I. Introduction
Howdy, everyone! Due to covid-19 and the ongoing lockdowns all around the globe, I decided that I would start some kind of 'blog' on mc-market that aims towards helping students, starting entrepreneurs, and generally people to improve their (work) life with simple but significant steps. If the feedback for these articles is positive and there's enough demand for more I will try to publish one article per week.
I will try to keep the information in these articles as plain and simple as possible, I will also write a short summary at the end of every article for those who want to have the information summed up rather than having to read through the article.
II. What makes habits important?
According to researches, it takes anywhere from 21 to 90 days to form a habit. But first of all, what even is a habit, and how can it help you?
Habits are, simply explained, specific actions, tasks, or exercises that we execute on a frequent, regular basis. For example, watching two episodes of your favorite series each evening would be considered a habit. The longer you follow a habit the harder it will be for you to get away from it.
So, are habits a bad thing? Well, they can be both a blessing and a curse. If your habit is to learn a new skill for 60 minutes each day you're definitely working towards improving yourself, on the other side, if you smoke one pack of cigarettes a day you're most likely not improving anything except the value of tobacco companies. But here's the interesting part:
What if you could use small, almost unnoticeable habits to make a significant impact? Let's say you decide to read for one hour a day, the average reader needs 1.7 minutes to read one page, which means you'll read around 35 pages in this time frame. Let's play it further, it means that you read 1050 pages a month, spending 30 hours. That means you can read around three to, maybe, four educational books a month, which sums up to 36-48 books in one year. By just committing one single hour each day to completing a simple task you can create significant self-improvement.
Habits can change your life from the ground up, ask yourself what you want to achieve and create specific habits to reach it. You want a sixpack to attract the new girl in the neighborhood? Then get your ass out of bed and start exercising, change comes from within. If you're dedicated enough to complete a specific task for at least 21 days it'll likely become a habit, and even if not, with each completed task it will become easier and easier since your brain gets used to it.
Whether we like it or not, humans are creatures of habit. If you think about it your life is actually full of habits and choices you make every day, it's up to you whether you use the power of habits to improve or decrease your personal development. Did you know that habits can also create the so-called compound effect?
The compound effect basically describes the increasing significance of percentual improvements. If you, for example, receive 10% interest on your $100 investment each month you'll have $110 after the first month, $121 after the second, and so on. After one year you'll have around $314 which equals more than 300% growth, although you only received 10% a month. The same principle applies to habits, the longer you keep a habit the more significant will its results be - applies to both smoking and working out, the one is negative, the other positive.
III. How do you establish a habit?
Now let's take a look at how you can, easily, establish a new habit. There are quite a few tricks you can use to keep you motivated and on track to achieve your personal goals!
IV. Summary
Habits are frequently executed tasks, actions, or exercises that influence our behavior. They can have positive and negative effects. It takes around 21 to 90 days to form a new habit. Breaking out of an existing, negative, habit is just as hard as creating a new, positive, one. Habits work with the compound effect, which means that smaller changes add up to significant results.
V. Denouement
Thank you for reading through my second article! I hope you enjoyed reading it and learned something new from it. If you have ideas for future articles or feedback on what I can improve don't hesitate to tell me! Also, feel free to share what habits changed your life and suggest positive, life-improving habits that others can pick up.
Enjoy your weekend and stay healthy,
Zero
Howdy, everyone! Due to covid-19 and the ongoing lockdowns all around the globe, I decided that I would start some kind of 'blog' on mc-market that aims towards helping students, starting entrepreneurs, and generally people to improve their (work) life with simple but significant steps. If the feedback for these articles is positive and there's enough demand for more I will try to publish one article per week.
I will try to keep the information in these articles as plain and simple as possible, I will also write a short summary at the end of every article for those who want to have the information summed up rather than having to read through the article.
II. What makes habits important?
According to researches, it takes anywhere from 21 to 90 days to form a habit. But first of all, what even is a habit, and how can it help you?
Habits are, simply explained, specific actions, tasks, or exercises that we execute on a frequent, regular basis. For example, watching two episodes of your favorite series each evening would be considered a habit. The longer you follow a habit the harder it will be for you to get away from it.
So, are habits a bad thing? Well, they can be both a blessing and a curse. If your habit is to learn a new skill for 60 minutes each day you're definitely working towards improving yourself, on the other side, if you smoke one pack of cigarettes a day you're most likely not improving anything except the value of tobacco companies. But here's the interesting part:
What if you could use small, almost unnoticeable habits to make a significant impact? Let's say you decide to read for one hour a day, the average reader needs 1.7 minutes to read one page, which means you'll read around 35 pages in this time frame. Let's play it further, it means that you read 1050 pages a month, spending 30 hours. That means you can read around three to, maybe, four educational books a month, which sums up to 36-48 books in one year. By just committing one single hour each day to completing a simple task you can create significant self-improvement.
Habits can change your life from the ground up, ask yourself what you want to achieve and create specific habits to reach it. You want a sixpack to attract the new girl in the neighborhood? Then get your ass out of bed and start exercising, change comes from within. If you're dedicated enough to complete a specific task for at least 21 days it'll likely become a habit, and even if not, with each completed task it will become easier and easier since your brain gets used to it.
Whether we like it or not, humans are creatures of habit. If you think about it your life is actually full of habits and choices you make every day, it's up to you whether you use the power of habits to improve or decrease your personal development. Did you know that habits can also create the so-called compound effect?
The compound effect basically describes the increasing significance of percentual improvements. If you, for example, receive 10% interest on your $100 investment each month you'll have $110 after the first month, $121 after the second, and so on. After one year you'll have around $314 which equals more than 300% growth, although you only received 10% a month. The same principle applies to habits, the longer you keep a habit the more significant will its results be - applies to both smoking and working out, the one is negative, the other positive.
III. How do you establish a habit?
Now let's take a look at how you can, easily, establish a new habit. There are quite a few tricks you can use to keep you motivated and on track to achieve your personal goals!
- Take a calendar, if possible a physical one, and make a big, red cross on the days on which you maintain your habit. It's proven that you will likely keep up with your habit if you see a chain of crosses and your brain will be more motivated to make the chain longer and longer.
- Write your goals down and read them aloud every evening before going to bed and every morning after waking up. Sounds stupid? Kind of, but it's effective! The more often a message gets passed to our subconscious mind the more important it will appear for our brain. It's definitely weird to read your goals out loud every day, but keep doing it. It gives you a clear focus on what you want to achieve and why you are maintaining the habit that will lead you to your final goal.
- Start small. Making a significant change to your life is not easy, it's often a better option to start small rather than changing everything from the ground up. As I mentioned, humans are creatures of habit, which means breaking a bad habit is a challenge. Make smaller changes, for example, if you want to read one hour a day but have troubles with concentrating just read a few pages a day. This way you can slowly build the habit and also won't have this natural 'fear' of having to do something uncomfortable. The small changes will add up to bigger changes. Thanks compound effect!
- Keep track of your progress. If you want to get the body of your dreams make sure to take a picture before you start. You can then compare your current progress to when you first started. This can be a huge motivation and keeps you going, striving for more!
- Set a specific time frame for your habits. If you have a set time for working out it will be a lot easier for you - quite logical actually: If you don't give yourself a deadline and if you are just a little bit like me you'll just keep pushing the task further and further away from you! Having a set time for a habit, for example, every day at 4 PM, will make it a lot easier for you.
- Tell others about what you want to achieve. If you share your goals with others you are more likely to achieve them according to multiple studies. This is due to our human demand for social respect and acceptance. If you brag about what you want to achieve you better put your butt to work or you'll make a fool out of yourself!
- Remember that the progress you make is exponential, not linear. It will take time till you see results, but once you see them the increments become more significant.
- Success is not a comfortable procedure. Get comfortable with pushing yourself to the limit, average efforts won't bring you extraordinary results.
- Reward yourself. And no, I'm not talking about cheat days. I'm talking about fixed rewards for each milestone you make. If you manage to keep up with your habits for one week you might as well celebrate your progress. Of course, make sure not to ruin your progress by doing the very thing you wanted to get rid of.
- A working system. If you want to lose weight, don't eat less, eat better and exercise. If you're constantly hungry you're a lot more likely to eat something extremely unhealthy due to your brain seeing the lack of nutrition as a danger and it trying to get you to have reserves for bad times. Better do small steps forward rather than backward.
IV. Summary
Habits are frequently executed tasks, actions, or exercises that influence our behavior. They can have positive and negative effects. It takes around 21 to 90 days to form a new habit. Breaking out of an existing, negative, habit is just as hard as creating a new, positive, one. Habits work with the compound effect, which means that smaller changes add up to significant results.
- Mark each day on which you maintained your habit in the calendar. It will make you feel responsible not to discontinue the chain of days.
- Write your goals down and read them out loud every morning and evening.
- Start small. Significant changes are a lot harder and can make you fall back to old habits easier. Take advantage of the compound effect.
- Keep track of your progress by taking pictures, writing down improvements, etc.
- Set a specific time frame to complete your habit rather than pushing it further and further away.
- Share your goals - this puts positive pressure on you and actually helps you to keep going.
- The progress you make is exponential, not linear. Don't be disappointed if you don't see immediate results.
- Success is not comfortable. Average efforts won't bring extraordinary results.
- Reward yourself when reaching important milestones.
- Make sure that your system works, you don't want to be under constant pressure. While it takes discipline to maintain your habits you don't have to suffer.
V. Denouement
Thank you for reading through my second article! I hope you enjoyed reading it and learned something new from it. If you have ideas for future articles or feedback on what I can improve don't hesitate to tell me! Also, feel free to share what habits changed your life and suggest positive, life-improving habits that others can pick up.
Enjoy your weekend and stay healthy,
Zero
