze of memory, and before I know it, I find myself in days of frustration, tiredness, or aimlessness.
The solution is simple: Commit to the activities that work. If I’m going to be as high leverage as I wish to be, then I need consistent, disciplined commitment to my core habits.
What works for me:
- Meditate in the morning for at least 10 minutes.
- Journal in the morning “pre-input”, to quote Josh Waitzkin. Before you take in information from external sources, allow your creativity and intuition to express itself.
- Write in the evening before bed.
What works for my work:
- Design before you build.
- Don’t split your focus. Be willing to allow other things to be undone, so you can actually ship the thing you’re working on.
- Have fun.
The funny thing is that these bullet points are simply what’s most salient for me right now. If you were to ask me to rewrite this in 6 months, my points might be different.
My real commitment is to the intention of upholding a stable core of habits. The specific activities may differ, but what I find most important is the conscious awareness and execution of them. What can I say? Another thing that works for me is to switch up what I’m doing!
Do you need to explore and find out what works for you? Be willing to do things differently and to be surprised.
Or do you already know what works, and you simply need to stay disciplined? Be willing to commit to yourself. Be willing to meet who you are meant to become.