Habits Archives - from Gnome to Goliath

Ten Positive Habits to Improve Your Life

When you think about life what picture comes into your mind? Do you think of your life as a struggle? Or a burden? Have you seen people who stroll through life as though they are having fun? Nothing bothers them, they seem in control.

Well, as you know, I believe that most of life is about habits. There are positive habits and negative habits. If you want to improve your life, cultivate more of the positive habits. This is the simplest equation in life. If you are interested in more of my articles about habits – there are a few recommendations:

By the end of this short article, you will have a list of ten positive habits as ideas which you can use to improve your life. Don’t take this as the end of your journey, this is just the beginning. Keep reading and keep discovering other positive habits.

How to create a routine of habits for winning?

Whether you like it or not, your life runs mostly on habits. In this article, I will show you a way to define positive habits for winning.

Today I am going to explore one of my favourite topics – habits. In this article I will walk you through the steps I took to create a winning habit for winning at my favourite sports – tennis.

In 2019, after I moved to a new neighbourhood, I joined a local tennis club. I have always been into tennis, but it is so hard to keep playing the sport when you are moving all around the world. But this time, I was set upon becoming part of the community. I signed up for all events, which included playing as a sub in the C-team for the local inter-county doubles league. Now, three years later, I am member of the board and I continue to play on the C-team team.

Playing tennis competitively, even as an amateur, is very different than playing tennis for fun. In 2021, inspired by reading about Michael Phelps (in the book The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg – link to Goodreads), I created a small routine for myself to repeat before every point. It worked! This year, as soon as the inter-county started, I happened to be reading another book on the same subject (Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg – link to Goodreads) and I decided to create a full match-wide routine for playing tennis.

Here, I will show you how I did it. I hope that you will be able to extract the learnings and apply it to your personal life.

How to Improve Book Retention

Stop reading non-fiction books only to forget them after you close the last page. Increase your retention by following three simple steps.

Today I am going to teach you how to improve your retention when reading non-fiction books. After all this is the only reason why we read such kinds of books, right?

I have gone over several methods that do not work. From passive reading (i.e., I just read the book and then I take the next one), to highlighting quotes and important passages, and all the way to extracting my highlights and creating a mind map organized by chapter. But when I read a great book like Adam Grant’s Think Again, I will find myself unable to generate a thoughtful review about it or remember even one important idea from the book.

Here, I will show you my latest method for improving retention. It is based on the book How to Take Smart Notes (link to Goodreads).

How to Climb the Wall

When learning a new skill, the moment when your will drops below your skill is called the wall. To succeed, you need to climb the wall.

Every time when you start something new there is a moment when your willpower drops below your perceived skill level. This moment is called the wall. It looks daunting but eventually, if you keep practicing both, your skill level and your willpower start going up. You have started to climb the wall. If you persist, you will get to the peak and then … you will see another mountain to climb.

In this article, I will give you my tips for the hardest part in acquiring any new skill – the climb. If you zoom our, you will notice the same principle at a higher level – your career, your relationship, your life. Hopefully, you will also find ways to apply what you have learned to other areas, not only when learning a skill.

Which Brain Is in Charge of Your Eating?

Learn to engage your deliberate brain in your eating choices, you will be able to improve your health and well-being.

We humans have three brains in our heads – the lizard brain, the monkey brain, and the human brain. This is a wrong model, but it is a good approximation of the true (details here, link to Wikipedia). We still don’t know for sure, but we kinda know which part of the brain is responsible for which function. When it comes to controlling basic needs like eating, nutrition, things become tricky. Is it better to keep eating the food which we always ate (as in thousands of years ago)? Or is it better to go against our nature, because we know that it is leading us to obesity and other problems?

In this article, I am sharing my experience, opinion, and knowledge on this subject. It is inspired by a podcast episode I recently listened to (Tim Ferris’s interview with Dr. Michio Kaku) in combination with several books about the brain and nutrition which I read over the last few years (for more details about my reading – Tin’s List of Best Books 2021 and Tin’s List of Best Books 2020).

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, a nutritionist, or a scientist. All information in this article is based on my own experience and beliefs. Please consult with a specialist before following any of my tips.