Effective habits (A)

This series of posts can get extremely boring, but they are important for the author (me) to write them out, so if you see a big letter (A, B...) next to the title consider spending your time in more efficeint way or proceed with caution! :)

In these series of posts I am going to show you some ideas on how to improve the effectiveness of your life. And what better way than by improving things we all do all the time: habits. So firstly I am going to talk a little bit about what I think a habit is, then we are going to go through habbit ideas one at a time:

1. proactivity

2. have your goals written in yourself

3.manage your time

4. know to listen

5. think win win

6.synergise

7. sharpen the saw

These are the names I have given to these basic ideas. The first three are about your character, You and how you deal with life the next three are about how to be most effective in interactions with others and the last is about building yourself.

So, what is a habit? Some online definitions : an established custom; "it was their habit to dine at 7 every evening" a pattern of behavior acquired through frequent repetition; "she had a habit twirling the ends of her hair"; "long use had hardened him to it" a distinctive attire (as the costume of a religious order) put a habit on substance abuse: excessive use of drugs

don't really tell much. I belive that habbits are a mix of: 1. knowledge on a certain issue, so you know what to do 2. skill, so you know how to do something, but just like driving a car, it has to be practised enough so that it becomes a subconscious process and 3. attitude or knowing why we want to do something, because it matches our values.

There are positivie and negative habits and unfortunately the negative ones are the easiest to learn and the hardest to get rid of because they are, like all habits, mostly subconscious. There are also many emotions and feelings connected with habits. For example when you develop a habit of spending too much time on line, it can be quite nice and pleasing until you realise how many more important things you should still do ( and that makes you feel a bit bad), like study for an exam. And since that is currently my case I must work fast on finishing this post.

It depends on our values, but most of us want a happy family, good friends, steady and interesting job... and to achive all these goals the hedonistic, short term habits and behaviour connected to it are not really a good choice. So we have learn positive, long term habits which lead to such behaviour that we achieve our goals and gain far greater overall pleasure than short term joys can ever give us.

But it is not just about learning these habits, we also have to understand them and then live them. It may sound easy but it takes quite a while to incorporate something into your subconscious mind. Furthermore it takes a lot of conscious effort and denial of short term joys, but by doing so you achieve what you really want to and nothing can be more valuable than that.

So be very careful and wise when choosing your habits.