The Stronger Revolution

The Stronger Revolution is all about optimizing your life and achieving your goals through the aggregation of marginal gains.  The daily progress needed to achieve your goals requires that you are firing on all cylinders as much as possible.  On Episode #13 of The Stronger Revolution, I talk about the importance of morning and evening routines, and how to start your own.  These routines act as bookends to our day to guarantee we are productive.

I would argue that most people don’t have a morning or evening routine.  Therefore, their days start and end with no organization, and are probably quite hectic.  I imagine someone coming home from work, shoving in a mindless dinner, letting the TV wash over them, and then maybe doing some work before finally turning the light out at some late 11pm hour.  They wake up the next morning, hopefully grab something to eat as they run out the door, get to work on just in time, and spend the rest of the day feeling like they are playing catch up.  For those who want to take control of their life and live through purpose, this is no way to live.

Instead, we use morning and evening routines.  Both routines are made up on regular consistent actions carried out on a daily basis with a purpose.  Because they are routines, we don’t have to think about them every morning and every night.  That saves brain space and power.  Thus, we can use routines to better set up for our perfect day without using a lot of energy.  In our already hectic lives, these types of gains are golden.  We are mindful when we structure our routines, but free up that brain space because by definition the routine becomes regular and habitual.

For a morning routine, you want to start with a consistent wakeup time.  You want to wake up around the same time every day.  You might try to sleep in a little on the weekends, but don’t let it be drastically different.  For example, maybe you wake up at 6am on the weekdays and 7am on the weekends.  Once you are awake, your goal is to take control and set an intention for your day.  Some people like to mediate, journal, or read.  Maybe you get in a workout.  My morning routine always includes a healthy breakfast, a daily devotional journal, and designing my to-do list and daily schedule through a daily planner.  If you can, avoid any screens for 30-60 minutes after waking up.  Seeing various alerts on our electronic devices makes up reactive.  We want to start the day being proactive, i.e. in control.  By the time we get to work, we are ready and have control over whatever comes our way.

For an evening routine, the goal is to wind down, destress, and quiet our mind to prepare for a restful night of sleeping.  To start the destress process, shut work off at a consistent time every night, i.e. I don’t check any emails after 7pm, or something similar.  Make or buy a healthy dinner and sit down to enjoy it.  If you like a particular television show, use it for the right reason, maybe to relax your mind or laugh a little.  Add a reflection journal through with you can reflect on your day and possible changes for the future.  Maybe take a quiet walk or read a book.  You want to start creating with your mind and consumer a little bit.  And finally, set a consistent bed time.

For more information on morning and evening routines, check out my Podcast:

The post Morning and Evening Routines appeared first on Pittsburgh Crossfit | Industrial Athletics.

Anyone who listens to our Podcast, the Stronger Revolution, knows that structure is freedom.  Part of an effective structure is good organization.  When we have a purpose and goals associated with that purpose, we will have to do things on a daily basis to reach those goals.  A structured life will keep up on track to dedicate time to those daily tasks.  However, we need a system to make sure we are on top of those tasks.

Finding examples of daily organizational systems is easy.  Just go to Google and start typing.  There are millions out there.  The difficult part is sifting your way through the noise to find the system that works best for you.  If you are easily adaptable, this may not be too hard.  If you are a particular person, finding the perfect system can be much harder, if not impossible.  To help you dig through some of that noise, here are some of the systems I’ve used and adapted to my own:

For more information on organized productivity systems and how to adapt and create your own.  Check out our Podcast episode on this topic.  You can listen on iTunes or Spotify by searching “The Stronger Revolution.”  Or, listen here.

The post Staying Organized appeared first on Pittsburgh Crossfit | Industrial Athletics.

In the Stronger Revolution Episode #11, I talk about how bringing structure to your life brings freedom to your life.  The two concepts may seem contradictory, but it is only through structure that we can organize our day to commit to our purpose.  Start small.  Set a time each day to dedicate to your goals.  Then, organize the rest of your around those daily tasks, those daily 1% gains.  For a more detailed explanation about why this is so important and how to start organizing your life, give this episode a listen.

The post Structure is Freedom appeared first on Pittsburgh Crossfit | Industrial Athletics.

On this episode of The Stronger Revolution, I talk about the concept of consistency.  If you are going to start a new habit, or make a change to your life, you must be consistent in your actions.  Without consistency, we enter a cycle of starting something new and tapering off, starting something new and tapering off again.  We must be consistent is all aspects of our life if we are going to improve by 1% every day.  In this episode, you will learn the two characteristics that any consistent practice must contain.

The post Consistency is Key appeared first on Pittsburgh Crossfit | Industrial Athletics.

In Episode 9 of The Stronger Revolution, I talk about how to get over Paralysis by Analysis, that terrible state of over thinking.  We don’t have to be perfect to get started.  We don’t have to have everything right.  The magic of any system is the ability to change.  Fear can prevent us from starting.  Fear of getting it wrong can hold us back.  But, get over that fear and start taking actions to optimize your life.

The post Just Get Started appeared first on Pittsburgh Crossfit | Industrial Athletics.

In this episode of The Stronger Revolution, I talk about the importance of goals.  There are some common issues that limit our abilities to achieve our goals.  We often start with a lot of motivation, but fail to follow through.  I share strategies for proper goal setting that lead to achievement.  The Aggregation of Marginal Gains is found in the steps we take to achieve our goals.  We reverse engineer our goals into measurable and manageable steps.  Successfully completing those steps is how we improve by 1%.  Try these strategies with your goals and see if you have more success.

The post Goal Setting Strategies appeared first on Pittsburgh Crossfit | Industrial Athletics.

In The Stronger Revolution Episode #7 we talk further about the decision making process.  In Episode #6, we broke our decisions down to 2 options.  In this episode, we cover 5 strategies for assessing these options to help us make better decisions for ourselves.  We can improve our lives by 1% every day by making better decisions that help us live our purpose.  These strategies help us look inward when making decision and eliminate outside influence that may cloud our judgment.

The post Decision Making Part 2 appeared first on Pittsburgh Crossfit | Industrial Athletics.

This is the first of a two part episode on Decision Making.  I cover applying the Aggregation of Marginal Gains to your life again and answer some questions about measuring your improvement.  Then, I dive into decision making as we start to boil the process down to two options.  I start the process of eliminating the fogginess that comes with allowing outside influence to impact our decisions.  Finally, I leave you with some foresight into Episode 2 on decision making coming in the near future.

The post Decision Making Part 1 appeared first on Pittsburgh Crossfit | Industrial Athletics.

On this episode of the Stronger Revolution, I finish the groundwork for setting a system in your life so you can maximize the Aggregation of Marginal Gains.  We’ve already talked about Purpose.  Then we talked about the 3 most important things in our life.  In this episode, we cover core values.  Our core values are going to tell us How we will do something.  They are our guiding principles.  Once we have core values established, we can start to look at our lives and how to approach decision and tasks.  We will have a new level of clarity when we are faced with decisions.   We will also know how to act in various situations and have a new understanding of what is important to us and why.

I hope you love the show.

The post Core Values appeared first on Pittsburgh Crossfit | Industrial Athletics.

In Episode #4 of The Stronger Revolution, we take one step closer to setting up our lives for success.   We spent time after last episode looking at our purpose as we tried to focus our life on “Why we are Here.”  Now, we have to look to see if what we are doing in our lives aligns with our discovered purpose.

What are the 3 most important things in your life?  What 3 things do you spend the most time on during the day?  Do these two lists align?

The post The 3 Pillars of Your Life appeared first on Pittsburgh Crossfit | Industrial Athletics.