5 Simple Habits to Live Your Best Life

My life over the last 10 years has been a chaotic mix of wants, needs, and endless to-do lists. As someone who possesses the attention span of a small puppy, I vacillate from one exciting activity to the next, never fully completing the task-at-hand, leaving an endless trail of unfinished projects, creative ideas, and to-dos in my wake. As the new year rolled around, I was faced with the annual challenge of coming up with a year-defining resolution that would help me improve the areas of my life that we all want to improve: Money, career, relationships, health, you know the drill.

I had attempted to tackle all these areas individually, but my sporadic focus left me feeling defeated as I lamented the many areas that were being neglected. I’ve read dozens of self-improvement books and articles over the years, and they’ve covered the gamut of methods to improve the aforementioned areas of one’s life, but I have never found a way to pull them all together. Enter Atomic Habits by James Clear and his revolutionary way of making habits stick.

Forget Goals, Focus On Systems

Part of the problem with my yearly resolution was that it was always centered around a goal. It might be, “start a career in an industry you love”, “write 200 articles by year’s end”, or “lose 30 pounds.” The problem with these types of goals is that they are binary. Pass or fail. This can be very defeating because your idea of success is wrapped up in a single outcome. But one of the key ideas from Atomic Habits is that you should do away with setting a goal, and instead focus on a system for a success. Lofty year-end goals like losing 30 pounds is a lot harder than say, a system of dieting that cuts out alcohol consumption through the week. The latter is designed to be straight-forward, simple, and easily measured. More importantly, you’re not tracking the pounds you lose or gain over the year, but your ability to simply change one daily habit, drinking, throughout the week (weekends not included of course, that would madness!)

So How Do I Track My New System?

I’m glad you asked! One of the key points in Clear’s seminal work is that we should strive to get 1% better every day. You read that correctly. One measly percent. Said another way, you’re not going to lose 30 pounds by cutting out your favorite cocktail during your nightly Netflix binge, but if you consistently find the strength to switch the beer and bourbon out for water and chewing gum, over time the deficit of calories and improved sleep will, over time, allow you to achieve the type of weight loss that you normally strive for over the year, mostly through bad dieting or pointless treadmill sessions.

So now that we know that good habits are important, and implementing a good “system” can help make those tiny 1% improvements, you might be asking, “well how do I make myself accountable to my new system?” or “how can I track these small steps towards greatness?” The app stores of Android OS and iOS offer a variety of choices, respectively. Some habit trackers are fairly average due to poor design or hidden costs, and the best allow you to gamify your daily journey, be it through an aesthetically-pleasing user interface, or some wonderful Tamagotchi-like experience like growing your own personal tree. I’m a simple man. I love a clean interface with a variety of icons to represent my daily habits. For my money, the best habit tracking application available is Streaks. But first, a quick primer.

When interviewed about his system for writing decades of consistently successful stand-up material, the brilliant Jerry Seinfeld responded with, “don’t break the chain.” You see, Seinfeld was a big fan of buying those big, paper wall calendars, and he would place a red “X” for every day that he wrote a joke. As long as he kept that chain of red “X’s” intact, he was able to keep himself accountable to his system, and could consistently track how much time and effort he was putting into become a better comedian. With the app, Streaks, you use a similar psychology. You can choose up to 12 habits, and track the number of sequential days you have successfully completed a specific habit. The app’s beautiful interface lays out your habits in the form of clean, monochromatic buttons (with an icon of your choosing) that you long-press to mark a habit as complete. With the long-press, of course, comes the option of a variety of sounds and colors that helps create a tiny endorphin rush. Additionally, you can track your progress in the form of visual charts and other helpful tools to see how you’re improving over the course of a week, month, and so on. As of this time, Streaks is native to iOS users only (sorry Android devotees) and costs $4.99 in the app store.

Since I started using the Streaks app, I have tested numerous habits to see how their daily implementation might improve my life, and the following five have yielded some fantastic results over the last year. I will never be able to write an article long enough to document all the habits that one can use to make those daily 1% improvements, but these five are a pretty good start!

Habit 1: Meditation (10 Minute Minimum)

Sharon Salzberg, one of the most important figures in the mindfulness movement, was interviewed in a podcast and said that 10 minutes represents a good MED or “minimum effective dose” to generate real benefit to your day-to-day mental state. Based on my experience, I think she is spot-on. If you don’t think meditation is for you, I implore to read more about its benefits. You can can start with Dan Harris’ 10 Percent Happier book which documents his journey from doubting meditation as new age mumbo jumbo, to making it a mainstay in his life after his harrowing experience as an overstressed anchor. In short, the man needed to have a life-changing panic attack on live TV to finally making the change in his life. Harris offers a great insight into the often misunderstood mindfulness movement, and his everyman story will help ground you as you begin your own journey. As someone who was massively stressed in 2020, as I’m sure many of us were, I found the daily practice of 10 minutes per day helped me find some calm in my daily mental storm. If anything, if afforded me the ability to hit the pause button on my overactive monkey brain, and address my negative states before they got out of control.

Habit 2: Intermittent Fasting

I could easily post the numerous websites that discuss the benefits of intermittent fasting, but a 30-second google search would allow you to do the same. In short, it basically means you allow yourself a certain amount of hours to eat, and then a larger hourly window to go without food. An example would be skipping breakfast, eating from 1–9pm, and then fasting as you sleep and most of the next morning and early afternoon. Fasting allows your body to use its own fat stores for energy, and allows your body to initiate cellular repair by cleaning out damaged cells, in order to regenerate newer, healthier ones. The benefit of this being things like weight loss and a host of other benefits like mental clarity, increased growth hormone, and improved insulin sensitivity. If you’re skeptical about whether you can do this, please know that you can through discipline. My wife was the kind of person that could never allow herself to wait until 11am to eat; she feared fasting would cause both moodiness and make her light-headed. After starting with a beginner’s ratio like 15:9 (that’s 15 hours of fasting and 9 hours of eating) over a 24 hr time period, she eventually worked her way up to the more beneficial 16:8 ratio and eventually 17:7. If you don’t think these ratios work for you, there are plenty more to choose from, and most people just have to find what works for their style. For me, I love the simple idea of not being a slave to eating. Most of us do far too much of it anyway, and not the good kind. I enjoy not having that morning crash that follows a big breakfast, and the focus that comes from fasting till noon. After trying a number of fad diets, and calorie-restricting methods, I’ve found intermittent fasting to be the most effective weight loss method yet, and it’s helped me build the discipline and mental resilience that allows me to tackle other psychologically challenging tasks. Trust me on this one, your willpower will thank you.

Habit 3: Go to the Gym!

I know! This is such a trite recommendation that I had a hart time writing it. But, facts are facts. If you exercise, particularly with some form of resistance training (e.g., bands, dumbbells, body-weight), you will absolutely benefit from it in numerous ways. For more insight into the benefits of good ol’ fashioned exercise, read John J. Ratey’s book, Spark, which details the different ways you can lower stress, fight memory loss, and mentally perform better with exercise. To be honest, you don’t even need to hit the gym, you just need to move more! Get outside and run. Or don’t, that’s fine too, but do something physical. To make this doable, I have two habit markers, one for 15 minutes of weights, and one for 15 minutes of cardio. The best part of this method is I always end going over 15 minutes, and this is just more evidence that sometimes all you need to do is START. I call this, “positive self-trickery”. Fool yourself sometimes; tell yourself you’ll do the bare minimum and see where it takes you.

Habit 4: [Insert a small achievable diet hack here]

Is that title clear enough for you? If not, I get it. But honestly, I didn’t know what to put here because this will vary based on your own personal likes, dislikes, and level of discipline. For me, I have two major diet habit rules. 1) Eat a fruit or veggie (or both) every single day. If you make a point to implement one of these during your day, that should be one less moment that you reach for a bag of chips or a candy bar. As time goes by, those little wins add up and the belly fat goes down. The other food-related habit that I could have easily put here is the “not-to-do” kind. Mine happens to be no bread or processed foods after 2:30pm. Before you ask, no, I have absolutely no scientific basis for using that time other than it makes it easier. Would 12pm be better? Definitely. But I like a sandwich and a side of chips as much as the next guy, and that combo is often the quick lunch I make during a busy day. Besides, when that mid-afternoon time comes and goes, I know I’ve got to implement the veggies and/or fruits to equalize some of my earlier snacking. Simply put, it’s a win/win for me, I get my early indulgences, but I stay the course for the rest of the day.

Habit 5: Plan the NEXT Day

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with planning out your to-do list for the morning, and if that works for you, then great! Personally, I don’t like to plan my day after it’s started, which for most of us is the moment we get out of bed. Therefore, I want you to take some time tonight to think about what you want to accomplish tomorrow; I mean REALLY think it out. If you’re a busy student, an overworked mom or dad, or even a 50 yr old divorcee, use whatever quiet time you might get at the end of your day, and put pen to paper for what a successful day would look like. Night planning (after my kids are tucked in) is what allows me to take stock of my goals for the week. By planning at night, I can prioritize where in my day or week that important tasks should be completed. Trying to do that in the morning always feels rushed and pressured, does it not? After all, who is to say that I won’t get an urgent email from my boss in the middle of making a morning to-do list? Do you have a boss? If so, that’s one more master that you’re accountable for. Eliminate that worry by focusing on a plan before the external circumstances come along and wreak havoc on your schedule. Murphy’s law is going to get you, but always have a plan!

So there you have it, my not-so insightful list of helpful habits and recommendations for getting your daily life on track for 2021. In closing, I want to you leave you one last nugget wisdom from Atomic Habits. Actually it’s four nuggets. Author James Clear cites Four Laws of Behavior Change, for making a habit stick: (1) make it obvious, (2) make it attractive, (3) make it easy, and (4) make it satisfying. Apply these four laws to each of your habits, and watch your life change for the better, one day at a time, or at least 1% percent at a time.