10 Unhealthy habits you should stop today

With the passage of time, we often learn some bad habits which hold us back from reaching our full potential. Its normal since everything we know was learned from somewhere else, every single habit you have you must have grabbed it from somewhere, either voluntarily or involuntarily, It's important for you to be aware of these bad habits and get rid of them to boost your productivity and overall happiness. Here are a few of these habits that most people have and don’t even realize very often that they do.

Worrying

This is a habit we often feel like we should have in order to solve our problems, it comes from overthinking about an issue to the point we become overly concerned. Its okay to think about a problem, thinking about it intensely is okay, but it shouldn’t push you to become worried because worries infiltrate themselves into everything else we do. You can’t focus on anything else because you are just thinking about a specific issue, its not because you think about a issue for so long that you are going to find a solution, sometimes it is even by detaching your thoughts from it that the solution comes to mind. By being focused so intently on an issue, you blind yourself to other perspectives which could lead you to the solution and eventually you get stuck in this one trend of thought.

“Worrying does not take away tomorrow’s troubles. It takes away today’s peace.”

~ Randy Armstrong

Sleeping too much

We all do need enough rest which is estimated for the average person to be 8 hours of sleep, that means if you sleep at 8pm you should wake up at 4am, 9pm to 5am, 10pm to 6am and so on. Some of us we sleep as early as 7pm and go all through to 10am, that's very bad. Oversleeping doesn’t make you the more rest, it rather makes you even more tired than you were before, it slows down your metabolism and makes you lazy for the rest of the day. I always aim to sleep at most 8 hours, but generally I try to sleep just for 7 hours, that gives me more time in my day to work and with this routine I can accomplish more, there aren’t any advantages to over sleeping.

Eating too much

I don’t like the argument that obesity is a choice, especially when you consider all the good things there are to eat out there. It can be really difficult to resist this temptation, but in the same way as you won’t take narcotics or smoke, you should actively be trying to avoid overeating. There are so many negative effects to over eating, and I’m not about to list them here, I’ll just say that you should consider obesity as an addiction and act accordingly. Stop reducing your life span over some burgers.

Tv Addiction

In the whole scope of productivity, watching Tv has never had a good rep. Spending long hours of your day just watching persons acting out a fictional life won’t contribute anything to your own life and long term happiness. I can’t even recall that much of 90% of the movies I watched last year, but I can definitely remember what I accomplished last year and that was nothing. Tv shouldn’t be a major part of your daily routine but rather just a medium you use to blow off some steam after a lot of stress, a distraction shouldn’t become the main attraction.

Overspending

Everyone should have a budget and track his or her expenses, means are limited but wants are unlimited. We pick up this bad habits by comparing ourselves to others we see online, except that we aren’t making as much as they are, and we know little about them. You are trying to dress like Kim Kardashian, but you don’t make as much money as her. Learn to live according to your means and never spend more than you make.

Alcohol Addiction

It turns out a beverage has more power and control than even the government, I’m not a drinker, so I’m not quite sure what people like in beer, but I know what the side effects of it are. Compared to something like water, we can clearly see that beer is bad, we also drink a lot of water, but we don’t spend all of our income on it, nor do we neglect our responsibilities or go home and beat our wives. As long as beer isn’t decreasing your productivity and influencing your life negatively then by all means do it, but experience has shown that alcohol addiction has always had a negative effect in the lives of everyone who dealt in it.

Talking about others

I could spend all day talking about why I like Elon Musk or Bill gates or Mark zuckerberg, I could tell you why I hate my neighbors or why what that colleague did was so offensive to me but in the end what will be the outcome for me, how is that going to contribute to my life and my general well-being. Will I be any happier or would that have generated more income for me after it all ? I don’t think so. I may have a moment of relieve but that will slowly fade out, and I’ll still be the same person, meanwhile in that time when I was talking, Mark Zuckerberg would have made another billion and my colleague would be doing another thing foul. I’ll be back into the same cycle of talking again and again, everyone will be moving ahead in life while all I’ll have done is talk about them. Don’t waste your time talking about other persons unless you are a journalist, you should

Laziness

You can’t accomplish everything but at least try to accomplish one thing at a time, I often tend to work on multiple projects at the same time and laziness can really settle in when I don’t feel like I’m making enough progress in anything. In those moments its best to make substantial progress at least in one thing, if all your courses seem challenging, choose one and put in all your energy into it, the success you get from that will boost you into doing the others. You don’t need to go at the speed of everybody else but make sure you keep moving.

Watching news

There was once a time when I watched news every day, but recently I realized how useless that was, and I was confusing news for being something essential to do while it was just a distraction. I gave it way too much of my time and attention while it didn’t really give me anything back, it didn’t educate me (ever so slightly), it didn’t make me a better person, nor did it help me become more productive. The news I watched yesterday has already become obsolete today but the 4 hours I spent, I won’t ever get them back. Its important to be informed about the things which are directly related to you, not necessarily about things happening from across the world. The best I do right now is let the news play in the background while I work but I don’t give it my full attention anymore these days.

Social Media Addiction

Of course social media is useful, it provides us with the quick exhilaration of happiness we so desperately need during a boring day, but we tend to abuse its usage. Its a constant influx of entertaining material which is new at every scroll so it keeps us hooked, whether its cats fighting, a makeup artist or a catchy dance move, there is no shortage of content which can entertain us. Before you realize it, you’ve spent 6 hours just scrolling through random feeds of people whom you have never seen, sure you might learn a thing or two here and there but was the time investment proportional to the lesson you learned or the value you got from it? More often than not, its not the case. Ration your time on social media and never spend more than 2 hours a day looking at other people’s lives.

Thanks for reading!

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