“Two words that changed my life – if you have to make a big decision in the marathon, whether or not you want to keep going or stop – and those words are ‘Remember tomorrow, remember tomorrow.’ You want to drop out of the race at mile 18 ’cause you’re tired? Cool. Remember how you are going to feel tomorrow when someone asks you how you did.”
-Jesse Itzler

Normally I would find two more quotes before writing and posting this, but, I don’t think that’s necessary. Also, it’s kind of late, so it might be a choice between posting this tonight or not.

Jesse Itzler is someone I had never heard of before catching him on the Rubin Report the other day. However, he’s done quite a lot of cool and interesting things (I’ll let you google it if you’re interested, or you could listen to the podcast… I think he recently did Rogan as well, though I didn’t listen to that one). I’m quite interested to check out his most recent book, Living With the Monks.

One of the things that he mentioned in the podcast was his mantra to “Remember tomorrow”. Any time you are going to make a split second decision, stop, and remind yourself to remember tomorrow. How will you feel about the decision then? Should I put off writing that story I’ve been ‘working on’ for a year now? Should I eat this pint of ice cream? Should I yell at this guy who did something I didn’t like? Should I get super drunk and go crazy? Remember tomorrow. How will you feel about your decision then?

It’s one of those simple things that of course you should know, but I know that I’ve not always been mindful of. But I think it’s helpful. Even before hearing the quote, the past few weeks I’ve been trying to keep in mind that I need to be making decisions based more on the long-term than the short-term. It’s more abstract thinking about it that way though, so I think this more concrete way of thinking about it may be helpful. The thought can also be extrapolated into more long-term. Remember next week, remember next month, remember next year… how will I feel then about the decisions that I made now?

I know a thing that I’ve been frustrating myself with for a long time now is  that I rarely sit down to write. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been doing the daily blogs for my diet. Sure, they’re generally super boring and forced, but it hopefully will create a habit that I will maintain of sitting down to dump out a blog, even if it is utter crap. In addition to not writing enough, I also don’t read enough. And so for that I gave myself a new rule yesterday, and we’ll see how it goes. The rule is this: Every day, sit down, open a book, and read at least one word. One word is easy. No matter how tired I am, I can do it. And blowing away the expectation is also easy… if I read a whole chapter I’ve far and away outdone the requirement. Hopefully it is about creating a habit. And honestly, if I have the book in my hand and I’m sitting down, I’m probably going to read more than just one word.

I don’t want to pile on too much at once, but in another week or two, I am going to make the same rule for myself in regard to writing, specifically in regard to working on book that I’ve been very sporadically working on. Sit down in front of my laptop, open the document, and write at least one word. If it doesn’t work, maybe I’ll increase the word amount, but I really think that just getting myself into the habit of setting myself up to do it will naturally lead to actually doing it.

Remember tomorrow, so that you can have no regrets when it arrives.