There are things in life that people do automatically, like motor reflexes with blinking and swallowing, or actions like locking the door and — unfortunately — checking the phone for notifications.
Similar to values that you do not compromise on, your actions stack towards habits that form the cornerstones of your life. These actions set the tone for how you feel and provides the momentum for other positive habits you’re trying to build.
With a few years of experiments on my belt, here are my non-negotiable habits as of August 2024.
One-liner gratitude when I wake up
When the alarm on the phone goes off, I make the ten-step hike from my bed to the table and switch it off.
I start a new entry in my daily log on Notion; take a pause through the haziness of sleep, and write one thing that I am grateful for, in the title of the entry.
Logging it on Notion serves as a time stamp for my wake-up times, which is always useful for trend-spotting each month.
I try to log down my dream(s) in the body of the note. They disappear like wisps, sometimes.
Tracking: My time, nutrition, and expenses
Even though we now know that the quote “what gets measured gets managed” is a misnomer at best, and an opposite interpretation at worst, it is still helpful for me.
First, it gives me the outputs for my behaviour.
Want to know how many minutes I’ve invested in traveling this year? I see it in Toggl, and because I’ve been tracking since 2018, I can work out how many experience dividends I’m getting from year to year.
Want to know how much money I’m spending on groceries up until today for the month? Spendee tells me the amount, because I’ve made it a habit to log every purchase the moment I make them.
And for nutrition? It’s the same logic, and helpful as I keep track of the amount of protein I ingest every day.
Secondly, and more importantly, the act of doing the thing makes me want to be more conscientious and deliberate. This has been a huge mind shift in the way I approach these building blocks of life.
(Though there is something to be said about the scarcity mindset I have observed in me sometimes. Something to experiment more on!)
Work outs, at least three times a week
My workout routine has me completing four workouts a week, so three times is keeping it safe on weeks where I feel like my back can’t handle more than, or if I fall sick/injured.
On typical weeks when I’m not traveling, I pick myself up first thing in the morning to do them. It sets my energy levels higher through the day when I do, but there are slight differences in power and endurance when I do them later on in the day.
As an addition, at a minimum I’m aiming for activity every day. It’s a morning walk these days, on days I don’t go to the gym.
Meditating, at least 10 minutes a day
I don’t have a set time for when I do this; even with a 1,695 day streak, I’m still playing around with what works best.
But the important thing is that I do it, whether it is right before I settle into working, during a break in the middle of the day, or when I am walking.
Reading, at least ten minutes a day
My Kindle (a pretty laggy 7th-gen Paperwhite) is never far from me — on my desk, on the table, in my bag — and if I have free moments in between calls at work, I’m trying to reach the end of a chapter in a non-fiction book.
Additionally, I block half an hour before bedtime to do light fiction reading, though the time expands and contracts depending on when the work day ends; something to work on more diligently.
Journaling before I sleep
Through my life I have trialed and tested many different mediums (digital vs. a proper journal), timings (mornings vs. nights), and methods (free writing, lists, bullet, unsent letters…).
For now, I journal on Day One through my phone (it’s telling me I have a 1,413 day streak today!), where I have two journals: one for free-form writing about what happened during the day, and another to answer the daily prompt.
The free-form writing journal gives me the chance to unload what is on my mind that has been playing incessantly throughout the day.
I find that reflecting on my actions, and dumping the contents of my brain to work through potential solutions, ways I should be reacting, and paths forward has been helpful in clarity.
For the daily prompts, that’s just a fun way to surface topics I wouldn’t think of, and reach to the edges of diving into them.
I’m probably forgetting non-negotiables that are second nature to me (i.e. drinking 2 litres of water, using dental floss, applying sunblock), but that is not a bad thing.
More that I am thinking about: Is there an optimal number or a maximum of habits before the system falls apart? What about rigidity vs. fluidity of the way I act upon them? Psychological barriers or breakthroughs?