Rules and Habits for a better life

Hi there! šŸ‘‹

Iā€™ve written down this page in order to share my experience in regards to some rules and habits Iā€™ve been following for quite some time now that have improved my productivity, health, wellbeing and overall happiness. I hope you find some of them interesting and I encourage you to start adding at least some of them to your life.

āœ… Success is the product of daily habitsā€”not once-in-a-lifetime 
transformations.

The List

  • Wake up early.
    • Make your bed.
    • Set a bedtime.
  • Itā€™s better to be an hour early than a minute late.
  • Eat healthy.
    • Drink a lot of water.
    • Eat at least 2 fruits every day.
    • Avoid overindulge.
    • Avoid alcohol.
    • If youā€™re new to the world of nutrition and you want to lose, maintain or gain weight, I recommend you get familiar with MyFitnessPal app. Here is an article explaining how to use it.
  • Exercise your body.
    • Find an exercise you like and add it as one of your daily goals.
  • Exercise your mind.
    • Read for at least 15 minutes every day.
    • Make a list of monthly learnings.
    • Study topics of your interest.
    • Always stay a student.
  • Use a note taking app to write down and organize your thoughts.
  • Small habits donā€™t add up. They compound.
  • Read an article about your industry every day.
    • Put your new learnings to practice. In theory, theory and practice are the same.Ā In practice, they are not. ~ AE.
  • Be organized.
    • Create monthly lists with your todo lists for everyday.
    • On Sundays, prepare the todo lists for each day of the upcoming week.
    • Break down big tasks into smaller subtasks.
    • Set goals for years, months, and weeks.
    • Use a password manager to forget completely about passwords.
  • Avoid distractions.
  • Be gentle.
  • Control your cashflow.
    • Invest your money. Use compound interest in your favor.
    • Donā€™t put all your eggs in the same basket.
    • Be frugal.
    • Know where you are spending your money and ask why.
    • Donā€™t let lifestyle inflation overtake you.
  • Donā€™t wait until later, do the thing now.
    • If a task takes less than 2 minutes, do it right away.
    • Start today ā€” not tomorrow.
    • Stop looking for shortcuts. Do the work.
    • Putting off an easy thing makes it hard, and putting off a hard one makes it impossible.
  • Have strong opinions, weakly held.
  • Perform a health screening with a doctor once per year.
  • Walk at least 10.000 steps every day.

    But I donā€™t have time you say.Ā Sure you do. Get up earlier. Take your phone calls outside, as I try to do. Do walking meetings instead of sitting ones. Do a couple laps around the parking lot before you go inside. Donā€™t call an Uber, walk there instead. ~ Link

  • Have daily goals and follow them.
    • Update them on a monthly basis if needed.
  • Remember: Nobody is thinking about you. Theyā€™re too busy thinking about themselves.
  • Have hobbies unrelated to your job.
  • Working on a side-project related to your job will give you A LOT of useful insights.
  • Lighten up. Relax. Whatever it is, youā€™re probably taking it too seriously.
  • A quitter never wins and a winner never quits.
    • There is no failure unless you quit!
  • Be punctual.
  • Do your own research.
    • Demand evidence and think critically.
  • Automate as many tasks as possible.
  • Believe in yourself.
    • You can do it, you just need to be consistent.
  • Time is the only limited resource you can control. Donā€™t waste it.
  • The Boy Scouts rule: Leave the campground cleaner than you found it.
    • This rule should be applied in all aspects of your life.
    • Every time you leave a room, clean it and leave it ready for the next time you will go there.
  • Travel, seek different ways of doing the same thing.
  • Engage in social activities with the people you like the most.
  • Eat the frog.
    • Most people overestimate what they can get done in a year and underestimate what they can do in a decade.
  • Be always in human-sponge mode.
    • See what you can learn from every person you meetā€”even people you donā€™t like.
    • Copy your mentors, until you become one of theirs.
  • Aim for small consistent wins over long periods of time.
  • In order to get better, you must feel uncomfortable.
    • This is a fundamental truth about any sort of practice: if you never push yourself beyond your comfort zone, you will never improve.
  • Visualize yourself completing your goals.
  • Focus on what is important.
  • Donā€™t be afraid to fail.
    • In order to get better you must fail repeatedly.
    • Just remember to get up when you fall.
    • Pros are just amateurs who know how to gracefully recover from their mistakes.
  • Donā€™t wait for things to happen. Make them happen.
  • Donā€™t break the chain.
    • Use a Habit Tracker app.
    • Never miss twice. Never skip the thing youā€™re trying to accomplish two days in a row.
    • Skipping a good habit for a second day in a row is the beginning of a bad habit.
    • Itā€™s better to do less than you hoped than to do nothing at all.
  • Luck is just one of the byproducts of those who take the most action.
    • The harder I work, the luckier I get.
  • Keep earning your title, or it expires.
  • Complete your Habit Scorecard at least once a year.
    • The first step to changing bad habits is to be on the lookout for them.
  • Mastery requires practice.
    • The only way to become excellent is to be endlessly fascinated by doing the same thing over and over.
    • Deliberate practice + Habits = Mastery.


If youā€™re interested in follow-up reading related to this article, I recommend you take a look at these books:



Thanks for reading and in case you want to reach me, you can shoot me an email to manuherrera8@gmail.com. Iā€™ll be happy to answer šŸ˜.

See you next time! šŸ‘‹

Rules and Habits for a better life | manu.show
Tags: productivity
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