Not long ago, my daily life was inreally bad shape. I was sleeping anywhere between 3am to 6am onaverage, and on the really bad days I wouldn’t sleep at all. Because Islept late, I would wake up late. Subsequently, my day would start offlate, which meant I was busy “playing catch-up” and being late for myappointments. My diet was horrendous – I was eating lots of junk foodand snacks at night to stay awake. It got worse month after month, and Ididn’t want to continue on. I needed to revamp my lifestyle!
Ipicked out 9 habits I wanted to cultivate for the next 21 days, suchas: (1) Sleeping at/before 12am, (2) Waking up at 5am, (3) Reading abook or listening to a podcast at least once a day, (4) Meditating, (5)Being timely for my appointments (6) Even eating a raw food diet! #6might be a bit of an overkill for some people, but hey – since it wasjust for 21 days, I thought I might as well try something different for achange.
I’mextremely happy to report that nearly all my habits have stuck. My lifehas become significantly organized. I wake up early, I get to all myappointments early/on time, I get my work done, I meditate, I’m eatingraw, and I sleep on time. Out of the 9 habits, 8 habits stuck, while 1habit was let go because I realized it wasn’t something I wanted to workon for now. Compared to my previous lifestyle, this has been a total180 degree turnaround.
Somepeople might think this positive change is exclusive to me, thatperhaps I have some incredible determination, persistence or disciplineto pull this off. I don’t want to disappoint, but it’s not. In fact,truth be told, I consider myself a very undisciplined person. What I dohave though, are 6 specific tips that have been critical in enabling mylifestyle change. These have helped my new habits stick.
Ifyou have been trying to cultivate new habits with little success, thenyou might find these very useful. These habits are not rocket science –they are easy to understand, apply and have worked tremendously for me.
1.Know the Real Reason Why Your Habit Didn’t Stick PreviouslyAddress theroot cause of the issue, not the effect. Desperately battling withyourself every morning to wake up at 5:30am is to address the effect.Understanding why you keep failing to wake up at 5:30am is to addressthe cause.
Forexample, I couldn’t wake up early for the longest time ever, and all Ikept doing is to keep trying and failing the next day. This wouldcontinue on for several months until I finally realized it was justgoing nowhere. I began to start analyzing my situation to understand whyI couldn’t wake up early, through a self-questioning process. I probedinto the situation, and asked myself “why” this was happening to drilldown to the root cause.
Why am I tired?Because I didn’t have enough sleep.
为什么我累？因为我没有足够的睡眠。
Why didn’t I have enough sleep?Because I slept late.
为什么我没有足够的睡眠？因为我睡得晚。
Why did I sleep late?Because I had too many things to do.
为什么我睡得晚？因为我有太多的事情去做。
Why did I have so many things to do?Because I can’t finish them.
为什么我有这么多的事情去做？因为我不能结束它们。
Why can’t I finish them?Because I schedule more tasks than I can accomplish for the day.
为什么不结束它们？因为我计划了比我白天能解决的事情多的任务。
Gettingdown to this root cause helped me realize two things (1) All our habitsare tied to one another (sleeping time, waking time, timeliness) (2) Iunderestimate the time taken to finish the tasks (and subsequentlyoverestimate how fast I can do those tasks). Many times, I would targetto finish multiple projects in 1 day, which wasn’t possible at all.
Thismeant that to make my waking early habit stick, (1) I need to changehabits that are related to waking early (see Tip #2) and (2) I have tobe more realistic in my planning. Rather than stuff in so many tasks fora day and not finishing them, now I go for a challenging yet achievableschedule and complete my tasks accordingly.
Keep asking why to drill down to the root reason. Once you get to the real cause, you can immediately resolve the issue.
保持深层地追问最根部的原因。一旦，你找到真正的原因，你就能立刻地解决问题。
2.Pick Habits that Reinforce Each OtherOur habits are not standalone;they are interlinked. Some habits have a stronger linkage with eachother than others. For example, sleeping early and waking early areobviously linked to each other, while sleeping early and reading a book aday might not be so closely related. If you want to cultivate a habit,identify the other habits that are tied with it and make a holisticchange. These habits will reinforce each other to help make the changeseamless.
Wakingup early means I more time to do my tasks, which helps me to sleepearlier in the night. This helps me to wake up early the next day.
早起意味着我有更多的时间来做我的任务，这样帮助我在晚上睡得更早。这样帮助我在第二天的早晨起的更早。
Beingon time helps me to get my tasks completed on time, which helps meadhere to the day’s schedule. This means my sleeping time andsubsequently my waking time does not get affected.
Meditatingclears out mental clutter and reduces the amount of sleep I need.Usually I sleep about pro6-10 hours, but on the nights I meditate, Irequire about 5-6 hours.
Switchingto a raw vegan diet has helped to increase my mental clarity, whichmeant I don’t need to sleep as much as before. I’m not saying that youneed to go raw vegan just to cultivate a habit of sleeping/waking early,just that I noticed this particular benefit when I switched to thisdiet. You can sleep and wake up early perfectly fine by changing otherhabits.
3.Plan For Your Habits (Right down to the timings)Having a schedule letsyou know when you are on or off track for your habits. For the 1st dayof my new lifestyle, I did a full-day planning and continued thereafterfor all other days.
1.Onthe night before, put together a list all the tasks I need to get donefor the next day. This includes what’s on my calendar (I use Gcal).
1.在前一天的晚上，把我第二天需要完成的任务集中到一个表上。这包括在我的日历上（我用谷歌日历）。
2.Batch them into (a) Major projects, (b) Medium sized tasks and (c) Small, administrative activities
2.把它们分成（a）主要的项目，（b）中间的任务和（c）小的，后勤的行为
3.Slotthem into my schedule for the day. Major projects would have mostamount of time assigned. The principle I usually go by is 60-30-10 (%time spent) for a-b-c groups respectively.
4.Beaware of how much time each task requires. If it helps, most of thetime we underestimate the time we need. Make it a realistic yetchallenging time to work towards. Usually I assign a 5-10 minutes buffertime in between tasks to account for the transition from 1 task to thenext.
6.Ifthere are more tasks to be done than my schedule allows, I’lldeprioritize the unimportant ones and put them off to another day.
6。如果那里比计划允许的有更多的任务去做，我将取消掉不重要的事情并且把它们推迟到另外一天。
Withall this planning done, when the next day comes all I have to do is tofollow the schedule to a tee. I keep a close watch on the timing toensure I’m on time. 5 minutes before it’s up, I do a wrap up and starttransiting to the next task on the list.
Thebeauty of having a precise schedule is it helps me know exactly whenI’m taking more time than desired, and this helps me work on being moreefficient. There are some timings which absolutely have to be protected,such as my sleeping/waking times and appointment times, so in thatsense the time allocated on my tasks are fixed. That means I have towork more efficiently.
Itmay seem like a hassle, but it really isn’t. It just takes me about 10minutes to get each day’s schedule done. Not surprisingly, I haveallocate time in my daily schedule to do my scheduling for the next day(11-11:10pm). All you have to do is create a template once, and then youcan reapply this template for the other days. There will be similaritems across all out days that can be reapplied, such aswaking/breakfast/commuting/working/dinner/sleeping times, so it’s reallyvery straight forward.
Ifyou don’t plan for when exactly to get the habit done and instead justarbitrarily say that you want it to be done sometime today, then there’sa very high chance it might not get done. This is why most people’shabits don’t stick. Other things will invariably keep popping in andyou’d engage them without realizing it and throw your schedule offtrack. From there, other things get pushed back and you never get tocarry out your habit.
4.Stay Ahead of Your ScheduleI found it’s extremely motivating to stayahead. Waking up early at 5am means I’m ahead of most people in theworld (and myself too, if I were to stick to my old schedule), and thatmotivates me to work fast and stay ahead. What helps me continue thismomentum is that I end my tasks earlier and start the next task beforethe scheduled timing. By ensuring I stay ahead of my schedule, I’mnaturally motivated to work on all the things I have planned, includingmy habits. There’s no resistance to get them started at all.
If a task is taking more time than needed, then I make a choice. Either I:
如果任务花费了比所它们需要的更多的时间，这时我会做一个选择。我会：
1.Hurry up and get it done
1、加快速度来完成它。
2.Deprioritize the unnecessary or
2.或者使它变得不可能
3.Borrowtime out for my later tasks to continue working on the current one.This also means I have to work faster for the remainder of the day.
3.从以后的任务中借时间来完成当前的这个任务。这意味着我不得不在这一天的剩下的时间里工作的更快。
Thisdecision-making process is important, because otherwise you will end upplaying catch-up for the rest of the day, which affects all yourplanned habits/activities. Subsequently, it also affects your will tomaintain your habits. Stay ahead of your schedule and you will find iteasier to stay motivated.
5.Track Your HabitsTracking keeps you accountable to your habits. I have awhiteboard in my bedroom which I use to track my habits. On thewhiteboard, I drew a large table, split by days (21 days to cultivate anew habit) and by habits. For the days where I do the habit, I will giveit a check. For the days I don’t, I make a cross. It’s very satisfyingto do the checks every time you finish a habit! You can also track yourhabits on paper or in your computer.
HabitForge – Tracks new habits through a 21-day period. If you miss the habit for 1 day, it’ll restart.
铸造习惯--在21天的时间里养成一个新的习惯。如果你有一天没有做到，那么就重新开始。
Rootein– Unlike Habit Forge, this is an ongoing habit tracker. There is also amobile version for you to track your habits on the go.
挖土机--不像铸造习惯，这是一个正在进行的习惯记录。它还有一个手机版本来记录你正在进行的习惯。
Joe’s Goals – Same as Rootein. There’s an option to place multiple checks on the same goal for extra-productive days.
乔的目标--和挖土机一样。它有一个选项来记录为了同样的目标不同的日期里不同的习惯。
6.Engage People Around YouEngagement can occur on 2 levels – (a) Activeengagement, where you inform your friends who might be interested in andcultivate the habit together with them or (b) Passive engagement, whereyou let others know about your plans and having them morally supportyou.
Ihad both forms of support in my habit change. 2 days before I startedmy lifestyle revamp program, I posted an article on my blog, ThePersonal Excellence Blog, on the new 21-day Lifestyle Revamp Program Iwas taking on. I wrote in detail about the rationale behind the program,the benefits, the habits I was taking on and how I was going to achievemy goals. I also invited them to join me too in cultivating new habits.Much to my pleasant surprise, many readers responded in enthusiasm onnew habits they wanted to cultivate and joined me in the 21-days ofchange.
Formy raw food diet, I told my mom that I’m just eating fruits and saladsfor the next 3 weeks, and she began to stock up the house with fruitslike bananas, grapes and strawberries. In fact, I just finished a box ofstrawberries from typing this post. Yesterday, I went to watch How ToTrain A Dragon with my friend, and filled him in on my raw food diet. Hethen kept a look out for the restaurants we could dine in for thatnight. In the end I had warm baby spinach salad for dinner. My firsttime having it – can’t say I like it, but it’s nice for a change :D.
Don’tfeel that you’re alone in your habit change because you aren’t. Thereare always people around you who are more than willing to support you.
不要感觉你在改变自己的习惯上是孤独的，因为你不是。那里经常有许多周围的人正在准备去支持你。
FinalWordsMy new habits have pretty much been integrated into my daily lifenow. Everything runs on auto-pilot and it feels like I’ve been doingthis for a long while. My personal tips above have worked tremendouslyfor myself, so while they may look simple and straightforward, don’tunderestimate them. Try them out for yourself and let me know how yournew habits are coming along for you.
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