Here's a smart David Goggins habit to start your productive day off right

Jul 11, 2023

I was really disappointed in myself a few weekends back.

Although I did a bit of work, I still fell way short of my side business goals.

I’d been so excited to have a bit of extra free time to tackle my goals.

But instead of hitting the ground running, I dilly-dallied and got nowhere near the amount of work done that I intended.

Now, I can come up with a million excuses about why my side projects didn’t get the attention they deserved that Saturday and Sunday, but it did motivate me to try something new.

I decided to try a lowkey genius David Goggins morning strategy I discovered to ensure focus, productivity, and performance.

It’s such a simple idea, but one that can serve as jet fuel for reaching your goals (assuming you aren’t an oversensitive baby).

David Goggins running an ultramarathon. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Brandon Rogers, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Be your own boss

OK, here it is.

A lot of people want to be their own boss. They want to make a ton of money and answer only to themselves.

The problem with that is: you almost certainly suck at being your own boss!

You’re soft!

You let yourself slack off, you give yourself days off because you’re a little tired, you allow yourself to produce substandard work and then dismiss it with weak excuses.

But what if your boss was a hard-a**? What if your boss (you) demanded more from … yourself?

David Goggins is that kind of boss.

If you’re not familiar with him, Goggins is a straight-talking former Navy SEAL and ultramarathoner who wrote one of my all-time favorite self-improvement books, Can’t Hurt Me (affiliate link).

Goggins isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

He despises laziness and excuses and sometimes you feel like you’re in SEAL training when he’s trying to motivate you with his abrasive, aggressive, borderline insulting straight talk and commands.

But is it possible that’s exactly what you need?

I discovered Goggins when I was at the peak of feeling sorry for myself during one of the many COVID lockdowns.

I was drinking too much every day, I hated my job, I hated myself, and yet I wasn’t pushing myself to make any changes.

Change is hard, and people love to avoid things that are hard.

Although I’ve gotten a lot better at this — I quit drinking, I’m in the best shape of my life, and my side businesses are already producing around $40 per day just five months after getting started — I do have more days than I’d like to admit where I disappoint myself.

An illustration of the sun coming up over a mountain (Credit: James Julian/Dall-E 2)

It’s time for a meeting

Here’s where the Goggins morning strategy comes into play.

Over that weekend, I was catching up on some old podcast episodes that I’d saved. I’m new to Spotify, so I have a very long list to get through.

Because I was unhappy with my output on Saturday and Sunday mornings, I decided to fire up the Goggins episode of the Joe Rogan podcast.

Goggins said the most insightful thing about how most of us go to morning meetings at work and how he decided to start having a morning meeting with himself.

“Every morning I woke up like ‘alright motherf***er … I called it my morning meeting.

“We all have these f***in’ meetings all f***in’ day long.

“We go to work, we’re working for somebody else.

“They want a meeting because they want to be successful, so we all sit our asses down and try to make them better, try to make them more money, try to make them more powerful.

“We don’t do that for ourselves.

“Every morning, I wake up — I used to, I had to get back into it again — but (in) that morning meeting I’d wake up like, “OK Goggins, what did you do f***ed up yesterday? Where were you at?

“And I just go through that, analyzing. I went through a period of time where I started having those conversations.

“I can’t want it more than you. So many people want it the easy way.

“They build this narrative, ‘it’s OK,’ when the narrative should be, “you need to work harder. You need to discipline your mind better.”

The first morning meeting didn’t go well for me.

My performance over the weekend did not meet my expectations.

But you know what?

Sitting down, acknowledging that, and then releasing it with a pledge to do better motivated me to be better.

That was what motivated me to write the very article you’re reading right now.

At the end of the day, I’m the only boss I really want to impress.

Now go get ‘em!

(Final side note: if you’re looking for some extra motivation, I cannot recommend Goggins’ audiobook version of Can’t Hurt Me (affiliate link) highly enough. Nothing will shake you out of your lethargy like having a SEAL and ultramarathoner tell you inspiring stories and bark at you to get off your a**. If you’re new to Audible, you can listen to it for free by using my affiliate link to sign up for a risk-free trial).

This post is republished from my Medium publication Famously Healthy.

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