2010 has seen me make a lot of habit changes in my life (which you can read about here) and by experiencing this, I’ve learnt so much to pass on to you. Sometimes the changes are big and life altering but often they’re just small things that will help you create days that runs just a little bit more smoother. Here are 12 mini-habits I’ve cultivated.
1. Taking Garbage To The Main Bins
When you’re finished eating, taking the food straight to the outdoor bin gets it off your plate (couldn’t resist) and it’s gone. A great idea is to get rid of your bin from your kitchen which forces you into the habit. You will always have a really clean looking house for when people come around and there will be no lingering smells or overflowing bins.
If I’m going downstairs, I take my paper bin every time, and just nip outside to empty it. It takes literally 10 seconds and keeps my house fresh and neat. This habit works well with a Raw Food Diet which I adopted and blogged about recently.You don’t have to spend forever cleaning dishes because fruit and veg doesn’t stick to the plates like meat. You eat, put the foods in the outdoor bins, rinse your plate and you’re done.
You also start to condition a mental habit which is “I’ll get things done now so they don’t grow into something huge I can’t handle”. This skill will naturally transfer to other areas of your life like your finances, health and relationships. Action will become your first response.
2. Enjoying Washing The Dishes
I genuinely enjoy washing the dishes. I love the warmth and the little rainbows inside the bubbles and the calm centred moment it offers me. Experience the vibrant colours of life. Stroke your face with a hot towel, feel the sharpness of the wind on your skin or the sun on your neck, watch a Dad teaching his son to ride a bike on the local park.
There is beauty in these things. They get you out of thought and in to experiencing this moment. The media industry imprints a view of life upon us to only be really happy in the big moments – weddings, job raises, the birth of a child etc. If this is true then are we due to experience at best average happiness for 99% of our life?
99% of life is small moments and to not appreciate them is a dis-service to yourself and everyone else. An unhappy you is useless to everyone. What sounds, sights and smells can you appreciate right now around you if you chose to? Enjoy your little slice of perfection.
3. Spice Up Dull Tasks
Every day I have to eat 100g of Brazil Nuts as part of my diet, it gets boring quickly. I do things like go for a walk and eat them or spread them throughout the day or eat them with Watermelon or an Orange. If your mind is focused on another task when you perform something boring then the task will get done but you won’t have to suffer through it.
You could listen to music whilst cleaning, return phone calls whilst riding your bike or make plans for tomorrow in your head when you’re sat in a boring meeting. There’s opportunities everywhere once you start looking around and you are only limited by your creativity.
4. Consciously Slow
The “super fast” side of personal development is mostly bogus. People who tell you productivity is about speed usually aren’t productive themselves. They tend to do lots of things but none of the right things and so the slower turtle wins the race. Do you agree with me here? Look at them in their eyes – are they deeply satisfied running about their lives? Do they have the complete lifestyle that you want or do you have a more suitable role model in mind?
I’m enjoying the ride and don’t plan on arriving early. I want to soak up all the experience life has to offer. Change happens in an instant but it takes time to manifest in the physical world so you might as well get comfortable and enjoy the journey. A great way is through slower movement.
Whenever your body is moving fast so is your mind. Consciously slowing down your body will immediately affect your mind and simplify your thoughts creating the space to get out of your thoughts and into experiencing this moment. Not to mention how sexy slow moving people look 
.
5. Read One Book At A Time
Do you have lots of books strewn around with folded corners and bookmarked pages left half read? Until recently, have about 5 or 6 on the go at any one time. You don’t get much out of books like that. So I developed a system for it. I created a complimentary flowchart diagram to simplify it for you too. It’s based around taking notes on books, digitizing the notes and only keeping in the long term a core selection of under 10 books.
Reading one book at a time increases your consciousness about what you’re reading. You have to finish the book before moving onto the next one so this will force you to pick better quality books so you don’t have to suffer through terrible ones.
6. Plastic Fantastic
Have you ever wondered if you could just never use cash and get by? I do 99% of the time. Places like bars have a minimum price of £2.50 ($5) to use plastic but just buy your friends drink and get them to give the to buy you the next one. We are creative enough to get around this. No coins feels great. My pockets now just hold my cash card, my house key and one pen. Simples!
7. One Pen
I use one pen, and it has my name on it. People know its mine and it’s always with me. Doing this will make sure that you never have that feeling on the phone or when you pat all your pockets looking for those darn elusive pens! Plus, it looks great when you’re always prepared with a pen.
8. Paperize Your Productivity
When it comes to staying organized I stick with good ol’ pen and paper. It’s so easy to get drawn in on-line to the latest shiniest new application and we start to forget the original purpose is to be productive. With pen and paper its easy. There’s no adverts to distract you, you just write your goals and they stay there. If in doubt, write it out.
9. Stop Talking So Much
We have two ears and one mouth. Is God having a little joke with us here? Some say he’s showing us to listen twice as much as we talk. Talking uses a lot of energy. Do you ever find that people who talk a lot are trying so hard to connect with the other person but the other person just wants someone to listen! It doesn’t work. By doubling your listening in conversations, you will connect much deeper, appear profound and save yourself lots of energy.
10. Pay off Lots At Once On Smaller Bills
If you have a small monthly bill then consider opening a new account and depositing 6 months worth of payments and setting up a direct debit. You decide what a small amount is. This unloads the hassle from your mind and allows you to concentrate on other areas of your life safe in the knowledge that this one is sorted for the medium term. Simply remind yourself to restart payments by writing a reminder in your diary a couple of weeks in advance.
11. Always See An Opportunity to grow
Develop a certainty that every event and person in life is there to make me grow. If someone is annoying you, you can grow from it. It’s an opportunity to develop your humility, patience, unconditional love and even humour. It could be the push that you need to find a new group of friends or an opportunity to show your partner your moral strength. There is always an opportunity for growth.
Can doing yard work for an elderly relative be framed as a chance to catch up and get some exercise? Could you frame working at a dull job for a while as disciplining yourself to be persistent for when you finally quit and work for yourself? Can’t your annoying boss be a lesson is laughing at yourself and humility?
12. Benefit From Social Networking Without Wasting Time
I use a site called “SocialOomph“ (The free option) and Twitters Official Facebook Application (Always Free). Combined, they can save you lots of time with social networking. The Facebook/Twitter Application lets you update Facebook via Twitter. I set it up so every Tweet appears immediately on my Facebook, reaching all of my online friends in one swoop. The coolest bit about this is that SocialOomph allows you to schedule Tweets.
You set a Tweet now, and it appears at a time of your choosing. In the morning I might write 3 statuses that are published at 9am, 2pm and 9pm. You can update your friends on how your day has been without ever having to visit the tempting Facebook interface and let it post for you. I give myself a timed 30 minutes in the morning on Facebook and that’s it for the day. It’s so efficient and I heartily recommend it. It spares you energy and lots of time to pour into other areas of your life that excite you more.
I have lots of half finished books and have a feeling I’m not the only one in personal development circles. Having too many books unfinished is an ineffective way of learning. They just start to stack up and nothing really gets done. I was thinking about this the other day when I saw Leo Babauta mention that he had less than 10 books in total.
I wanted access to the information from my books but didn’t want them in my home as they take up space and re-reading books for information is inefficient. So, I created my own system . It’s minimalistic, flexible and fills my needs.
This system will suit you if:
- You want more physical space
- You enjoy minimizing your possessions
- You have books lying about unfinished
- You never want to re-read a book again
- You want to digitize as much of your paper as you can
- You want an organized system for new books that you buy
- You feel that sorting your books into a system would give you mental clarity
- You want to extract the best lessons from a book and convert them into real life lessons
THE FIRST PURGE
The first step is to put all the books you have now into the system. When they’re in the system we can learn how to deal with new books.
Collect Your Books
Next, put aside a few hours to process all of your books. Maybe a day at the weekend or an evening. Collect them all together and get them in front of you on the floor.
Elimination
Get rid of all the books that you don’t want to read even if you’ve already started them. Also get rid of books that you have read and don’t want to come back to in the future. Don’t feel obliged to finish a book that bores the life out of you. You can give them away. Give to needy friends, sell on-line or give them to your local library and loan them out if you need them back.
Select Your Keepers
Are there some books that you just know that you’ll want to keep with you even after you’ve read them and taken notes on them?. Be strict here. Would notes do really and it’s just an emotional attachment?
I recommend setting a permanent limit on the number of books you can keep. You don’t have to max out that limit now. It’s like an overdraft, it’s just for emergencies. I chose a limit of five, but only have four in the list now. This is your “Keepers List”.
The “Keepers List” books are there for you to dip into whenever you want. These are the only books that will stay with you for the long term. You can change them but it may require sacrificing another book.
Separation
On paper or preferably a computer create three lists:
- The ‘Keepers List’
- Books you want to take notes on immediately without a re-read to decide if they’re good enough (called the “Notes List“)
- Books to read/re-read before deciding whether they’re worth taking notes on – called the (“Reading List“)
Learn To Speed Read
Before you start processing the books I would seriously recommend learning to speed read so that you can scan a book before deciding whether it should progress to the “Notes List”. A book I own and would recommend is The Speed Reading Book by Tony Buzan. Speed Reading is a set of simple techniques for reading at significantly faster speeds than normal. Imagine reading every book in a quarter of the usual time. I’d say you’d easily half your reading time compared to reading the book in a normal way, very easily.
The Three Stages
Stage 1 – What To Read Next? (Reading Stage)
Is there a topic/book that you want to dive into right now that really gets you pumped? Or even one that you would love to collate notes on to get a view of the bigger picture? Or just simply to get them out of the way and off your mind? If so, put these books at the top of your “Reading List“. Pick one and start speed reading it straight away. If it’s good enough it will go to the ‘Notes List’ Stage. If not, you can get rid of it.
Minimize the books that you bring into your life during this purging period. Don’t buy and ask others not to give you any. If they do, then they simply go to the bottom of the ‘Reading List’ so that you can process the ones that you already have.
Stage 2 -Take Notes (Notes Stage)
If you decided that the book was good enough to take notes on, it progresses to this stage. Go back through it this time at a slower rate, taking notes as you go along in a way that will make it easy for you to quickly relearn in the future.
Go through the books that we decided before were in your ‘Notes List’ before progressing with books on the ‘Reading List’.
Go out there and apply what you learn and this is what I call your ‘Studying Book’. Study it you until you’ve achieved a level you’re happy with. Taking notes on personal development books is only good as a backup, their needs to be action. There’s no rush to get through the list. This is why I recommend being so picky with your reading books.
Stage 3 – Is it A Keeper? (Keepers Stage)
At this stage you can decide whether the book qualifies to be added to your ‘Keeper List’. Most wont but maybe one book per year will change on it. Most books can just have the lessons drawn out of them. If it’s not good enough to be a Keeper then learn from it, take notes and get rid of it.
Here’s a simplified flowchart diagram of the system and three stages.
(click to maximise. It will open in a new window and can be printed with my permission.)
Digitizing
If you’re digitizing your notes then I recommend you use Google Docs. It has every feature you could want plus more. It has highlighting, folders, remote access, can be accessed off-line and from anywhere with an internet connection and is totally free. The best feature is that it has a search function to separate notes into genres so they’re easier to find. Applying this system over years could give you a lot of notes after all.
Topic Notes
You’ll get to a point where you have made notes on several books in one area. You will start seeing patterns and want to keep note of them. I recommend keeping an editable document that combines ALL of the notes on this topic condensed further than the original ones. You will learn more and more as you go along and eventually have everything that you have learned on a topic on one page. You can add to this with information you read on-line, hear about from other people or learn through personal experience.
Once All Is Done
It’ll feel great once you’ve got this up and running. You’ll have something that lets you know exactly what will happen with books once they come into your life and you’ll have access to the information without the bulk. They will be processed efficiently and you will have peace of mind knowing that all the information is being dealt with.
Notes
- I’d recommend getting several books on one area and taking notes on them all.
- Go To Philosophers Notes for a wide range of notes on Personal Development (Text and Audio) to save you time. If you have a personal development book already then you could go to the site and use some of the notes there. I’d always recommend buying a book rather than just reading notes about it because you might pick up a gem that someone else missed. They might be detailed enough for you or at least a great starting point. Another idea is to do an internet search for Book Title Notes eg. The Power Of Now Notes.
- You can use this system for exam revision but with taking more detailed notes. The section on topic notes applied especially here.
- The system is suited at factual books but could as easily apply to lessons that you’ve learned from fiction books too. If you read a Harry Potter book (crap example!!!) and it fired off some creative ideas then you’re still learning something and should jot it down and then implement it.
- I have no fears about digitizing my notes. I’ve been doing it for years and I’ve never had a problem. If you are nervous that you will lose the notes then you can always back them up to an external harddrive. Documents hardly take up any space at all.
- Getting all the notes on a specific area in front of you allows you to get a great zoomed out view of the greater underlying principles at hand. You can’t get experiences like this from just reading them one after another as you’re too focused on the shallower concepts.
- Work the system to your own needs. You don’t need to do everything I’ve set out here. Be creative and do what suits you, that’s how I developed this system.
- You could do this with audio programs and documentaries. I’ve listened to so many audio programs over the years and sometimes they’re great to re-listen to just for motivation but why not extract the information and move them on?
- If time goes by and you don’t want to read a book any more just get rid of it. Life’s too short.
- It might be a bit messy at first as you go through books on unrelated areas but in the future you can buy several books on one area and condense the notes for future use and it will allow you to get deeper into a topic than jumping between different areas.
- (For those of you interested, my Keepers at the moment are
