On morning and habit
The first thing that I do after I snooze my alarm is to open this app called Today and put a check mark on my “Wake up before sunrise” habit. Today is a habit tracking app that I stumbled upon a couple of weeks ago.
Within Today, I can create habits and set when, how often I want to do these habits, and choose a picture accompanying each habit that I feel can help me stay motivated to do the habit.
The idea is, every time I complete a particular habit, I will open the app, tap the habit, and the app will keep track when I complete that particular habit. The app has a calendar feature that highlights when you complete the habit and increment the streak count every time you complete a habit a couple days in a row.
Every morning, I review what are the habits that I need to complete that day and this set the tone for my day.
And by induction, this supposed to set the tone for my entire life.
I come to believe that habits are what defines a person.
I believe that if you want to have a good life and be successful, all you need are good habits.
Having habits that force you to consistently move toward your goal is what gets you to your goal. It is so obvious conceptually, I always knew this especially after reading books like The power of Habits and Deep Work. I am able to reason why this concept is true, I can cite advice from these books about the benefit of having a good habit but in all honesty, I never fully implement these concepts to my life, until now.
I want to be clear that it is not my intention to lecture you on how to have a good life. My intention for this writing is simply to reflect upon my experience on having my habits neatly journaled and how it benefitting me.
There is a number of habits that I have been successfuly and not so successfully execute this past couple of weeks.
Let me start with the successful ones and I will tell you how it has benefited me.
1. Meditating every day
I have been meditating on and off for 10 months. But, up until this writing, I have been able to maintain a run streak of 115 days of meditating at least once a day. I know that I am a much better person now when compared to me 115 days ago. I’m getting much better at controlling my stress, my anxiety, and my emotions in general. And most importantly now I understand what being “present” really means and I can use this new understanding to enjoy my existence a little bit better.
2. Wake up before sunrise every weekday
Since I started this habit on November 3rd I only missed it twice, on November 15th and November 20th. I missed the November 15th by only 12 minutes and I missed the November 20th because my phone is low on power and is not charging, thus the alarm was not ringing. Waking up early gives me the sense that I have enough time to do all the stuff that I want to do in a day while not being stressed all the time because I don’t have enough time.
3. Learn machine learning every weekday
I started this habit on November 3rd and never missed a day. I always wanted to do work in Machine Learning (ML). I know that I am still a total noob. But just like that League of Legends ad said, “being bad is the first step of being not bad”. By constantly being less bad by just a little bit every day through this awesome course from Udacity, now I am much more confident in my understanding of ML and hopefully be able to put it into a good use soon.
4. Apply to 5 companies every day
This habit started on November 9th and I have only missed it once. Since then I have been applying for 80 different positions. And surprise, surprise, since then I get a lot more response and interviews. Who would’ve thought that applying to more jobs gets you more interviews? Hopefully, I will get a job soon. Finger crossed!
5. Do one algorithm problem every weekday
I started this habit on November 9th and I haven’t missed a day. I can say my ability to solve algorithms problem is getting a bit better each day. You can check my GitHub to see what kind of problems that I’ve been solving.
6. Not eating out
Unless somebody else paid for the food, I have not eaten out since November 14th. I introduce this habit just to see whether I can be more financially discipline by cutting the most expensive expense: Food. It’s been 13 days since I started this habit, and it’s still going strong.
7. Writing for Sapu Lidi every Sunday
I decided to sign up for this idea of writing weekly to improve my writing skill and also to know my self a bit better.
Writing is the window to the soul.
This habit just started last Sunday and hopefully, I can continue to deliver in the weeks to come.
Not all habit that I started has a good rate of completion. One of the habits that I failed to execute successfully is:
1. Having a conversation with one new person every single day
I started to log this habit on November 10th and so far has only completed 6 days out of 16 days. I started this habit in the hopes that I can get out of my comfort zone and be braver to come up to a random person and start a little conversation with them. Go talk with that cute person in the corner, or talk with that random strangers with a killer pants, whatever. Sometimes I failed to do this simply because I already went home and thus cannot find random people to talk to or sometimes because I am just afraid. Hopefully, I can fix this problem this week.
Surprisingly, there are habits that I think has a substantial effect on me even though I just started doing them in a more consistent manner about 2 or 3 weeks ago. What’s beautiful is that every time I try to complete that habit, it doesn’t feel heavy or impossible. If anything, once I complete that habit it makes me feel great.
To see the list of the habit that I need to complete every morning and review what I did or did not complete every night gives me a full awareness of what I accomplished and what should be improved. It gives me a sense of progress in things that I care about. It pushes me to keep doing what I’ve been doing since I don’t want to break the momentum.
