Amongst the more awful exhortatory articles on the web, designed to encourage the ambitious to be more so, to be more monomaniacal, more ruthless, more obsessive and more insufferable, is this:

10 Morning Habits of People Who Are Unstoppable

Now for a start, who would want to be unstoppable? I certainly wouldn’t want to live with, or work with, or talk with, anyone who’s unstoppable. Can you imagine what it might be like?

So, I was curious to see how I measure up against these 10 morning habits. I’m not, as they say, a ‘morning person’. I amble into the office at an ever later hour, as the years go by, but I stay late and I work every day of the year. I’m successful, I suppose, though ‘success’ must always be qualified. Let’s say I run a successful business – a good one, a happy one, I think, and a profitable one. But I don’t think LLP Group is unstoppable.

What, then, are these ten laudable habits?

1. ‘They’re crushing it on commutes.’

It seems that what this curious phrase means is that the unstoppable amongst us are using every minute available to ‘crush’ numbers in spreadsheets, or do other business-improving things. Moreover, if your hands aren’t free, for example, because you’re driving, you should be ‘crushing’ it with audiobooks.

Now this is nonsense. A good book, newspaper, magazine or even some good music to listen to will make you a better, broader, more interesting and more imaginative worker. Travelling gives you the time to broaden the mind. I’d rather be broadminded than an unstoppable ‘crusher’.

2. They wake up early – around 6 to 7 am – and are excited for the day

I get up between 8 and 9 unless there’s a good reason for an earlier start. I like to have a cup of tea and to approach the day with Zen-like calm.

3. They simplify their wardrobe choices.

My wardrobe is the simplest I know. I wear a polo shirt and jeans nearly every day. The author describes how the alternative is the wasted time of ‘agonizing’ over choices. Who does he think he might be? The Duchess of Cambridge?

4. They create motivation by reminding themselves of their ‘why’.

As if they only have one why, and that’s to be unstoppable and insufferable. I get out of bed for all sorts of different reasons and I hope my ‘whys’ go on surprising me.

5. They don’t drink coffee

Apparently the alternatives (yoga, cycling, etc.) also give you a chance to ‘expand your social circle and influence’. I don’t drink coffee either, but I don’t think it makes me more or less unstoppable.. I ‘expand my social circle’ through the judicious offering of tea (though never Darjeeling). This man is an idiot!

6. They don’t surf the web and other social sites for hours on end

They have no interest in the world, or their friends. They have no curiosity outside their ‘unstoppable’ sphere of acitivity. They have no sense of fun or joy.

7. They drink green smoothies because they believe that a healthy body leads to a healthy mind.

YUK. Priggish bastards.

8. They eat protein, because it helps with satiety.

Very soon they’ll need statins. And do they, these unstoppable goody-goodies ‘drink water because it helps with sobriety?’

9. They work out and even break a sweat

Well, nothing wrong with that, but I hope they’re not those ostentatious people I see in the gym, grimly going through their routines in a world entirely of their own. And looking at themselves in the mirror, and never looking at me.

10. They simply start.

Well, nothing wrong with that as long as some calm and quiet thought has preceded whatever they can’t be stopped from doing. But why don’t they start being human and likeable rather than unstoppable and loathsome?

 

I certainly hope I’m not unstoppable. Apparently 5,000 people read this ghastly blog post. How can they read such nonsense? How can people even think such nonsense and write it down?

I despair. Let’s not ‘crush’. Let’s be nice!