New habits can be tough, you will always experience resistance or will simply forget about it. One thing you can do is make sure you have reminders that will help you increase the probability of doing the thing every day. It can be as simple as an alarm on your phone or a post it note on your bathroom mirror.

For example if you always forget to floss, keep the floss right next to your toothbrush so that whenever you go brush your teeth you will have a physical reminder of what you want to do.

Your brain is great at thinking and solving problems, but it’s terrible at remembering things, so we would benefit from helping our brains out whenever we can.

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
— Seneca

Photo by Joakim Honkasalo on Unsplash

Scheduling your time can be very difficult. At work and at home you’re always distracted by all the urgent things that you need to do and it’s very hard to make time for what’s important to you. One thing you can do is to schedule blocks of time for your important projects, and make it a practice that you can’t be interrupted during these times. If you progress even a little bit every day, you will achieve a lot in the long run and will feel better because you’re spenmding time on what’s important, not just fighting fires all the time.

“Life, if well lived, is long enough.”
— Seneca

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It can be really hard to get rid of bad habits. By definition a habit is something that you do “automatically” and you might feel like you don’t have control over it. However, there are a couple of tips that can help you revert them.

First, you can think of something that will help you realize when you’re falling into the habit, for example if you bite your nails you can use products that will make them taste bitter. Not only will you be deterred from biting them, you will realize when you’re doing it and can consciously decide not to do it.

Additionally you can make sure that you have a way to prevent the habit handy for when it happens, for example you can keep nail clippers on your desk so that when you get the urge to bite them you can trim them instead.

Decide which habit you want to revert, find a way to realize when you’re doing it and make it easy to remove the temptation.

“As long as you live, keep learning how to live.”
— Seneca

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Sometimes a very simple action can brighten our day. Whenever I go out on my bike I make it a point to say “good morning” to joggers, hikers and other bikers I pass or cross. It seems silly but this small gesture of humanity brightens my day. I like to think it brightens their day too and hopefully triggers a chain reaction of kindness.

Small gestures of kindness can have a large effect that you don’t even know about.

“Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.”
— Seneca

Photo by OC Gonzalez on Unsplash

Nowadays most apps want to send you notifications, even individual websites want to do this too. Your attention is on high demand because it is worth money to advertisers.

In order to protect your precious time and attention, ask yourself the following questions:

– Do I need to know about this immediately?
– Do I need to know about this at all?

You will find that most of the time you absolutely do not need the instant notifications to distract you. Explore the settings on your device and set it up so that you only get what you do need. Calls and messages from family are fine, notifications about social media posts or group chats can most likely wait until you check. Most other notifications you probably don’t need to see them at all.

Be mindful of every notification you receive from now on, resist FOMO and disable them if you don’t actually need them. Protect your time and attention.

“No man is free who is not master of himself.”
 — Epictetus

Photo by Febe Vanermen on Unsplash