Daniel Clough

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Perfection is not the goal

I was off to an absolutely cracking start for my habits in May. You could say, a perfect start.

My goal was to maintain the habits that I’ve recently got to 80% consistency:

  • sleep 6.5 hours
  • drink two litres of water
  • drink a maximum of three cups of caffeine (before midday)
  • take my supplements

I also wanted to eat paleo and intermittently fast (as per my new stricter rules) at 50% consistency.

I was particularly impressed with my first six days of sleep. A perfect record and an average of 7:35 hours a night. But then days 7, 8, & 9 happened. They were still above 6.5 hours, but getting a bit close to the wire. I started to feel disappointed that I wasn’t able to keep up with the 7 and 8 hours numbers from the first six days.

And then, I came in with a 3:52 for day 10.

I was disappointed with myself. I could have easily avoided the 3:52. Instead, I went to bed late when I knew I would be getting up at 04.30 the next morning – and I ruined my perfect record.

But, wait. Let’s back up a minute.

I KNEW I would come in shockingly low on day 10. I even made the decision to stay up late consciously. I did it with knowledge I was easily on track enough to still achieve my sleep goal for the month (80%).

Let’s back up even further. Why on earth was I disappointed on days 7, 8 and 9? They were ABOVE the goal of 6.5 hours. I was literally disappointed with achieving my goal!

If I take an even more macro view of things – even with day 10 – I am at 90% consistency with sleep for the month. That’s nicely ABOVE my 80% goal. It’s a great month so far. Everything is well above my goal, with only paleo lagging a bit – and I have plenty of time to course correct on that.

So, why do I find myself disappointed and giving myself a hard time? Why do I find myself slipping into perfection being the goal?

One word. Expectations.

I’ve gone most of my adult life holding myself to high and unrealistic standards. I’ve managed to change my mentality around this in the last few years. But, it’s so incredibly easy to fall back into the trap of letting my expectations run out of control. Before you know it, I’m changing the goal posts and having a crappy internal dialogue with myself.

The silver lining is that nowadays I‘m able to catch this happening early. I can then pause and zoom out – see things for what they really are.

And this is what I see. I’ve made a breakthrough with my habits in the last few months and have found a system that works. I’m smashing May. I’m on an upward trend with momentum. I can be happy and proud of where I am in general. I literally find myself looking at my habit sheets and day, hardly believing it’s me doing it.

Perfection is not the goal. Nearly all of the benefits happen in the 80 – 90% consistency range. That’s where you can live a successful, healthy and balanced life.

Daily Habits: April 2022

Tracking my daily habits has been a game changer. And I don’t use that phrase lightly. In just three months, I’ve built a handful of habits up to 80% consistency.

In fact, my focus for April was to nudge those handful of habits to 80% consistency. Here’s how I did:

I’m really pleased for a few reasons. Even though I fell just short of 80% for sleep (I missed it by one day) – I’ve shown that last month’s improvement was not a fluke. I also had a curve ball in the form of a camping trip that pulled my numbers down. I was more on the ball over the weekends too.

As with March, I wasn’t counting ‘Be active’ because I’ve only been walking and doing rehab for my back injury. I’m starting to ease back into training now, so I’ll start counting that in May.

So, the big question – what’s my focus for May?

I’ve been trying to decide if I should give myself another month to let the handful of habits really settle at 80% before tackling something new. That would probably be the sensible thing to do. But, I’m also itching to tackle my nutrition. After some thought, that’s what I’m going to do. It’s long overdue.

I would usually focus on only one thing at a time. However, there are two things that are very closely linked, which it makes sense to tackle together.

The first is eating paleo. This is going to be challenging for me. I have a bad relationship with food and tend to over-indulge in foods that are bad for me. I don’t know why I do it. I’ve tried to explore this with therapy and reading – but I haven’t been able to figure it out yet. I’m hoping that by making nutrition a focus within the framework of my daily tracking, I can make a breakthrough.

The second is intermittent fasting (8 hours eating, 16 hours fasting). But, wait – I’ve been telling you my intermittent fasting is already at over 80%? It is! Well, kinda. I drink cups of tea (and quite a few) in my 16 hours fasting window – so technically it’s not fasting because I consume milk.

The reason these are linked is because milk isn’t paleo (it’s dairy). So if I’m going to focus on eating paleo more often, I should also take the opportunity to tighten up my intermittent fasting.

So, my goals for May are:

  • eat paleo – meat, fruit, vegetables and nuts (50% of the time).
  • Intermittently fast (8 hours eating and 16 hours fasting) under new stricter rules (50% of the time).

I’ll now only consume water or black coffee in the fasting window.

If I can achieve 50% consistency for eating paleo and strict fasting, that would be massive for me. I can then see a path to nudging both of those to 80% over the next few months.

Of course, I’ll continue to maintain my 80% levels for sleep, drinking two litres of water, a maximum of three cups of caffeine before midday and taking my supplements.

A big ambitious month ahead. I’m ready for it. 👊

P.S If you are interested in my progress for February and March, you can find them here – Feb, March.

The single best thing I’ve ever done to improve my habits

I started tracking my daily habits a couple of months ago. I wrote about how I did in February here.

It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done to improve my habits. It’s given me the dose of self awareness I needed to change my behaviours.

I made sleep a priority for March. I wanted to improve my sleep consistency (how many nights I slept for over 6.5 hours), whilst hopefully seeing everything else maintained.

Here’s how I did:

I’m super pleased. This is a nice baseline to improve upon.

The number of nights I slept over 6.5 hours jumped from 50% to 74%, which is a huge improvement. I also noticed my average sleep time was nicely up – from 6 hours, 23 minutes to 6 hours, 45 minutes (tracked by whoop)

The main change I made was to be more conscious of what time I went to bed and woke up. I know that sounds obvious, but I just didn’t think about it much previously. I would find myself going to bed about 23.00 and waking up at 05.00 – and then be surprised I only got 5 hours sleep.

I’m also pleased with my other scores improving. Remember, my goal was only to maintain them. Intermittent fasting, restricting caffeine to 3 cups before midday, drinking two litres of water and taking my supplements all increased. This is only the second month I’ve been tracking my daily habits, so the self awareness factor is continuing to help me be more consistent. It’s much easier to notice when I might be at risk of not achieving a habit on any given day – which then nudges me to take action to avoid it.

Eating paleo is obviously in a bad place. I was only focusing on sleep this month, so I didn’t expect it to increase. It needs a more well thought out plan of attack. Being active wasn’t tracked in March because I’m dealing with a lower back injury. I’m currently just walking and doing rehab (which I do daily, but I didn’t think it was useful to track it as being active).

That brings me to my focus for April. I’m very tempted to tackle eating paleo because I know that’s where the biggest bang for buck is (not only because it’s starting off low, but because an improvement here will improve my health the most). That said, it’s also a fairly complicated one because of my bad relationship with food.

I would also like to see the habits I have mostly dialled in get to at least 80%. Why 80%? No reason other than it feels about the right number to be consistent enough to get most of the benefits – whilst also giving me a bit of wiggle room to enjoy life and not stress about being perfect. Bringing sleep, intermittent fasting, caffeine, water and supplements up to 80% feels like a stretching – yet achievable ask for April. In a 30 day month, that allows me to have six misses.

In fact, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll aim to bring those up to 80% consistency in April. I know the two areas I need to focus on to do that. I need to be more focused on a daily basis (often I know the action I need to take to avoid a miss, but I let it happen anyway). I also need to be a bit more vigilant on the weekends, which is where I often drop the ball.

I think eating paleo will increase a bit, because I hate seeing it so low. But, it’s not the focus and I’m not attached to any type of result there. That’ll be for May.

Wish me luck!

No alcohol: 250 days

Giving up alcohol for 60 days felt like a massive milestone for me. But now it’s just the first step in my 250 day journey of being alcohol free.

At the 60 day mark I still had some desire for a glass of wine at weekends or at social events. Whilst I felt confident that I wouldn’t slip up and have a drink – there was always a risk. When people noticed I wasn’t drinking, I told them that I was taking a break from drinking.

Now, the desire has gone and I tell people I don’t drink. There’s no chance I’ll slip up.

Life remains much better without it. I’m more consistent with health habits. I have less anxiety and feel more upbeat. It’s easier to maintain an ideal weight.

I find myself at a crossroad. I’ve been careful to never commit to giving up alcohol forever. The real goal was to change my relationship with it – which I have. I have proved to myself I can take it or leave it and go long periods without it. I know for sure life is a lot better when I do that.

The question now is – can I integrate it back into my life on my terms? Do I even want to?

I think I do. My ideal scenario would be having a couple glasses of very nice wine 3 or 4 times a year – at special occasions. I want to be conscious about what those special occasions are. I would like to drink slowly and really appreciate it. And then after – effortlessly – not drink again for several months.

My only worry is that every rule I’ve ever tried to put in place for alcohol has failed. It’s a 100% failure rate. That’s not good. Will a couple of glasses turn into three or four? Will I feel the desire to drink again on weekends? Will I be able to give it up again if I do fall into that pattern?

OK, let’s get more positive. I’ve also never given up alcohol for 250 days and had the relationship with it that I do now. I have a whole new perspective. So, I think the chances of the above happening are unlikely. And if they do happen, I’m confident I can return to being sober forever.

I’m on the fence. So, for now I will continue on my path of not drinking. Perhaps the right occasion will present itself for an experiment. Or perhaps I will never feel like running the experiment.

Tracking daily habits

Last month I decided to track how consistent I was with my daily habits. The idea wasn’t to be perfect, but to bring better self awareness of how I was doing.

Here’s how I did in February:

It worked exactly as I wanted. It gave me more self awareness from both a micro and macro perspective.

From a micro perspective, I would sometimes realise I was at risk of not doing something as the day went on. For example, it might be mid afternoon before I realised that I hadn’t drank any water yet. If I left it for a few more hours, I would be into the evening and there was a good chance I wouldn’t get my two litres in. That would force me to course correct and drink a litre immediately to put me back on track. I can guarantee the big picture would look worse had I not had this daily dose of self awareness.

From a macro perspective, it’s super useful to look at a picture of a month like this. I can see what habits are almost effortless and which ones need a bit more focus. It’s also obvious where I have some harder thinking to do if I want to improve my consistency.

Here is what I noticed:

  • No alcohol is a given. I’m 231 days sober. It’s a default habit and there’s no risk of having a drink.
  • Being active 4-5 times a week and intermittent fasting is easy. An almost perfect record.
  • Drinking 2 litres of water, 3 cups of caffeine (before Midday) and taking my supplements is fairly easy. A few slip ups here or there, but comfortably in the 80/20 zone.
  • Eating paleo (ish), sleeping 6.5 hours, meditating for 60 mins and networking with two people a day need a lot of work. My record is anything from terrible to patchy at best.
  • Weekends are trickier for me. It’s super easy to get off track with even habits that are fairly easy to keep up in the week. That’s something to think about.

I should add that mediating for 60 mins and networking with two people per day are new habits I’m trying to establish. I’m still in the early stages of figuring out the best way to get these habits to stick. But, paleo (ish) and sleeping 6.5 hours are things that have been on my radar for a long time, and as you can see I’m struggling with them.

As I head into March, it would be super easy (and predictable) to set out to try and improve everything that needs work. But, I know that will quickly become overwhelming and lead to failure. Instead, I need to pick one thing to focus on.

That’s sleep. It’s the easiest one to improve (I have a good sense of what to change) and will make the biggest impact.  If I’m sitting here at the end of March looking at the same type of picture, but with improved sleep – that’ll be a hell of a win.

If you want to improve your habits, I’d highly recommend tracking them like this. Having something in front of you that’s visual, gives you a healthy dose of self awareness many times a day. And being able to look at the bigger picture helps give you a sense of where to focus your efforts for improvement.

See you at the beginning of April 😊

How to expand your point of view

I recently wrote about how to build a strong point of view. I used a few examples – one of which was investing.

Here’s what I said:

​​A good example of this, is my own investing strategy. I used to only invest in passive index funds. Over the last year or so I’ve been listening to people who are taking more risk. I’ve experimented a bit in this space and have decided I want to take on a bit more risk.

So, I’m transitioning to investing 80% in indexes and 20% in a handful of public companies with a long-term view. The foundations of my point of view are still there (I’m still mostly investing in indexes). But, how much risk I’m willing to take has changed and this ended up shifting my point of view and strategy for how I invest.

I ended up taking this a step further and re-allocating as:

  • Indexes – 70%
  • Specific public companies – 17%
  • Cryptocurrency – 13%

Five months in, I’ve decided to mostly revert back to how I was before.

Why? Two main reasons.. 

Firstly, the specific public companies basket has significantly under-performed the market in the last five months:

  • S&P 500: +12.34%
  • Specific public companies: +5.05%

Now, it’s only five months and I should allow a longer time to compare performance. However, one of the reasons I went for passive index funds in the first place was because the data tells us that over 85% of actively managed funds underperform the S&P 500. When I look at my specific public companies basket, it’s one or two poorly performing stocks that are pulling the entire performance down. This highlights the power of diversification (i.e owning an S&P 500 index fund). It also puts into perspective the challenge of trying to beat the market.

Secondly, the specific companies basket is distracting. Ideally I would rarely look at it, but I’m finding that very hard. Now that I have a goal to beat the market, I find myself comparing against it regularly. Also, I have a gut feeling that trying to beat the market is a flawed strategy (because of the first reason). I therefore find myself worrying about my decision to try and do that. Overall, I’ve managed to bring a whole new emotional factor into play, which you don’t get with passive index investing. 

The exception is cryptocurrency. I think about it differently to the specific public companies basket. I feel like there’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to get returns that far exceed the market. Therefore it feels much more speculative. It might very well lose half or even most of its value. That’s a risk I’ve come to terms with and it changes how I think about it, and how often I check it. 

So, I’m switching to:

  • Indexes – 87%
  • Cryptocurrency – 13%

This makes me feel much better.

Even though I’ve gone back and forth a bit, it was a useful exercise. It reminded me that even when you have a pretty solid point of view around something, you need to stay open minded and curious. You need to experiment and evolve. Sometimes that will refine your point of view, or perhaps even take you in a different direction. And other times, you might find yourself reverting back – which is still useful as a learning experience. Importantly, if you don’t take those chances, you just get stale.

Five things I’ve found to be super helpful in establishing new habits

Here are five things I’ve found to be super helpful in establishing new habits.

Make them visible

I have a few key habits that I like to do every day. Eat paleo, eat within an 8 hour window, consume roughly 2K calories, drink 3 litres of water, take my vitamins, and reach out to a couple of people.

I write them at the top of my daily planning page. This forces me to look at them frequently throughout the day – increasing my chances of sticking to them. It also encourages me to reflect on how I did, more than I would otherwise.

Don’t break the chain

I heard about the Seinfeld Strategy from James Clear. It’s surprisingly effective.

It’s as simple as having a wall calendar, and marking an X for every day you stick to your habit. It becomes very addictive to grow the chain, and not break it.

I use this for moderating how much alcohol I drink. I’m aiming for a once a week, with a two drink limit. And for the most part, it’s helping me stay on track.

Keep experimenting

I used to struggle to drink enough water. Then, one day I randomly decided to drink two 500ml bottles of water as the first thing I did after waking. It was a game changer. Not only did it put me at 33% of my daily goal within minutes – it also changed my behaviour. It was really easy to drink a 500ml bottle in one go. So, I just down a 500ml bottle of water each time I want a drink now. And I have the opposite problem – not going too far over 3 litres of water a day!

One at a time

It’s REALLY hard to try and establish multiple habits at the same time. Yet, it’s so easy to fall into this trap.

Be disciplined and pick one. Nail it properly, and then pick another. Trust me, there is plenty of time. If you successfully establish a handful of new habits per year, you’ll transform your life every year.

Start small

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve tried to establish really ambitious habits straight away. Inevitably, I do it for a few days (a few weeks at best), but then fall off the wagon.

Want to drink 3 litres of water a day? Start with a glass. Want to eat healthily every day? Start with just breakfast. Etc.

Then, once you’ve got these small new habits established, you can step it up from there.

The power of self examination – and how it leads to the best version of yourself

Naval Ravikant was back on the Tim Ferriss podcast last week. It was one of the best podcasts I’ve listened to – he totally knocked it out of the park.

The interview is packed with great insights for how to think about life. It’s a must listen.

Naval has a skill of being able to say something, which causes you to pause and go ‘huh?’. I’ve written about this before in Wait, our whole life is just a firefly blinking once in the night? (which I still read a couple of times a month).

I wanted to share part of the podcast where Naval talks about the power of self examination. This really resonated with me. And I’ve since had an insight about it (which I’ll also share below).

[Read more…] about The power of self examination – and how it leads to the best version of yourself

My new coaching program – Get Unstuck

I was helping someone last week who was struggling with their work life balance. They were frustrated and upset.

Work was overpowering everything else in their life. Ironically, it was an intentional (ish) choice for them to double down on their work. It helped distract them from some other things that were going on in their life.

We talked about their priorities at work – and where the boundaries should be between work and the rest of their life. We also talked about what things had to be prioritised either higher, or as high as work. Things like health, a few relationships, a specific issue in their life, and some time to switch off. We talked about strategies to make that happen.

I know exactly what it’s like for work to overpower everything else in your life. I struggled with this for a long time. I felt like a failure for not being able to get any ONE, single area of my life in good shape. I was unhappy and overwhelmed most of the time [Read more…] about My new coaching program – Get Unstuck

The bizarre, but very effective way I use social media (and a list of really cool people to follow)

The Social Dilemma documentary is doing the rounds at the moment. It’s about a bunch of tech executives from Silicon Valley, who highlight the consequences of our growing dependence on social media.

It’s eye opening for many, but nothing new to me. I’ve felt for a very long time that the benefits of using social media are vastly outweighed by the negatives. Over the last few years it’s made me drastically change how I use social media.

[Read more…] about The bizarre, but very effective way I use social media (and a list of really cool people to follow)