Habits. Pretty much all of the comments here boil down to habits.
Sleep, diet, exercise, attention, focus, productivity, knowledge, workflow, socializing -- anything we do repeatedly is a habit. Right now, in each and every moment, we are all the average/sum of the daily habits of the past few years.
So, the "level" we achieve in each domain is a lagging indicator of our habits; fat stores up over time, dirty dishes stack up, lack of knowledge is the result of lack of learning habits, etc.
If you make weekly improvements to your habits, that means small changes are sticking each week. While 1% better doesn't seem to matter much in the short run, if you stack 1% every week, in one year you're now 50% better in your routines.
How to do so? Here are some ideas:
-Make the bad habits harder to do. Keep the snacks, games, distractions out of reach, so you have to expend extra effort to get to them. You want high-effort barriers to beginning bad habits.
-Make good habits easier to do. Prepare yourself for workouts in advance. Commit yourself to things that will be helpful. use daily streaks, motivation, positive thinking, and imagination to encourage your good habits.
For more information, check out James Clear + Sam Harris' conversation on the Making Sense podcast (or the Waking Up app).
This is an amazing piece of advice. At the risk of sounding cliche, I would still like to recommend The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. The basic premise of the book is this: The Habit loop is a neurological pattern that governs any habit. It consists of three elements: a cue, a routine, and a reward. Understanding these components can help in understanding how to change bad habits or form good ones.
Alternately, I found Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg to be more actionable and was able to stick a number of new habits using the recommendations from the book.
What new habits have you picked up? I've picked up a few handy ones, but I am running out of ideas, and some were very 'fragile' in that a shift in routine (e.g. a vacation) completely broke the new habit.
Sleep, diet, exercise, attention, focus, productivity, knowledge, workflow, socializing -- anything we do repeatedly is a habit. Right now, in each and every moment, we are all the average/sum of the daily habits of the past few years.
So, the "level" we achieve in each domain is a lagging indicator of our habits; fat stores up over time, dirty dishes stack up, lack of knowledge is the result of lack of learning habits, etc.
If you make weekly improvements to your habits, that means small changes are sticking each week. While 1% better doesn't seem to matter much in the short run, if you stack 1% every week, in one year you're now 50% better in your routines.
How to do so? Here are some ideas:
-Make the bad habits harder to do. Keep the snacks, games, distractions out of reach, so you have to expend extra effort to get to them. You want high-effort barriers to beginning bad habits.
-Make good habits easier to do. Prepare yourself for workouts in advance. Commit yourself to things that will be helpful. use daily streaks, motivation, positive thinking, and imagination to encourage your good habits.
For more information, check out James Clear + Sam Harris' conversation on the Making Sense podcast (or the Waking Up app).