Some Golden Behaviours with a Massive Return on Life
Good habits can change your life. Better habits can improve your life. Lifelong routines impact everything. If you focus on changing or cultivating keystone habits, you can cause widespread shifts. However, identifying keystone habits is tricky. To find them, you have to know where to look. Detecting keystone habits means searching out certain characteristics. Keystone habits offer what is known within academic literature as ‘small wins’. They help other habits to flourish by creating new structures, and they establish cultures where change becomes contagious. Here are some suggestions from my experience.
- Catch the early morning sunlight. Catching the early morning sun light,even just for 15 minutes, when the sun is low in the horizon, is the best thing you can do for your brain health, circadian rhythm, sleep, hormones, mood and many more things.
- Write things down. Don’t try to remember everything.
- Begin your day with the end in mind — focus on a few high-priority tasks at a time.
- Make daily walking a must-have habit — your mental clarity depends on it.
- Meditate – even if for 5 minutes.
- First 8 hours of the day are the most productive time. Don’t waste them doing low value tasks.
- Work on tasks that get you closer to your bigger goal.
- Eat your last meal at least couple of hours before sleep.
- Go to bed at around the same time every night.
- Take warm water shower in the evening before going to bed.
- Get off all screens and devices at least an hour before bed time.
- Practice the one-tab rule — use a single browser tab when you are working. It minimizes web distractions so you can stay on a single task.
- Recover from work stress by scheduling quality breaks or fun habits between focused work sessions.
- Write a gratitude diary.
- Plan your day the night before, including the clothes you want to wear and your To do list
- Master the habit of task elimination to reduce your time on unnecessary work.
- Take time out for breathing exercises.
- Practise mindful eating.
- Declutter your immediate workspace before you start focused work — distractions can ruin deep work.
- Disable notifications on your phone.
