Transcription
I used to wake up every day like I was already behind. The calendar was full, the routine was dialed in, and still I felt like I was losing. Sound familiar?
Today, I'm going to tell you about one of the most effective techniques for improving your life that I have ever come across. This technique helped me earn two master's degree, a medical degree, build a thriving social media career, wonderful relationships, get into the best shape of my life, and build the life that I love. I'm not telling you that as a flex. I'm just telling you that as someone who has done some things.
This technique is borderline the anti-goal setting technique. I know that sounds weird, but let me explain it with a quick but important backstory. I was doing everything right, but none of it felt right. The deeper I got into these high performance habits that you read about, the more disconnected that I became from the life that I actually wanted. The worst part about this is that I couldn't even see it. I couldn't see it because I convinced myself that discipline was the answer to everything.
I call this the trap of modern productivity. We live in a world where everyone is obsessed with optimization. Wake up at 5, journal, cold plunge, hit inbox zero, bulletproof your coffee. These are just a few, but I'm sure we're looking at the same Instagrams. Here's the truth that I feel like no one's telling you. You can be insanely productive and still feel completely lost. You could be checking every box and still hate the person that you're becoming. I know that because I've lived it. I built the perfect routine on paper and it nearly broke me. Because discipline without direction is just an endless path to nowhere. More effort, less clarity. More structure, less peace.
This isn't me saying that effort or structure are a bad thing, but they need to come from a place of alignment. I'll explain in a sec. One morning after a perfect routine, I sat in my car and I could not even start the engine. I wasn't sad. I was maybe a little bit anxious, but I was mainly just empty. That's when it hit me. I had built a routine that wasn't aligned with anything. It wasn't built around what mattered. It was built around what looked good. I had no direction, no internal guide to point me in the direction I wanted to be in. Just a long list of things that I thought I was supposed to do to make my life better.
Now, here's the part I want you to listen to the most. It was in this moment that I started the alignment process. That night, I sat on my bed, no music, no phone, just a notebook. I asked myself one question. What kind of person do I actually want to be? Not what society wants, not what the algorithm wants, what I want. I wrote down three things that I didn't like about myself, things that I knew were holding me back. And here's where we get into the anti-goal system. This was not superficial stuff. These were very real things. Maybe you're drinking too much. Maybe you're not good in conversations. Maybe you spend hours scrolling and you hate it. Some of these may sound smaller than others, but all of them can be equally as detrimental to your life.
Once you've written some things down, you pick three. And then you think about it a little bit longer and you narrow it down to one. The one that pisses you off the most. And yes, this might hurt. It's kind of supposed to. I don't want to gloss over the fact that this is hard. This is a level of self-reflection that most people never accomplish in life. Change starts with awareness and sometimes confronting that change may be necessary. You don't need another tool. You don't need another app.
So once I had my one thing, I made a decision. I'm going to focus on this every day for the next 3 months. I know, I know that is not a pretty timeline to talk about on social media. We all want like a 5day reset. But trust me, no multitasking, no stacking 10 new habits, just one weakness that I'm done tolerating. And every day I put energy into it. Sometimes it was 5 minutes, sometimes it was an hour. The important thing is that it was consistent. After 90 days, I looked back and realized I was not that guy anymore. I had leveled up in a real tangible way. Not just in productivity, but in my entire identity. That's when I understood alignment creates power. Not just efficiency, not just systems, real momentum.
And look, it doesn't have to be a perfect 3-month timeline. Maybe you just need a month, maybe a little bit less. Individualize it to yourself. Once you know what you're working toward, then you can build that routine. But here's the thing. Most people do this backwards. They build a complex routine first and hope that it turns them into the person they want to be. This might resonate for you. But if you don't know your direction, that routine becomes nothing but a burden.
My current routine is incredibly simple. Morning sunlight, a full glass of water, breath work or silence, a few minutes of meditation to ask, who do I want to be today? It takes less than 15 minutes, but it anchors me in my actual identity. Everything that I do after that comes from alignment, not from pressure. When you act from alignment, you stop secondguessing yourself. You stop getting pulled into fake urgency. You start trusting your own instincts. You're not perfect, but you're real solid. You stop needing approval. You stop chasing hacks. you move different.
That's the shift that most people never make. They keep optimizing but never aligning. And that is why their routines collapse every few months. So if you actually want to do this, here's what I recommend. One, reflection. You need to sit with yourself. Sit alone. No inputs, no distractions. Ask, "What am I doing that's pulling me out of integrity or alignment? Where do I feel weak, inconsistent, or ashamed?" These are hard questions, but it's where you need to look. Now, write it down. Get specific with this. Use real words, not be better. I want you to write, "Stop numbing myself for 3 hours with scrolling." Of the three that you list, pick the one that you know would unlock the most progress if you fixed it.
Now, design your 90-day transformation. What daily actions help you improve this? What's your fallback plan for tough days? What triggers make this worse? By the way, you can use this word for word. Like, literally write all of these things down. This is as simple as it gets. Now, I want you to track your input, not just your outcome. Don't track whether you're healed. Simple check boxes. Did I work on this today? And yes, I also want you to reflect on your improvement. That's incredibly important. This life is a wonderful journey. Reflect on it.
Now, people are going to want to do this. So, when it comes to adding things, add the structure slowly. Build a 10 to 15 minute morning or evening routine that reinforces the change. You don't have to, and by the way, I make other videos on morning routines. This could be very helpful for you. But add something like breath work, hydration, reflection. If that currently serves your change and reset every quarter after 90 days or so, reassess. Then choose your next focus. Again, this can be less time. This is how you build real selfrust one cycle at a time.
Let me recap this very quickly and very clearly for you. Don't start with routines. Start with truth. Pick three things that frustrate you about yourself. Narrow it to one. Get brutally honest. Focus on that one change for 90 days. Build simple daily actions that support it. Reflect. Repeat. You will be unrecognizable in one year. I can absolutely promise you this is what alignment looks like. It's not flashy. It's not trendy, but it is real. If this resonated with you, try it. You have nothing to lose.
And if you want the full system that I use, much more than I can put in a short YouTube video, the exact routines, mindset practices, and the reflection tools that I rely on daily, I laid that all out in my book, From Dole to Doctor. how I trained my brain to thrive and how you can too. I poured my heart and soul into this book for three years. It is the most realistic and practical guide to living and achieving your absolute best life. Not written out of theory, but written out of true sciencebacked strategies that actually work for real people. This isn't coming from someone who just studied it. This is coming from someone who actually lived it. I'll drop a link in the top of the description for you. If you're ready to stop chasing and start building from clarity, it's there.
If you enjoyed this video, drop a like and subscribe. I drop a video just as impactful and life-changing as this every week, sometimes twice a week. Drop a comment telling me your favorite thing about this video. And most importantly, share this with someone that you care about. It's completely free and it's the least that you can do to help them. I read and respond to all of your comments. We are genuinely in this together. Less noise, more alignment. That's the game. I'm Dr. Matt Jones. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next.