Bit Better Book Club πŸŽ‰

Weeks 1 and 2: The Power of Habit βš™

Welcome to weeks 1 and 2!

Time to read:

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

It explores the science behind habit creation and reformation. The book reached the best seller list for The New York Times, Amazon.com, and USA Today.

Just 30 pages (or 47 minutes for an audiobook) a day to finish it in 2 weeks :raised_hands:

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Speaking of habits, I installed Strides on my iPhone recently, and it has helped me to stick to what I really want to do every day:

  • Wake up, immediately drink water
  • hop on the Yoga mat and do some stretching exercises
  • drink more water, take a shower
  • make breakfast at home
  • plan the day
  • do an hour of reading
  • DO NOT USE SOCIAL MEDIA the whole day unless it is FRI-SUN
  • Meditate at some point in the day
  • Write a short journal entry

I think the social media part is absolutely crucial. Social media has become a toxic cesspool of negativity and I just can’t protect myself against it. Doomscrolling is a word now for a reason.

It’s ridiculous, but having that little app is enough to keep myself honest. In the first day, I still reflexively reached into my pocket, took out the phone, types β€œT” into Safari and looked at the Twitter homepage but then I was like β€œHALT! I don’t want to read this today.” and closed it.

At day 5 (Friday), I totally forgot that according to my own rules I was allowed to use Twitter and Reddit – I had simply lost the urge to even look at it.

I also like think about this this way: Whatever we expose ourselves to, our brain will process that. If we fill our brains with social media, that takes up precious processing power throughout the day. If we don’t do that and only fill our brains with books and content we really actively want, our brains will instead be busy processing THAT and that is just much more useful.

Besides, when I don’t read social media, I suddenly have seemingly infinite amounts of time in the day that I can spend reading books :slight_smile: Already managed 3 book this year :slight_smile:

Habits are really powerful.

As I said on Goodreads to you, also check out The Path of Least Resistance. It goes beyond habits and actually argues, why habits alone are not enough. You need to see the bigger systems (as in: Systems Thinking) that surround you, or else you will perpetually bounce back and forth between good habits and bad habits and never seem to make any real progress.

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