deepstash
Beta
Deepstash brings you key ideas from the most inspiring articles like this one:
Read more efficiently
Save what inspires you
Remember anything
Build Better Habits that Actually Stick (with Creative Deliberate Practice)
5
Key Ideas
Save all ideas
Seek practice over immediate gratification
"If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again” is a popular saying but, to count as truly helpful advice, it should say: "If at first you don’t succeed, practice, practice, practice, and then try, try, again”
Building habits is a long-term game, there's no immediate fix.
516 SAVES
813 READS
Practice produces greatness
Some of the greatest artists, innovators, and athletes of all time became great because of their commitment to practice, not their commitment to seeing immediate results.
Kobe Bryant, for example, was well-known for starting his practice routine as early as 4 AM and refusing to stop until he made 400 shots, no matter how long it took. He explained his reasoning by saying that “if I do this consistently over time then the gap is going to widen [between me and my competition]”.
483 SAVES
720 READS
Deliberate practice
431 SAVES
821 READS
The problem with Deliberate practice
The more banal and ordinary a habit is the less likely we are to think about how to deliberately practice it.
But deliberate practice applies to all habits no matter how big or small they are.
402 SAVES
618 READS
Get creative with your practice
Sometimes your task is so mundane and so far away from being what is normally considered a skill that it’s hard to figure out how to practice it at all; so you have to get creative.
For example, to wake up early without hitting snooze, you should practice waking up. During the day, lay in your bed and pretend to be asleep. Then when your alarm goes off practice exactly what you're going to do in the morning. Eventually, you will strengthen your synapses associated with your routine of waking up early and you'll no longer hit the snooze button.
455 SAVES
723 READS
SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
5
DRAFTS
Start With One Habit at a Time
New habits are very major life changes and should not be taken lightly. They require an enormous amount of discipline and mental energy to build, and you don't want to overwhelm yourself.
...Change Your Timeline
Your timeline is how often you want to practice your new habit; it’s your recurring goal. For example, meditate for 30 minutes per day.
A short timeline can be overwhelming, and a long timeline won't give you enough practice. For best results, use a weekly timeline: mediate for 3 hours per week.
A good weekly timeline isn't overwhelming and will give you some “wiggle room” in your hectic schedule.
Start Low, Build As You Go
Keep your goals extremely small at the beginning, and then gradually increase them every week. Your initial goals should be so small that it would be impossible not to complete them:
- meditate for 5 minutes this week.
- read 5 pages this week.
- floss 1 day this week.
10
Key Ideas
Bad habits
Nothing sabotages your productivity quite like bad habits.
They slow you down, decrease your accuracy, make you less creative, and stifle your performance.
Impulsively surfing the internet
It takes you 15 consecutive minutes of focus before you can fully engage in a task. Once you do, you fall into flow, a state of increased productivity.
Click in and out of your work enough times to check the news of social media, and you can go through an entire day without experiencing flow.
Perfectionism
We freeze up when it’s time to get started because we know that our ideas aren’t perfect and what we produce might not be any good.
But you can never produce something great if you don't get started and give your ideas time to evolve.
2
Key Ideas
Develop better habits by:
- Thinking really small: it accumulates and adds up in a big way;
- Shifting your evironment, so that good habits are easier to keep;
- Piggybacking new habits on old habits:
- Surrounding yourself with good people:
- Keeping it simple: short lists, reachable;
- Picking yourself up when you fall.