7 Simple Daily Actions That Will Make You Happier and More Productive

Happiness and productivity are birds of a feather. When you’re happy, you’re more productive, and when you’re more productive you’re happier. Like all things in life we have overcomplicated the shit out of this.

1. GRATITUDE

If you don’t appreciate what you have now, you’ll never appreciate what you get later- Tim Ferriss

For a while I thought the idea of gratitude was a bunch of hokey new age bullshit perpetuated by new age people getting high off of crystals and candles. It turns out there’s scientific evidence for the fact that gratitude makes you a happier person. In his book The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor talks about something called the positive Tetris effect. When people played the game Tetris for an extended period of time, they started seeing Tetris shapes everywhere. One addict confessed to seeing them while walking down the cereal aisle of the grocery store. What does this have to do with gratitude?We start to notice the things we look for on a consistent basis. According to Shawn Achor

“Just as our brains can be wired in ways that hold us back we can retrain them to scan for the good things in life- to help us see more possibility, to feel more energy and succeed at higher levels.”

By writing down three good things that happen each day we start to prime our brain to notice them. One of the easiest ways to get started with this habit is with The Five Minute Journal.

2. LEVERAGE ACTIVATION ENERGY

In 2013, I wrote an article on Medium about how writing 1000 words a day changed my life. One of the most important things that I talked about in it was the principle of activation energy, again based on Shawn Achor’s work.

Activation energy is rocket fuel for developing new habits.

Put your gratitude journal on your desk or the first place you’d see it in the morning. The less steps there are between you and writing in the journal the more likely you are to do it.

If you want to take this to a more extreme level, here are a few other “hacks” that you can use. (The example below is specifically for developing a writing habit, but the principles can be used for anything).

• Use a tool like Heyfocus or Rescuetime and block all distracting apps and web sites the night before. This way even if temptation strikes you in the morning, it won’t be an option.
• Open up your distraction free writing software before you shut your computer down for the evening. This way when you flip open your laptop, it’s the first thing you’ll see. Again the less steps there are between you and the action you want to take, the more likely you are to take it. Now you don’t even have to click on your writing app to launch it.
• Use an Accelerant: To trick your brain into thinking you’ve already made progress towards a writing goal (i.e. 1000 words), jot down a quote or even a few sentences. According to Shawn’s research the closer your brain perceives you to be towards a goal, the more likely you are to accomplish it. And don’t forget that you can always start with a shitty first sentence.

Understanding activation energy can be used to practice an instrument, exercise, and even develop better eating habits.

3. MEDITATION

“Meditation is not a life hack”- Susan Piver

For a long time I resisted meditation because I thought that it was pointless until I was peaceful as a Zen Bhuddhist. But two conversations on The Unmistakable Creative finally got me into the habit.

In one episode of the podcast, my friend Greg Hartle said that human beings are the only species with the capacity to pause between stimulus and response. The secret to cultivating that capacity? Meditation. After that I was finally sold on the virtues of cultivating a daily meditation habit.

In a Soulful Exploration of Inner Wisdom, author and meditation coach Susan Piver told me that we have to let go of our agenda when we meditate. It finally hit me that if we come to meditation with expectations we get in our own way. Like many habits, if you try to do too much out of the gate, you’ll burn out. Sitting around doing nothing for 15 minutes each day sounded like a nightmare to me.

So I decided to start with 2 minutes each day. Then I worked my way up to 5, and now up to 10. Use activation energy, and put the Calm app on the first page of your iPhone apps. What I learned from conversations with Susan and others is that consistency matters more than length.

If you need a book Susan’s latest one, Start Here Now is a quick read that’s excellent.

No need for a monastery, enchanted garden or any other new age nonsense. Sit down close your eyes and let go of your agenda.

4. WATCH OR READ SOMETHING FUNNY

Even the smallest shots of positivity can give someone a serious competitive edge. — Shawn Achor

When I first read this, I was skeptical. But I decided to give it a try. Besides who doesn’t need an excuse to screw around on Youtube. It turns out a little bit of screwing around on Youtube has some serious benefits.

• Create a Youtube playlist of things that make you laugh. I’d recommend John Oliver, Louis CK and John Stewart.
• Set your browser home page to Funny Or Die.

While these are small bursts of positivity, as Achor says “however trivial their benefits are worth it”

5. BLOCK EMAIL/SOCIAL MEDIA FOR A FEW HOURS

Studies show that spending time on social media, including Facebook can increase loneliness and decrease satisfaction with life. — Kelly McGonigal

Have you ever found yourself mindlessly browsing Facebook and wondered why you were there in the first place? I’ve met some amazing people and made some amazing friends because of social media. But over the years I’ve noticed a pattern.

Someone is always up to something far more epic than I am.

Spending too much time on social media causes us to give into our natural temptation to compare ourselves to other people. We forget that as Paul Jarvis so brilliantly nobody on the internet is living the life you think they are.

There’s also some science to back this up. In his book Leaders Eat Last, Simon Sinek has an entire chapter about the happy chemicals, one of which is dopamine.

Facebook is like a dopamine drug dealer.

Every like, every comment and every share gives you a hit. And the more you get, the more you’ll need to produce the same high. Dopamine is addictive, but the high doesn’t last. When you start measuring the satisfaction and fulfillment of your life through likes and retweets, it’s time for a serious change.

1) Block social media entirely for a few hours each day

2) Disable auto-logins on all your accounts. While this seems like it’s designed to save you time, it actually causes you to waste time. Again what you’re doing here is using activation energy. The more steps there are between you and the action you don’t want to take, the less likely you are to take it.

6. MAKE SOMETHING, WRITE SOMETHING OR TAKE AN ACTION TOWARDS A GOAL

Part of why I started religiously writing 1000 words a day was because I recognized that I had complete control over my behavior, but not necessarily the outcomes.

• I couldn’t control how many people read, retweeted or liked my post.
• I couldn’t control how many comments I received.

All I could control was the act of sitting down and writing. Why does this make you happier? Because it gives you control. Too often we set goals that we don’t really have any control over.

Make a post go viral is a horrible writing goal. Write x # of words is one that you are in complete control of.

A few nights ago I was talking to our team about our growth goals for The Unmistakable Creative. We’ve set some massive goals. If we set goals that are too big and so far off from where we are, it’s easy to give up on them. But if we set ones that we believe we can get to, we’re more than likely to make them happen. This was an important lesson I learned from my friend and mentor Greg Hartle. Once you accomplish the first goal you can reset the bar.

By first limiting the scope of our efforts and watching those efforts have the intended effect, we accumulate the resources knowledge, and confidence to expand the circle, gradually conquering a larger area- Shawn Achor

7. EXERCISE

Of all the things that have drastically increased my happiness, nothing comes close to my love for surfing. Anytime I get out of the water I’m in a much better mood than I was when I got in. I used to hate exercising, but I got addicted to how good I felt after a surf session. I’m no expert in health and fitness , and there have probably been much better posts than this written about the subject. So I’ll keep this simple.

Move everyday.

• Jonathan Fields has said that he actually does all his meetings on walks. Given that sitting is the new smoking, not a bad idea.
• In their new book, Mate, Tucker Max and Geoff Miller talk extensively about the impact of exercise on our mental health.

This is one of those no brainer things. And like most things work your way up to it.

Most of these actions can be incorporated into your life in about 30 minutes a day. All of them have had a profound impact on my life. As you can tell a lot of these ideas were based on my personal insights from Shawn Achor’s book The Happiness Advantage, which I can’t recommend enough. Also if you want to listen to an interview I did with Shawn a while back, click here.

I’m the host and founder of The Unmistakable Creative Podcast. Every Sunday we share the most unmistakable parts of the internet that we have discovered in The Sunday Quiver. Receive our next issue by signing up here.