I started a checklist of things I want to get done—habits I want to build—every day.

It includes the morning routine I want: things like getting straight out of bed, going outside to read and/or swim, and cooking a healthy breakfast.

Self-improvement activities for during the day: like meditating and working out.

And productive tasks: like making progress on RightMessage, and writing these essays.

It’s amazing how much of a sense of purpose and satisfaction this simple checklist gives me.

We humans are simple machines.

I’d been feeling a little bit… lost. The freedom of being able to set my day out however I wanted wasn’t feeling so freeing any more.

Now, at the end of each day I feel so fulfilled just from being able to check those things off my list.

From that point of view, I don’t think it even matters what exactly the tasks on the checklist are.

So much is simply the fact that I’m recognising my internal compass’ current direction—my intention—and then working to achieve it even if there’s a feeling of discomfort at the idea of doing that task at that moment. That’s an incredibly powerful muscle to build.

It’s the act of hitting those micro-goals that makes me feel like I have a purpose that I’m fulfilling, and trains me to want to do those things again next time.

My intuition will guide me to edit the tasks over time to best suit my evolving journey. And I trust that the big-picture goals will fall into place on their own when I take care of the day-to-day brick stacking and course-correct over time with my intuition as a guide.

That said, if I don’t get something done that day, that’s OK.

I mark it with ‘NT’ for ‘not today’. It’s not a big red X—calling it out as a failure can easily seep into calling myself out as a failure, which will make my brain less likely to wire to do the thing on future days. It just wasn’t on the cards for that day. I have a chat with myself about why it didn’t happen and what I could change for next time to make it more likely to happen.

It’s working.

It’s been almost three weeks so far.

The first week had about a 70% success rate, and I was filled with self-doubt that there was any point to all this.

The most recent week is at 96%, with all but one task at 100%. Now I don’t want to break the streaks, but more relevant is that a lot of them are already becoming habitual. I’m getting better at them. I feel great whenever I blast through the discomfort and achieve a task, and I feel so much more fulfilled in myself generally. The universe is responding. Things are falling into place.