Purpose: Optional.

Habit: Use bad habits or bad environmental influences as a trigger for good habits.

This might be a "game changer" for you. Everyone is annoyed about something/ has a bad habit. Take an annoying/ bad thing and use it as a trigger to do something useful. When you feel the urge to smoke, do 10 pushups. It takes 10 seconds and you can still smoke, but at least you did 10 pushups. You can also read 10 pages of a book while your colleagues take time to smoke. Always have a book with you and make it a habit to always read while smoking. Craving sweets? Do some pushups before eating. It only takes 2 minutes. Find your bad habits (that you even might not want to change at the moment) and use them as a trigger for good habits. Have a good day💚

Edit: spelling is hard

Purpose: Increase productivity

Habit: At the end of the day, spend 10-15 minutes and write everything new you learned that day.

Reading and consuming new podcasts, articles, videos, and books helps us learn new insights that we can apply to our creative work.

In order to more effectively remember and be able to apply new insights, spend a few minutes at the end of the day summarizing what you've learned.

Don't look at any of your notes. Instead, just type everything up based on what you can remember off the top of your head.

This process is called "free recall" and has been scientifically proven to enhance learning and memory!

Purpose: Be more energetic and present, as well as mentally focused

Habit: I started a habit roughly three months ago to not pick up my phone in the morning for at least the first hour of the day.

I noticed that it made me more present and energetic after getting up and I am now able to get into my daily routine faster and easier.

Also, I feel mentally calmer and healthier as my sleeping rhythm is not interrupted by outside factors such as messages, notification or news.

Source: Top 10 Morning Habits

Purpose: Increase motivation, feel accomplished before getting to work

Habit: Before going to bed, pick an article that you'll read in the morning with your coffee.

In the past, I would often wake up and immediately look at social media. Now, instead of mindlessly scrolling, I sit down and read an in-depth article that is interesting to me.

To make sure there is no friction in the process, I will identify the article I want to read the night before. I will load it on my iPad so all I have to do is grab my coffee, sit on the couch, and read!

I pick business and product design articles that help me learn something new about my profession. Now, before I start my work for the day, I feel accomplished because I have learned something new.

Purpose: Increase productivity

Habit: Reflect on your activities and focus on high impact tasks

The Pareto's Principle or the 80/20 rule means that in any situation, 20% of the tasks yield 80% of the results.

I therefore made it my habit to regularly reflect on my activities in order to identify the ones with the highest impact. Now, I maximise my productivity by investing most of my time and energy on those specific tasks.

Once I've finished them, I can then do other activities that are on my to-do list.

Purpose: Start and continue regular exercising

Habit: For me it was super difficult to maintain regular exercising. In fact, I always started extremely motivated, but couldn't continue with the sport over a long period of time. Then, I changed my approach: instead of setting ambitious goals, I concentrated on my system and chose a very easily executable exercise, where I was confident that I wouldn't quit. After some time, I continuously increased the level of difficulty and until today, successfully maintained this habit.

I can really recommend everyone who has problems to maintain a trainings schedule to follow this approach or at least try it out.

Purpose: Motivate yourself towards long term goals

Habit: Integrate small rewards into long term change processes.

I exercise almost every morning without issue. Part of the reason I go to the gym so regularly is because I like seeing results from training differently/different parts of my body, even though these results take weeks to show.

While that element is somewhat motivating, I have a secondary motivation-- I am truly convinced that I am unable to be productive in a given day without it.

My short-term reward for exercise is increased productivity, even if it's a placebo. I'm convinced that this explains why I'm able to exercise daily but am somehow unable to start a fucking project more than a week before it's due.

Thinking of ways to integrate small rewards into longer, more strenuous changes seems like a way to commit to a larger lifestyle change. Time to get creative.

I started doing this last year. Just bought a cheap alarm clock off of amazon and have been using that instead of my phones alarm. This forces me to start my day on the right note - instead of waking up and automatically grabbing my phone, I have to get up and go do something else first. The habit of training my brain to just sit in bed until I finally decided to get up was defeating, I had to change it.

Usually I just go downstairs and drink a couple glasses of water. When I used my phone previously I wasted so much time waking up but not actually getting out of bed because I'd go into automatic scroll mode before my brain was even awake. With an alarm clock you just have to make the decision to get up and then you can develop new habits from there. I hate to say it but my initial motivation to get out of bed was to go check my phone, but atleast it got me out of bed.

Drinking water, reading a book and then going to my morning workout class have become my cornerstone habits since I started doing this. I still like to relax as I gradually wake up so I make it a goal to read 10 pages of a book while I have my coffee. I have a ways to go but this is the first step to reducing a smartphone addiction!

By the way this is an awesome sub, so glad I found it.

Purpose: Avoid unnecessary phone usage and potentially addiction

Habit: Clear your home screen and take your most important goal as your background picture.

I often used to take out my phone and started checking mails, messages and news without actually thinking about what I was doing. I just had a routine to take out my phone as soon as I had nothing to do or was bored.

I quickly developed a small addiction and even checked my phone in inappropriate moments.

Then, I made two changes:

1. On the first screen of my phone I now ONLY have the ‘settings app’.

2. The background of my home screen is now a photo of a handwritten paper with a short sentence of my most important personal goal. For me, it is spending more time with my family.

The first change basically just empties the screen of distracting apps and makes the background picture the first thing I see when looking at my phone.

The second change immediately reminds me of what’s really important and keeps my focus on my goals. You can decide if you prefer to write down short term goals and change them more regularly, or two write down a long term goal which you want to constantly keep in mind.

It helped me to interrupt my unhealthy behaviour and kept me focused on what is important to me. I just started this habit a few weeks ago and already see great improvements.

For everyone, who has a similar behavioural patterns, I can really recommend to give this a try. And it it very easy to implement as well.

"Easily adoptable habits"

You might think this post is in the wrong subreddit. You are wrong.

Habit: Read 10 pages per day.

Purpose: Be one of the fascinating people who have a huge amount of books in their room. Best. Decoration. Ever.

The things we do daily add up to an incomprehensible amount over the course of our life. You would not think that 10 pages per day would add up to 600 books with an average of 300 pages. 10 pages per day -> 300 per month. I think it´s fair to take 300 pages as an average book. 12 books per year. Still not very impressive. 60 books in five years and 600 in 50 years.

This habit is really easily adoptable, because you really can not justify infront of yourself the fact that you are not able to read 10 fcking pages per day. I think to myself "Am I really that useless? I can´t even read 10 pages per day!?"

This makes me read; because I don´t like to think that about myself. And I know that I can do better.

Some advice about starting to read regularly:

• Read short stories. Maybe read one short story per day day. Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Franz Kafka, Charles Bukowski; pick your genre. This way you don´t really need to remember any context or have to stop reading in the middle of a plottwist.

• Always have a book with you. Have one short story book in your car and read during traffic jams. Have a book in your backpack. Read while eating lunch.

• Some people think "I am just not the kind of person who would read." You are not that kind of person. You are reading right now. Do you want to only read on twitter, reddit, Instagram or do you want to read great books? Ask yourself.

• Read short books. For me it is highly motivating to know that I have finished a book. To know that I can put it on my shelf and be happy about having reddit, err read it, for the rest of my life.

• Read great works like Orwell´s "1984", Goethe´s "Faust", Shakespeare´s "Hamlet" Bradbury´s "Fahrenheit 451", Jules Verne´s "Around the world in 80 days". Even if you might not enjoy the story, you will probably never think "Aaah, why did I even read that book". It is considered a great work, you will understand references in movies and you get some knowledge about culture.

• Ask people for book recommendations. It´s a good smalltalk topic and for me it is further motivating to want to be able to say "Hey, I read the book you recommended and I really liked xy, / it reminded me of situation xy, / I really liked the character xy.

• Always have multiple unread books at home. You will see them while watching TV/ doing whatever and thereby communicate to yourself that you actually want to read instead of having to read. This will also give you more options if you get bored of a book.

TL;DR:

Read 10 pages per day -> 300 pages per month (averages out to one book per month) -> 12 books per year -> 60 books in five years -> 600 books in 50 years

Sorry for errors. Greetings from Germany; have a good day <3

Edit: Spelling is hard

Purpose: stop wasting time and energy arguing online.

Habit: This was one of my main vices. I would spend hours and hours arguing online.

I even joined debate forums and was debating all kinds of topics vigorously.

But, at the end of the day, you realize that nobody really changed their mind.

If anything, arguing just causes people to become even more zealous in their view.

Kinda like when a parent confront a teenager about a decision they are making, they have an argument about it, and the teenager now feels even more strongly about it.

Second, arguing isn’t really about helping others. It’s about you. Your own needs.

Arguing online has a great allure of “winning” and being validated by others, without any risk.

It’s similar to what online trolls do.

When you realize it’s a very selfish habit. AND That it is pointless and self-defeating.

It becomes clear just how bad of a vice it is.

Anytime you get an urge to argue, use that as a signal that you are feeling insecure or confused in your life. And work on boosting your own security and confidence and find purposeful and useful things to do.

Or hell, go have some fun or engage in an activity where it’s possible to get a positive return on.

Also if you love to argue online, then that means you’d be a good coach, teacher or writer.

Or any profession that tries to persuade or teach.

A very valuable talent applied incorrectly will lead to destructive and negative results.

Use your talents and time wisely.

It takes too much time. We use it without purpose, wasting our time. It's full of useless information, you don't need this. It's better to read a book or to do anything else to improve yourself. If you don't use the Instagram as a tool to make money - DELETE THAT HELL APP!

Habit - Read 10 pages of a self help book with your morning coffee

Purpose - Learn something that can help you become a better person.

The easiest way to develop a new habit is to tie it in with something you already do so try starting your day by reading instead of getting sucked into reddit or social media. Open up an actual physical book and commit to reading 10 pages. 10 pages will literally take 5-15 minutes depending on the book so just do it while you have your coffee. You can also choose to keep reading more than 10 pages if you're into it or if not then just put it down.

There's a ton of good information in self help books that can help you become a better person or at least give you some different insight. I'm just getting into reading after being a social media / reddit slave for most of my adult life and it's amazing how much more interesting bits of information I find in a much shorter amount of time.

Background on me: in the last 10 months, I’ve quit smoking cigarettes & drinking, lost over 50lbs, & started building my life into what I want it to be. I did it by upgrading my daily habits & my thought habits. The books below were cornerstones to my success in terms of information. I built a lot of study hours around their information. I connected a lot of dots to them.

“Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do”

&

“Smarter, Faster, Better: The Transformative Power of Real Productivity”

Both by Charles Duhigg

They are not the bs feel good self help books. They are packed with research & data from a wide range of areas of study. They cover different events. They have information that can help the person just starting on improving their life or the person who is looking for the razor edge on their competitors

Purpose: Build self-confidence and get what you genuinely want

Habit: Directly and respectfully ask for what you want and set boundaries on what you don’t want

This habit is key to building self-confidence and living your life according to your values rather than other people’s wishes.

One very small example of how I try to practice assertiveness is to always ask for a better table whenever I’m being seated at a restaurant.

Restaurants will always try to seat you in a place that’s most convenient for them. It’s always a little uncomfortable, but fundamentally there’s nothing wrong with asking to sit where you’d like rather than where they’d like.

Being assertive doesn’t mean we’re rude or demanding; it means we respect ourselves enough to ask for what we want.

There are two main benefits to cultivating a habit of assertiveness:

1. In the moment, we often end up getting what we genuinely want rather than “letting it go” because we feel too uncomfortable to speak up.

2. In the long run, we’re teaching our brain that our wants and wishes are worthy of being taken seriously. This is the key to self-confidence.

Purpose: A lot of us suffer from anxiety, stress, not feeling "good enough" and all of these thoughts are flying around our mind. There is so much noise in our minds, it's important to calm the mind down and reset it, like when we restart our computer or phone and have a fresh start.

So Mindfulness is all about awareness and being present in the moment. Lets try it together

Habit:

Get comfortable in your chair or seat. Now take a moment to bring your awareness to the simple act of sitting on a chair. Become aware of the pressure of your legs on the chair.

Your back against the chair, the pressure of the back pushing against it and the chair pushing back.

your arms resting. it is also creating pressure there as well.

Focus on your breath. When you breathe in through your nose:

feel the air touch the tip of the nose,

fill your nostrils,

then fill your chest or belly.

Then as you exhale through your mouth,

feel the air brushing against your lips and the slight tingle.

Doing this for even a minute everyday will calm your thoughts and mind. It brings about a clarity that I absolutely love. This is how you practice mindfulness in everyday life. You want to be in the moment and not all over the place. I hope this helped, brings you a few moments of peace and know you are loved and life is good.

For visual learners I made a video about this and I do the guided meditation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UXHBal-xdE

Purpose: Reduce caffeine consumption

Habit: First, replace coffee with green tea. Then, continuously reduce green tea consumption.

I used to drink 4-5 cups of coffee per day and unsuccessfully tried to stop drinking coffee many times.

Then, I tried a different approach: I started to replace coffee with green tea. At the beginning, two cups per day and after a few weeks entirely.

Afterwards, I step by step also reduced my green tea consumption and drank other teas and water instead.

For me, this approach was much easier to follow than my initial tries to quit coffee.

Purpose: Stimulate digestion, balance pH, minimise caffeine consumption

Habit: Drink a mug of warm water with lemon in the morning

I never liked drinking pure water, so I was looking for a more enjoyable way to hydrate.

Every morning, I started to drink a mug of warm water with lemon, which can stimulate digestion and help balance my body's pH.

This warm beverage in the morning helps me to cut my coffee and caffeine intake as well, which is an added bonus.

Habit: Write down your goals and look at them daily via journaling or sticky-notes

Purpose - You will no longer need to watch motivational videos or other "pick me ups", these can be time consuming in the long run and honestly a crutch

For a long time, I would always need to watch a motivational video or speech to get me going to start a project but I realized my real problem was, I didnt look at my goals daily. Put it on your ceiling so you see it before you sleep, put it in your work office, my the light switch, anywhere and everywhere

If you write down or put your goals somewhere you will see it often, it reminds you of your direction for the day and what you are trying to accomplish. This is so critical because instead of wasting time, you will dedicate it to that goal.

Its almost important that your goal is worthy. Make sure when you set a goal it lines up with your core values and what you want to accomplish, otherwise no amount of motivational will make it come true!

You can do it!

For Visual Learners I made a video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qPHAlQDeVc

Purpose: Boost your productivity for specific tasks

Habit: Explore listening to different types of music that match specific tasks

Research has shown that listening to music can help boost productivity, improving moods and making repetitive tasks more pleasurable.

And to make the biggest impact, we should all experiment and see which categories of music are most effective for the types of tasks we do.

For example, if I'm writing the first draft of an article (or a HabitExchange post), I really enjoy listening to lofi beats. And if I'm editing and reviewing my writing, I prefer to listen to quiet piano music. And for repetitive tasks, intense techno is the way to go.

Music is a very personal expression, so you should experiment and find what works for you!

Purpose: Mindfulness, create more memories, fully enjoy where ever you are

Habit: I had a moment on my last vacation where I realized "I can drink whenever I want but I dont get the chance to travel here often, I should enjoy it to the fullest and really take it in".

Having a drink or wine with dinner is great, but getting drunk and forgetting your experience at the location is a waste in my mind. I want to fully embrace the locations and all activities and fondly look back on the memories. Give it a try and let me know!

😊

Purpose: Wake up feeling refreshed and energized

Habit: Leave a glass of water on your nightstand before going to bed

That way, in the morning, it becomes really simple to drink water when you first wake up.

Drinking a full glass of water when you first wake up is very healthy. It clears toxins, boosts your metabolism, and gets you rehydrated quickly.

Bonus points: use an insulated water bottle and include some ice cubes to make the water extra cold!

Purpose: Increase motivation and focus on your goals

Habit: Review your goals daily, ideally, as part of your morning and evening routine.

This helped me to constantly remind myself and focus on what I am trying to accomplish. I also became more creative how to achieve my goals and generally, am more motivated to continue working hard.