The personal OS (Operation System) — booting
I’m a life learner. I’m trying to learn something new every day and improve myself.
In the last decade I’ve adopted and created many habits to improve my life and become happier.
In the technology community, we usually have a set of ground roles to help us develop and operate our software. We are used to having an operating system in our computers that help us operate a computer on a higher level and have a simpler way of working with it.
As humans, on one side, we have a biological ”operating system” as our body, a wonderful machine that knows how to operate,
and on the other side, we have a set of expected behavioral rules as our culture and society that expect us and drive us for certain behaviours.
What we don’t have is a set of well defined and learned operational manual or guide for our own personal life.
In the following posts I will introduce the collection of my life user-manual, my personal OS (Operational System).
It’s a series of small life habits that I do on a daily/weekly basis. There are 2 principals for all of those habits:
- Every habit start from a small baby step action that is usually very easy to start with and keep doing — just a 5 minute, or a simple action per day. Nothing big. But I’m willing and committing doing it on a regular base.
- Most habits will increase and compound over time (I will post a dedicate post for this topic — here is the link)
My personal OS is designed for me. I do think that each one of us can tailor his own habits that will suite his/her life style and goals.
The purpose of the personal OS is to create a simple set of habits that together will improve the life satisfaction and happiness in the short and long term. They are simple to understand and there is a very clear reasoning for doing them — the WHY.
We can group them into the following groups/categories:
- Improving our mind and skills
- Taking care of our body
- Positive thinking
When we put a system of small habits instead of big new-year’s decisions that are hard to keep, we are setting ourselves to succeed. Step by step, compounding.
The first habit (and the last one for this post) is meditation. It is the cornerstone for achieving mindfulness. With this mindfulness, it would be easier to to adopt new habits, to identify bad habits and the stories that we tell ourselves. we will be able to “catch” ourselves in the moment and act mindfully instead of autopilot mode (most of the times…)
We can only improve what we see and understand what is going in our lives.
The first basic meditation practice can be done in 1 minute and it is just noticing your breath and each time your mind is wondering get back to your breath. That’s it.
The essence of meditation is training your mind to identify when your mind is wondering. Like you train a muscle in the gym.
Once you are there, you can increase it to 5, 10, 20 minutes and more Over time.
We will go deeper into habit formations in the future, but I recommend doing the mediation on a regular time and place, like when you wake up, before going to sleep, in your car before starting your work etc.
There are many apps that can help you start with and teach you meditation and mindfulness. My 2 favorites are:
If you are wondering how does my list of habits looks like, here is a sample:
- When I wake up — drink 2 glasses of water and eat a banana.
- After taking a shower — write my gratitude diary and decide what do I need to do to make today a great day.
- After dropping the kids in school — do Yoga and meditation.
- When I drive to work — learn Spanish.
- When I arrive to the office — drink 2 glasses of water.
- When I arrive to the office I turn off all mobile and desktop notifications.
- Before every coffee — drink 1 glass of water.
- After lunch — meditate
- Standing instead of sitting in the office.
- When I’m getting a request that takes only 2 minutes to handle — just do it.
- When I’m getting a request that is not urgent and important for me — I defer it.
- Reach inbox zero — every day.
- When commuting — listen to self development audiobooks.
- Every day eat at least 5 kinds of vegetables/fruits
- Avoid bread (I’m still struggling this one…)
- Walk outside everyday.
- Long walks (at least 1 hour) 3 times a week while listening to audiobooks.
- Use stairs instead of elevators.
- Every Friday call my parents.
- Every week schedule and meet a friend for coffee/beer.
- Say ”I love you” at least once a day.
- Go to bed before 23:00 (work in progress…)
- Before going to bed, decide what will I accomplish tomorrow.
In the future posts we will discuss how to create new habits, and what habits should you adopt (or at least why I choose mine).
More from the Personal OS:
- When you take the compound effect into your daily habits, tiny gains can result with huge life improvement over time — The Personal OS — The Power of 1%
- A formula for building new habits. Understanding how habits works and how can we build new ones by attaching them to existing triggers in our life — The Personal OS — Building habits, Teaching an old dog new tricks
- A repository of habit triggers and actions to inspire you for your new habits based on the habit formula — The Personal OS — The Habit Repository
