Day 23: Daily Practice

Today you will learn what a daily practice is, why it's important to purpose, and how to create a daily practice of pursuing purpose.

Summary

What is a Daily Practice?

The path to purpose is laid out before you in small daily tasks you accomplish every day that add up to your goals, and those goals adding up to your purpose.

So a life of purpose is achieved in the practice of taking small daily actions. You can call this a daily practice. It's a set of habits, actions, and behaviors that you exhibit day in and day out in pursuit of your purpose.

• We call it a practice because every day you're trying to improve by just 1%, you're practicing each one of these habits and actions and trying to get better, little bit by little.
• You are constantly monitoring what you did yesterday, what you will do today, and what you will do tomorrow.

Why is a Daily Practice important?

When we set lofty goals far in the future and end up just procrastinating and never actually getting started with it, putting the life you really want to be living on hold until "someday".

• But your dreams only become a reality with consistent action, no matter how small, that is taken every day.
• When you are doing work that's geared towards your purpose, you enjoy the work and will be fulfilled by it now, rather than waiting till you succeed someday.

Having a daily practice will help you:

• Get started now with the permission to suck in the beginning because we're going to take action on this every day, so we don't need to be perfect right in the beginning.
• Train your grit, especially to be at your best when you're at your worst, because these daily habits will continue to carry you through even the worst of days.

How to create a Daily Practice

First Element: Scheduling Time

At the core of any daily practice is scheduling time, marking down time blocks in a calendar that are for your daily practice of working towards your purpose.

• You need time for work towards your purpose, that's established and protected. It's the most effective way to safeguard the time you can devote to creative work, protecting those precious minutes from all of life's other demands.
• It's also a powerful tool for ensuring that you invest the necessary time in rest and recovery, sharpening your skillset and building your community.
• The more you schedule your work time instead of waiting for inspiration to strike the better.
• You're creating a sanctuary for your work to be done every day.
• When you begin scheduling your daily practice, start small with a routine that is sustainable

When you're working in the time blocks for your purpose, spend as much time as possible working on the items that are important but not urgent, things that you can continuously keep working on and getting better at.

• Use Stephen Covey's matrix to prioritize the demands on your time and tasks to be completed.

Second Element: Work Space

• A daily practice requires a workspace for you to actually perform that daily practice.  
• You're trying to make this environment as distraction free as possible and most conducive for you actually doing work.
• Having a positive headspace. Use things like mindfulness and meditation to clear out psychological clutter before working.
• Find a physical space for work that reduces the friction for you actually to get started working. So make sure it has all the supplies and everything that you're gonna need to do your work and it's a space that's distraction free to allow you to have deep, full focus and concentration on what you're producing.
• Try creating a ritual for getting into your workspace and daily practice.

Daily Practice Killers

• Poor or toxic diet
• Social Media
• Email
• Overworking
• Doing the wrong tasks

Daily Practice Boosters

• Learning your craft and skills necessary for your purpose
• Meditation
• Gratitude
• Movement and exercise
• Good nutrition
• Proper hydration
• Sleep

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Activity

First, using whatever calendar and time management system that works best for you, schedule time for your daily practice everyday.

Second, analyze habits and routines that could help you to get into your daily practice everyday. Remove habits that will distract you from engaging in your daily practice.

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Skill Lesson Mastered

Demonstrate mastery of the knowledge and skills presented in this lesson by applying it to the above activity. If, and only if, you have a full understanding and have mastered the knowledge and skills presented in this lesson, select the next lesson in the navigation.