Struggling to Stay on Track? This Will Fix It (It Worked for Me)

All right, today I want to go through the number one tool that I use to stay consistent and stay on track, and therefore as a byproduct, to get results. And look, I don't want to use this channel just to kind of give you small tips and the sort of stuff that everybody shares. I want to give you tools that help you have a breakthrough, and I think this could be one of them. I actually think if you get this one thing right and you implement it into your life, it can completely change how you measure progress. And therefore it could be the difference between staying consistent or falling off, which is super powerful. And jumping right in, it's as simple as this. It's about using a week as the primary time horizon for tracking your progress. So before we get into exactly how I use the week as a time horizon to track my own progress, I want to kind of talk about what led me to using a week. And I've talked about it a little bit before, and it's my framework of a bad week, an okay week, a good week, and a great week. And I kind of, I came up with this maybe 6 or so months ago, and I've always had it in my head as a framework for how I kind of think about at a macro level how I'm doing about something. So I think that all weeks tend to fall into one of those 4 categories, and I'll explain them. So a great week is where the stars aligned, you smash it based on exactly what you had planned to do, sometimes even do better, and it's just like across the board, training, nutrition, habits, all kind of A+. And you put it down on one of those weeks that they only happen from time to time, but the, but the stars aligned and you absolutely smashed it out of the park. That's a great week. A good week is, you know, just a very good week. Most things happen exactly as you plan them. It was a great step forward. The stars didn't align and it wasn't like amazing, but it was a good solid week. And for the most part, you achieve nearly everything that you needed to achieve and you put it down as a good week. An okay week is where you probably have some challenges, some hurdles, things don't go exactly to plan, but at the end of the day, you put a good enough step forward. It was good enough for you to feel, you know what, this was an okay week. So for me, that probably looks like, you know, probably got most of my trainings in, maybe I missed one of my zone 2s, maybe I even hit all of my training sessions but my steps were like 6K instead of 10K, maybe I was aiming for 2,200 calories and I ended up hitting like 2,350, or actually maybe everything was on par but my good— my whole foods were 60% instead of 80%. So it's where you tick most of the boxes but there are a few things that kind of need a little bit of focus for the following week, and I would class it as an okay week. And then a bad week, the wheels came off, right? Maybe there was a massive, like, travel situation going on in your week, or maybe there was life threw you a curveball and you only got half your training sessions in. And on top of that, you know, um, there were a couple of days where you just didn't even track your food and it just got all out of hand. Basically multiple things went wrong and you know you just need to regroup, forget about the week entirely, move on to the next. And they are the 4 kind of weeks, or at least like the 4 ways that I tend to classify my own weeks. A bad week, wheels came off. An okay week, for the most part okay but kind of multiple things didn't go as planned. A good week, most things went as planned and it was a great step forward. And a great week, stars aligned, absolutely smashed out of the week. One of those probably won't arrive for another 4 or 5 weeks, right? And all you need for great results is a ratio of those weeks. You do not need them all to be great. You also absolutely can't have them all bad. What I would say is that for the most part, you're looking to probably have 80% of your weeks to be in that good category. Now and again, you'll get a great week. Actually, like, you know, from time to time, you're going to get a good week. Now and again you'll get a bad week, and what I would say is that really the main thing there is that you're probably looking for, again, mostly good, some okay, and now and again a great or a bad. Now what you can't do is have a number of bad weeks back to back. A number of bad weeks back to back screw up everything. So if you do get a bad week, that's something to really think about, and you need to springboard back into an okay or a good week pretty quickly because multiple bad weeks really do dent progress.. But for the most part, as long as the bad weeks are few and far between, and you're mostly putting in good weeks with your great, the odd okay, and the bad one shows up from time to time, you're going to make great progress. That's called great consistency, and you're going to get really great results. So that's kind of my framework. And I think that that framework is what led me to kind of really believe in the time horizon of a week to measure progress. So The other thing in terms of why a week works, then I'm going to get into a few applications of how I actually use the week myself on a weekly basis. But this is why I think a week works. For a start, it's not too long. So when you start to kind of think about what you want to achieve over the period of, sorry, over the period of say like even half a year or a year, things start to get a little bit too abstract. The reality is that life changes and your own views change. So like your goals often change over that kind of very, very long time horizon. And sometimes it could be pretty daunting in terms of, I want to achieve 10% body fat, I want to get low, stronger. It's like, it's so far that actually it can become quite, um, overwhelming. It's not too short— a week, sorry— is not too short, i.e., like a day, where, you know, things could be pretty volatile, things can move around, things can change rapidly. And actually, like, a day doesn't matter that much. So it's not too short for it to kind of not matter from that perspective. And I think that actually the week is a real sweet spot. And it's big enough that actually really does matter. Like it matters to put in a good week and actually really matters if you put in a bad week. But it's also small enough that you can actually influence it. And things don't change too much. So I think the week is the sweet spot. So okay, hopefully that has opened your eyes to the framework of bad, okay, good, and great as a way of being able to grade the weeks. And hopefully that has got you thinking about why a week works as a time horizon. Forget years, forget how you did today, which kind of matters as a stepping stone onto way as to how a week goes. But the reality is you can afford a bad day and then you can have two great days thereafter and still put in a really solid week. So a week is, I think, the sweet spot. So now we get into kind of some applications for how I use the time horizon of a week in my own life. And I'll cover 3 main areas, and they're the 3 things I really think about in terms of my, I guess, my fitness and my health. And like, 1 is my training, 2 is my nutrition, and 3 is my foundational health habits. So why don't we cover training first? And to do that, I'm gonna share something with you. So hopefully now you can see, um, I want to give you some examples of how I actually track the days and come up with what a week looks like for my training. So you can ignore the calories and stuff below, but every single day I jot down what I, what I did from an activity perspective, either my training and my steps. Well, actually both of them. I always capture my training and my steps. And I build this day to day, and I'm kind of constantly seeing how the picture of the week is building.. And at the end of the week, it's a great summary for me to reflect back on it and grade how it was. But not only that, it's really important because like I said, a bad day doesn't matter too much if you recover and have a couple of great days thereafter. What really matters is how you landed the week. So the good thing about kind of tracking this on a day-to-day basis and building, building the week as it goes along is that you can pivot and change things and reorder things and make comebacks. And actually, there could be a couple of times in the week where you start to drift, but then you really pull it in. And, you know, actually, in some more weeks I'll show you in a minute that happened. But I just wanted to show you kind of the last 4 or so, uh, weeks that I've captured, just to show you how, um, that works in my own life. So you can see here, like, you know, you can see Monday weight session, 14K steps. Tuesday, 10K steps, there was no training session as planned. And then Wednesday, I got a nice Zone 2 in, got some good steps in, and I'm building it throughout the week. So that was one week. You can see here another week, um, kind of pretty much the same. You know, actually all of these are good, great weeks. Um, here's another one. Uh, again, these are standard, like 3 weights, 2 lots of Zone 2, usually kind of 10K steps as an average. Um, and here's, here's another one as well. Um, these— so these were all weeks prior to going on holiday to Cyprus as of a couple of weeks ago, and they were all dialed in. I'd actually say they're all great weeks, which is super rare. Maybe there was like a couple good, a couple great, but I was super dialed in before I went on holiday, and I just put in like really solid, perfect weeks almost. So I would say they probably are mostly great, which is a bit unusual. Um, and actually, look, I'll share this one. This is how I'm doing this week. So on Monday, uh, I was hoping to frontload the week. Actually, this is a Goddamn phone, man. Goes to show you I won't edit that out. Um, so yeah, like this week, this shows how, uh, I've been tracking it this week and how multiple times I've pivoted a little bit to make sure that I stay on track. And I'm still, you know, the jury's still, uh, open as to how I'm gonna do for the week. So Monday, I was hoping to front-load the week and start with a weight session. That did not happen, um, for whatever reason. I can't remember now, but I just kind of laid down and I didn't get that session in, and I only got 7K steps in. So as I woke up on Tuesday morning and I punched in 7K steps, I'm like, not a great start to the week. I was hoping to front-load it and I didn't, and I didn't get my 10K steps in. So I was like, all right, not the worst thing in the world. I can still post a good, maybe even a great week this week, but I better get my act together on Tuesday. So Tuesday I did a away session and I got my 10K steps in, which meant my average had shifted up to kind of like 8.5 or whatever. All right, cool, good. Then on Wednesday it got to like 4 PM and I was thinking, I haven't done anything yet and I've hardly got any steps in, I'm just gonna sack it all off and just start again on Thursday. And then this kind of picture caught me and I was like, I can't do that because if I do that and I put Wednesday down as just like 3K steps, I have absolutely ruled out being able to post a great week. It's not the worst thing in the world, but probably ruled out putting in a good week. And I probably put myself in a position to only have an okay week at best. And I didn't wanna do that. So it was 4:00 PM. I just had a conversation with myself. I put my gym gear on and I went for a 45-minute run, which basically meant I got my zone 2 in and I got my steps up. And that meant I rolled into Thursday. Which is yesterday, um, with, you know, the, the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday feeling like, wow, okay, back on track. And then yesterday I put in a good weights effort, only 6K steps, but again, I could see throughout the previous 3 days, that's fine, I'm going to average out about 8K, plenty of time to pull that one back. And then as of today, Friday, I haven't done anything yet, but I've gone for a long walk and I could see that I need to get my steps up, so I went for a very long walk. In the morning, and then this afternoon I'm going to get in 45 minutes of zone 2. I'll get a little bit of a run in there to get my steps up. So I know that Friday, if I finish 45 minutes zone 2, make sure that 10 or 15 minutes of that is a run, I'm going to probably post 12-13k steps. Man, I am going to finish Friday on a roll, which basically means across Saturday and Sunday I only really need to get one workout in, a swim, keep my steps high, I'm on a great week. Minimum good week, but probably a great week. So hopefully that shows you there were two moments this week. One, a slow start, and two, that moment on a Wednesday where I nearly didn't do it and put my— and I nearly put myself in a position to completely rule out a great and almost a good week where I use this framework of measuring my progress over a week to stay on track. So Yes, that's it for training. Um, let's jump into nutrition as well. So I wanted to give you— so this is this week so far, and actually we'll start with this one, right? So my calorie target is 2,200 for the week, and you can see here every single day I'm loading up my week view of my calories and my macros. How am I doing? And You can see here I feel great actually about how I'm doing. Like Monday and Tuesday were intentionally quite low days. I wanted to build a bit of room on the calorie, um, side of things. And then Wednesday and Thursday, they've ticked off, so all ticked up. So already in my mind I'm thinking, let's not be too out of hand on Friday. Let's have a good 2,000 day on a Friday, and that's going to afford me a nice weekend Saturday and Sunday where I can punch in a 2,300, 2,400, maybe even a 2,500 and still average out at 2,200. So I'm slowly building this picture of my calories throughout the week to make sure I land 2,200. And, you know, there have been plenty of times when I've been looking at my nutrition on, um, in this weekly view where I've had a massive spike on a Tuesday and I've gone, uh-oh, Wednesday and Thursday better be low to average that out. So it's all about noticing when you're putting a foot wrong and then putting a good foot after that and averaging things out. So, but as it stands this week, 2 low days, 2 pretty creeping up days, hopefully a low day on a Friday to balance it out, and a great weekend with a little bit of room to splurge. And I'm going to come in at 2,200. And then the other thing that I look at, um, in terms of my nutrition is just how I'm doing with my macronutrients. You know, I want to make sure that they're roughly in the right place. And again, as an average, my— you can see Monday to Thursday, my protein's at 169, which is great. Don't really look too closely at carbs. I do look at my fiber, and I'm like a little low there, uh, 20 grams on the fiber. So today Um, I had like a steak and salad meal, but I made sure to have a fiber bar. I'm going to think about how to get my like overload on fiber today to get that average up to about 25, so I'm not too low before I go into the weekend and can't do too much about it. Then mostly the things I look at, I look at sugar sometimes to make sure that, you know, that's not getting too out of hand. But the reality is, is that like, you know, most of it comes from fruit and that's not too much of a thing. So the main things I look at there is protein and fiber, and I'm doing perfectly fine. On those. I just need to make sure that I keep the protein up so that it averages where it is now, maybe a touch higher. Remember, I'm only looking for 150+ really. But then on my fiber, I'm a little low. Like ideally, I know it's got my goal there as 38, but that's auto-calculated by MyFitnessPal. I want it to be 30, really 25 to 30. So I'm going to have an overdose day today to get me back up to that 25 average so that at the weekend, as long as I'm not too silly, I'm going to be able to feel pretty good about where I am at the end of the week. So that's just a great example. You can see I'm doing exactly the same for my calories,, right? And my macronutrients. And then the third place that I kind of like look at the week as a time horizon is with my habits. Now, you know, I am measuring my progress in terms of percent consistency across the course of any month, and I'm aiming for 80% consistency. But that 80% consistency doesn't get there by chance. You know, there are at least 8, 9, 10, 11 times throughout the week where I'm reflecting on how the picture is building. Over the course of the month. And I'm either tightening up or like cruising or whatever based on how I'm doing. And actually what I do is I do chunk the way that I think about building those steps towards a good month at a kind of week time horizon. And look, here's a good example of where I am at the moment with my habits. And you can see I'm doing, I've made a great start to the week, right? Um, of course alcohol is 100%. My sleep is bang on perfect. My protein is perfect. My caffeine, I've had a miss, but that's fine. I can afford 6 misses throughout the week. Throughout the month and still hit 80%. Water's bang on perfect. My whole foods is actually really good, strong start. Steps, 50%, right? Two. So I'm already thinking, man, I have to make sure Friday, Saturday, Sunday is good. I don't want to fall behind on steps and then basically put myself in a position where it's going to be a real struggle or an impossibility to meet 80%. And then my fasting, great so far, right? But there's been one miss, and I want to make sure that that doesn't turn into two or three too quickly. So I'm looking at that as a kind of like my first kind of 7 or so days. Look at that picture, it's, it's building perfectly. But steps have started to get on my radar a little bit, and the fasting a little bit on my radar. Other than that, things are perfect, right? So again, you can see I'm using my week as, as the time horizon to hold myself accountable to putting in a good shift. And then obviously those 4 weeks will build to a month, and Like I said earlier on, that time horizon is a, of a week is a real sweet spot because, you know, it doesn't matter that I miss Whole Foods for a day, I miss caffeine for a day. It matters a little bit that I didn't hit my steps twice, 2 days out of 4, that's 50%. But it's like, it's all recoverable from, you know, it, it just doesn't matter. It's just one blip. And I'm, but if I'm not looking at those one blip, blips over the course of kind of how I, how I think about the week, then it can easily get outta hand and then get to a point where I just know the week's going to be a write-off. So that is that. Let me just stop sharing. So look, hopefully that has highlighted the importance of, and how actually I practically use the time horizon of a week to measure my training, um, to measure my nutrition, and to measure my habits. And again, what I'm really looking for is just to make sure that I'm putting in mostly good weeks on my training, nutrition, and habits. And I would say that if I was not looking at things on that sort of time horizon, there would be so many times where I get to Thursday, Friday, or Saturday and I just got no chance of putting in a good week. And then, you know, a couple of bad weeks, you've got no chance of putting in a good month. And then it just keeps, you know, rolling up to actually not making any progress. But if you can just put the weeks— if you can just put in good, solid, good weeks, now and again a great, now and again an okay, try and keep away from those bad weeks, or you just have one bad week, treat it super goddamn seriously and bounce back with a good or great one. If you can keep doing that, that's what allows you to stay consistent over the longer, longer term— by months and years— and that's what will give you results. So what I would say is don't stress too much about the day. Think about it as a small stepping stone towards a week. Don't think too much about the months and the years. Just focus on the weeks. And you're going to be straight. And look, before I jump into kind of wrapping up the episode, that's actually almost what I do at work as well. I try and under— like, when I'm, uh, working on something, I try and think, look, here's the direction where I want to go, and this is roughly the result. But then I kind of let go of that, and I'm more thinking, I've got to take a good step forward on a weekly basis. I have to make an impact on a weekly basis, and I need to move towards the direction I want to go. And if I move towards it, amazing. If I don't, that's something to really think about. So I actually really do think about the time horizon of a week very seriously, even in a kind of professional setting as well. So I think it has super, you know, a lot of different applications. So let's wrap up the episode. Here's what I would say. Good weeks stack into great months and great months stack into real transformation. And really I would encourage you to think about the weeks as the main kind of stick of measuring how you're doing, how your progress is. And don't sweat too much about the days. Think about them as a stepping stone towards a week. Don't think too much about the months or years. Just know where you're heading. And then the practical takeaway I would say is why don't you go ahead and pick one thing in your life, whether it be your training, whether it be your nutrition, you know, whether it be your habits. Habits is a great one. And start to track it daily. But importantly, whilst tracking it daily, continue to hold the picture and the time horizon of a week in your head as you do it. And then when you get to the end of the week, grade it. Grade it as a bad week, an okay week, a good week, or a great week. Reset, go again. And I think that if you can get in the habit of thinking about progress like that, you're going to do amazing and you're going to stack good weeks. And like I said, good weeks stack into great months, and great months are what cause real transformation. I truly believe that thinking about the time horizon of a week can be the difference to you staying on track, the difference to you being consistent, and therefore, as a byproduct, the difference between you getting results. So I hope that this was a useful episode. Get in touch if you want any help or have any questions around any of this, and I will see you next week.