My husband is very big on self-improvement, productivity, and “life-hacking” as he calls it. It seems like every week he has a new crazy idea on how to improve his effectiveness by percentage. I know, what a geek. At least you don’t have to live with him. Here are some of his crazy ideas from the past few years:
- Taking short naps during the day instead of sleeping eight hours at night to gain 3 extra hours of work time each day.
- Putting butter in coffee to stop hunger and lose weight. (I know, gross.)
- Taking ice cold showers in the morning to supposedly increase testosterone.
- Holding books further away from you face so your eyes don’t have to move as much and you can read faster.
- Opening up multiple credit cards for “leverage against lenders.” (He and I had a huuuge fight over this one.)
- Setting a time limit on everything including social engagements. (I stomped this experiment out immediately.)
Although I think my husband is a complete weirdo a lot of the time, and most of these “life-hacks” he tries out are equally strange, I do admire his desire to always do things better and more effectively. Sometimes his experiments actually are effective. Recently he started using this iPhone app called Lift which tracks your habits each day. The idea behind the app is that you list your desired daily habits such as “Pack tomorrow’s lunch before going to bed” or “Don’t hit the snooze button in the morning” and each time you complete it, you give yourself a “check” for the day. As you build up your streak, it give you “points” like in a video game.
I don’t have a smart phone, but I liked what my husband was doing, so I tried the same thing with a calendar. I’ve been trying to write my novel for awhile now, but I keep getting distracted and going days without writing. I adapted the Lift thing to a calendar, which is actually already known to Life-hackers as the “Jerry Seinfeld technique:” Supposedly when Jerry was starting out he realized the only way to achieve success in comedy was to write great jokes. The only way to write great jokes, was to write a lot of jokes. He committed to writing jokes every single day. If he did, he’d draw a big red ‘X’ on his calendar. Visually, if he completed his task many days in a row, he’d have a string of x’s on his wall. The key was just to “keep the streak going.”
I’m now on a twelve day writing streak! Before I started tracking it with the calendar, I never got past four days. It’s amazing how “chores” become easy and more productive when it becomes an every day habit. I just started tracking my exercise in this way too– I’ll let you know how much weight I finally lose. Building habits really are the path to a better lifestyle. Ok, my husband was finally right on something. Let’s just not tell him that.
My actions are ruled by appetite, passion, prejudice, greed, love, fear, environment, habit, and the worst of these tyrants is habit. Therefore, if I must be a slave to habit let me be a slave to good habits. My bad habits must be destroyed and new furrows prepared for good seed. -Og Mandino, The Greatest Salesman in the World