Tag Archives: habits

Goals, Habits, Life

Practice Your Craft

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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit. – Aristotle

Bah. I suck. I’ve been hesitant to write lately and seem to have a mental block. Trying to come up with content to write about for Rentything has been a challenge. There’s a reason for this. I haven’t practiced, and I haven’t been consistent.

If you want to get good at something, you must must must practice consistently and deliberately. There are no shortcuts. It is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for success. Anything less simply doesn’t cut it. The path to mastery is littered with failure and setbacks, but this shouldn’t stop you from trying. There are skills that I believe have a huge return on investment and are definitely worth learning. Some of these include:

 

1. General strength training

Not being generally strong is a terrible thing. There are so many reasons to be strong that the list is exhausting. Some of the reasons include being functionally useful in a variety of activites, such as helping friends move, gardening, playing with your kids, and so on. Strength makes almost all activites better and very few worse. And the best part is strength is something that can be earned, significantly, if you are willing to put in your time, probably more so than most other types of physical activites.

 

2. Social skills

This is the one that most people believe is either you have or do not have, which is simply a FALSE belief. Social skills are a game of practice and encompass a huge variety of skills including the ability to listen, to empathise, to connect, to understand, to adapt, and so on. And believe it or not, going out and meeting people and trying different things will improve your skills. On the flipside, not going out consistently and generally hiding from people will make you more socially inept. This is my current situation and is something I am fully aware of. Social skills take consistent practice, just like anything else. And the skills will get rusty.

 

3. Writing

Writing a lot will get you better. I’ve never heard of any writer any time in the history of writing who wrote masterpieces on their first try, it simply doesn’t happen. And when you don’t write frequently, it is a struggle, kind of like what is happening to me write now. Typing these words on this keyboard is very unnatural and coming up with the right words is difficult, and yet I have nobody else to blame except myself.

 

4. Programming

This is something very important to me at the moment, and so is something I spend the majority of my days/time on. I notice if I take days off, it takes a while to get back into the groove of things. Just like many skills, the more consistent the practice the better you get.

There are an infinite number of skills you could spend the rest of your life trying to learn, but you won’t be able to learn them all. I would say getting relatively good at a skill isn’t too difficult if you are willing to put in your time, but obtaining mastery requires extreme dedication and time. Two ways of getting good at a skill are to go full immersion or to spend a little bit of time each day practicing. If we take the full immersion route, there is not much room to learn other skills for the time being. Spending a little bit of time each day allows you to develop other skills without getting overwhelmed on one specific skill.

There are skills you’ll get good at throughout your life. Some, such as driving, will become second nature to you. Others you’ll naturally let die due to lack of interest (like that one time you tried pottery). Others you’ll get rusty on due to lack of practice. This is my current situation with skills such as rock climbing, writing, and jiu jitsu. If you don’t want those ones to go away, start practicing them again. Generally they come back pretty quickly. Having a variety of skills in your repertoire is important, and having a few with full mastery is even better. I think they call it becoming a T shaped person (generalist in many areas, expertise in a few). In my opinion this is a good strategy and one I strive for myself. The skills you get better/worse at will likely be constantly in flux, but don’t worry about it. That’s part of the ebb and flow of life. Just remember to practice consistently.

Habits

Consistently Consistent

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The single biggest bang for your buck in terms of results is consistency. It is boring and unsexy compared to magic bullets and one shots of awesomeness, but consistency works, plain and simple. I don’t think you’d find a successful person in the world who encourages people to be wildly inconsistent, except perhaps to spark creativity, to break negative habits, and to discover new things. And only for short periods of time.

Consistently doing bad things will lead to further bad things, and consistently doing good things will lead to further good things. Consistency forms habits (and habits are good and bad). Want to start becoming more awesome at something? Figure out what works, then be very consistent in doing that thing. Want to stop? Then become inconsistent at doing that thing.

Want to get good at arm bars? Find out how to do them properly, then do them. Lots of them. Every day. Consistently.

Want to get better at bouldering? Boulder. A lot. Consistently.

Want to get good at x? Find out the best way to do x, then do it. A lot. Consistently. Every day might be too much (if recovery is an issue, or if money is an issue, or time is an issue, or x is an issue). Doesn’t matter, do it at a pace you can do it at, at a schedule you can reasonably do it at. Push too hard, and it’s unsustainable. Push too light, and you won’t see the results as quickly if at all.

Consistency is not a guarantee for success (especially if you are consistently doing something incorrectly), but it is a good bet. In other words, consistency is necessary but not sufficient for success. The opposite is not also true. That is, it is virtually guaranteed that not doing something consistently will bring you results on par with not doing that thing at all.

So how do you know if you’re doing the right thing consistently? Well, that’s a bit tougher. Sometimes, it’s obvious and getting into the minutiae is unnecessary. Want to lose weight? Eat less. Forget about what you should eat, when you should eat it, and how many meals you should eat. You will know when its time to think about those things. For many, getting started is the hard part, so keeping it simple is the easiest way to start and stay at it consistently. Other times, figuring out the right thing is tough. You could ask people. If 100 people tell you to do it a certain way, it’s either conventional wisdom because it’s the correct thing to do or because nobody bothered to challenge it (one is good, one is terrible). You’ll have to decide based on gut feel what to do here. If you get 100 completely different answers, you are in “nobody knows what the eff they are talking about” territory. In that case, ignore everybody, and explore for yourself.

Usually the hardest part is just starting. That’s why I’m a fan of just doing it, observe (and measure!) obsessively, and make corrections as you go. Is P90X better than Insanity is better than blah blah blah… Stop, just stop…. If starting is the hardest part for you, then the just do it approach is a great one. If starting is not the hardest part, then I’d go with front loading the work and doing the hard and boring stuff first, like finding the right material, figuring out the annoying little details, and other deep research like you are some mad scientist with crazy hair, weird mannerisms and bad hygiene (but I’m willing to bet starting is the tough part).

Once that’s out of the way, be consistently consistent. Ready? Ok, go!

Lifestyle

Making Things Intolerably Inconvenient

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Kissing a Cactus in Argentina

Humans are lazy creatures by nature. Its just the way it is. Laziness isn’t a bad thing, in fact I think it has many benefits including getting adequate rest, keeping things as simple as possible, doing only what’s important, etc. If we can just accept the fact that we are lazy by nature we can use it to our advantage. One of the ideas I’ve been playing around with lately is the idea of intolerable inconvenience. The basic premise is you make something so utterly inconvenient for you that your laziness kicks in and you decide not to do that something. This works great for getting rid of bad habits, saving money, sticking to a good eating lifestyle, and so on.

I first noticed this myself one fine morning when I realized I didn’t have any food in the kitchen but was starving. I was going to drive over to Tim Horton’s for a breakfast sandwich and coffee (bad habit) but realized I didn’t have a car for the day. “Oh, how inconvenient” I thought to myself. So what did I do? Nothing. I decided to fast that day instead (good habit). When I noticed that I did a good habit instead of a bad habit because I was too lazy to walk to the Tim Horton’s, I thought “hmmmm, what else can I make really inconvenient for myself to force good habits?”. Some of the stuff I came up with was removing a lot of bookmarks to time wasting websites so that if I wanted to go to them I would have to type them in manually. Too lazy, screw it. Another is hiding the remote control for the TV so that I don’t watch it. Get rid of the junk food in your house or put it in the attic or something. Lock your credit cards in a safe. You can get pretty creative with this if you use your imagination. Cell phone bill too high?  Give the phone to your neighbour.  Need to study more and play games less? Hide the power cord to your Wii.

Note that the opposite also works. Make good habits super convenient for you. Have a giant glass of water beside your bed so that when you wake up in the morning you can chug it down and hydrate right away. Put the vitamins and supplements you take right beside the glass of water. Put your keys in the same spot everyday so you’ll never lose them. Leave your lunch at the front door so you never forget it (or set a daily reminder that goes off before you head out the door reminding you to grab it from the fridge). The list goes on. Make the good stuff easy to do and the bad stuff really inconvenient. I like it, nice and simple and effective.

Life

Lifestyle experiments: A great way to challenge yourself

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What are lifestyle experiments? They are like 30 day challenges you give to yourself to help give you some insight on something or to help form a new habit. They take you out of your comfort zone and usually help break some bad habits. Lifestyle experiments should be fun and challenging and should be in alignment with your life goals. Here are a few that I am starting or have recently started. If you are new to this I would recommend starting out with only 1 challenge at a time.

Lifestyle experiment #1 – No disposable garbage such a coffee cups, take out containers, etc. This one will be very tough for me, but I realized how much disposable garbage I’ve been using because its convenient to do so. At lunch I grab things on the go when I’m busy at work and this will have to stop. I especially like the vegetarian soups across the street from my work, but they don’t come in bowls, only takeout styrofoam containers. I won’t be able to get any Tim Horton’s or Starbucks unless I bring my own container, either. Plus there are numerous other places I go to grab food on the go around my office that I won’t be able to any longer. This will be a challenge, and I don’t know if I’ll succeed. But I’ll try and by the end of it I’ll be confident that I’ll have reduced my consumption of these wasteful products significantly.

Reason for doing lifestyle experiment #1 – to further reduce my ecological footprint on this planet, one of my lifelong goals.

Lifestyle experiment #2 – Get rid of cellphone. I don’t really need it. There aren’t that many people that call me anymore. In all my years of owning a cellphone, I have only ever received 1 emergency phone call. I’ve been really thinking about this one and I think I’ve fallen in the trap of owning a cell phone for the sake of owning one, when in fact I’m not really getting what I pay out of it. Most people with their fancy phones don’t actually need a fancy phone, and they find excuses to buy one rather than legitimately needing one (like for work). Its a very terrible mindset in my opinion. Its like paying for a gym membership and not going to the gym. I’ve got email, I’ve got Skype, I’ve got IM, so if anybody wants to get in touch with me they can do so through those mediums.  I won’t bring my cellphone to work and I’ll keep it on silent when I’m at home to eliminate distractions.  This experiment shouldn’t be too difficult,  I literally get more wrong numbers and telemarketers calling me then people who actually are looking to speak to me. If after 30 days the cellphone experiment is a success I’ll likely reduce to pay as you go and only turn it on when I need to make a phone call and I’m not near my computer (like if I’m out and meeting a friend).

Reason for doing lifestyle experiment #2 – Cost cutting. Part of my trimming the fat and of living a simpler life.

Lifestyle experiment #3 – Stronger eye contact with strangers. I tend to not look at strangers. I think that’s a shame because strangers are only strangers because you haven’t met them yet! And you don’t stand a chance of meeting them if you never look at them. I started this habit of not looking at people living in Toronto when I noticed that if you look at a homeless person in the eyes they’ll tend to always ask you for money. However, if you don’t you have a better chance of not being asked or pretending to ignore them. Torontonians do this a lot and I picked it up. Then for some reason it generalized and I avoided everybody’s eye contact. I plan on not avoiding on contact for 30 days, including the homeless without staring at people creepily. This shouldn’t be too bad, because I have tried this before and noticed that people don’t recognize you because they aren’t looking or will smile at you or the occasional guy who tries to outstare you.

Reason for doing lifestyle experiment #3 – Purely for fun.  Who knows, might make a friend or two!

If I cheat or fail, I’ll post the updates on Twitter. http://twitter.com/landland

Get started on some of your lifestyle experiments today!

Life

finding time by organizing your priorities

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Somebody recently asked me when I actually sleep. With all the things going on in my life at the moment I still had time to hang out and have brunch with her and told her all of the movies I’ve been watching. Its actually pretty simple, its all about setting up your priorities.

High on my list of priorities are my friends. I don’t have many that I see frequently these days, so when I get a phone call or an email saying one is going to be in town and want to go for brunch or hang out, of course I’ll say yes. Unless I have an absolutely immovable meeting or am booked solid, I try my darndest to say yes to meet up. It just means I have to shift something else around and reset some of my priorities.

If its important to you, you’ll find time for it. That’s just how it is. There is always time for the things that are important to you. If you don’t have time for it, it means it isn’t important to you, simple as that. When somebody tells you they don’t have time to see you, that just means you’re not as important to them as something else at the moment, lol. Finding time can be a challenge if you’re extremely busy, but it isn’t impossible. If you commute at any part of your day (most people do), that is a great time to listen to those language courses to learn that language you’ve always wanted to learn. Or going for a run during your lunch break and eating at your desk for those pressed to finding time for a healthy workout.

Idle TV or news reading time can be eliminated if TV or news isn’t high on your priority (I hope TV isn’t). Things that should be high on everybody’s priority list should include stuff you enjoy like your hobbies and passions, your health, your work (yes, your work quality is a reflection of your drive to succeed and commitment to others), your friends and family, that sort of thing. So what is important to you? Put those things at the top of your priority list. What isn’t important to you? Those things should go at the bottom. If you find that your job isn’t very important to you, then you should probably look for a career change. If you find that video games is high on your list, hopefully your balancing that with something important that is also high on your list, like saving the whales or something.

A good time of day to get a lot of your tasks out of the way is as soon as you get up. You’ll notice that if you knock off some of your higher priority items as soon as you get up, you’ll have a great feeling of accomplishment and the rest of your day will be more enjoyable. Before you go to bed, plan ahead and prioritize some of the important tasks you have to do the next day. Its about being productive, doing things effectively and efficiently, and being smart with your time. You can’t do everything, but you sure as heck can do a lot if you prioritize and act. I actually sleep pretty well, its high on my priority list 🙂

Life

We are the sum of our habits.

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Somebody somewhere said, “I think, therefore I am”. I think it was Descartes, but I don’t remember and I’m too lazy to Google. I believe that’s only partially true. The truth is we are a sum of our habits. Our habits, are acquired behaviours through frequent repetition. For most people, they aren’t aware of their habits. Its a shame, because habits can make or break you.

Some habits are good, some habits are bad. A bad habit I have is writing poorly and never looking over what I wrote. After years on instant messengers, and writing things like roflmao and wtf, I have developed a nasty habit of bad writing. In IM I write everything in lowercase and sometimes don’t even end my questions with a question mark. You can look at my first blog post to see what I’m talking about. Its a bad habit that I developed over the years. I have to break this habit, especially if I am going to write something coherent on the GMAT. I have been aware of this habit for quite a while and have consciously started to rid myself of it and form a new, better habit.

Better habits are habits that serve you. Self defeating thoughts are a habit. Why not give yourself self empowering thoughts instead? That will involve ridding a bad habit and creating a good habit. I will say this, if you’ve never broken a bad habit before its really tough. Forming habits take time and removing those habits can take just as much time. Watching TV is a habit. Surfing the net all day is a habit. Do they serve you? Probably not very much. Instead, why not try exercising? That is a habit. And it is a very rewarding habit at that.

Don’t try and change all your habits at once. You’ll fail miserably. Instead, focus on one habit and try and change that. Make sure its something you can do. Start small and build up. For example, if you want to exercise for 30 minutes a day try 10 minutes a day at first. 10 minutes is a lot easier to do. Once you start the ball rolling then you can up the time and it becomes much easier. Make it a game, like a 30 day challenge. You’ll notice by the end of the 30 day challenge you’ll have a new shiny habit within you. How cool is that?