Building Habits made easy

For the past 10 months, I woke up before 6:00 AM, worked out, did at least 3 hours of deep focus work along with 5 more hours of shallow focus work, and read a book all while getting 8 hours of sleep every single day. How? Habits.

So, What are habits? Habits are daily tasks that your mind got used to that it no longer needs consciousness. It can subconsciously get things done.

If you think about it now, The most important outcomes of your life heavily depend on your habits.

You are lagging at work - because you scroll through your phone whenever you get bored or anxious.

You feel sick - because you don’t cook and order food most days.

You are always weak - because you don’t work out and spend most day sitting on a chair or couch.

And I can go on with this list. If there is one thing that I am really proud of my entire life which I still do to this day be grateful, It is reading Atomic Habits and applying what I learnt from there.

But what is the urgency? Why can’t you just live in the moment and worry about your habits later? Because your habits will become your identity.

My Father had made the habit of verbally assaulting others whenever he got angry. 25 years later, He can’t fix it. He says “ This is me. I can’t change”. Repeated action will become your habit and eventually your identity if you don’t fix it right away.

And I did the same. I used to have a very low temper and scream at closed ones for simple things. After a few years, my family started ignoring my temper. They believed that It had become a part of me.

Look into yourself. Do you have any habits that you don’t like? Now Imagine yourself doing the same thing even when you are 60 years old.

If you don’t realize the urgency of the matter now, It might be too late for you.

as children, we imitate our parents and slowly make that our identity. from our favorite food to our role model, we learn everything from our parents. We can’t do anything about it, we are not conscious.

Everything from our religion, beliefs, likes, dislikes, favorite food, and favorite people, are inherited from our parents when we are children.

In a way, your childhood habits shape you. But they can be changed as you get into new environments and be conscious about these. and if you continue to make the same mistake now when you have the consciousness, your identity cannot be changed ever, in life.

from smoking once in a while to becoming a smoker, from working out to becoming a fit person, your habits become your identity.

Your perspective, goals, mentors, friends, experiences, health, and wealth depend on your habits. fix your habits and see how easy it is to fix your life.

Now, the good thing about this is It gives you the power to change your future. small increments in your habits, compound over time.

“If you get 1% better every day, you get 37% by the end of the year” - James Clear.

Now that I have convinced you to take action immediately, Here’s how I did it. I am going to summarize everything I did that week. And because I am doing most of the work for you, A day is all you need to start your journey toward the ultra-productive club.

3 is the most important. don’t miss it.

1. A list of “bad habits”

It’s easier to recognize your bad habits than to think about the good habits. So, take a paper, and just jot down all your bad habits(things you don’t want to do). This should give you an idea of “what you don’t want to be”. Using this, you can just negate every item on the list and create what you want to become.

Now, You also can educate yourself by reading books and listening to podcasts. Don’t try to live someone else’s life. Do your research, understand how It helps you, and then decide on building these habits.

Don’t worry about how hard these habits are. I will teach you how to trick your mind into getting things done. If you want to make things even better, order these “to-do” based on your schedule. This list will give you clarity on what you need to focus on.

2. Environment is Key

No matter how determined you think you are, It is very hard to get rid of a habit. You may have stopped it for years but if the “trigger” is hit, your brain wants to do it again. So, What to do? change your environment.

and one key factor in determining the reward for an activity is the friction to do it. laying on your bed has very low friction compared to waking up, brushing your teeth, changing, and going to the gym.

We need to create an environment where the friction for good habits is very low and that for bad habits is very high.

Example,

Every night, I set the alarm and put my phone near my sink, in the washroom. I have my gym clothes ready on the hanger and I apply toothpaste to my brush(I know, this is too much). When I wake up, I have to get into the washroom, to turn off the annoying alarm. I have the brush ready to go. My gym clothes are ready. Once I change to gym clothes, It’s very hard to convince myself to not work out. This is my cheat code for waking up early every single day.

I place 5-6 water bottles on my work desk every day. Healthy food like fruits are the first thing you see when you open my fridge. Every day after waking up, I change the sheets and place a book on the bed. when I go to the bedroom at night, I have the book ready to go.

You can do the same to avoid bad habits. If you are addicted to video games, once you complete playing, unplug the console and put it in your closet.

The goal is simple. If you want to do something, make it easily accessible. And if you don’t want to, make it very hard to get to it.

3. The 10-second rule.

The most important point here. If you can only do one thing from here, do this.

Many people ask me how I start my days so early most of the year. For the first 3 months of 2023, when I was ultra-determined, I started my day at 4:30 AM and worked out 6 days a week(except for a couple, literally).

It’s simple. find the hardest part. do it in under 10 seconds before you can think. For me, It was going to the sink and splashing water on my face. I just count to 10 and run into my washroom to wash my face. Once I do that, I don’t want to sleep. It can also be brushing your teeth.

Ok. I woke up. but I am still lazy. I don’t want to work out. I just want to lay around or watch something on my phone. I push out all these thoughts, count to 10, and quickly put on shoes. Once I do that, The friction for going to the gym is lower than untying my shoes and going to bed.

Every unachievable habit has its own hardest part. figure it out, and see how it gets a lot easier.

The same works for vice-versa. If I ever get tempted to scroll my phone mindlessly, I say “Let’s wait for a minute. Then I can continue”. After a minute, I don’t want to do it.

4. The Reward system

Your brain constantly looks for rewards. every second, It finds out all the tasks you can do, sorts them based on the expected reward, and completes them in the order. If the actual reward for a task is as “satisfying” as expected, The reward for it increases even more.

So, our goal is simple. For the habits that you think are good, pair them up with a good reward, and for the habits you want to avoid, pair them up with a bad or painful reward.

Here is an example. Every morning that I go to the gym, I take a hot(or warm) shower. I just put the heat to the sweet spot and enjoy my shower. If I don’t go to the gym, I do uncomfortable but safe cold showers. This reduces the reward for lousy laying in bed and increases the reward for working out. And you can think of these rewards for most things you do. Here is a list.

The harder the activity, the more painful the reward.

5. Make habits your identity.

I spent the last 15 years of my life on auto-pilot. I wanted that to change. I wanted to be more in control of my life. I wanted to understand the purpose of my life. so, How can I do all this? I started thinking like someone who has his life in control. What would he do in the morning? What would he focus his work on? How much time would he spend on x and y? This gives clarity.

Don’t say “I want to eat healthier”, instead say “I am a healthy person.”

Don’t say “I want to create content”, instead say “ I am a creator”.

When you tie your habits to your identity, they last a lifetime. Though it’s simple, It’s highly effective. But this can work against you. If you pick the wrong habit and tie it to your identity, you may not be able to change it.

"I don't wake up early as I am not a morning person."

"I can't make friends as I am an introvert."

These actions become your facts. and they are hard to change. so choose your habits carefully.

6. Habit tracking.

There are three parts to developing any habit.

1. education - getting to know the rewards and trigger points explained above.

2. action - putting these actions and experimenting.

3. consistency - repeating these actions every day.

All the above points will kickstart your habits but if you are not careful, they might wear out slowly. So, You need to track your habits.

list down all the habits on a paper. (note: use notion.so to make it easier. mark all the habits that you want to get in green and the habits that you want to avoid in red). Every day, before you go to sleep, pull up this paper and put +1 to the right of the habit that had the desired outcome and -1 for the habit that didn’t. Calculate your habit score for the week.

Set a target of current score + 1 for next week.

This has three benefits:

1. It is a hard-cover proof of your progress. It will give you the feeling of achievement and help you be motivated.

2. It makes it very easy to track a habit. It will tell you the habits that are the hardest and the easiest. Should you spend more time on this? Is your reward system working? Did you pick up the correct trigger point? This paper will tell you the story.

3. It will allow you to look at the bigger picture. You may have missed working out three days in a row but when you look at the score for the whole month, You went to the gym 20 days. That’s an excellent effort.

These points are enough for you to turn your life around and get shit done, every day. But If you double down on these weekly targets, you might take actions that counter your end goal.

Let me give you an example to make this clear. I have decided to become healthy for the long-term benefits and started tracking my eating habits. My first goal was to lose weight because that’s a part of becoming healthy.
When I was working on the goal, sometimes I had to take processed food to save time. like low-fat cheese, low-fat milk, Coke Zero, eating only meat, and taking many supplements(We will talk more about this another time). This has helped me reach my weekly target but this is not very healthy. eating processed food, even if it’s low in proteins, will cause issues for your gut microbiome.

Now, If I account for all of this and focus on eating whole foods, I might not lose weight which is not healthy either. This all seems complex and generally, people give up. But I didn’t. I had one more super-power. Systems.

3. You don’t need goals, you need systems.

Goals are too abstract. They don’t have a clear definition and work plan. systems create that.

“You don’t level up to your goals, you level down to your systems” - James clear

So, what is a system? A system is a magical machine that tells you what you need to do this very second, to work towards your goal which is destined decades later. So, here’s how you build your systems.

The first thing you need to do is look at the opposite way. You need to decide on your dream life and then reverse engineer it into your habits. Why?

Another example. In any room, you have multiple entrances but only one exit. the engineers need to add directions to the exit so people can easily get out of the room in the event of a fire. So, they need to figure out an ideal path to exit. If they start this path from the entrance, their destination can lead anywhere, maybe to other entrances. But If they start this path at the exit, and come back from there, they don’t need to worry about the path not reaching the exit.

In the same way, You don’t start by deciding what you will do this week or this month. You need to decide on your destination, your dream life 10 years later. Jot down everything you wanna have. income, house, cars, food, or just financial freedom. Now, Once you have pictured your life. You need to write what you need to have to get there. write everything that you think you should do to put yourself in that position.

For example, If you want to make $X every month from YouTube. Then how many views should you get? followers? likes? shares? collaborations? etc. Define a few quantified metrics that can be tracked.

Now, to reach this, What had to be achieved the previous year? So, If I want to get 1 million followers on LinkedIn, I need to get to 900k the year before. You may have different metrics. Now, come one year back and reduce the goal for each metric accordingly. And do this every year backward until you get to the current year.

Now, Do the same for each month. and when you get to the current month, do it for each week, then each day and each hour. Now, What you need to do this hour is quantified with a daily goal but It is an actionable step towards your dream which is set up 10 years later.

This is what I call “Live in the moment. Plan in decades.”

Now, of course, these systems won’t be perfect and they don’t need to be. That’s the power of reverse engineering. Because you have decided on the destination, even if you wander from the path for a short time, It doesn’t matter. And you need to set up a system review every 6 months. Assess your progress and change each step accordingly.

Currently, I am improving this to use AI to make it even easier. will share it with you when it’s ready.

I hope you pick at least one thing from here. These have helped me turn my life around and I hope they will do the same to you. see you next week.