Eliminate Clutter
We live in an era of too much.The cost of goods has decreased rapidly over the last few decades and we now possess a lot of everything. Own fewer clothes, shoes, cooking materials, bedding sheets, and towels. Give away or throw directly in the trash to create white space in your life.
But decluttering your life is more than just getting rid of materialistic possessions: it’s about focusing on less goals (one is enough), eliminating items from your to-do list, consuming less social media, cancelling the gym membership you never use, bailing on time-consuming meetings and pointless arguments, keeping your desk clean at the end of the day, and single-tasking.Use the 80/20 rule to find the truly important things in your life. Focus on the 20% of things that bring you 80% of the results. This will help you stop sweating the small stuff and focus on the bigger picture instead.
Develop a Growth Mindset
A person with a growth mindset views challenges as opportunities. Growth comes from taking on difficult challenges and figuring out how to overcome them. You look at failures and struggles as progress and getting closer to the solution. In Elon Musk’s words: “You should take the approach that you’re wrong. Your goal is to be less wrong.” You value the process over the result.You know you can learn anything if you put enough effort into it. And if you fail, you approach the problem from a different angle until you find a solution that works. You iterate until you get it right.Expand your knowledge by reading books, taking online courses, watching documentaries, reading about your industry, and learning from other people. To consolidate what you learned, teach the concepts to other people using the Feynman Technique.Developing a growth-oriented mindset brings progress to both your personal and professional life. Even small gains each day compound over time: a 1% gain per day adds up to almost 38x increase over a year.
Journaling
Journaling is the most effective way to understand your past, present, and future. Writing your thoughts down every day helps you sort your mental clutter, be clearer on your ambitions and goals, consolidates what you learn, increases your gratitude, and improves insight and understanding of your life. A journal records your entire life history that you can look back on and see how much you’ve grown.To get started, start simple: write one thing you accomplished, one thing you are grateful for, and one thing you are struggling with. Once you have developed the habit of writing daily, you can expand on your template by adding other things you find relevant, like progress on big goals and steps you are taking to accomplish them.To make journaling one of your good daily habits, make it a part of your nigh-time routine. Write down your thoughts on a notebook before going to bed and let your brain process the information during sleep.
Materials are edited by T. Ibragimova
