How to Follow Through: 32 Articles in 32 Days, and Counting

Following through is a CHOICE you either act upon, or you don't, own your choice.

1 ) Following through is a CHOICE.

Following through is almost without exception a CHOICE. This article is the 32nd in 32 days, and the 2nd of 2 days doing my next 30 Days in a Row Challenge. This time my priority is to work on my Google Project Management Certification course DAILY. The articles are a secondary goal which I can skip at ANY time to assure I accomplish my priority task. If I can achieve both , awesome! If not, nothing short of a medical emergency or natural disaster will keep me from doing the first.

An article a day has been FAR from effortless, but I've also learned I can do it indefinitely, so long as it's a priority:-) Around day 15 I was a bit worried I wouldn't be able to generate enough topic ideas to keep going. But I managed my way through by committing to, and publicly announcing the following day's article topic at the bottom of the current article. It created accountability and hopefully anticipation for some of my audience.

2 ) Make promises, then KEEP them

A handy trick to add force to your follow through, is to make promises with an attainable time frame, AND KEEP THEM. Don't make any you can't, or won't keep. Be realistic about how many commitments you can deliver on. APOLOGIZE to those you made promises to, then broke. This isn't a big deal as long as it's rare and you apologize when it happens. Manage the expectations of others and yourself. Follow through by promising and delivering, otherwise DON'T make those promises.

The power of doing something opTimally difficult is that it grows your abilities, authentic, earned confidence and genuine self-esteem. I've coined these behaviors SOVBs ( Sustainable OpTimal Viable Behaviors ;-)- They're behaviors that are genuinely challenging, but not so difficult that they can't be sustained long term. It's my vaccine against James Clear's Atomic Habits & B.J. Fogg's Tiny Habits. If their ideas were TRULY effective, everyone in Japan would have been excellent English speakers as early as 130 some years ago, yet to this day, 99ish % STILL aren't :-?

3 ) Take Extreme Responsibility

One of the keys to follow through is taking responsibility for your actions. Let's get radically honest, most people are full of crap when it comes to their reason for the things they don't do, but know they should. I like the way Jocko Willink puts it in the title of his book Extreme Ownership. He talks about having THREE alarm clocks. I think they were his phone, an electronic alarm and an old wind up Westclox alarm clock. He uses TRIPLE redundancy just to take extreme ownership about when he wakes up! I LOVE that, no excuses, just extreme personal responsibility:-)

But I know something he may not know, or care about. Research is clear on this, if you need an alarm to wake up, you aren't getting enough sleep! If you aren't getting enough sleep, your cognitive capacity and immune system are both compromised. That's why I typically wake up around 5 PM Japan Standard Time WITHOUT any alarm, EVER, unless I have no choice because of a local scheduling commitment. My main asset for what I do is my brain, so I do anything I can to maximize its potential.

4 ) Do it DAILY

Although I give some exceptions in this article and elsewhere, " as far as possible without surrender " DO IT DAILY! I don't care what it is, following through on your priority daily is a form of extreme ownership, not days off, no excuses, not rest days or cheat days. There is exceptional power in doing anything daily. Habits are formed from two primary elements, repetition and frequency, with daily being the ideal MINIMUM frequency for maximizing habit formation while keeping it no excuses / extreme responsibility attainable.

5 ) ONE NEW Follow through at a time.

Roy Baumeister, a leading researcher on willpower and self esteem recommends that we only have ONE priority if it's new, yet to be established, challenging for us, or on top of an already filled plate. There's compelling evidence that " willpower " is finite. The more tasks you spread it over, the less likely you will follow through on ANY of them.

6 ) Daily productive time is likewise finite.

With a finite time daily, our productive capacity is also finite. I typically work 12 to 16 hours a day most days by choice because I'm that driven to build my business as fast as possible so I have the option to work far fewer in the future. Even though most of that time is productive and focused, there's only so much work I can do. Prioritizing the one task you most want to follow through on gives you the very best chance of accomplishing it. Putting it first removes any possibility or excuse of not getting to it. It's your CHOICE as is the responsibility to follow through. If it takes more than a day, you can be proud that you chose to get started, worked hard, and you already know what tomorrow's carry-over priority will be;-)

The more daily tasks you consistently do, the more they will become habits and the less of your willpower reserve you'll have to draw upon, to do it. That's why, with exception to high intensity exercise, I recommend you follow through on ALL tasks EFD ( Every F'ing Day ). That goes double for any new tasks you want to turn into habits.

Most of my methods around forming positive habits came from my own decades of trial and error. By doing something EVERY day to eliminate the possibility it's your rest day, cheat day... which too often becomes a tipping point the next day when you still don't feel like doing it. Forming habits around what you like to do are always easy, and forming habits around what's challenging is rarely fun, nor easy, but ALWAYS possible.

This isn't to say you shouldn't ever take days off, but you can designate daily tasks EVERY weekday, and take weekends off. Sometimes you'll fall off the wagon as I've done 100's of times, but that matters FAR less than what you do next. Take FULL responsibility for your choice, forgive yourself instantly, and get back on the wagon. The EFD principle evolved out of the many times I fell off, and from that, I gradually learned that EFD is the best solution by far.

My techniques come mostly from my own experience and reflection but two excellent books on forming habits, change and staying motivated are Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit and the Chip and Dan Heath's Switch. I recommend both highly.

Even if following through consistently is an established habit for you, in my experience, it's NEVER effortless and ALWAYS takes some willpower to follow through.

After somewhere around 38 ish years of mostly consistent fitness, it's STILL always easier to be lazy and skip it than to do the work. In the words of ?Dr. Robert H. Schuller " the temptation to be lazy never leaves us ". It's ultimately a choice we make and act on, or create an excuse for and don't.

Finally, small,? meaningful, and personally amusing gestures when you finish part, or all of a task are fun, playful and healthy ways to celebrate, reinforce and reward yourself for following through. I prefer " the happy dance " most times, and briefly do the " pride / victory " power pose at the end of my workouts. I'm sure the ultra conservative Japanese seniors who see me doing it at the park, in public think I'm nuts;-)

Follow through is a CHOICE you either act upon, or you don't, own your choice.

P.S. What are Your Best Strategies for Following Through?

P.P.S. How to be an " Idea Vampire ": Sucking Ideas Out of Your Environment to Create Value for Others