The Enemy Gets a Vote

Or- The great and noble task

Welcome to 2024. In December, we crossed the 1,000-subscriber threshold which I am pretty proud of.

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This month, the paywall slams shut. If you are a free subscriber, you will get all the Thursday emails, but won’t have full access to the monthly Walking Point post or the archives. If you subscribe at any level in January, you will get a full free year of RTFU.

If you subscribe at the founding member level, I will mail you a personalized autographed copy of Tough Rugged Bastards when it becomes available in August.

As always, thank you for your support, and let’s keep getting better at getting better.

Today’s subtitle is inspired by a quote from Helen Keller, “I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.

Think.

This month we’re focusing on habits— forming them, keeping them, and breaking them. I’ve said repeatedly that I am not a fan of waiting for the new year to make changes, I prefer new-day resolutions which can occur far more frequently, but it is hard to dismiss the magic that comes with January first, the time when anything is possible. So, hopefully this will help you become one of the less that 15% who stick with the things you committed to changing this year.

There is a maxim often heard during the planning of military operations, “Remember, the enemy gets a vote.”

This means that the greatest plan only stays great until the first shot is fired.

So, while we plan, we try to keep an acronym in mind— EMPCOA —Enemy’s most probable course of action- What is the enemy most likely to do in response to our plan?

As we all embark on Operation 2024, we would be wise to remember the words of 1970 comic strip character Pogo, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

The person most responsible for derailing our best-laid plans for the new year will be our biggest enemy—us.  

So, it makes sense to use the acronym EMPCOA to pre-plan responses to our most probable self-sabotaging courses of action.  

We have another saying, the best predictor of future performance is past performance.

This means that the chances are pretty good that your EMPCOA is going to be the same as it has been in the past.

How likely is it that you will start reneging on the plan to hit the gym three days a week, practice French for 15 minutes in the morning, or have family dinner every Tuesday and Thursday?

The enemy is insidious. They won’t thwart your plan right away. They are more likely to come up with a reason to “Just skip today, it won’t matter.”

Then they’ll tell you, “Hey, it’s not like you have a perfect track record, it won’t hurt if you miss one more.”

Then before long, they’re whispering in your ear, “Hey, buddy you gave it a good shot, but I guess you just aren’t meant to lose the weight or get stronger or parler Français.

So how do we plan to counter the EMPCOA?

We talked about the first step last month. Making sure that the tactical actions we want to achieve are aligned with a larger operational goal and our strategic vision.

This gives us our Why and lays out the path we need to follow.

Next, we can establish a Task, Condition, and Standard.

This has got to be non-negotiable.

Task- Practice French every morning to prepare for the trip I have planned.

Condition- Use the Duolingo app while sitting on the couch as I drink my morning coffee.

Standard- Successfully complete 1 lesson. Once complete, I’ll mark my habit tracker. If an emergency prevents me from completing it in the morning, I will do it at lunch.

There are far too many variables to say how many times you have to repeat an action before it becomes automatic, but the chances are pretty good that if you can hold the enemy off for a month, they will surrender.

Read.

The Alchemy of Money

By Frederik Gieschen — This is a great post on focusing on what is most important in the new year.

The Path of Fear (plus my favorite year-end exercise)

Write.

I am trying a new method of journaling for the new year. It is focused on establishing my daily priorities in the morning and then reviewing them and grading myself in the evening.

If you keep a journal or track your task completion, I’d love to hear what method you use.

Repeat.

Words of wisdom from those who said it best.

The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality, and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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