It’s surprisingly easy to fall into inefficient routines, like indulging in junk food, binge-watching Netflix, or starting your day by checking emails. We all find ourselves engaging in these unhealthy and unproductive behaviors from time to time.
To become more productive with our time, one approach is to identify and uproot these “bad” habits. The process is relatively straightforward:
- Track the triggers that initiate the bad habit.
- Avoid the triggers whenever possible.
- Replace the bad routines with positive or neutral ones that offer the same reward when we encounter unavoidable triggers for the bad habit.
I’ve delved deeper into the process of uprooting and replacing bad habits in a more comprehensive article, which you can find here [include link to the article].
Alternatively, another path to enhanced productivity is learning and applying fundamental principles of effective time and energy management. Both methods, eliminating bad habits and incorporating productivity fundamentals, have proven to be effective in upgrading personal systems. By making these changes, we can move closer to our desired state—a place where we consistently take action towards our goals, achieve more results in less time, and can even take guilt-free breaks knowing we’ve accomplished quality work during the hours we’ve dedicated.
Unlike notable habit experts James Clear, BJ Fogg, and Charles Duhigg, I’ve found that starting with the fundamentals yields better results. Once we grasp these fundamental principles, we can establish rituals that solidify them into our daily routines.
For most individuals, the fundamentals are surprisingly effective, requiring less willpower to implement while delivering significant wins early on.
Let me share a personal example that highlights the power of fundamentals. As an information worker who spends a lot of time sitting, I realized the importance of taking mental and physical breaks throughout the day to boost cognitive performance. To accomplish this, I decided to pick up juggling as a fun activity to pause my work and get my blood flowing. I ordered three juggling balls from Amazon and began my journey. However, for several weeks, I struggled to keep the balls in the air for more than a few seconds.
Realizing that I needed a solid foundation, I turned to YouTube to learn the juggling fundamentals:
- Hold your arms at a 90-degree angle.
- Throw the ball with the middle of your hand.
- Imagine an imaginary box in front of you, with its bottom corners starting at your hands and extending up to eye level.
- Throw the ball in your right hand to the upper left-hand corner of the box.
- When the ball from your right hand reaches the left-hand corner of the box, throw the ball in your left hand to the upper right-hand corner of the imaginary box.
- Practice with two balls until the throws become natural.
- Add a third ball that will be thrown before the second ball starts to drop (step 5).
By learning and implementing these fundamentals, my juggling practice became much more fruitful. In a short period, I was able to keep three balls airborne for up to a minute without making any mistakes.
This story is significant because it illustrates that working hard alone is not the answer; it’s working with a proven strategy that yields results. Even if I had practiced for hours on end, I would not have achieved my current (albeit modest) juggling skills without the fundamental strategies I learned from YouTube. The same principle applies to personal efficiency.
With the foundational principles in place, I can now add more balls or learn new tricks in juggling. Similarly, with productivity fundamentals, you can gradually incorporate techniques that enhance your performance without feeling overwhelmed or dropping any important tasks.
With practice, these fundamentals will gradually replace the inefficiencies in your life. Timeboxing, planning your day the night before, clearing to neutral, tackling the most challenging task