This episode covers everything I've learned about upgrading my habits to improve my life. Here's a brief summary of the points covered:
- Habits are the most important demonstration of your character: you are what you do repetitively.
- By consciously upgrading your habits, you have an opportunity to implement your vision of who you want to be, in your day-to-day life.
- Habits are powerful because steady persistence always beats the mad dash.
- Habits dramatically reduce the amount of willpower and brainpower required to get things done. Once you have implemented a habit and can do it on autopilot, you conserve willpower and brainpower, helping you get more done.
- Habits are easiest to adopt when they are simple to understand, when you minimise any friction at the start of the action, when there are clear environmental triggers that tell your unconscious to start the habit, and when you have feedback (rewards) for completion.
- I recommend the use of a habit tracking app like lift.do. In the podcast, I provide some examples of habits that I am currently working on and describe how I use this app to help me implement them.
- The episode covers the best books to read more about habits (listed in the show notes below) and I talk about many of the tips that I've gathered from these resources.
- Previous episodes on productivity
- Interview with Augusto Pinaud
- Lift Habit Tracking App
- Interview with Lift CEO Tony Stubblebine
- The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work by Shawn Achor
- The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
- Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by Roy F. Baumeister
- Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind) edited by Jocelyn K. Glei
- Photo credit: Todd Quackenbush