Raising Standards

Life has its ups and downs.

They’re inevitable.

Some days you feel on top of the world.

Other days, you want to quit.

It’s not about having higher highs...

It’s about having higher lows.

Like James Clear said:

‘’You don’t rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.’’

This means you need to raise your standards.

Why is this important?

Entrepreneurship isn’t linear—

It’s exponential.

But to see exponential growth...

You need momentum.

If you work hard for 3 months and then quit because you don’t have the right systems...

You’ll lose all the progress you made.

Sure, you might still have followers.

But exponential results don’t show in followers.

You don’t see real growth until your breakthrough.

I learned this the hard way.

I’ve pressed the reset button twice in the 12 months I’ve been here.

But the last 3 months?

That’s when I finally saw real progress.

How?

By raising my standards.

I made it my mission to protect my momentum at all costs.

Here is how I did it:

Sacrifices

There are some things holding you back.

You know what they are.

They have to go.

For me, it was:

• Video games

• Weed

• Festivals

• Social media

Sacrificing them forever felt impossible to commit to.

Some part of me didn’t want to let them go completely.

So I tried sacrificing them temporary.

I called it ‘’no-go monk mode’’.

Why the ‘’no-go’’ part?

This agreement had to be set in stone.

I knew that it wasn’t realistic to journal or meditate every day.

And if I couldn’t keep up with the good habits...

I’d inevitably fall back into my bad ones.

That’s why, with ‘’no-go monk mode’’, I focused only on what I COULDN’T do.

No distractions.

No excuses.

I experimented with different time periods:

• 30 days

• 60 days

• 90 days

But the same thing happened every time:

Halfway through, I could only think about what I’d do when the period was over.

My productivity hit rock bottom.

And as soon as the period ended...

I relapsed.

I lost all momentum and had to start over.

I came up with a third option:

Indefinite sacrifice.

I quit all my bad habits—

Not forever, but until I reached a specific goal:

Earn 10k in a month.

The moment I made this decision, I felt a sense of peace within.

My intuition knew tis was an agreement I could keep.

Non-Negotiables

Now that you know what NOT to do,

It’s time to focus on what TO do.

If you’ve been on X for long enough...

You know there are certain tasks you NEED to do consistently to reach your goal.

Without consistency, building momentum is impossible.

For me, these tasks were:

• Writing

• Engaging

• Building

• Reflecting

These aren’t optional.

If one of them is missing...

I couldn’t achieve my goal.

So, I decided on a bare minimum:

• 1 newsletter per week

• 3 tweets per day

• 1 long-form per week

• 2 hour of engagement daily

• Daily journaling

These were the tasks I had to complete—no matter what.

Missing even one meant saying goodbye to my goal.

No excuses allowed.

Not even valid ones.

Didn’t have the time to do 2 hours of engagement today?

Do 4 hours tomorrow.

Miss again?

Do 6 hours the day after.

Don’t let yourself off the hook.

Always pay your debt.

To help me stay consistent, I used streaks.

For example:

At the top of my journaling routine, I note the day.

Day 1, Day 2, and so on.

Right now, I’m on Day 95

That’s 95 consecutive days of self-reflection.

This habit allowed me to improve 1% every day.

(if you want to know how, check out this link: Self honesty)

In the past 3 months, I’ve made more progress than I did in the entire year before.

Im also tracking streaks for:

• Engagement

• Weekly newsletters

• Meditation

The higher your streak...

The harder it is to break.

And if you do break it?

You’ll have to start all over again.

So whatever you do...

Don’t break the streak.

Endnote

I treat these things like commandments and prohibitions.

Momentum is your best friend in business.

Think of it like a rocket.

It doesn’t pause halfway up the sky.

It keeps going until it reaches space.

Your non-negotiables maintain momentum.

They’re your baseline.

But to build momentum, you need to push harder.

Use all excess energy to put in extra work.

But when you’re tired and fall...

Fall back to your baseline.

Raise your standards, protect your momentum.

And you’ll see exponential growth.

Much love,

Tibor