About Consigo

After starting from the bottom in life and rising to the very top, becoming a CEO and startup founder, I broke down in every possible way. Without friends, distant from my family, distant from God, and with no money for anything, I reached what was, for me, rock bottom.

And despite the painful situation I was living in, somehow, I managed to get a little bit of money together, took my little boy out to eat the chicken parmigiana he loved so much, explained to him what was happening, packed my clothes into a backpack, and went traveling along the beaches of southern Brazil. I lived simply, staying in hostels, guesthouses, and sometimes crashing for free in vacant apartments during the off-season winter—cold enough to have kilometers of beach all to myself, but above all, to force me to be alone with myself.

I spent months wandering, trying to find myself again. I wanted to be that vigorous, fearless "me," capable of doing anything and achieving success. I wanted to find myself once more. It took me a long time to understand that I didn't need to search for myself, because I was already there. And worst of all: that person was the fruit, the result of all the decisions I had made throughout my life. That was a shock, because I realized I was searching for a version of myself that had deceived me and thrown me into rock bottom. And, sad as it is, I undoubtedly wish I had realized this much sooner. But the identity I wore wouldn't allow it. The pleasure rewards were many, and I could only crave more. Despite having achieved professional recognition, I must admit that I lived running away from responsibility, without commitment and without discipline, piling bad habits on top of one another, without caring what the outcome would be. But the bill finally came due.

When I became conscious of who I was, I realized how "ugly" I had become, inside and out. Bloated from excessive alcohol consumption, my skin damaged by neglect, and my stamina non-existent from a sedentary lifestyle and constant chain-smoking, living one day after another as if there were no tomorrow. My diet was terrible, and my gut was constantly warning me that something wasn't right. Drowning in debt, sunk in complete financial disorganization, and with no prospect of putting my house in order, because I lacked the confidence to look for a job—which, in itself, pushed opportunities away. I asked several friends for help; they tried, but I wasn't ready. What a wretched life I had built.

But when we begin to recognize who we truly are, that is where the transformation begins. I stopped complaining, I stopped smoking, I quit drinking excessively, I started eating better, being grateful for my food, and seeing beauty in simple things. It wasn't easy. It didn't happen overnight.

It was by seeking knowledge, through reading literature itself, that I began to understand more about human behavior and habit formation. In this process, three books were essential to me: "The Power of Habit", "Atomic Habits", and "Thinking, Fast and Slow". Each of them brought concepts that served perfectly to explain what I needed to comprehend—after all, according to psychology, I have a "High Need for Cognition" and I operate, according to Aristotelian philosophy, by thinking from First Principles. In other words, I need to learn about a subject in a way that allows me to identify its essential concepts so I can then operate on them. It is a harder and slower path for me, but extremely rewarding.

The first book, "The Power of Habit", outlined how habits are formed and how they can be dismantled; the second, "Atomic Habits", showed two fundamental things: the possibility of starting with essential small steps and the formation of identity through routine; the third, "Thinking, Fast and Slow", made it clear, in several ways, how our minds work, awakening in me a pursuit and deep dive into neuroscience, especially neuroplasticity.

While studying all this material, I decided to put the theory into practice and started creating my weekly schedule to carry out daily micro-tasks. I started by using Google Calendar. First, I planned out a routine from the beginning to the end of the day, all carefully crafted, with precise alarms: morning meditation, exercise, breakfast, work, lunch, calling my son, more work, reading, dinner, gratitude, sleep. At first, this helped me, but I soon realized that life isn't that rigid; it was simply impossible to do everything exactly as planned on the calendar, which forced the first breach of contract. And once you break a contract once, your brain starts accepting it as an option and builds a tendency to break it again effortlessly. It is the exact same concept as habit building, only inverted.

To solve this, I realized I could keep my daily commitments—all of them—but needed to be flexible. That is: I would continue executing all of them, but not necessarily at the scheduled time, because my reality simply demanded that adaptation. The important thing was to reach the end of the day with every task on the list completed. That was when something clicked: I remembered a project I had started 5 years ago called "Hoje eu consigo" ("Today I Can"). The initial idea was an app for daily challenges where people would carry out actions like saying "I love you" to someone special or leaving a positive note in a public restroom. In other words, it had nothing to do with building habits, but perhaps stemmed from a possible lack of more genuine relationships. Even so, the project's structure was already a to-do list focused on "today," without the rigidity of schedules. The tool was almost ready; it just needed a few adjustments to become my own habit-reviewing tool.

And so it was done. I created the Consigo App based on these real needs, kept the essence of the phrase "Hoje eu consigo", and created a category of challenges called "Inspirar-se" ("Be Inspired"), which carries the original challenges from the first version of "Hoje eu Consigo", and which I highly recommend everyone keep enabled.

Since then, having quit smoking, lost 15 kilos, returned to running and cycling almost every day, and drinking only socially and in moderation, I have been working on every detail of this app—and using it daily—to help more people. Why? The authors of all the books I read on habits went through great hardships in their lives to develop their methods; honestly, I never felt I was enough to write a book, but considering the time we spend glued to our phone screens, I believe an app can be even more useful and accessible.

I hope it serves you well.

Best regards, Jeff Monteiro