The wolf you feed wins is a Cherokee legend. The wolf you name you will never forget to feed. This simple and fun system will help you eat your frogs (see briantracy.com) and make progress on your goals.
Adopt a Pack
You adopt wolves based on your most precious goals. These are the cute cuddly beasts you want to keep close to you every day. I have five wolves: Yogi, Avenrand, Piano, Escape, and The House at the Corner. I tried cute names like Bear, Hope, and Bach but it took way too much brain power to remember what I wanted to accomplish. Have fun but sometimes simple is better.
These wolves become your daily pack. I also have a weekly wolf which consists of seven different activities I do on seven different days of the week. I named him Weekly Wolf. Keep your pack between four and six wolves. If you grow a pack too large it becomes chaos and eventually, they start eating each other.
Feed Your Wolves First
My alpha wolf is Avenrand, my novel. Although I wake up and feed Yogi first, Avenrand is the most important wolf in my pack, and I feed her in the morning right after my daily yoga practice and before any of the other wolves get fed.
Before you do anything else in your day, ask yourself, “Have I fed my Alpha Wolf yet?” Don’t piss off the alpha wolf.
How to Feed a Wolf
No two wolves eat the same daily diet. Avenrand eats two to four pomodoros a day (45 minutes each). A pomodoro is a block of highly focused time for that task. Set a timer and remain on task until it goes off. Piano only gets two small pomodoros (20 minutes each) a day. The best practice is to know exactly what you want to feed each wolf every day.
Play with the Puppies
I know there are more than six things you want to do in your day. This is where you get to name the puppies. Now puppies are still being taken care of by their mommies, so they don’t have to be fed by you, nor do you need to pay any attention to them at all. But who doesn’t want to play with the puppies?
Puppies are things you just enjoy doing. One of my puppies is building my new Lego set (I can thank my sister for that obsession). I now have a Lego table where I can stop by and build on my masterpiece a little at a time. But if I don’t sit down and press pieces into place for a day or two it isn’t going to affect any of my life goals.
Building Legos is something I only do in between major tasks or while waiting on the tea kettle to boil. When all the wolves are fed, I might sit down and work on it for hours or I might not. Puppies are fun but you don’t have to feed them every day.
Do Not Feed Coyotes
Coyotes are distractions. Anything that gets in the way of you feeding your wolves is a coyote.
Coyotes may be social media scrolling or netflix binging or anything you mindlessly delve into. They might be a limiting belief, like “I’m not good enough to write a book people will want to read.”
The quicker you learn to recognize a coyote the better. When you see a coyote, you shoo it away and yell, “I do not feed coyotes.” That’s it. Don’t ponder it further, don’t give it the time. Don’t free fall into thinking you have too many coyotes to feed the wolves. Coyotes only hang around when you feed them with your precious time and attention.
Coyotes are scavengers. They will try to feed on any thoughts you let linger in your mind like, “Her book is so much better than mine.” or “She has 1,000 followers and I only have 24.” If you don’t shoo them away, soon they will call out to their cousins and have a family feast on your insecurities. They will start attacking your pack until you stop feeding the wolves and just fuel the coyotes.
Build Your Best Den
In the Cherokee legend, there are good and bad wolves. In my system, all my wolves are good. They are members of my pack, welcome in the den, and I feed them daily. I try not to have too many because over crowding the den causes rivalry. You must choose who is a wolf and who is a puppy and identify the coyotes.
The Rules Are Simple
First Feed the Wolves then play with the puppies. Never Feed the Coyotes.