In the last few days, I started writing down in a more systematic way the systems that I created for my life. Ultimately, I want those systems to be ways to keep improving every day, even on the days that I don’t want to do anything. I am convinced that if you don’t improve every day, you regress to a lower state of yourself, and that is something that I really want to avoid.
But improving cannot happen with simply reading a book once every full moon and being done with it. It is a constant, slow process that has to be kept alive every single day. And this every single day is the part I find the hardest. So to make sure that I do get it done, I have put some systems in place, like my morning and evening routine, in which I include some learning.
Let’s see what I am doing on a regular basis for now that helps me improve and that I have already integrated.
Reading
I think reading is on of the most important of those practices, since it let gets me exposed to new ideas, helps me see the world in a different light than I would otherwise. I just finished reading How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life in which I got hooked to the idea of creating systems for your life, and The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future that showed me that there are people interested in almost anything you could think of.
Listening to podcasts
Same idea than for reading, except that I have more freedom of doing something else. I listen to them in the transports, and at the gym. Right now, I’m listening to Lewis Howes mainly, with a touch of Tim Ferriss. To improve even more, I may try listening to other kind of podcasts, the first coming to mind being Hardcore History by Dan Carlin. This is one of the least integrated of the bunch, since I still am working on my gym system and I don’t take the train every day yet.
Journaling
I’ve been journaling for about 2 years now, and I don’t think that I will ever stop. It helps me free my mind, be grateful, and in much more general terms, think about anything and everything. I decompose this in two parts. First, a constrained journaling, in which I answer to specific questions, then a free flow journaling, in which I write anything, and I really mean anything, that comes to my mind. The combination of both helped me understand myself and my life way more than any other practice.
Meditating
This is integrated in my morning routine, but it is a practice I have a very hard time staying with. Thankfully, using the application 10% happier, I can have some 1 minute and 3 minutes meditations that really help during the days when I really don’t feel like it or I woke up too late…
Blogging
This is actually the system that I started working on last. I have been writing on here for a few days, and it has not been easy. What I am trying to do for now is to write every single day to get in the habit of it, publishing and all. But it will help me quite a lot to learn how to build a community of people who I may be able to help, letting me pick up skills along the way that will help me in starting my own business.
Daily, it is not easy to keep on with all of those. These were not all added in a day but step by step during the last 3 years, with quite a lot of pain, and failing. I have not yet added to my systems the exceptions of life, like travelling, a lack of motivation (which was one of the biggest issues, and still is), or any other unplanned event. But having those unperfect systems still helped me improving my life, probably in more ways that I can understand. I am still looking for the system to help me fight the lack of motivation, and I have stumbled upon an interesting idea in the last days and weeks. I’ll let you know more about it in a later post.
What about you ? What are your routines for improvements ? Do you have difficulties setting systems up, or is it just like snapping your fingers ?