Recommended listening:

Harvard Business Review “Set Habits You’ll Actually Keep”

Freakonomics “When Willpower Isn’t Enough”

Experts and rock stars in every field have figured out the key to being able to function at a higher level than most people dream of.  As with anything, I believe that this is skill that can be learned and trained to a desired level of mastery.

After listening to both of these podcasts, I was inspired to rethink a lot of the common things I do day to day. By making common tasks into habits, a person can free up their mind to take on more important, complex tasks. The resulting reduction in stress significantly boosts creativity and allows for a more high-functioning lifestyle. Many of my personal mentors and heroes have been able to achieve their successes through streamlining common tasks and productive behavior into instinctive habits.

As a result, one of my biggest recent goals has become to figure out the most important habits to make or break. After consciously observing my daily habits, I realized that I’ve neglected many easy yet effective tasks because I didn’t understood why they would be the best use of my time. These neglected tasks included basic things such as cleaning dishes immediately after use to more important things such as being mindful of where my free time goes. One common trap is doing what feels easiest one day and then creating a pattern based on that. For me, that has been things such as browsing reddit, watching twitch.tv, or playing video games. I’ve decided to slowly create new habits that will allow me to get the most from my day. Hopefully, according to these podcasts, common tasks I do become habits so that I can unlock time that I never knew existed while living a better, healthier, more high-functioning life.