Write for my blog every single day

I started writing using Google documents. Every single day I would write for about 5-10 minutes towards a certain topic. After a few days I would spend the same amount of time to review what I had written and then post it on the blog. I would do it just before going to bed. Thus, going to bed was my trigger.

It worked beautifully until one day I decided to write on good and old paper instead of using my laptop, as my laptop was hooked to my television.

It was fine that day and I continued it for the next few days but eventually it died down. And before I realized it, already more than week had gone by without me writing anything.

Usually in the past I would have felt very bad that I couldn’t discipline myself and it would have kept reinforcing the belief that I was a failure.

This time, however, it was different. There was no reinforcing of any negative belief. There was no negative belief in fact! I was easily able to step back and analyze why I was not able to create that particular habit.

It came down to two things.

1. Convenience – When I would write using Google documents, on my laptop, it was easy for me to just copy and paste onto my blog. Meanwhile, when I had started writing on a piece of paper, it became quite cumbersome, or felt like it, to have to copy it again onto the blog. Also, when I started writing on a piece of paper it was easy for me to let my focus wander, writing about one thing today and totally different the next day.
2. Not having a strong enough reason for me to continue writing – I’ve found this to be quite a problem, as I mentioned previously. If I’m doing something for the sake of disciplining myself, it’s quite easy to fall out of it. On the other hand if there’s a strong enough reason for me to do something, I continue despite any obstacles.

Has anyone else found a better way to create habits? What are your experiences?

Related posts:

1. Habits
2. How to create a new habit in 5 simple steps
3. Results of 7 day no gossiping challenge

1. Pick a habit that you want to break. In the beginning pick a simple habit.

2. Find out why you want to break that habit. Watch videos about the dangers of it, read blogs, talk to people who’ve broken that habit, and for extremely quick results, meet people who were hospitalized because of that habit, i.e. smoking.

3. Find out your trigger that causes you to act on that habit. E.g. whenever you’re in the presence of people who’re smoking, you have an urge to smoke. So, the trigger would be you being around smokers. Whenever you feel sad you start to eat, so the trigger would be your getting sad. As soon as you sit on your couch, you turn the tv on, so the trigger would be you sitting on the couch.

4. Keep your motivation up by exposing yourself to the dangers of this habit by either reading something, watching some videos, or hanging around people who are breaking the same habit or have already broken the same habit, every single day.

5. Whenever you hit a trigger that normally causes you to act on the habit you’re trying to break, do something different right away before you can act out of habit. As soon as you sit on your couch, whip out a book and start reading it, or just stop hanging around smokers, or whenever you get sad, right away start writing in a journal.

Trick is to have a strong enough reason to break that habit. Then monitoring your triggers. As soon as you hit your trigger and want to act on your old habit, immediately put a break there. Break that pattern! If you do that enough times, trigger will get weaker. That’s pretty much all there is to it. Don’t forget that by actually trying various ways you’ll learn much more than just reading about them. Just don’t give up!

Related posts:

1. How to create a new habit in 5 simple steps
2. Habits
3. How to develop the habit of jogging every morning?

1. Pick a habit that you want to create

2. Break that habit down into small steps, 1st step being ridiculously small and easy

3. Write down why you want to create that habit, keep asking yourself why until you start to feel good every time you think about that habit

4. Read your “why” every single day at least one time, preferably once before going to bed and once right after you wake up

5. Perform the steps every single day and increasing in intensity every week. So, you would repeat the same easy step every single day for one week and next week you would increase the intensity slightly and keep it up for second week, and then increase again for third week and so on

Related posts:

1. How to break a bad habit in 5 simple steps
2. How to develop the habit of jogging every morning?
3. Habits

There has been so much talk about it taking 21 days to establish a new habit! Almost every self help book you read you’ll find something along the same timeline. How it takes 21 days to form a new habit! Unfortunately that never worked for me. And I don’t mean that I tried one habit. I tried to form new habits in many different areas of my life but even doing them for up to 2 years did not work for me, forget about 21 days!

What went wrong? Obviously 21 days worked for some people!

Maybe it was because I was forcing myself to complete my 30 day goals? I did not look at those goals or habits as long term goals. Instead I was determined to complete them for 30 days for the sake of completing them. My goal was to complete those tasks for 30, 60 or pre-determined number of days.

So, for example, my goal was to work out for every single day for 30 days. Instead my goal should have been to look a certain way, or to have more stamina and so on.

My goal was to give up sugar for 30 days instead it should’ve been to have a healthy diet.

Now I’m looking at habits a bit differently. I decide what my ultimate goal is, then I break it down into smaller and more manageable daily tasks.

E.g. one of my goals is to have more stamina. Now this is not a 30 day goal. I want to have more stamina for the rest of my life. I want that to be my lifestyle. So, I’m in no hurry in trying to achieve that. There’s no 30 day goal here. I start with ridiculously small goals for every single day.

One thing you must remember whenever trying to set a new habit is to perform it every single day.

For the first week I only put on my jogging clothes, wear my running shoes and go out the door. Then immediately I come back in. I do this for one week.

For week two, I walked for 5 mins only.

For week three, I walked for 10 mins only and so on…

Best idea is to choose habits for life instead of for short term. If you think about habits in that sense you would realize that there is no rush. Go at a slow pace. Stretch yourself only enough that you don’t mind and you don’t get any resistance from your mind.

So, the first week do something very small. Each week, increase the intensity a little bit. This way before you know it, you would have developed a new habit.

For instance, if you wanted to develop the habit of writing a post for your blog daily.

Week 1. Pick up your computer and log onto your blog and then log off

Week 2. Start writing with a timer and write for only 5 mins, save it as a draft, which you may publish by the end of the week

Week 3. Write for 10 mins daily

Week 4. Write for 15 mins daily

Week 5. Write for 20 mins daily and keep increasing slowly but consistently

Another thing that was missing in all of my 21/60/90 day experiments was the motivation! I had incredible motivation at the beginning but eventually motivation died down and I still kept up my habit because of self discipline.

What if I had tried the following?

Whatever goal I wanted to achieve, I should’ve found sources of motivation for me. That could be watching videos, reading books, reading blog posts, listening to audio tapes regarding that goal, talking to people about it, joining groups about it (offline and online) and so on. Meaning  I should have kept my motivation high.

So, I think habits also die down after a while because we feel pointless in continuing with them. We tend to forget why we really started forming that particular habit. That’s why it’s very important to have a “WHY”. We should be reminding ourselves why we are trying to set a habit, why we’re trying to achieve a particular goal.

E.g. we learn about dangers of sugar. Now we set a goal to cut sugar from our diet. As days go by we tend to slowly forget why we were cutting sugar out of our diets. We have an idea that it’s bad for us but that real intense fear is gone. That motivation is gone! We need to spark that fire again. Otherwise, temptations come in the way! We’re surrounded by wonderful tasting foods that have sugar in them! Not to mention people eating items containing sugar all around us, and let’s not forget the advertising that bombards us on a daily basis!

So, we could start watching videos of dangers of sugar or dangers of high fructose corn syrup. And also, keep yourself busy with reading research documents, visiting blogs about their dangers and so on. Spend some time daily on doing this along with setting small daily tasks of eliminating sugar from our diet. Then see what happens!

Pretty soon you will realize that your mindset has shifted. You will automatically become conditioned to think that sugar is bad for you. And I think that’s the best form of motivation there is. Once you develop a belief then you will not have to force yourself, or discipline yourself to do anything. You will stop having foods that contain sugar or HFCS automatically. You will not even feel like having them

So, the biggest thing I’ve learned from my years of experimenting with trying to set new habits or eliminate bad ones is that we need to keep burning the fire of motivation, we need to keep reminding ourselves why we’re continuing with our 21/30/60 day experiments!

Right now, one of the habits that I’m working on is writing for my blog for 5 minutes daily! Instead of writing and posting, I just write for 5 minutes in google documents then when I feel it’s enough for a post, I just publish it on my blog.

So, do not be surprised if the quality goes down a little bit. I’m trying to write a half decent blog but more importantly setting a habit of writing every single day!

That’s where I find we go wrong! We try to achieve too much too fast! If we do not develop a habit of doing something on a consistent basis, what happens when we’re really feeling down, or tired, or just are not motivated anymore, or something else of importance comes to our life? We take a break! After all it’s just one day!

But before the habit is ingrained in your subconscious mind, no breaks should be taken! None! Even if you spend 2 minutes on your habit, do it! But do not skip a day without performing a task towards your goal!

And make sure you keep your motivation high for the first few weeks especially! 30 day experiments are fine if you consistently keep reminding yourself why you’re involved in this experiment in the first place!

Related posts:

1. Latest update on habits
2. How to develop the habit of jogging every morning?
3. How to break a bad habit in 5 simple steps

I remember hearing that we should take pride in everything we do.

What if you’re doing something just to pay the bills, should you still do the best job possible?

What if you’re working at a job that you dislike or hate? Should you still put in your best effort there?

What if you don’t get credit for work and in fact credit goes to someone else? Should you still keep on putting your best work?

If you have a job just to pay the bills, is it ok to do your personal stuff while at work? I.e. blogging while at work? Paying your bills while at work? Browse the internet? And so on…

What if the more you do, more is given to you? Should you still keep on doing the best that you possibly can at your job?

Almost all of my life I have had jobs which I disliked but had to do them due to our family’s financial situation. I’ve been working ever since I was 12. Did every single job imaginable!

In the beginning I used to always put in that extra effort above and beyond what was required of me. Later I realized that no one valued my extra work. Not only that but people took credit for my work and in fact made fun of me for working so hard. Also, all of my income went in to the family. Our whole family was like that though. Every one working hard to just make ends meet. Still, I never saw the benefit of working hard since I never got to ever treat myself with my income. As far as I knew, I worked hard for free!

Slowly but surely I started doing the minimum amount of work at jobs which I disliked. Actually I did little more than bare minimum at jobs so I wouldn’t get fired but never gave it my best. I knew I had to work to survive but also realized I did not have to go out of my way to give the job my best.

I always thought I would put in my best effort at a job which I totally loved.

Recently I realized that that’s actually become a habit of mine. No matter what I do I am not able to give it my best. I learned that even if I found something I was loving, sooner or later I slowed down and gave up! I never put in that extra effort that might have taken me over the top! I couldn’t understand why. I was held back because of my bad habits.

That’s when I realized the truth in always giving it your best, no matter what you’re doing! Because that’s how habits form. Once a habit is formed, it’s not that easy to get rid of it especially since it’s been reinforced for more than 20 years.

I’ve noticed one thing at different jobs that I’ve held in the computer industry. I’m sure it’s quite similar in other industries as well. If you do a lot of work you end up setting expectations. If at some time you do a little less work, then you’re questioned as to why you’re slowing down. That’s why you see a lot of people just taking it easy at work. They’re doing a little work when you know they can easily do 5-10 times their usual amount in much less than a full day’s work.

They were not like this to begin with. They got trained to be lazier!

So, I’m not saying start giving it your best at your jobs which you dislike or hate. What I am saying is whatever you do, no matter how little, start doing it the best possible way!

E.g. if you’re working at a fast food restaurant. Don’t try to serve 100 customers when your colleagues are only serving 25! Instead serve the same number as others but serve them well! A little smile here and there, a little politeness, whatever you can do to give it that extra edge!

Now, you’re not doing this for others! You’re doing it for yourself. Soon, you’ll develop the habit to do the best no matter what you’re doing.

And when the time comes and you find your passion, you won’t be slowed down by your bad habits but will be fully ready and prepared for it!

After all, like Aristotle said, excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit!

Related posts:

1. How to break a bad habit in 5 simple steps
2. How to create a new habit in 5 simple steps
3. Latest update on habits

Those times have passed and I have calmed down except for sudden bursts on the highway every once in a while.

One thing I learned while driving at really high speeds is the concentration it required. I was totally concentrating on driving and I was in the “zone” as it’s called.

I was totally concentrating on driving and could not afford to think about anything else. And because of that my driving was much better!

My mind was racing at such high speed as well and making decisions with lightning speed. My reflexes were much faster and I was going through traffic with incredible calm. I was driving much better and much safer than I do when I drive at normal speed limits.

That is the same thing with setting goals. If we set small and miniscule goals, our concentration is all over the place. We work on our goals for a minutes here and there and work on some other stuff and watch tv and chit chat with friends and so on. Before we know it, the whole day’s gone by and we complain about not having enough time.

When we set huuuuuge and scary goals for ourselves and totally commit to achieving them, we do not have time to think about anything else, nor do we have time to just hang out or engage in idle chit chat.

And once we enter that total concentration zone that’s when magic begins to happen. We start achieving incredible results. Things we never thought we could do before, we start doing easily and we seem to accomplish all of this in the same amount of time.

Now please do not go out there trying this experiment of driving at high speeds. It’s incredibly foolish and a stupid thing to do. You may easily hurt yourself or someone else so do not engage in that.

If you do want to drive at fast speeds then go to a track and do it. There are a lot of tracks where you can take your car for a day for a small fee and drive however you feel like driving but just don’t do it on normal roads!

But do try and set goals that require you to stretch beyond your comfort zone! Think about what it is that you want and totally commit yourself to it. Just test it out! It doesn’t have to be anything extraordinary, just something that might require your total concentration. Do that and see how it feels!

“Aim at the sun and you may not reach it; but your arrow will fly far higher than if you had aimed at an object on a level with yourself.” – F. Hawes

Related posts:

1. How to develop the habit of jogging every morning?
2. Self-Discipline – the missing link
3. Habits

Never really concentrating on one thing long enough to see it to fruition.

Recently, I was concentrating on affirmations and finding out what worked for me and what didn’t. Then I got interested in eating healthy. Then it was exercising. Then it was using the law of attraction more effectively. Then it was de-cluttering my house and keeping it that way. Then it was “maybe I should try to go on a vegetarian diet for a month?” Then I thought maybe I should buy organic meat and try that before going on a vegetarian diet. Then I thought about how I can work fewer hours at work and still get paid the same. Then I thought more about gossiping at work and how I am getting involved again. Then I thought about doing some more 30 day experiments. Then I thought about over 4,000 email messages that are in my yahoo account that I should clean out. And this is not all, that’s just what I can think of right now.

In the end I ended up doing a lot of things in bits and pieces but nothing to full completion.

So, you can see that I did not do anything effectively.

This is the multi-tasking world, with multi-tasking mentality! At work, you should be able to respond to your emails, converse with your colleagues/boss, work on your project and update the reporting sheets all at the same time.

I started looking around at people who were achieving enormous results in a very short period of time and every single one of them had one thing in common. They were all focusing on that particular item with all of their energy.

So…. what would happen if I started doing that? hmm…

I’ve done a lot of 30 day experiments but since I feel like there is so much I want to do, taking a whole month for just one item seems like a long time. It’s not really because time is passing anyways and a month is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Also, a month can easily pass by just in all this confusion. Instead of getting confused, I could have done some one thing for that month. If I started to just do things that I want to or would love to do, I would learn a lot more about myself whether I failed or succeeded.

I have trained myself to be disciplined whenever I need to be. I don’t doubt that I can concentrate on one thing for a whole month for example. It’s just deciding which one thing to concentrate on. It’s more in my mind than anything else.

Still I have to look out for myself and work with myself so instead I will devise some 7 day experiments. I will totally focus on one item for 7 days.

That means not even browsing the internet for other stuff. Totally excluding, even going to forums or websites that are not directly related to my goal of the week. Let’s see what happens!

Ivy Lee’s system

In one of his books Napoleon Hill tells a story about Ivy Lee who was working with Charles Schwab, the head of Bethlehem Steel. Ivy Lee is considered the father of modern public relations.

Charles Schawb told Lee that the biggest problem he had was making his managers more effective – helping them better utilize their time. Lee provided a system to Schwab and told Schwab to first try the system out for a while and then pay him whatever Schwab thought the idea was worth.

This is basically what Ivy Lee told Charles Schwab:

1. List the six most important things you have to do tomorrow
2. Number them in order of importance/priority
3. Take the paper out tomorrow morning – start with 1 and stay with it until it is completed
4. Only then go to 2 and repeat until the end of day. If you don’t finish all six you probably wouldn’t have finished them using any other system anyway

In a short while after trying this system out, Schwab sent Ivy Lee a cheque for $25,000. Now this was in 1920s so you can imagine what that amount is today. This shows you what Schwab thought of Lee’s idea and Napoleon Hill gave it to us for free!

There are literally thousands of time management books, tapes, videos, seminars out there but so often we get caught up in designing really complex systems that we lose track of the basics. If Charles Schwab thought so highly of this basic system, and if this simple system helped people at that level, surely it can help us!

Focus on one thing until it’s done! I am going to devise some experiments for myself and find out what can be achieved in one week!

Related posts:

1. Where does your time go?
2. One day challenge to stop gossiping
3. How to organize your receipts?

After that I started watching tv again. There is nothing better than watching some show, that you enjoy, after coming home from work. I enjoy mystery shows the most. These days there are a ton of mystery shows. Anytime you turn the tv on, you’re bound to find something to watch.

Killing brain cells

I am not joking but it really feels like I’m getting dumb if I keep watching tv. I have realized that I can’t think, can’t concentrate, can’t even do simple things effectively while watching tv. Every time I have needed to concentrate I have had to turn the tv off.

As I really love to think, tv is actually coming in my way. My mind seems cloudy and foggy even after the tv is off.

But I just did not want to resort to using discipline again as that just doesn’t seem to last.

Even now I’m sitting watching “Without a trace”. I don’t really watch this show but it’s on right now so why not!?

Cable tv discount ended

Recently all my discounts ended for my cable tv. I could have called and negotiated better discounts once again as I always have been doing but I decided against it.

I called and cancelled the cable!!! Wuhooo!!!

Well, I have until 24th of July before it’s cancelled.

Instead of using strictly discipline, I am changing my environment to change myself. If you want to stop smoking, you stop hanging out with people who smoke. If you want to stop watching tv, you cancel your cable!

Related posts:

1. I spilled coffee on my laptop
2. How to break a bad habit in 5 simple steps
3. Why do I feel tired all the time?

I started feeling much clearer through out the day. My sleep improved. I didn’t need as much sleep and I started sleeping soundly. I was yawning through out the day though. This didn’t go away until after a month at least. My concentration improved. I was drinking herbal teas and rooibos tea. Best thing about this tea was that it tasted almost like regular tea and I could even buy earl grey rooibos tea which was awesome! I even found stores where they would sell loose tea, directly imported from different countries. I never realized that there were so many different flavours even of herbal or natural teas.

Every day I felt more energetic and was totally loving it. At this point, no effort from my part was required to keep away from caffeine. I noticed that even if I had a little bit of caffeine during the day it would disrupt my sleep that night. So, I stayed away from caffeine.

Only downside of all this was that whenever I would go to any friends or family’s house I would be offered tea and it seemed rude to turn them down but I still did. Most of them understood though. So, all was well

Related posts:

1. Caffeine withdrawal symptoms
2. Give up caffeine!
3. Experiment with creating new beliefs

All it took was just missing one cup of tea at my regular tea time and it just got worst after that. For two straight weeks I experienced following symptoms:

• Severe headaches
• Nausea
• Fever
• Lose of concentration
• Extreme irritability
• Difficulty sleeping
• Anxiety

And this is all that I can remember right now as it was a few months ago. I would be sitting at work trying to work on some problem and I would have no idea what I was doing. I would read something ten times and even then it just seemed hard to understand it.

I still did not want to use my will power or discipline to stay away from caffeine. Not only did I completely stop tea, or coffee, but any form of caffeine. No tea, no coffee, no pepsi, no cokes, no caffeine in any form whatsoever.

I started repeating my intentions through out the day and I had to do this for the next two days or so, that’s all. After that my desire to stay away from caffeine was very strong and seemed like no effort at all, even though I was experiencing severe caffeine withdrawal symptoms.

Related posts:

1. After the caffeine withdrawal symptoms disappeared
2. Give up caffeine!
3. Experiment with creating new beliefs