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Want to Be Super Successful? Science Says Do Any 1 of These 10 Things
Break your day into chunks
Too much time spent doing one thing can cause you to lose focus, and interest.
And if you're working on something you don't really want to do, it makes it easier because you only have to do it for a short while.
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SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
10
Key Ideas
How to Develop Habits
- Focus on just one habit, for 30 days.
- Put it on paper, together with your motivations, obstacles, and strategies for overcoming them.
- Commit fully, preferably in a public way.
- Track your progress.
- Remain publicly accountable — report on your progress each day.
- Have support for when you falter.
- Reward small wins.
- If you fail, figure out what went wrong, plan for it, and try again.
8
Key Ideas
Learn something new
... even if it's stressful. Mastering a new skill means more stress now but more happiness later.
The key is to choose the right new skill to master, a challenge to undertake, or ...
Friends near you
Geographically close friends (and neighbors) have the greatest effect on happiness.
Individual happiness cascades through groups of people, like contagion. So make friends with people who live near you.
Embrace opposing feelings
Happiness can come from noticing and embracing a wide spectrum of emotions--both good and bad.
So don't ignore negative feelings. Embrace them--and then actively work toward overcoming whatever issues you face.
5
Key Ideas
“Micro quotas”
In the process of finding a balance between your desire to dream big and your day-to-day activities, create macro quotas.
These refer to the minimum amounts of work that...
Behavior chains
Creating new habits that stick is easier if we make use of our current routines, instead of trying to fight them.
Use "if-then planning": choose a regular part of your schedule and then build another “link in the chain” by adding a new habit. For example: "If it is lunch time, then I will only eat meat and vegetables.”
Simplify decision-making
Making repeated choices depletes our mental energy, even if these choices are mundane and pleasant.
If you want to maintain long term discipline, aim for fewer decisions during the day: identify the aspects of your life that you consider mundane and then ‘routinize’ those aspects as much as possible.