About Tazz McAlister

About Tazz.

Tazz McAlister standing with his dog beside a wooden fence

Where I Came From.

Almost 15 years ago, I started working with people getting out of jail, trying to get their lives back on track or, in many cases, trying to start a new life altogether.

A phrase I heard regularly was:

“I just want to be normal.”

That phrase stuck with me.

Because if you’re trying to help someone build a normal life, you first have to ask: What the fuck is normal?

A big part of my work involved helping people understand the habits, routines, structure and behaviours that support a stable life. But the more I looked at it, the more I realised something:

Just because something is normal doesn’t mean it’s good.

If the majority of people are sleeping poorly, eating shit, spending more than they earn, barely exercising and spending hours every day scrolling, then doing what most people do might make you normal.

It doesn’t necessarily make you healthy, financially secure, disciplined or fulfilled.

What I Learned.

That’s where the idea behind a lot of my thinking started.

It’s so fucking easy to be above average because the bar is so fucking low.

You don’t need to become an extreme bodybuilder, a billionaire or someone who spends every waking hour working on themselves.

You need to do the important things better than most people, and keep doing them.

Chris Williamson has spoken about how the standards that might have made a man stand out in the 1980s or 1990s could make him seem exceptional today. Not necessarily because those standards were extraordinary, but because the world around us has changed.

We’re surrounded by more convenience, more entertainment and more ways to avoid doing the things we know we should be doing.

Endless scrolling. Porn. Gambling. Video games. Instant gratification. Spending. Debt. Credit cards.

None of these things are automatically evil in every circumstance. But when they become habits that consume your time, money, attention or ambition, they can hold you back without you even noticing.

You can move through life with the handbrake on and still convince yourself you’re making progress.

How I Apply It.

I don’t believe you need to be perfect.

You don’t need to train ten times a week. You don’t need to have your diet dialled in 100 per cent. You don’t need to be the first person in the office and the last person to leave every day.

You need a standard you can maintain.

One decision rarely stays one decision.

You plan to train after work. You get home, sit on the couch and start scrolling. The gym gets skipped, cooking feels like too much effort, takeaway costs more than you planned, you eat late, sleep worse and start the next day behind.

None of those decisions ruins your life by itself. Repeated often enough, they start creating a direction.

Here’s another analogy I use when thinking about ageing and declining capacity.

Imagine an aeroplane flying 500 metres above the ground. Every kilometre it travels, its engine loses one per cent of its power.

If it keeps trying to fly the same way while its power gradually declines, its altitude will eventually drop. Keep going long enough, and it hits the ground.

We can’t stop ageing. But we can influence how well we maintain our capacity through the habits we build and sustain.

Train consistently. Eat reasonably well. Sleep enough. Manage your money. Keep learning. Avoid habits that slowly take more from your life than they give back.

You don’t need to be perfect at any of these things.

But if you’re consistently doing them better than most people, that difference can compound over years.

That’s the standard I’m interested in.

What I’m Building.

The Momentum Standard is an extension of that philosophy.

It’s built around four areas that have a significant influence on how we live:

Food. Fitness. Money. Habits.

Your life doesn’t exist in separate boxes.

A difficult week at work can change the way you eat, train and sleep. Financial pressure can affect your mood and relationships. Poor sleep can make every other useful decision feel harder than it should.

The positive version works the same way. Improving one area can create more energy, confidence, time or control somewhere else.

I’m interested in practical systems that help people improve these areas without making life unnecessarily complicated.

You don’t need someone else’s life.

You don’t need my exact workout, someone else’s diet, some bloke on the internet’s morning routine or a financial plan that doesn’t make sense for your situation.

Your circumstances matter. Your priorities matter. The useful standard is one you can understand, apply and actually maintain.

I don’t want The Momentum Standard to tell everyone to live the same way.

Not another program that expects you to be perfect for two weeks before you fall off the wagon. Not a philosophy that requires you to optimise every minute of your day.

Just better decisions, better habits and a higher standard that you can actually maintain.

How It Can Help You.

You don’t need to fix every area of your life at once.

You might need to take one area from A to Z.

Or you might need to improve several areas incrementally, one per cent at a time.

The important thing is to stop drifting and start making deliberate decisions about where you want to improve.

If you’re unsure where to start, read Blog #4, where I explain how to approach the different areas of your life and decide what deserves your attention first.

You can also use the Habit Calculator to audit your habits across the areas that matter, identify where you’re currently losing ground, and work out where you can raise your standard.

Because the goal isn’t to be perfect.

It’s to build a life that’s better than the one you’d end up with if you simply did what everyone else was doing.