12 Habits
Look at this! There’s a guy out there right now, and he’s jogging in the pouring rain. You got this dude! The most frustrating thing about building habits and about self-development, in general, is the idea that inspiration doesn’t always correlate to change. So it doesn’t matter how motivated or inspired that you are. It doesn’t mean that you’re actually going to do something about it. It doesn’t mean that you’re actually, actually gonna change your life. So I wanted to talk about why you should start thinking long-term and stop trying to change everything about your life in a day.
I enter most things in life with a pinch of skepticism. That’s especially true of self-help. I remember the first time I listened to my bootleg copy of Tony Robbins Awaken the Giant Within Recording: I respect you as the kind of person who wants to change the quality of your life, and you’re committed to doing something about it Me: So stupid.
I got hooked on self-help. It’s not all good, most of it is corny, but I almost always finish the books feeling inspired and ready to change everything about me. The problem is I tried to take on too much at once. I try to build six habits at the exact same time and that approach would always fail. Then I started to view habit change as a series of experiments. I’d commit to going to the gym for 30 days straight or I’d read a book every week for a year. Some were more extreme than others. They didn’t always stick but my success ratio skyrocketed and they always pushed me to learn something new about myself.
So this year to try to learn more but also to make myself feel very uncomfortable I’m gonna be doing 12 30-day experiments. Some of those experiments will include quitting caffeine. As a daily coffee drinker for the last five years, I’ve been dreading this one but I know that it’ll be healthy to take a little bit of a break. Cold showers for 30 days. I’ve taken many cold showers in the past but I’ve never committed to doing it for this long and it makes me very nervous. I’ve already started this month by quitting sugar.
I want to encourage you guys to do this with me. Now you don’t have to do every single one. I understand that our lives are very busy and to take on some of these would be asking a lot but if there are ones that appeal to you, if there are ones that excite you, or if there are ones that you find scare the crap out of you — like the cold showers — then I encourage you to do them along with me because together we can learn a lot.
All right, so I completely understand that you might not want to develop the same exact habits that I’m building. You look at the cold showers and you’re scared. You’re a little b**ch! That’s rude. I can’t say that I shouldn’t call you a b**ch…but you’re being a b**ch. But no okay if you actually don’t want to do it, that’s fine. That’s why I’ve actually come up with a list of 12 habits that you might want to build instead. So these are the twelve habits that I’ve built that have had the greatest impact on my life and that might help you.
Exercise every day. Set a minimum amount of time to work out every day that you can actually follow through with. Everyone can set aside ten to fifteen minutes to go for a jog, do a few push-ups or sit-ups.
Eat more veggies. Most days I make smoothies to get more veggies into my diet. Even adding more veggies to one meal a day can make a big difference.
Read every day. Listen to an audiobook or do some light reading before bed. You don’t have to read a book every week. But the dense content you get from books is unlike any other medium.
Drink more water. The common recommendation is to drink 64 ounces or 2 liters of water per day.
Stop buying new stuff. You can learn a lot by stopping purchases for even 30 days. You’ll break that habit loop of buying for the dopamine hit or as a distraction mechanism. You’ll also likely save a lot of money.
Meditate. I’ll be honest, I don’t meditate much, but it’s been a habit that I valued in the past. Sam Harris has a meditation app called Waking Up which I’d recommend checking out.
Build a morning or nighttime routine This is a little bit more advanced but it’s a keystone habit. You’re developing one habit that’s connected to many others. What are three things that you can do every morning or night that will increase the quality of your life? Work on a passion project. Take 30 minutes to write for your blog, start learning photography, or even learn an instrument. Sometimes we get so focused on achievement that we’re not focused on things that we actually enjoy or love.
Declutter. Spend the month downsizing and cleaning out your junk drawers. The Minimalist created an effective game called the minimalism game. In it you get rid of one thing on the first day, two things on the second day, three things on the third day all the way to date.You end up getting rid of a lot of stuff.
Journal. A daily journal can help you catch negative patterns or get a clearer vision of your goals. I’ve carried one on and off for years and the act of getting my thoughts down has helped me a lot.
Wake up early. I wasn’t always an early riser. I used to spend late nights working to get projects finished at the last minute. But waking up early has helped me avoid procrastination and spend time with family and friends after 5:00 p.m.
Quit social media. I made a video last year about my 30-day social media detox. That change continues to save me time every day and helps me avoid falling into the comparison trap that I often find on Instagram and apps like it.
So you can scale up the difficulty of these habits. You can scale them down if you want to do 5 minutes or 60 minutes for your exercise every day. Have at it and come up with one that fits best with your life. I usually recommend starting small. Keep it nice and easy. Five minutes is great because most of the time we don’t do 5 minutes. We say hey, I’m gonna sit down and work for 5 minutes, set a timer, you’re usually gonna work for way longer. So don’t be so ambitious that you completely destroy the entire process.
