No Zero Days
The concept of No Zero Days has been on my mind a lot recently.
I initially heard about it in this interview, but apparently the concept originates from a viral reddit post from a Canadian named Ryan.1
The premise of No Zero Days is simple. A zero day is when you don't take a single action towards a goal you're working on. Then the goal becomes avoiding zero days entirely.
I think this mentality is useful for helping avoid the procrastination that comes from perfectionism, and also to help train discipline across any area of your life you care about. Being motivated is great, but motivation doesn't happen intrinsically every single day.
Sometimes you have to just force yourself to go do the thing.
There are going to be plenty of days where you don't feel productive, or you're limited by time or you're just kind of burnt out. But avoiding a no zero day could be as easy as writing down a fragment of an idea for something you're writing, or doing a single pushup to say you exercised, or reading a single page to say you've read something.
You did something. You avoided a zero day.
The point is not to chase perfection or to ensure you're making significant, huge efforts day after day. It's just to be consistent, and to keep doing those mundane daily efforts that will compound over time.
My personal No Zero Days mindset is centered on three focuses:
- Writing daily
- Exercising daily
- Reading daily
How about you?
If you want to skip to the "No Zero Days" part of the conversation in the video linked, it begins around the 32 minute mark.↩