Repetition is key.

Let’s say you a have a big gut.

But you want a six pack. So, you go online and look for an exercise that will help you.

There, you find that you will need to lower your overall body fat for the abs to show. You are intimidated by the prospect of going on a diet.

You tell this to one of you friends. He tries to cheer you on. He promises to join the gym with you.

You are sick and tired of having a big gut so you decide to start your journey towards having abs.

You join a gym and work your abs until they are sore. Your friend on the other hand doesn’t over work his abs like you do.

The next day you are surprised to see that your abs are still sore and you can’t work them anymore. Your gym coach tells you to give them a week of rest. That week, your friend went to the gym without you. After some rest, your abs start working again. The next day, you join your friend in the gym.

You ask your friend if he had similar troubles. He tells you that he didn’t. Rather he kept working his muscles throughout the week when you were absent. He also tells you that he can now do more reps than he could a week before.

You are tempted to over work your muscles again. But you’ve learnt your lesson.

You start giving some love to all your muscle groups- biceps, neck and shoulder, pecks, legs etc. You don’t over work a muscle anymore. You are more concerned with putting in more reps. You now realize that, you won’t see results after one day of hardcore training. Rather you will see results after you’ve put in regular work, day after day after day.

Here’s what James Clear has to say about it,

Everyone wants to make progress. And there is only one way to do it: put in your reps.

He does a great job at explaining this idea. He cites multiple studies that prove this effect. I highly recommend you read his post. You can find it here- https://jamesclear.com/repetitions

My Unfortunate Fascination with Motivation Porn

I usually disagree with people who say that self-help is crap. But I understand where they are coming from. It’s not that self-help is crap, but motivation porn is.

Some people tend to think that they are the same. But they are not. Self-help can range from a book that helps you to learn a new language to YouTube videos whose sole purpose is to shout at you and tell you that you are a loser.

I hope you can see the difference.

Well, I didn’t when I was a teen. I used to read all kinds of stuff. And I fell into the rabbit hole of motivation porn.

But something in me kept bugging me that there must be more to it. On hindsight I know there are fake gurus out there who put out contents without substance, who pretend as if motivation will see you through the finish line. But I didn’t know it then.

So, I nevertheless kept trusting these motivation gurus. And it’s no surprise that my life was stuck in stagnation for a long period of time.

Then I found some real gurus. There was a stark difference between them and the fake ones. They didn’t talk about amazing possibilities. They rather preferred to talk about scientific consensus. They didn’t try to motivate you, they urged you to research on your own and try their ideas to see if they hold.

Thus, I cut all my ties with the motivation industry. I would still sometimes see one or two of their videos just for the fun of it, but I don’t believe that they would solve any of my problems anymore.

Because procrastination is not about lack of motivation, it’s about lack of clarity. As James clear states in his amazing book ‘Atomic Habits’-

Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity

That led me to appreciate the works of real teachers and researchers out there. People like Charles Duhigg, James Clear, Malcolm Gladwell, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Barbara Oakley etc. have helped me improve my skills and attitude.

5 habits that can improve your life

Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity – James Clear

Habits have always been one of my fascinations. To understand their usefulness, you  have to know about compounding.

What is compounding? Compounding is the accumulation of outcomes. We compound interests in banks. Warren buffet became a billionaire by compounding his profits in the stock market.

Here’s a quote from the man himself:

You can see how much emphasis Buffet puts on reading, on knowledge and on compounding.

Habits lets you harness the power of compounding. You repeat your habits day after day after day. Thus, the outcomes build on top of one another.

Thus, to build muscle we workout at frequent intervals. You can’t just do extreme workout one day and expect to look like Jason Statham overnight.

That’s why experts forbid us to cram everything the night before an exam. Studying regularly, no matter how little, builds the knowledge into your psyche.

If I was successful in intriguing you about habits, then you may be wondering what some of the best habits are. Well, Everyone is at a unique stage of their life so it’s hard to recommend something that might help everyone. I will still try and find the common grounds. Here are my top 5:

1. Studying Smart

Much of our study time is wasted as we don’t know the proper ways of doing it. To really up your game and retain what you learn, you need to know these two concepts: ‘Spaced repetition’ and ‘Recall’.

It’s been proven by various studies that spaced reputation is the best way to study. It’s a simple concept where you revise your study material at frequent intervals. (If you wish for an app to facilitate this, you can use Anki. It’s available for both android and windows-PC.

the second concept is ‘to recall’. It’s famously known as the ‘Feynman technique’, as the legendary physicist Richard Feynman popularized it. The concept is to stop at frequent intervals while studying, and trying to convey what you just studied in your own words. You can do this by writing, saying it out loud, or through teaching someone else. For more clarification, watch the video here.

2. Blocking all entertainment

If you block your favorite sources of entertainment for a certain period of the day, you will be bored. This boredom can be your weapon.

When you have nothing better to do, you will start to seek action in any format. Soon you’ll start organizing your room, reading a book, or maybe writing down your thoughts.

You may go out and talk to someone, finish the project that you’ve been procrastination on, or start doing mild exercise.

No matter what, your day will be more productive than just scrolling through Facebook or watching random YouTube videos.

I recommend, you block all entertainment, which includes all social media, until evening.

3. Three sacred hours

This is my favorite habit. This is a habit that is apparently very popular among famous writers too.

Jordan Peterson used to isolate himself in a room for 3 hours everyday to write his first book.

Steven Pressfield also employs a similar tactic.

Stephen king once told George RR Martin that he writes 6 pages every day. (I guess in his case it’s 6 sacred pages! 😉)

Neil Gaiman also shares how he isolated himself when he needs to write. I discussed about his technique here.

The idea is simple. Create a list of things you want to get accomplished every day. Maybe you want to practice coding, learn a language, write fiction or read the news. It can be anything as long as it can be done (at least partially) within 25 minutes.

Then keep only 6 of these tasks and remove the others from this list. Every day, at a fixed time, start a pomodoro timer and get all 6 of these done. It will take you only 3 hours and you’ll never miss the things that are most important for your personal/ career growth.

If you think you can’t make 3 hours of space in your schedule, try 2 hours or even just one hour. The important thing here is repetition not quantity.

Also, see if you can make time by eliminating your social media presence.

I elaborate on the 3 sacred hours idea here.

 

4. Working out

We are so used to thinking about exercise as a physical phenomena that we forget its best benefits revolve around the brain. Working out cures depression, makes you more focused and helps you sleep well. Working out has even been linked to better memory. So it definitely should be a habit that you take on early in your life.

 

5. Morning Pages

Julia Cameron popularized this idea in her bestselling book ‘The Artists Way’.

Psychologist Conor Neil, in his TEDx Talk (with over 2million views!) advises journaling to increase intelligence. He is not the only psychologist whom I have heard being an ardent supporter of journaling either. Bill Williams, the famous psychologist turned stock trader is another person who pushes morning pages as a crucial factor for success.

The way I suggest you use morning pages is like this-

Write down the events that happened in the previous day. Record your actions and reactions. Once you do that, you’ll start to develop an idea of what you are doing right and where you have room for improvement.

Hope this helps!

 

Atomic Habits is a must read for everyone

Professionals stick to the schedule;
amateurs let life get in the way

We fail to live up to our potential for many reasons. Some of us are just victims of bad habits. Some just can’t beat fear. Then there are others who are shackled by their tendency to procrastinate. These things work diligently everyday to keep us where we are, or worse- get us spiraling down towards hell.

These monsters are real. They pretend to love us, make us fall victim to short-term safety and pleasure. They are cunning and know how to break through every wall of reason that we build.

Your higher self calls you. You want to answer it. But, you don’t. You can’t actually. It’s because of these monsters. Stephen Pressfield calls them Resistance. Resistance stems from you but is not you. You can defeat it. You just need some weapons in your arsenal.

I first saw James Clear on YouTube. I instantly knew he was legit. Later when he published a book I knew I had to read it. The Book is called Atomic Habits.

Atomic Habits is a perfection. There are many books and gurus for habits. James Clear borrows from them and then add his own wisdom to it. Thus, Atomic Habit is comprehensive and tackles almost all the practical issues that we face regarding habits.

The best thing about the book is how it illustrates the relationship between habits and identity. Here’s a quote from the book:

Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.

The main discussion of the book revolves around the 4 pillars of habit: Cue, Craving, Response and Reward. Clear goes in depth about how to utilize these phase to build good habits and delete the bad ones.

When you apply the teachings of Atomic Habits to your life, you beat resistance. You stop being a hedonist and start your journey towards stoicism. You are then in the path of manifesting your highest, truest self.

Even a little improvement today goes a long way over time. Your life will soon be vibrant and filled with meaning. This book will show you how to take proper care of every aspect of your life- health, wealth, art, spirit… you name it. Through automatizing the most important yet mundane tasks, you’ll find true freedom. Through building rituals your performance will be consistently good and improve over time.

When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy. You can be satisfied anytime your system is running

The 5 seconds rule (and other productive hacks)

Whenever there’s a deadline near, I spring into action. But, after that, I get exhausted. I felt like I need a more organic way for productivity.

So, I started some digging.

ASAP Science (a YT channel) helped. In their video about productivity, they suggested to just get started- for two reasons:

i. Before starting out mind wanders about all the difficulties ahead and makes us disinterested.

ii. Our brain doesn’t like unfinished work. So when we get started it bugs us to finish.

Then I came across James Clear (Author of “Atomic Habits”). I love two of his quotes as follows:

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”

and “To improve upon a habit, you have to first build one” (paraphrased)

he advises to do atom sized tasks for 60 days to build a solid habit first. Then we can strive to improve the habit.

But, the advice I liked most came from Mel Robbins- her famous 5 seconds rule.

When I’ve the impulse to do something (or think I should), I shall count backwards like this- 5,4,3,2,1 .. and do the thing.

As Mel explains, when we hesitate, the brain sees that as a signal of threat, as in the activity is dangerous, so it stops us from doing.

Also, it lets the cortex brain gain some power over the limbic one- for rational decision making.

So all three of the ideas above have been of great benefit to me lately. Almost finished Mel’s book yesterday. It’s a good book. I liked the audio version of the book as Mel is a great speaker.