A small win

What a beautiful morning! I am writing this blog post to tell about a small win (or rather small wins) that I had recently.

I read two self-help books last year:

  1. Atomic Habits
  2. Deep work

(I feel like that is pretty much the reading that I did last year 😅)

But the good thing is they got me more conscious about “habits” and “focus” - the two gateway drugs for me 😆

At the start of 2023, I finished reading one more self-help book: The morning miracle randomly as it was lying around in our house. There was some marketing fluff inside it, but I was focused on the core concepts. I have been putting the techniques that I learned from it into a good amount of practice.

I didn’t have a mental model for “habits” when I started. Now after these books, I am kind of understanding it, I think 😊

So, with that, I am gonna share some of the small wins that I had recently.

win #1 - I can meditate after all

First, I continuously meditated for 11 days using an app called Atom - for 10 to 15 minutes a day.

The app grows a forest based on the points that you accrue after a meditation session.

image

And then I missed it for 3 continuous days because of a family function. But had the intention to get back on track. (P.S. Thanks to “Atomic Habits” for teaching me the technique to get back on track when we are going out of sync. I think it said 2 days is the max threshold for missing out on a regular habit. Beyond that point, you might as well not continue the habit. So if we are missing a habit for 2 continuous days, that is when our internal alarm has to go off and think about why we missed it)

So, the forest looks like this now (on Day 19)

image

win #2 - I can journal too

I started writing a journal for less than 10 minutes every day. First I started to do it with logseq, but it was forcing me to switch on my computer early in the morning. So, I switched to a paper journal that I got as a gift.

My journal format is simple. one “Accomplishment” and one “Disappointment” that I had the previous day. That’s all I write.

Once a journal page is filled. I retrospect a bit and see if I need to embed new behaviors to help avoid the disappointments that I had.

(Thanks to the “morning miracle” book in this case, as it motivated me to try the habit of journalling)

my learnings

I have never done something like this before, yet having a good run now. The secret sauce that I learned is

“Start small” - like very very small. If it takes more than 2 minutes on day one, then you are over-doing it (again lessons from the books above)

~ ~ ~ ~

Bye, have a good day!