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Habits are what shape us. Strong habits increase your critical thinking and help you make healthy choices. Learning the following 5 habits will give you the tools to build a strong and rich mindset.
1- Wake Up Early Without Hitting The Snooze Button
A good morning routine is waking up every day on time without hitting the snooze button. Your brain works faster in the morning and can absorb information much more quickly.
A morning routine can pay dividends if you train your mind to wake up on time daily. To solidify a routine, it must be done over 30 days to become a habit.
There is no specific time to wake up in the morning as long as it is within a reasonable time before going to work or finishing the tasks you want to do.
Although it is true that the most successful people, such as Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, wake up as early as 3:45 AM, you do not have to wake up that early. However, you do have to plan your morning routine to best serve your situation.
Each person requires a certain amount of sleeping hours to have the necessary sleeping cycles to recover. On average, people need about 6-8 hours for their minds to be fully functional in the morning. You can find the optimal amount of sleeping hours for you by experimenting. Having a good sleep is the first step to having a morning routine.
Many people struggle with waking up on time, and as a result, they find themselves hitting the snooze button a few times before waking up. There is a correlation between hitting the snooze button and your productivity in the morning. This video can explain.
The best way to eliminate hitting the snooze button and waking up on time is by putting your phone or alarm within walking distance from your bed, forcing you to leave the bed to turn off the alarm.
For more tips, check Mel Robbin’s 5 Second rule book for more info on beating laziness and waking up on time.
2- Write Down The Tasks You Want To Accomplish Today
A daily planner ensures you take advantage of the day by writing things down. You can buy a daily planner or create your own; the important thing is that it outlines what you need to accomplish today.
It is essential to do this task early in the day.
In general, we can only do a limited number of daily tasks if we factor in the time we need to eat, sleep, cook, and do other daily chores. Those tasks are time-consuming, leaving you little time to do productive things.
You have more chances of finishing your tasks if you write them down.
On average, it is possible to finish up to 5 tasks a day.
Understanding your limit and the time you take to finish each task is also essential. That is what the daily planner will help you to do. Try to experiment with the number of tasks you can do in a day and see the most optimal number for you.
If you feel that there are not enough hours in the day to do anything and the only way to finish everything is to work extra hours, then check: 5 Reasons You Are Working Overtime, How To Fix?
3- Limit Your Decisions With A Pre-Determined Schedule
This one might sound counter-productive, but making few decisions throughout the day can reduce time wasted with needless decisions that have zero impact on productivity.
For example, deciding what you should eat today instead of planning your meals for the whole week in one day or deciding if you should go to the gym today instead of making a weekly routine of the number of days you will be working out.
Spending less time making decisions and focusing on doing tasks will make you ten times more productive. If you eliminate the decision-making aspect in your life, you are skipping the procrastination and laziness and jumping straight to action.
You can eliminate the number of decisions you make by planning and taking the choice part out of the equation. For example, reading one hour a day or training every day for 30 minutes should not be a decision but an action you must do. Therefore, you have already told yourself to do a specific routine and eliminated the decision-making aspect.
Sometimes, you may not feel like doing that task, so you must force yourself to solidify the habit. If you repeat the same task enough times, you trick your brain into subconsciously responding to do the task without the need to force yourself to do it.
Finally, making a few quality decisions can increase your success in life. Jeff Bezos is famous for making a few high-quality decisions.
For more help, read 5 Strong Habits To Boost Concentration.
4- Use Your Free Time To Build Skills.
Some people use their free time to do non-productive activities such as consuming content, which is okay to relax and have some good quality time.
But too much of something is not good, and doing too many non-productive activities will impact your growth and the ability to learn something new.
The goal of using your free time to learn and build new skills is to keep your brain occupied and always on alert. It takes discipline to train your brain to learn something new every day, but it will certainly equip you with new skills you can use to your advantage.
Building skills can be taking online courses, reading books or even engaging in social activities. It keeps your brain active and motivates you to learn new things daily.
Therefore, try to find a time in your day to feed the creative side in you by doing something different that can teach you new skills.
5- Surround Yourself With Like-Minded People
If you want to become good at something, you have to spend time with people who share your interests and passion and are good at what you want to become.
Doing so will have a significant impact on the way you think. It will keep you updated on the latest news and provide you with tips to keep improving.
Networking significantly affects growth because it connects with others who share your interests and can provide you with new opportunities.
You need to realise that you will always need others to grow, and making a habit of socialising with like-minded people is the most important thing you can do to succeed at anything.
