10 Habits I learnt that changed my life forever.

Many of us want a good quality life, we seek money or try to come up with a new year's resolution to improve it. But to live a good quality life in the sense of being healthy and productive, we need to do things that are sustainable, using every day as an opportunity to practise habits that will lead to a quality life. In this article, I would like to share the habits I developed over the course of 2 years that have improved my life significantly and life lessons I learnt at 19.

Nutrition, Exercise and Sleep.

Before you do anything, you have to be in the right head space to complete a task. This means having a sleep schedule, a quality diet and performing enough exercise. For a healthy sleep schedule, sleep and wake up at the same time every day. Yes, this means on the weekends too. Ensure you wake up at the end of your sleep cycle when you are at the lightest stage of your sleep. Studies have proven waking up at this stage of your sleep makes you feel more energetic. To wake up at the end of your sleep cycle, note that each cycle is around 90 minutes hence if you want to wake up at 6:00am sleep at 10:30pm. You should also know diet and exercise play a huge role in how we feel and how much energy we have throughout the day. Developing a quality diet model with sufficient exercise will help maintain a healthy body, but also a healthy mind. By improving these three aspects of your life, you should see a tremendous impact on your mood and health. After I payed more attention to these three factors and allowing myself to eat healthy meals and exercise regularly, I could concentrate for longer and do more work throughout the day without burning out.

Time Is Valuable.

Time is a resource we all have, but limited and more precious than money. Money and wealth may buy you a great deal, but it cannot give you a moment that has already passed. This is where developing a time management system will help you from wasting time. I use the weekends, to plan the activities I will do 2 days in advance, a rough to do list, so to speak. Once I reach the second day, I make a note of the completed tasks and adjust accordingly for the rest of the week. At this stage, you have successfully decided what work you need to do but how should you do it? Use the pomodoro technique and adapt it to your concentration levels. I can work around 2 hours with a 15 minute break before I continue working another 2 hours. For many, this sounds difficult or may seem easy, hence adjust accordingly. If you can only concentrate for 30 minutes that is a fine. Work in 30 minute blocks with 5 minute breaks. While you are working, make sure you eliminate all distractions. I put my phone on airplane mode while I work.

Train Your Memory.

We have an amazing ability to remember a great deal of information, hence it is important to train our memory to engage in things that are hard and challenging. Many of us do jobs that are 9–5 and do not engage us fully. Learning new information quickly and more efficiently may sound like a superpower, and it is surely something many of us want to possess. The question is, how do you do it? The secret is to practise this three-step process; first use active recall, the second is to create images for information you are trying to remember. The more vivid the images, the increased chance of remembering it. Lastly connect the new images and information you have learnt to information you have already learnt. The trick is to connect the newly learnt information with memories. These techniques have helped me remember vast amounts of information, including notes I have made at University in 2018 well over 4 years ago. To really expand your mind and memory using these techniques is not enough, the key to improving at any skill is to practise, practise and you guessed it more practice.

"If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn't call it genius. " ― Michelangelo Buonarroti

Have A Purpose.

This may sound like a simple habit, but it is a powerful tool. Before starting any task, remember why are you doing it. Visualise the benefits you will get if you continue with a task you want to do and remember where the path you choose will ultimately take you. This is important. Actively doing this will increase your chances of finishing tasks that you always wanted to do.

Build A Routine.

The daily routine you set influences how you feel, when you do work, when you eat, and dealing with life in general. This has been clear to me, especially with the pandemic. I never understood the value of having something as boring as a routine, but without it I did not feel motivated to do any work and mentally I was not 100%. Routine gives the sense of control many of us want in life, the action to make changes. It also illustrates the metaphorical steps being taken to reach our goals. For example, studying every day for X amount of hours will ensure that I have a good chance of scoring well on a test. Building a routine helping you study X amount of hours a day will help you reach your goal as each day passes. Studies have also proven that having an established routine creates positive psychological benefits. You will feel less stressed, you will sleep better and you will be happier because you will not feel guilty for spending your free time binging your favourite shows.

Read.

This is extremely important. Growing up and even now I find reading boring and labourious, but the benefits of reading are amazing. Not only do you expand your base knowledge on subjects, you can practise your creative ability by painting an image and structures which all help strengthen your mind. There is no certain genre of books that will help you achieve this. You can simply read articles, books, medical studies and even science text books. By simply building the habit of reading regularly, you will increase your knowledge and it helps you practise the creative ability one needs in order to study anything effectively. My choice of books to read is in the realm of mathematics, currently I use these texts to follow and practise proofs to sharpen my ability to make logical statements or arguments.

Get A Notebook And Write.

I always used to have a lot of thoughts and ideas going through my mind. I started writing these down and reading through the notes I made. By doing this, I could organise all the things I wanted to do in the day and complete them successfully. Personally, I made an investment in an iPad with the Apple pencil to write my notes and store them all in one place. For me, this form of digital note keeping has been great, and it's a device that can do more than just write. I can even connect reminders to my phone to make sure I am up to date with my tasks. I also journal about events, possessions or people that I am grateful to have in my life. Keeping yourself engaged with what you're grateful for in your life has clearly increased how happy I feel.

Small Consistent Changes Make Big Impacts.

Say you have a mountain of work to complete, you are sitting at your desk thinking, how am I going to get all of this done? Sometimes people have anxiety before starting tasks that may be challenging and they may never start. The key to completing hard tasks is to apply simple problem-solving skills. For example, say you promised yourself to walk 10,000 steps in a day consistently. Of course, you might say that's easy. You wake up the next day and you do it. Many people might do this for a week, then give up. This is a common pitfall many face which is doing too much in a short amount of time. What you should do is take this metaphorical 10,000 step challenge and split it up into smaller tasks, one day you walk 2,000 steps. You continue this habit for a week, then you increase this by 500 to 2,500 steps the next week, so and so forth. By splitting enormous tasks into smaller, manageable actions, you will complete tasks you once found difficult with ease. The key is building small habits that lead to the larger goal. This way, you are building a sustainable lifestyle, form discipline and consistency.

' A Journey of a thousand miles starts with a singular step' - Lao Tzu

Self Reflection And Review

This is a vital habit that has made me realise who I am as a person. The art of knowing yourself is something all of us have struggled with in life. You might have asked yourself, what do I want to be? What do I love and enjoy? What type of person do I hope to be? As popular as the Google search engine may be for these types of questions, the person who knows the most about you is yourself. Challenging yourself and thinking about the way you are will reveal these answers that you have looked for previously. As I have mentioned before, small steps make big impacts, taking just 5 minutes during the day to think about where you are right now and where you want to be briefly removes all the noise in life. We rarely take the time to sit in the quiet and hear our thoughts. By doing so, we take a step further to understanding ourselves better and helps us build strong mental stamina.

Everyday Is A Training Day.

Everyday you wake up is a chance to practise, a new beginning. This is good to remember because we cannot be perfect. We are going to make mistakes, and this is part of learning and improving. Over the course of 2 years, there were days were I forgot to eat healthy or read and that is okay because I knew the next day I woke up was a chance to make up for yesterday. Having this positive mindset towards minor setbacks helps you achieve anything you essentially want. As long as the actions you make good or bad provide a net positive increase, having days where you are not perfect still helps you reach your goals. You do not have to be perfect to be successful, just the willingness to keep trying helps you achieve your goals.

Lastly, I would like to say that these are not the only habits that will change your life. There are many more, but these are my top 10 based on my experiences and goals.

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