Ever heard of the 5 a.m. club by Robin Sharma? Or seen viral videos of people waking up at 4 a.m. and sharing their routine? I have, and I got a little obsessed with trying it out. But through a lot of trial and error with my morning routine, I learned some important lessons: Evening…
This phrase changed the way I think about habits. It comes from James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits (I recommend his book!). He said this in a talk he gave (click here to watch). The principle is this: For any habit, every rep you do is a vote for the person you want to…
Retention of lessons from a motivational talk, a YouTube video, or a book is hard to do. Why? Because YouTube encourages watching one video after another with its autoplay feature. It also had a sidebar with endless enticing videos. That doesn’t promote a good attention span or focus. And books we read are usually shelved…
In my quest to develop habits, I realized this very important lesson. If I read a good book every day, time is my friend because my knowledge builds in a positive direction. Time passing becomes a good thing. If I decide not to exercise consistently, time works against me, and my progress from the gym…
I started using an app called Focusmate in September 2021, and it’s been a game-changer. I tell my friends and family about it and why I’m a proponent of it. I discovered the app during a long struggle to establish habits. I especially wanted to get up early and exercise before work, but I failed…
When I think of motivation, I think of something I don’t want to do, and that definition doesn’t serve me because I make little progress on my task. But I find splitting the concept into intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is very helpful. Extrinsic motivation is action toward an external reward or an ulterior motive. For…
In life, we have goals: get physically fit, declutter and organize our home, learn a new language, meditate regularly. But these feel like mountains to climb because time and commitment are required. And that’s where procrastination hits us. Going to the gym makes us uncomfortable, so we look at Instagram instead. “Declutter the whole house?…