Photo by Jose Antonio Gallego Vázquez on Unsplash
It’s more than a month since the world has started shutting down and now you’ve realized that you’ve wasted much of time doing something that didn’t add any value to your life. Yes! Binge-watching Netflix, mindlessly watching Youtube’s baby videos or cat videos, TikTok dance of your neighbors and eternal scrolling of Facebook and Instagram.
And I know, the reason you’re here is that you’ve come to this point that these senseless things should come to an end. I’ve been there and realized at some point that this crisis has given us the GIFT OF TIME which we have dreamed of before! Remember when you last told yourself before “I wish I could just stay at home all day” or “I wish I could just stay at home to work” or “If only I have some time to do this”
Now is the time for you to make this wish come true! Now is the time to create something out from the gift of time that we have right now! Well, it is up to you if you will keep on wasting this precious time that we have right now.
We have listed down some Keystone habits to maximize your day and your life. (Keystone habits, is a term coined in the book “The Power of Habits” by Charles Duhigg, are habits that automatically lead to multiple positive behaviors and positive effects in your life.)
Let’s now begin…
1. Reading books
It is now time for you explore and learn more things through reading. I’m not talking about the novels and fictions books but more of the self-help and non-fiction books. This habit gives a ton of value, that will eventually help you see beyond what you can see for yourself, it opens your potential in chasing success and gives a wider perspective of life.
Now, pick 1 self-help book do it bit by bit (if you are not into reading, try reading few pages per day). Remember you are building a new habit and it would take some time before you can acquire it, so start by doing small baby steps.
In addition, certain books create another habit, like if you’re reading a finance book you’re more likely to adapt and apply those new knowledge in your life. So, want to improve your lifestyle? Your daily routine? Read one book that interest you and see the difference! Just start with few pages (even just 1 page) and keep the momentum going until you’ve built the habit!
2. Learning new skills
With the amount of time that we have right now it would be very possible for you to learn something new. Try learning how to play an instrument or learning a new language, these skills may take some time before you can learn it but once you’ve built the habit it will be a lot easier. Remember the enormous time you’ve spent in scrolling through your phone, if you will be able to allot most of those time you will surely learn something new.
I guarantee you! Building a new skill will SURELY ADD VALUE in your life!
3. Exercise
This is one of the things that we used to neglect when we are too busy in life. Chasing the ladder of success and neglecting our physical health. Now that we have much time available, why not set 15 to 30 minutes of your time daily and do some few crunches. Working out daily have tons of benefits not just on your physique but also mentally and emotionally.
Try doing a 10-minute workout today and follow through it with another session on the following day, repeat over and over, and you will notice that eventually some other habits are forming. From, working out to eating healthy, it has been proven that once you’ve started exercising you eventually eat more healthy foods. Isn’t it amazing how these keystone habits work? Try it for yourself and see that I’m not lying?
Remember start doing small steps when you’re building this habit.
4. Journaling
If you are new to journaling you might have thought that this is only writing whatever happens to your day. But there is more to that than just writing what happened to your day. This is like writing and sorting things from your mind into your notebook and gives you the chance to look yourself beyond your conscious mind.
It is like looking into your own minds and judging your thoughts from the outside. You can start to know more about yourself too once you’ve started building this habit. There are tons of benefits that journaling can give you.
Just pick-up your notebook and write anything don’t force yourself to write a lot. Start with fewer sentences then keep it moving. If you missed a day just move on and do it the following day, this gives you mental clarity and a better way of processing your thoughts. Try it now!
We have listed down some benefits of journaling here.
5. Self-discipline
You might be surprise about this, but self-discipline is like a skill that you must practice and keep on repeating for you to master this. We all know that self-discipline is one of the most important habit to acquire for us to achieve success. One of these is setting some time to not use your phone or taking cold showers.
Those may not have much visible impact right away but through consistent application you will notice that you’re starting to have power over yourself. Like having the discipline to do things not because you feel doing it but because you must do it and this is common to everyone as we tend to do most of the things because we felt like doing it, that when the gravity of not doing it kicks-in we tend to submit easily and not do it. This is also known as procrastination which is a common problem for everyone. (Check it here if you wanted to learn more on how to stop this.)
Learn to control yourself, build the habit that will form your self-discipline and you are one step ahead of being successful.
Conclusion
There are a lot of things that we can do with our spare time right now. But we must be vigilant on how we spend our time. Sometimes, we tend to just fill our time and spend the day with things that don’t really add value to our life. We often see time as an infinite resource that it is always available at the reach of our hand, but remember, once you’ve consumed your time you can no longer bring it back be wise on how you spend it.
Take this time to reflect and see beyond what’s happening. Take this opportunity to find and build yourself as we face this quarantine.
Vir Glarea 