Marc MWe’re all busy in this life of our’s and it can be difficult to find the time to weed out what takes priority. I’ve compiled a few handy hacks that I’ve found to improve my quality of life and overall well-being as a human. I have a strong belief that we should work to live, not live to work therefore I only hope that these suggestions will bring you a more rewarding and fulfilling journey we call life.
Reward pairing
Sometimes we know that we should do something that will benefit us, but just can’t seem to find the motivation to actually go through with it. This can become a real big problem as procrastination sets in and then for some, a particular task never gets accomplished. The answer is to pair your rewards with tasks you are constantly putting off for later. Pairing tasks such as exercising while having your favorite television show on in the background could make exercising more enjoyable.
Create a todo list of your tasks that need to be accomplished and start pairing them with equally rewarding incentive. Another approach could be rewarding yourself AFTER you have completed difficult task “A” for example.
Meditation
There may be a misunderstanding that meditation is for gurus and those in touch with their inner-self, however there a many benefits to incorporating meditation into your daily routine. You don’t necessarily need a full-blown mantra and hum tones to yourself for this to bring you increased productivity. Allocate 5 minutes in the morning and possibly 5 minutes at night to start off with and just sit quietly. With the amount of distractions we have with technology, a significant other, work, children, business you name it we often forget to just “chill out” and take our brains off of overdrive. During this 5 minute quiet session, you can close your eyes and just focus on your breathing and nothing else. Let your mind go. Of course thoughts will creep in from time to time, but with a little practice you will be able to just “be”. The point is not to become a meditation master, but allow you to take your brain off of overdrive and facilitate clarity of thought and better decision making.
Morning Journal
Research has shown there are numerous benefits to writing in general. I’m going to keep this one simple for the time being. Keeping a daily journal doesn’t have to be a long process. I think of a morning journal as a 5 minute brain dump writing exercise where I can spill all of my thoughts on paper, and you’ll find this can be very therapeutic. I take the approach of writing whatever is on my mind that is bothering me, I am grateful for and goals I’m looking to achieve for the day. The action of simply creating a routine in a way forms discipline and can spread to other areas of your life. Think of this like a muscle, the more you exercise it, the stronger it becomes. In turn this will form a positive habit. An example of this is keeping your home clean leads to keeping the office tidy, your daily practice of writing will domino onto other healthy habits.
Podcasts with educational value
One way to maximize the amount of knowledge you consume is to utilize your commuting time with educational podcasts on topics that you find interesting. Instead of listening to music, put on a great podcast episode that will bring you more self value and help you become a more well-rounded individual. Some of my favorite podcasts that I listen to are The Tim Ferris Show, NPR’s How I Built This, Hidden Brain, TED Radio Hour and Planet Money, Self Made Man, and Smart Passive Income. If you break it down to the amount of time we spend commuting back and forth to work you can crush at least one of these 45 minute episodes full of noteworthy gems a day. Let’s say for example if you average a one way 45 minute commute 5 days a week X 52 weeks a year that comes out to about 8 days straight of new knowledge goodness!
I like to use Overcast because it allows for speeding up the playback time in addition to skipping the excess noise gaps. Hands down best way to listen to podcasting content.
Become more humble
Just being a more understanding, overall good person that exudes empathy will get you very far in life. When you are humble you can accept your own strengths and limitations without defensiveness or judgment – a core value, that cultivates a powerful compassion for humanity.
Humble people place high value on more meaningful things that benefit others, such as noble qualities. Seeing life as a school we can learn from each other and accept criticism, new ideas and advice. This kind of self-acceptance stems from grounding self worth based on the intrinsic values as human beings rather than things such as multiple-figure salaries, the envy of a movie star physique, climbing the corporate ladder or the number of friends on Facebook. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with the aforementioned, however what we truly place emphasis as core values shouldn’t stem from a superficial place.
Learn a new language
How is this a hack? Well, the more you can communicate outside of your own culture, the more opportunities you will provide yourself. For example, companies more than ever are doing business in countries around the world, however they can’t do it without hiring globally-minded people who have the ability to speak at least one foreign language. You’ll give your brain a real boost in a variety of ways such as creativity, longer attention span, memory retention and a reduced risk of age-related cognitive decline due to an increase in neural connections. You’ll also become more interesting as you’ll have more to converse about. If you’re interested in learning a new language quickly, our hand-vetted instructors give online language lessons to students globally via Skype. I’m sure you can agree that the benefits of expanding your mind with the gift of a new language are unlimited.
In closing, these are simply suggestions in which I have personally implemented and have experienced a more fruitful and enjoyable life. These are not a one-size-fits-all, however hopefully you see the benefits of incorporating them into your daily life as well.
Jaci S
