Keeping the most valuable promise. Your own.

Hey! Thanks for stopping by.

In this very first newsletter I want to share one of my absolutely best methods that I use daily. But before diving in to the details, I want to give some background.

A few years back, I had just recovered from a flu, and frankly, I was pissed. Pissed that I just had reached what felt like the peak of my training, got sick, and now had zero ambition to continue. I'm a skinny guy, and most that I meet would probably not even guess that I'm working out consistently, but to me it felt like all the hours, all the self-motivation that I had trying to keep up with was about to go to waste.. Again.

I recognized the feeling I was having. The feeling of a promise to myself that was about to be broken.

I thought to myself "Why is it so hard to keep my own promises, when I obviously can do it for others: my kids, my partner, my friends and last but not least my work and employer".

At the time I was working as a sales manager in e-commerce, back then we always launched out weekly campaigns on Sundays at 6 PM. Every Sunday, 6 PM. EVERY Sunday, without exception 6PM sharp, and every time I sat down at my work computer at 5:30 and made sure everything was setup correctly and at 6PM launched as expected.

It didn't matter if I was sick, out of town, on a dinner party, visiting a friend or family, I just brought my laptop and went on with it, and for years I never even once had a thought like "I don't have the energy to do it today, I'll do it tomorrow" or "I don't feel good today so I launch the campaign once I feel better". Never.

Thinking back on it, it was probably fear of letting someone down, my boss, my team or even the customers that made me continue no matter what.

So with this fact, I knew I had it in me, but somehow when it came to my personal promises, I had a hard time staying consistent even with my most precious goals.

Then I had an idea. What if, I could fool myself into thinking that my goal was not personal, they were WORK. If I don't do it, someone will be disappointed, maybe even yell at me, maybe even fire me for not doing my job good enough.

With a new mindset and method, in the following year, I took action:

• Every time I took a shower, I ended it with a freezing cold one. Because I promised "work" I would do it.
• I worked out every other day consistently without stopping.Because I promised "work" I would do it.
• I stopped biting my nails which I had been doing ever since I was like 5 years old.Because I promised "work" I would do it.
• I drank a terrible-tasting "Gainer" every day to increase weight and muscle. Simply because, I told myself that I HAD NO CHOICE.

For some reason, it worked! Making my own goals equivalent to my 6PM every-Sunday-campaign-start-must-do-task worked better than anything I've tried before. As you can see, all of my goals were "no-brainers" that didn't cause an unmanageable stress for me. If it was career goals or similar I would have given myself more time to reach the goal with steps throughout the journey.

Since then, I've shared this "method of mine" with many friends and acquaintances and have observed remarkable results from those who tried it.

Everyone will have their own connection to a task that they would never skip.

What is your "Campaign Start"?

If you want to try this and succeed, it's extremely important that you find your own task that you would NEVER skip and then fooling yourself that these are equally important.

Thanks for reading all the way down here.

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I will share more ideas around personal growth, leadership, of course e-commerce and also my new obsession with increasing efficiency using generative AI.

Have a great day!

Best regards,

Jakob