I know it might sound cliche but walking is an easy habit to start and keep up with. I tend to walk when I get stuck on a problem and try to distract my mind with something else. Usually this turns into my subconscious working through the problem until I get an idea to try out.
The health benefits are very nice too if you’re just starting out. There are diminishing returns as your body gets used to it.
15 minutes in the morning/afternoon is my usually habit while at work. But on particularly tough days or just ones with nice weather I’d go for much longer walks.
It’s nice to explore the spaces around you when on these walks. You’ll end up discovering more of your surroundings than you’d ever expect. One nice benefit I’ve found is that I can do a 35ish minute walk to the movie theater I’d normally drive to. Doing this lets me just go see a movie on a whim, eat at one of the many restaurants near it. Maybe get a little drunk and be able to walk off a meal/buzz on the way back. I’ve had many epiphanies in this state of mind. You’ll just be a more relaxed individual if you adopted this.
To curb your craving for unhealthy food or beverage, including alcohol, stare at the item for three minutes. Mediate on it. Allow yourself to be fully present before it. This trains you not to automatically give in to your unhealthy craving. Before long, you will realize that you "can" choose not to eat or drink it.
Never thought about that. I do that for shopping. I have a rule of "not today, but if I remember in 3 weeks" (no wishlisting). I should do something like this for sugar.
Aggressively shutting down distractions. Now my phone charges in a drawer in the other room, and it’s in focus mode most of the time. I don’t get emails on my phone. I barely get any emails anyway. I stay logged out of websites. I use ad blockers to hide feeds.
With every step I became a little more focused, and not just on work.
Think of all activities as repeated cycles, and consider the last step of every cycle to be resetting / restocking / refilling / setting up / preparing for the next cycle. (As opposed to how most people think of it: beginning activities by doing the initial set-up.)
This has at least two benefits. First, it ensures follow-through (completion of what most people consider to be the last action). And second, it lowers the activation energy to start the next cycle.
Examples:
- "You kill it, you fill it." When I make a cup of instant coffee and then the electric kettle is almost empty, I refill the kettle and start heating the water again before I grab my cup and return to my home office. As a result, the kettle is always full of hot water when I go back for another cup, and I don't have to go through the aggravation of refilling it and waiting around for it to heat up before I grab my next cup. (And refilling at the end is easier because I've already started doing the activity.)
- Putting a new roll of toilet paper on the spindle. Likewise, if the replacement roll is the last one under the sink, restocking rolls under the sink after finishing in the bathroom. And if the package of rolls is almost empty after I restock the rolls under the sink, I immediately add TP to my grocery list.
- Clearing my desk at the end of the work day and setting up my initial work materials for the morning.
---
Another simple but great habit: using take-off and landing points at key places around the house to optimize in-home logistics and to avoid losing or spending time searching for things. I wrote about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41220059
Pair with the evergreen "A place for everything, and everything in its place."
I'll add that any home workout equipment is one of the best investments an individual can make. A set of adjustable dumbbells and a bench has transformed by body and made me develop a love for strength training. All without the hardest part of the gym (for me at least) - going.
Reading. I've never been a huge reader and mainly read non-fiction. I started listening to audiobooks while I walked and that got me interested in books more. Then got a Kindle and started reading more.
From there just got more and more into reading. For some reason I thought you could only read 1 book at a time but that's not true at all. I will have a few on the go at anytime. Just going to the library to sit and read is a nice break from everything. I have so many books I want to read now.
Instead of asking “what can I add”, to solve a problem, I will ask, “what can I take away”.
This plays out in all areas of my life.
At home there might be a cluttered area. Most people would buy a shelf, maybe head to the Container Store, and try or organize it. I tend to get rid of it. This removes the clutter and opens up a new area of the home with new possibilities.
At work when something goes wrong there is a whole call full of people suggesting on additional process, approvals, etc to add so it doesn’t happen again. I’m often the lone voice asking if we need to do the thing at all. If we stop doing it, it won’t break again and there is less work, not more. Everybody wins.
This is summed up in this quote I quite like.
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
When I was younger I used to hate on popular things and be that guy who is like "how can anyone like this, this is objectively bad" (for example pop music)
But I started a habit of re-framing it instead like "well if you don't understand why people like something, that is your own failure to understand human behaviour and culture, if you were smarter you would understand why its popular"
That habit of re-framing stuff like that made me look at things a lot more like a neutral observer/anthropologist and not be such a hater
To tack on to this, a thing my partner taught me: a shortcut to calling someone stupid is calling something they love stupid.
Trying to understand why they like that thing is a more connective and productive path. Maybe at the end of it you end up more informed and still don’t like the thing, but for me often times it turned a knee jerk “that thing is dumb” into a thing I love with people who also love that thing. What a great life hack.
I know it might sound cliche but walking is an easy habit to start and keep up with. I tend to walk when I get stuck on a problem and try to distract my mind with something else. Usually this turns into my subconscious working through the problem until I get an idea to try out.
The health benefits are very nice too if you’re just starting out. There are diminishing returns as your body gets used to it.
15 minutes in the morning/afternoon is my usually habit while at work. But on particularly tough days or just ones with nice weather I’d go for much longer walks.
It’s nice to explore the spaces around you when on these walks. You’ll end up discovering more of your surroundings than you’d ever expect. One nice benefit I’ve found is that I can do a 35ish minute walk to the movie theater I’d normally drive to. Doing this lets me just go see a movie on a whim, eat at one of the many restaurants near it. Maybe get a little drunk and be able to walk off a meal/buzz on the way back. I’ve had many epiphanies in this state of mind. You’ll just be a more relaxed individual if you adopted this.
To curb your craving for unhealthy food or beverage, including alcohol, stare at the item for three minutes. Mediate on it. Allow yourself to be fully present before it. This trains you not to automatically give in to your unhealthy craving. Before long, you will realize that you "can" choose not to eat or drink it.
Never thought about that. I do that for shopping. I have a rule of "not today, but if I remember in 3 weeks" (no wishlisting). I should do something like this for sugar.
Aggressively shutting down distractions. Now my phone charges in a drawer in the other room, and it’s in focus mode most of the time. I don’t get emails on my phone. I barely get any emails anyway. I stay logged out of websites. I use ad blockers to hide feeds.
With every step I became a little more focused, and not just on work.
Think of all activities as repeated cycles, and consider the last step of every cycle to be resetting / restocking / refilling / setting up / preparing for the next cycle. (As opposed to how most people think of it: beginning activities by doing the initial set-up.)
This has at least two benefits. First, it ensures follow-through (completion of what most people consider to be the last action). And second, it lowers the activation energy to start the next cycle.
Examples:
- "You kill it, you fill it." When I make a cup of instant coffee and then the electric kettle is almost empty, I refill the kettle and start heating the water again before I grab my cup and return to my home office. As a result, the kettle is always full of hot water when I go back for another cup, and I don't have to go through the aggravation of refilling it and waiting around for it to heat up before I grab my next cup. (And refilling at the end is easier because I've already started doing the activity.)
- Putting a new roll of toilet paper on the spindle. Likewise, if the replacement roll is the last one under the sink, restocking rolls under the sink after finishing in the bathroom. And if the package of rolls is almost empty after I restock the rolls under the sink, I immediately add TP to my grocery list.
- Clearing my desk at the end of the work day and setting up my initial work materials for the morning.
---
Another simple but great habit: using take-off and landing points at key places around the house to optimize in-home logistics and to avoid losing or spending time searching for things. I wrote about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41220059
Pair with the evergreen "A place for everything, and everything in its place."
Strength training, along the lines of Starting Strength, 5/3/1 etc.
Pull-up bar and dumbbells in my bedroom. 10 minutes a day, every morning. Wall calendar, marking each day I do my exercises.
Stronger, leaner, fitter, healthier. Been doing this for years. It accumulates over time.
I'll add that any home workout equipment is one of the best investments an individual can make. A set of adjustable dumbbells and a bench has transformed by body and made me develop a love for strength training. All without the hardest part of the gym (for me at least) - going.
What routine do you do? Is it same everyday?
Reading. I've never been a huge reader and mainly read non-fiction. I started listening to audiobooks while I walked and that got me interested in books more. Then got a Kindle and started reading more.
From there just got more and more into reading. For some reason I thought you could only read 1 book at a time but that's not true at all. I will have a few on the go at anytime. Just going to the library to sit and read is a nice break from everything. I have so many books I want to read now.
Have you tried paper books? For reasons I can’t explain, I found they made me read even more.
Instead of asking “what can I add”, to solve a problem, I will ask, “what can I take away”.
This plays out in all areas of my life.
At home there might be a cluttered area. Most people would buy a shelf, maybe head to the Container Store, and try or organize it. I tend to get rid of it. This removes the clutter and opens up a new area of the home with new possibilities.
At work when something goes wrong there is a whole call full of people suggesting on additional process, approvals, etc to add so it doesn’t happen again. I’m often the lone voice asking if we need to do the thing at all. If we stop doing it, it won’t break again and there is less work, not more. Everybody wins.
This is summed up in this quote I quite like.
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Or more simply, “less, but better” —Dieter Rams
When I was younger I used to hate on popular things and be that guy who is like "how can anyone like this, this is objectively bad" (for example pop music)
But I started a habit of re-framing it instead like "well if you don't understand why people like something, that is your own failure to understand human behaviour and culture, if you were smarter you would understand why its popular"
That habit of re-framing stuff like that made me look at things a lot more like a neutral observer/anthropologist and not be such a hater
To tack on to this, a thing my partner taught me: a shortcut to calling someone stupid is calling something they love stupid.
Trying to understand why they like that thing is a more connective and productive path. Maybe at the end of it you end up more informed and still don’t like the thing, but for me often times it turned a knee jerk “that thing is dumb” into a thing I love with people who also love that thing. What a great life hack.
Thanks for that one. Will try this too :-)
Waking up at 5am everyday to walk my puppy because he deserves his walks and it turns out so do I
Short morning self meditation each day where I reflect on my outlook and goals for myself to be about helping other people and being kind.
Pretending I am not an asshole.
i bought a mic and started talking into it and now it's easier to talk in front of an audience than if i had to cold turkey.