You have limited time in your day, and limited juice to spend on your actions.

Right now, you’re using either 100% of your available time or so close to it that it might as well be. Unless you spend any amount of time in a dark room, awake but doing literally nothing but staring into the abyss, then you’re doing something with all your time.

Some of those things are undoubtedly not as helpful to you as they could be. We all (and please let me stress that I’m absolutely included in this) have habits that, even if they’re not actively harmful, are soaking up resources that could be much better spent on other things. Since you’re using 100% of your time now, you can’t add productive activities without removing something.

Those things can go hand in hand. In fact, I think that’s a great way to do it – it’s easier to replace smoking with something else than to just quit smoking.

Here’s a thought exercise for you: make a list of all the things you’d like to stop doing. They can be great or small, and the list can be long or short. Doesn’t matter. Do you want to stop drinking? Maybe stop spending so much time on Facebook? How about quit screaming at other drivers on the highway? Put it all down on a list.

Then, in the next column, jot down roughly how much time you spend on each of those activities, both in duration and frequency. “A few hours, twice a week” or “15 seconds, about 3 times per drive,” etc.

And then finally, in another column, for each one of these items, write a positive activity you could do instead that takes about the same amount of time.

• Things To Stop – Time It Takes – Things To Do Instead
• Hit The Bar – 2 hours, three times a week – Hit The Gym
• Yell At Drivers – 15 seconds, 3 times per drive – Practice Gratitude
• Browse Facebook – 30 minutes, 4 times a day – Write A Book

Like that. Once you have that list, don’t try to do everything at once. You’ll go crazy, and probably fail. Instead, just pick one. Don’t worry about which one you do first – just pick literally anything and get started.

Now you have a framework. You have something you want to do, and no excuses about “not having enough time,” since you’re trying to eliminate a bad behavior with an equal time commitment. You’re simultaneously working towards your goals and eliminating the things standing in your way.

It’s hard to do positive stuff because you never have the time, and it’s hard to stop doing negative stuff because you’ve built habitual pathways. Use each of those problems to solve the other!

In 1974, Muhammad Ali fought George Foreman for the title in the Rumble in the Jungle. Foreman was favored to win; he was younger and an absolute powerhouse of a puncher. Ali was fast and light; he could out-maneuver opponents and run circles around them.

But Ali was also brilliant. He taunted Foreman before the match, saying in press releases that he was so fast Foreman would never touch him, things like that. Foreman was doing all of his pre-fight training in footwork – he was learning to cut off the ring, keep Ali from dancing. Meanwhile, Ali was doing nothing but endurance training: he was having his trainers deliver body shots to him endlessly to toughen him and teach him how to absorb the impact of the blows.

When the match happened, Ali didn’t dance at all. He huddled against the ropes and let Foreman throw hundreds of punches. This “rope-a-dope” technique worked like a charm; the stance against the ropes meant much of the power of Foreman’s punches was wasted while Foreman was exhausting himself throwing them. Ali’s entire strategy was to waste Foreman’s energy, and it worked. When Foreman could barely stand, Ali was full of vigor, and launched an offense that won the match.

There was an essential element to Ali’s strategy, and that was understanding (and in this case, even influencing) Foreman’s strategy.

If you want to solve a problem, you have to understand that you’re not the only one with a strategy, or a plan. Consider the case of Harry, the single guy. He wants to meet eligible single ladies, but he doesn’t know where to go. So he hops on Google and searches for “how to find a girlfriend” or something like that. It suggests places to go, websites to visit, whatever. Do you see the problem, though?

Every guy is doing that. The competition is high, and in fact it might be such that it actually chases the best of the eligible single girls away. Here’s what he should do: He should search for “how to find a great boyfriend” and see what that advice is.

That advice is going to shape the search strategy and even the evaluation methods of the women Harry is trying to date. He should absolutely know what that advice is. If the advice for “how to find a girlfriend” is to go to the singles bar, and the advice for “how to find a great boyfriend” is to go to the library, Harry should definitely go to the library and not the singles bar.

(And yes, now we get into this recursion problem where if everyone took that advice, now everyone has just switched positions and we’re back where we started. But that’s not what’s happening. I always hate the objection of “well, what if everyone did that?” If everyone did it, then the strategy to beat it would be to not do it – because the core strategy is essentially “understand what the crowd is doing, and when to deviate.”)

I’ve given this advice for people trying to break into new industries with little to no experience. “How do I get a job as an analyst,” is an okay search, but you’ll probably get much better information if you search for “how do I hire a fantastic analyst?” That search will tell you what hiring managers are looking for, and you can adapt your efforts accordingly.

If you really want to solve a problem, whether it’s adversarial (like a heavyweight boxing match), or the kind of problem where both parties want the same thing but suffer from information asymmetry (like dating or finding a new job), the best strategy is to understand what problem the other person is trying to solve and their strategy for doing so, and to adapt your strategy to match. Stay one step ahead.

So last night I introduced my oldest daughter to one of the greats of my childhood, The Neverending Story. I hadn’t seen it in a while, and was worried that it was way better in the ol’ Nostalgia Vault than it would be in reality. It wouldn’t be the first time that I tried to show The Beansprout a movie from when I was her age and she didn’t care for it (she wasn’t a fan of Aladdin! Can you believe it?), so I was also worried about that.

Both fears, it turned out, were totally unfounded.

The movie holds up. It was absolutely still incredible, a perfectly magical piece of film-making. And The Beansprout was utterly captivated! She hid her eyes during scary parts (peeking just enough to not miss the action, of course), begged me to end the suspense of dramatic scenes by telling her that Atreyu would be okay, and gasping at realizations as they happened.

It was a fantastic experience, watching the movie together. I’m so glad she shares my love of movies, and I look forward to sharing so many more of these moments with her. My father always showed me his favorite movies when I was growing up, and I’m sure that played a huge role in my love of cinema. I remember one of my happiest moments as a young man was the first time I showed my dad a movie I loved that he’d never seen before, and he really liked it as well. It’s a great piece of bonding.

The Neverending Story is a great movie to draw these lessons from, since the whole point of the movie is how important stories and imagination are to us. I hope my kids hold on to that for as long as they possibly can.

I’m driven towards my goals. I try to create valuable content every day, even if it’s just sharing my own struggles or lessons so you can come along. I commit to putting in effort every single day.

Some days that means I write a long post filled with (what I hope is) good information or valuable insights. I’m grateful for those days, because I like thinking I’ve contributed to making the world suck a little less.

Some days I’m sick. Some days I’m distracted. Some days I’m busy. I write anyway.

Some days your oldest daughter tells you that she’s never seen The Neverending Story before, and would love to watch it with you, Dad, if you have the time tonight.

Good night, everyone. I have something more important to do tonight.

I’m on day 5 of no caffeine. It happened accidentally – I was sick enough for a few days that the idea of any was really unappealing, so the silver lining of that is that I got through those difficult first few days of the detox.

From a chemicals-in-my-body perspective, I’m pretty healthy. I don’t drink, smoke, do any drugs, and I even keep processed sugar to a minimum. I aim to eat very healthy, though I’m certainly not perfect in that regard. But my diet is pretty high in veggies and protein and low in carbs, I drink a gallon of water a day, and so on.

Except for caffeine. Energy drinks in particular (though yes, always sugar-free, for all the good that does). I drink… a lot. Let’s just say I don’t want to say how much I drink on average for fear that someone’s going to call 911.

And I have no illusions that it’s not an addiction. The primary effect isn’t on my energy levels, it’s on my mood. I drink them when I’m not even tired. I drink them the way alcoholics hit the bottle, to be honest. If I had a rough day – a can of some sort of wild, hot garbage will put me right.

I don’t like it.

So, since fate has given me the opportunity to fight off this monkey, I’m taking it. I’m on day 5 of the detox. So far the effects have been… well, none, if I’m honest. I haven’t been sleeping any better, my general levels of stress and anxiety are unchanged, and my resting heart rate is still a cool 100.

But there are “positive non-changes,” too. I’m not any more tired than I was, which kind of reinforces the idea that I wasn’t drinking them for the energy anyway. I’d probably built up such a tolerance to the caffeine levels that it wasn’t doing a thing anymore. And my mood hasn’t decreased, on average.

I suppose there has been one major positive change, which is: do you have any idea how expensive these freakin’ things are?! So that’s a lot of money I’m not spending, which is always a good thing.

I know I’m in danger of falling off this wagon, which is why I’m writing this. The more I reinforce the positives to myself, the more they’ll hold. That’s another lesson to draw – public accountability helps.

Baby steps to a better life.

Can you find something good in every scenario?

Maybe you can and maybe you can’t, but I think the exercise is worthwhile no matter what. When it’s big picture stuff, it’s often easier – big changes are naturally bundles of many smaller discrete experiences, and some of those will be positive if you look. So that’s actually easy – it’s easier to find the one good thing about getting fired (more time to spend with your kids!), even if the emotional impact is harder to deal with at first.

But how about banging your toe against the coffee table? Where’s the good in that, huh?

Well, sometimes you have to go the opposite direction – instead of finding the one tiny good thing in a big bundle of bad ones, in this case you’re looking at one tiny bad thing. So find the big bundle of good it belongs in! Sure, you banged your toe – that sucks, and you genuinely have my sympathy if that just happened to you (maybe you shouldn’t walk while reading blogs, silly). But hey – you have a coffee table! And at least one foot! And probably a house where you keep that coffee table, or at least an apartment or something. And so on.

So there are two categories of “bad events” – ones that are big enough that surely they contain some good, and ones that are small enough that they must be outweighed by the good that surrounds them.

The reason it’s worthwhile to look at things that way isn’t because it has an immediate impact. Your toe is going to hurt the same regardless of whether you say, “Ow! I’m sure glad I have a coffee table!” The reason is because of the pervasive, long-term impact of positive creativity.

Sometimes you’ll have to work hard to think of One Good Thing ™. Some days can be really difficult to get through. Often, however, those days are difficult to get through because the negative things have grabbed your attention and don’t want to let go. Finding the One Good Thing isn’t about dramatic immediate change; it’s about shaking off the grip of those bad things, giving your emotions something else to focus on, so that you can push through to the next day. And that next day is better. And the next one is better still.

I’ve been sick the past couple of days. Being sick is no fun for anyone, but I’ll admit being physically sick often puts me in a bad place mentally as well. It hurts my ability to achieve my daily goals, which in turn makes me feel like a slug, and I’m a little hard on myself for it.

But there’s always something good. A lesson I can learn, like this one, and maybe share with others. A better day after the bad one.

It’s amazing how much you can get done in a really short period of time when you break it into smaller pieces.

A big lesson I’ve learned relatively recently is that putting your goals into very small, very regular, and very intense time blocks works really well.

It’s natural to want to put our goals down in terms of milestones or accomplishments. “Clean the basement on Saturday.” Or maybe “Write a chapter this week.” Or even “lose 20 pounds by May.” We focus on the goal; the thing we want to be different in the world.

And then we never get there. The goals stay firmly wishes. We’re bad at estimating how long they’ll take – so we think we can clean the basement on Saturday, but even with the best of intentions we’re only a third of the way done by midnight and we’re not only exhausted, we feel guilty and down on ourselves. You try to write a chapter by the end of the week, but something keeps coming up and you never have enough time to sit down and write a whole chapter. And it turns out “until May” isn’t enough time to lose 20 pounds, so you’ve only lost half that by then and you feel horrible.

It doesn’t have to be like that!

Your goals need to exist in your daily life. They also need to not consume your daily life.

The way to balance those two needs is to focus on time, not on milestones. Don’t say you’ll clean the basement on Saturday. Say that every Saturday, you’ll clean the basement for 2 hours until it’s done. Don’t write a chapter a week; say that you’ll write for 30 minutes every day, regardless of how much or how little you write during that time. And don’t worry about losing any specific amount of weight by any specific time; set a daily diet plan and say that you’ll exercise for 15 minutes, twice daily.

When you commit to those, you can do them with tremendous intensity. You can block out other distractions for the amount of time needed, and be satisfied with yourself when their time is over for the day. You can reclaim your life, guilt-free, as you do whatever else you want. You’ll know you’ve moved towards you goals.

Instead of being mad at yourself for only partially accomplishing a goal, you’ll be proud of yourself every single day for moving closer. You’ll build habits and satisfaction.

These chunks can be well and truly bite sized. Even ten minutes of writing is more than zero. Even a dollar saved is more than no dollars. There is no increment towards your goal that is shameful, pointless, or “not worth it.”

No matter what your goal is, there is a bite you could take out of it today. If you’re not willing to, then it’s not really your goal – and that’s all there is to it.

Some days you get the bear, and some days the bear gets you.

You don’t necessarily fall behind just because you have a bad day. If you’re relentless about your goals normally, you’ve gained ground every day. A day where you gain less ground isn’t the same as a day where you move backwards.

The bear got me today. I’ll get him tomorrow. And my scorecard is still way better than his.

My head hurts.

The nature of having young kids is that they do a phenomenal job of collecting germs. Germs to which they seem shockingly resilient, but which none the less lay waste to this poor old man’s immune system.

It’s not that bad. I’m more tired than I otherwise would be, and I have the standard suite of symptoms that accompany a head cold. But miracles of modern science abound, and I have plenty of medicines and chemicals to treat these symptoms and a safe environment in which to recover.

It did give me reason to reflect, as I recovered comfortably and safely, on how important it is to have a framework of goals, actions and principles that you establish in advance of these more difficult moments.

This morning I went to my eldest daughter’s karate belt test, despite the fact that in the moment I had very little desire to do so. But I have a firmly-held principle, written in the high times, that says “Attend as many of your children’s important milestones as you possibly can; only let actual inability prevent you from doing so.” Being tired and sick isn’t actual inability, so I went. The principle carried me when my immediate motivation wasn’t there.

Likewise, today would be a lousy day to start a blog or writing a book or a workout routine or a reading pattern or any of my other daily goals. If I didn’t already have those things in place, I wouldn’t find the motivation to start them today.

That’s why you can’t rely on motivation in the moment. No one is motivated every single day; some days just suck. And those are the days where you need that framework the most, because those are the days that have a tendency to turn into weeks, months, or the rest of your life if you let them.

That’s a headache far worse than this one.