I see a correlation between running a successful business and maintaining ‘healthy’ habits like daily exercise, meditation, and so on.

I’m curious whether there’s causation (and if so in what direction), or whether something else is causing both.

Is it that committing to those regular habits requires some level of willpower and drive—the ability to keep going even when you’re not seeing immediate results—and those are also contributors to business success?

Does committing to the habits serve as practice for your ‘willpower muscle’, alongside other benefits like giving you more energy, clarity of thought, and so on, that help in business?

Or the other way round: does feeling more successful make you more likely to bring yourself to continue with the habits?

I think any or all of those is plausible.

Do they perhaps all combine into a positively-reinforcing loop? Maintaining the healthy habits makes you a little more likely to succeed in business. That feeling of success makes you more open to continuing with the regular habits. And so on.

(I’ve intentionally avoided defining ‘success’ here—that’s a whole other topic.)

(h/t to Danny Feuer for helping me organise my thoughts about this.)