We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. - Aristotle

Our daily lives are often a series of habits played out through the day, a trammeled existence fettered by the slow accretion of our previous actions.

But habits can be changed, as difficult as that may seem sometimes.

I’m a living example: in tiny, almost infinitesimal steps, I’ve changed a laundry list of habits. Quit smoking, stopped impulse spending, got out of debt, began running and waking early and eating healthier and becoming frugal and simplifying my life and becoming organized and focused and productive, ran three marathons and a couple of triathlons, started a few successful blogs, eliminated my debt … you get the picture.

It’s possible.

And while I’ve written about habit change many times over the course of the life of Zen Habits, today I thought I’d put the best tips all together in one cheatsheet, for those new to the blog and for those who could use the reminders.

Keep it simple
Habit change is not that complicated. While the tips below will seem overwhelming, there’s really only a few things you need to know. Everything else is just helping these to become reality.

The simple steps of habit change:

1. Write down your plan.

2. Identify your triggers and replacement habits.

3. Focus on doing the replacement habits every single time the triggers happen, for about 30 days.

That’s it. We’ll talk more about each of these steps, and much more, in the cheatsheet below.

The Habit Change Cheatsheet
The following is a compilation of tips to help you change a habit. Don’t be overwhelmed — always remember the simple steps above. The rest are different ways to help you become more successful in your habit change.

1. Do just one habit at a time. Extremely important. Habit change is difficult, even with just one habit. If you do more than one habit at a time, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Keep it simple, allow yourself to focus, and give yourself the best chance for success. Btw, this is why New Year’s resolutions often fail — people try to tackle more than one change at a time.

2. Start small. The smaller the better, because habit change is difficult, and trying to take on too much is a recipe for disaster. Want to exercise? Start with just 5-10 minutes. Want to wake up earlier? Try just 10 minutes earlier for now. Or consider half habits.

3. Do a 30-day Challenge. In my experience, it takes about 30 days to change a habit, if you’re focused and consistent. This is a round number and will vary from person to person and habit to habit. Often you’ll read a magical “21 days” to change a habit, but this is a myth with no evidence. Seriously — try to find the evidence from a scientific study for this. A more recent study shows that 66 days is a better number (read more). But 30 days is a good number to get you started. Your challenge: stick with a habit every day for 30 days, and post your daily progress updates to a forum.

4. Write it down. Just saying you’re going to change the habit is not enough of a commitment. You need to actually write it down, on paper. Write what habit you’re going to change.

5. Make a plan. While you’re writing, also write down a plan. This will ensure you’re really prepared. The plan should include your reasons (motivations) for changing, obstacles, triggers, support buddies, and other ways you’re going to make this a success. More on each of these below.

6. Know your motivations, and be sure they’re strong. Write them down in your plan. You have to be very clear why you’re doing this, and the benefits of doing it need to be clear in your head. If you’re just doing it for vanity, while that can be a good motivator, it’s not usually enough. We need something stronger. For me, I quit smoking for my wife and kids. I made a promise to them. I knew if I didn’t smoke, not only would they be without a husband and father, but they’d be more likely to smoke themselves (my wife was a smoker and quit with me).

7. Don’t start right away. In your plan, write down a start date. Maybe a week or two from the date you start writing out the plan. When you start right away (like today), you are not giving the plan the seriousness it deserves. When you have a “Quit Date” or “Start Date”, it gives that date an air of significance. Tell everyone about your quit date (or start date). Put it up on your wall or computer desktop. Make this a Big Day. It builds up anticipation and excitement, and helps you to prepare.

8. Write down all your obstacles. If you’ve tried this habit change before (odds are you have), you’ve likely failed. Reflect on those failures, and figure out what stopped you from succeeding. Write down every obstacle that’s happened to you, and others that are likely to happen. Then write down how you plan to overcome them. That’s the key: write down your solution before the obstacles arrive, so you’re prepared.

9. Identify your triggers. What situations trigger your current habit? For the smoking habit, for example, triggers might include waking in the morning, having coffee, drinking alcohol, stressful meetings, going out with friends, driving, etc. Most habits have multiple triggers. Identify all of them and write them in your plan.

10. For every single trigger, identify a positive habit you’re going to do instead. When you first wake in the morning, instead of smoking, what will you do? What about when you get stressed? When you go out with friends? Some positive habits could include: exercise, meditation, deep breathing, organizing, decluttering, and more.

“Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.” - Mark Twain

11. Plan a support system. Who will you turn to when you have a strong urge? Write these people into your plan. Support forums online are a great tool as well — I used a smoking cessation forum on about.com when I quit smoking, and it really helped. Don’t underestimate the power of support — it’s really important.

12. Ask for help. Get your family and friends and co-workers to support you. Ask them for their help, and let them know how important this is. Find an AA group in your area. Join online forums where people are trying to quit. When you have really strong urges or a really difficult time, call on your support network for help. Don’t smoke a cigarette, for example, without posting to your online quit forum. Don’t have a drop of alcohol before calling your AA buddy.

13. Become aware of self-talk. You talk to yourself, in your head, all the time — but often we’re not aware of these thoughts. Start listening. These thoughts can derail any habit change, any goal. Often they’re negative: “I can’t do this. This is too difficult. Why am I putting myself through this? How bad is this for me anyway? I’m not strong enough. I don’t have enough discipline. I suck.” It’s important to know you’re doing this.

14. Stay positive. You will have negative thoughts — the important thing is to realize when you’re having them, and push them out of your head. Squash them like a bug! Then replace them with a positive thought. “I can do this! If Leo can do it, so can I!” :)

15. Have strategies to defeat the urge. Urges are going to come — they’re inevitable, and they’re strong. But they’re also temporary, and beatable. Urges usually last about a minute or two, and they come in waves of varying strength. You just need to ride out the wave, and the urge will go away. Some strategies for making it through the urge: deep breathing, self-massage, eat some frozen grapes, take a walk, exercise, drink a glass of water, call a support buddy, post on a support forum.

16. Prepare for the sabotagers. There will always be people who are negative, who try to get you to do your old habit. Be ready for them. Confront them, and be direct: you don’t need them to try to sabotage you, you need their support, and if they can’t support you then you don’t want to be around them.

17. Talk to yourself. Be your own cheerleader, give yourself pep talks, repeat your mantra (below), and don’t be afraid to seem crazy to others. We’ll see who’s crazy when you’ve changed your habit and they’re still lazy, unhealthy slobs!

18. Have a mantra. For quitting smoking, mine was “Not One Puff Ever” (I didn’t make this up, but it worked — more on this below). When I wanted to quit my day job, it was “Liberate Yourself”. This is just a way to remind yourself of what you’re trying to do.

19. Use visualization. This is powerful. Vividly picture, in your head, successfully changing your habit. Visualize doing your new habit after each trigger, overcoming urges, and what it will look like when you’re done. This seems new-agey, but it really works.

20. Have rewards. Regular ones. You might see these as bribes, but actually they’re just positive feedback. Put these into your plan, along with the milestones at which you’ll receive them.

21. Take it one urge at a time. Often we’re told to take it one day at a time — which is good advice — but really it’s one urge at a time. Just make it through this urge.

22. Not One Puff Ever (in other words, no exceptions). This seems harsh, but it’s a necessity: when you’re trying to break the bonds between an old habit and a trigger, and form a new bond between the trigger and a new habit, you need to be really consistent. You can’t do it sometimes, or there will be no new bond, or at least it will take a really really long time to form. So, at least for the first 30 days (and preferably 60), you need to have no exceptions. Each time a trigger happens, you need to do the new habit and not the old one. No exceptions, or you’ll have a backslide. If you do mess up, regroup, learn from your mistake, plan for your success, and try again (see the last item on this list).

23. Get rest. Being tired leaves us vulnerable to relapse. Get a lot of rest so you can have the energy to overcome urges.

24. Drink lots of water. Similar to the item above, being dehydrated leaves us open to failure. Stay hydrated!

25. Renew your commitment often. Remind yourself of your commitment hourly, and at the beginning and end of each day. Read your plan. Celebrate your success. Prepare yourself for obstacles and urges.

26. Set up public accountability. Blog about it, post on a forum, email your commitment and daily progress to friend and family, post a chart up at your office, write a column for your local newspaper (I did this when I ran my first marathon). When we make it public — not just the commitment but the progress updates — we don’t want to fail.

27. Engineer it so it’s hard to fail. Create a groove that’s harder to get out of than to stay in: increase positive feedback for sticking with the habit, and increase negative feedback for not doing the habit. Read more on this method.

28. Avoid some situations where you normally do your old habit, at least for awhile, to make it a bit easier on yourself. If you normally drink when you go out with friends, consider not going out for a little while. If you normally go outside your office with co-workers to smoke, avoid going out with them. This applies to any bad habit — whether it be eating junk food or doing drugs, there are some situations you can avoid that are especially difficult for someone trying to change a bad habit. Realize, though, that when you go back to those situations, you will still get the old urges, and when that happens you should be prepared.

29. If you fail, figure out what went wrong, plan for it, and try again. Don’t let failure and guilt stop you. They’re just obstacles, but they can be overcome. In fact, if you learn from each failure, they become stepping stones to your success. Regroup. Let go of guilt. Learn. Plan. And get back on that horse.

Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones. - Benjamin Franklin

Further reading:

• Autopilot Achievement: How to Turn Your Goals Into Habits
• Engineer Life: Set Up Habit Changes So It’s Hard to Fail
• How to Establish New Habits the No-Sweat Way
• 13 Things to Avoid When Changing Habits
• 7 Little Habits That Can Change Your Life, and How to Form Them

—
On mnmlist.com: Minimalism’s logical extension: Break free from goals.

“Wisely, and slow. They stumble that run fast.” - William Shakespeare

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter.

How many times have you rushed into making changes in your life — a habit change, learning a new skill — only to have it flop?

It’s not just the New Year’s Resolution Syndrome — it happens too often at all times of the year, that we run out of steam or get discouraged and give up.

But here’s the secret, and I won’t charge you $29.95 for it: go slowly.

This little change has more power than most people realize. It will help to learn any skill, from martial arts to art to computer activities. It will help form habits that are long-lasting. Slowing down will help you become more effective and ironically, help reach goals faster.

If you’ve ever tried T’ai Chi (or Taijiquan), famous for its series of slow movements and poses, you’ve felt the power of slow. The slower you go in T’ai Chi, the better, for many reasons. One effect of this slowness is that you perfect the movements. And your body adapts, forming muscle memories that will last when (and if) you decide to speed up the movements.

It’s as if your body and mind are forming a groove through continual repetition of the movements. If you move quickly, you’ll be erratic, and the groove will be much more difficult to form. If you move slowly, you can learn to move in exactly the same pattern, in a more precise way, and a groove will form. Once the groove is formed, it becomes easier. It’s now habit, unconscious memory, and automatic.

This is habit formation, and usually it’s done without thought. When we drive home and our minds are on something else, but we make the right motions to get home anyway … this is habit, this is our minds and bodies going in a groove we’ve formed by doing these actions so many times before.

The groove is best formed by going slow, at first.

This applies to anything: exercise, eating healthy, creating art, becoming a patient parent, carpentry, reading. Slow is the secret to making it last. And no, that’s not meant to be dirty.

Some of the reasons slow works, besides forming a groove:

1. Mindfulness. When you do something slowly, you can pay more attention to what you’re doing. I highly recommend that when you make changes, you do them mindfully, with full concentration. This increased awareness is necessary in the beginning, when you’re still forming the groove. Later, it’ll become automatic, but at first it’s anything but. You need to pay attention, and you can do this better when you do it slower.

2. You hold yourself back. Holding ourselves back is often considered a bad thing, but it’s not. It’s the best thing we can do, if we want changes to last. When we start a new change, often we are full of enthusiasm. But then we go all out and use up all of that enthusiasm, and run out of motivation or energy or get distracted by something else. But when you hold yourself back, you build up enthusiasm and keep it going for much longer — through that dreaded 2-3 week barrier when people often quit. So even if you want to run 3 miles at first, start with walking and then run-walking (in intervals), and only do a mile or so. You’ll want to do more, but stop yourself. Save that enthusiasm for next time.

3. You learn it right. Doing something slowly means you can learn to do it correctly, without being erratic, and later as it becomes second nature you’ll do it the right way. The importance is obvious in something like martial arts, but it’s also true in any physical activity. And every activity is physical (and mental).

4. Increased focus. When you do something slowly, you tend to do just one thing. It’s hard to multi-task and do something slowly — they don’t mix well. When you single-task, you can focus, instead of always being distracted. This leads to increased effectiveness.

5. Calm. Slow is calmer. Fast is hectic. Go slow to get rid of the chaos, and find peace.

“Slow down, everyone. You’re moving too fast.” - Jack Johnson

—
On mnmlist.com: The Definitive Guide to a Minimalist Mac Setup

Also: You might know I announced I’m moving to San Francisco … if you’re a San Francisco resident, please help me by adding to my moving to S.F. wiki!

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Ian Newby-Clark of My Bad Habits.

Control yourself!” We all say it, mostly to ourselves. We say it when we ‘indulge’ in behaviors that cause short-term gain for long-term pain. And guilt. I cite many of the usual suspects: eating the wrong things, being lazy, staying up too late, drinking too much. There are others, of course. Why do we do such things? After all, aren’t we entirely in control of ourselves all of the time?

Nope.

Research tells us that willpower is a limited resource. Each of us only has so much of it. The studies demonstrating this are rather ingenious. I will share one of my favorites with you, though there are many more.

You are a student at a mid-Western university and you are in a psychology experiment apparently concerned with taste-testing. The experimenter seats you at a table. In front of you is a plate of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. There is also a plate of radishes. Your stomach is growling because, as instructed, you didn’t eat anything last night.

The experimenter asks you to taste-test the radishes. You are not to taste the cookies. In fact, don’t even touch them! No cookies for you! Next, the experimenter asks you to help out another experimenter with a puzzle experiment. You start working on the puzzle. It’s rather hard …

Times passes …

You are having trouble solving the puzzle. Undeterred, you press on.

More time passes …

You still can’t solve the puzzle! You sometimes get close, but then you make a mistake and start over. Eventually, you give up. When the experiment is over, you learn a couple of interesting facts. First, the two experiments, taste-testing and puzzle-solving, were related. Those sneaky psychologists! Second, some people taste-tested the cookies. Lucky ducks!

Persisting at the frustratingly difficult puzzle takes willpower. But will the radish-eaters and cookie-eaters have the same amount of willpower? The experimenters think that the radish-eaters have less will-power than the cookie-eaters because the radish-eaters had to resist grabbing a cookie. So, the radish-eaters should give up on the puzzle sooner than the cookie-eaters. That’s what happened.

That study, and dozens of others like it, show that people only have so much willpower. When you have to control yourself, there is less willpower available to you for other parts of your life. This fact is a good one to know because people who lose their will-power often do things that they would rather not. They become aggressive, sexually impulsive, and give up too early on puzzles.

This has nothing to do with being physically tired. Your self-control is at low ebb when you are mentally exhausted. So, what lessons can we learn from what the science is telling us? How can we be in more and better control of ourselves more often? I have three tips:

1. Anticipate and plan for your times of low self-control. Now that you know that self-control is a limited resource and that depleting it means less for later, you can do some anticipating and planning. For example, make sure that you’re not in the chips and cookies aisle of the grocery store after a long day at work. Don’t start on your tax return after a frustrating commute.

2. Exercise your willpower muscle to get more of it. Roy Baumeister, one of the leading researchers in this field, thinks that willpower is like a muscle. Exercising a muscle in the short-term leads to its exhaustion. In the long-term, though, exercising a muscle causes it to grow. In fact, there is some good evidence that exercising your willpower, though temporarily depleting, means that it will be stronger in the long run. So, push yourself. Things to do that will deplete your willpower:

• Work on a tough to solve puzzle;
• Watch a funny movie but resist the urge to laugh;
• Watch a sad movie but resist the urge to cry.

3. Drink some orange juice. It turns out that glucose is one of the key ingredients that your brain needs for effective self-control. Willpower. It’s not just for breakfast anymore!

I hope that you find my message enlightening and helpful. Some of you, I am sure, will be disappointed to learn that your capacity for self-control is less than infinite. You do have willpower, just not as much as you might like. But now you know how to get more!

Read more from Ian Newby-Clark at his blog, My Bad Habits. Read his previous guest posts here at Zen Habits:

• Five Steps to Reclaim Your New Year’s Resolution
• The Power of Gradual
• Five Things You Need to Know About Effective Habit Change

I’ve done it before and I’m sure many of you have as well: decided I wanted to completely change my life, from diet to exercise to productivity habits to spending and career and family and more.

I’ve failed in the attempt to do this at least a few times.

I’ve also done it successfully. You might have read my story, but basically I went from overweight, sedentary, heavily in debt, overworked and stressed, unproductive, with no time for my family … to a runner, marathoner, exerciser, healthy diet, vegetarian, early riser, much more productive, debt-free, simplified life where I have time for my wife and kids.

And how did I do it all? One little step at a time.

Recently reader Christine asked:

I really want to be a positive, achieving, dedicated, in-the-moment, fun (& all the good traits you can imagine!) woman/wife/mother. How can I become that in my lifetime?

I want to be completely healed from past hurts, mistakes, doubts, failures, disappointments, pains, etc. I want to be free!

In short, Mr. Leo, I WANT TO CHANGE MY LIFE.

Christine, you’ve asked a lot of me, and I honestly can’t tackle it all in one answer, so I won’t try. Instead, I will give you the best suggestion I have:

Start small.

Don’t try to make all these huge changes, and change your entire life at once. It’s too hard, and overwhelming. You can’t do everything at once — you can only do one thing at a time.

So pick one thing to change — something easy. Don’t pick the most difficult thing — just the easiest. Something you can focus on for the next couple of weeks.

Be sure you’re going to be successful at it — again, it should be super easy.

Then clear everything else off your plate and focus on just that. Really put all your energy into making that change. You might try something simple, like smile more, or to be more grateful (say a prayer of thanks in the morning, and show gratitude to people throughout the day), or focus on slowing down as you do your work or chores.

Start small, and be sure to make this a success. Once you’ve had that success, use that feeling of success to leverage a second success — something small that you can win at, again. Keep repeating this, small successes, one after the other.

Small steps. That’s how you’re going to change your life. You’ll probably get impatient and want to do more, but trust me: this will work.
—
Read more about simple productivity, focus and getting great things done in Leo’s book, The Power of Less.

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter.

One of the biggest problems people face is the lack of discipline — they have goals or habits they want to achieve, but lack that discipline needed to stick with it.

Then we beat ourselves up about it. We feel crappy because we can’t stick with it.

And that leads to more failure, because we’re forming a mindset that we don’t have the necessary discipline.

Here’s what to do when you face a situation like this:

1. Forgive yourself. You aren’t perfect. No one is. Realize that beating yourself up will only make things worse. Take a few slow, deep breaths and let it go. Forgive yourself. And move on.

2. Realize that discipline is an illusion. While discipline is a common concept, it doesn’t actually exist. It’s not a thing you can actually do. Think about it: people say discipline is pushing yourself to do something you don’t want to do. But how do you do that? What skill is required? There isn’t a skill — it’s just forcing yourself to do something you don’t want to do. And that requires … some kind of motivation. Without motivation, you won’t be able to force yourself to do anything. So motivation is the key concept — and this is something that’s real, that you can actually learn how to do.

3. Focus on motivation. What’s your motivation for pursuing the goal or habit? How will you sustain the motivation when you struggle? Have very strong motivations for doing something, and write them down. Commit publicly. When things get tough, remind yourself of your motivation. Focus on it. It’ll pull you along — that’s more powerful than trying to focus on the push of discipline.

4. Make it easy. Discipline is tough because whatever the task or habit you’re trying to do is tough. Instead, make it easy. Remove barriers. Having a hard time exercising? Make it ridiculously easy, by only exercising for 5 minutes. What use is exercising for 5 minutes? You’re creating the habit, not getting yourself into shape overnight. The 5 minutes of exercise will have only a tiny impact on your health, but it makes exercise super easy. If you can do that 30 days in a row, you now have an exercise habit. Hate waking up early to go to the gym? Do it at home. Do it during lunch or after work.

5. Focus on enjoyment. It’s hard to push yourself — to have discipline — when you hate doing something. So find something enjoyable about the activity. If you don’t look forward to exercise, find some good music, or a workout partner who you can have a nice conversation with, or a peaceful setting in nature that is just beautiful. And focus on that enjoyable aspect. Hate doing your paperwork? Find a peaceful sanctuary where you can do the paperwork and enjoy yourself. Maybe have a nice cup of tea or coffee, play some nice music. And focus on the enjoyment.

6. Repeat. You’ll almost inevitably slip up sometime, no matter how good you are. Unfortunately, people often take this to mean they don’t have discipline, and they just beat themselves up and give up. Well, it’s just a bump in the road. Get up, dust yourself off, and get going again. Start from Step 1 and start all over.

—
If you liked this article, please share it on del.icio.us, StumbleUpon or Digg. I’d appreciate it. :)

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter.

We learn more by doing than by reading.

That’s a simplified statement, of course, because reading teaches us a lot, but it’s in the actual doing of things that we do our real learning. It may be a fairly harmless statement for most of us, but think about this: do you actually put it into practice? How about in your efforts to improve your life?

It’s easy to see how this applies in a school situation: In an article in the Chronicle for Higher Education, studies show that the best way to study for an exam is not to read and re-read, but to put the book down, try to recall what you read, then write it down. Much more effective.

But how about in your everyday life? This isn’t as obvious, but it’s just as effective.

When you want to improve your life in some way — by simplifying, by being more frugal, by starting to exercise or eat healthy, by learning more productive habits, by being a more positive or compassionate person — you are learning a new skill.

And when you learn a new skill, all the reading in the world won’t teach you the skill. You have to learn by doing.

So reading countless self-help articles and books are great — I’ve written a few myself — but remember that it’s only the first step.

You have to put the personal development posts away, get away from the computer or book, and start doing it. Today.

Only in doing it will you actually learn.

Reading does help though: first in helping you to understand what to do, and second in keeping you motivated as you actually do the skill. But it’s not a substitute for doing.

So stop reading this post, and go do what you want to learn to do!

—
If you liked this article, please share it on del.icio.us or StumbleUpon. I’d appreciate it. :)

Article by Zen Habits contributor Jonathan Mead.

Have you ever been annoyed by a successful person, because you thought you were more intelligent than them? Maybe it was a boss. Maybe it was a political figure or a leader.

It’s especially maddening when this person is creating rules that dictate your life. I can definitely relate. I’ve had my share of bosses that I thought were less than brilliant.

So what is it that makes them successful? That’s what I’ve always wondered and what has always bugged me. I mean, shouldn’t intelligence be a prerequisite to leadership? The answer… not really.

It turns out the biggest reason people are successful is: consistent action, not intelligence.

Then the question is, are these three words ruining your life…?

The unmagical words
Those words are: I don’t know.

It’s not drive, it’s not motivation, it’s not lack of passion that keeps people from doing what they want. It’s not knowing where to start, or how to get from A to B. That’s the single biggest reason people don’t take action to make their dreams a reality.

So how can we overcome this? How can we stop letting obscurity keep us from becoming successful? The answer is pretty simple: You have to develop the ability to stop caring about not knowing.

You have to cultivate the habit of doing before knowing. This seems like a daunting thing to do, but it’s really actually a very easy habit to create. And there are a multitude of possibilities that exist right now that you can practice it.

Easiest thing in the world

For example, how many time does your spouse or partner ask you “What do you want to have for dinner?” and you respond, “I don’t know.” (This happens to me all the time, and it’s maddening.) Next time, instead of using those three dirty words, just ask yourself, “What’s something I’d like to have for dinner?” and then respond.

Now do this when someone asks where you’d like to hang out, or what you’d like to spend the evening doing. Instead of re-actively saying “I don’t know,” take the time to come up with a response. Even if you’re not 100% completely stoked about the idea, just come up with something you’d be satisfied with doing. Anything other than I don’t know is an improvement.

Next, try asking yourself “How could I best use my time, right now?” or “What is the highest leverage use of my time, right now?” Take a minute to brainstorm and mentally prioritize. If you’re having trouble coming up with an answer, just pick whatever you think would be the most productive use of your time. Remember, anything is better than the three words we shall not speak of.

Just imagine all of the possibilities for you to practice actively making decisions based on your desires, rather than re-actively defaulting to unconsciousness. There are so many little ways you can practice this skill. I think you’ll be surprised at how often you’re able to rehearse it.

The difference between living and existing

Okay, so you’ve mastered it with the little stuff. Now it’s time to use it on the things that really matter. Stuff like your passions and career.

If you’re not doing something you love or at least like for a living, you’re selling yourself short. And I bet the reason why you’re not pursuing something better is because you don’t know what you’d rather do. Instead of allowing that not knowing to dwell in your psychic space, cast it out. Don’t tolerate it anymore. If you don’t know what you’re passionate about, move from not knowing to seeking a path that will allow you to explore what you might love to do. This might mean reading a book on different career pursuits. It might mean googling your hobbies for possible career intersections. Whatever it is, practice that until you move into a state of knowing.

The reason I’m so passionate about this is because I’ve seen so many lives unfulfilled because of not knowing. It saddens me to think that such a simple phrase can have such a devastating impact.

I urge you to practice moving in the direction of knowing, when you feel stuck in a state of indecision. All it takes is one little shift.

It could mean the difference between making a dying and making a living.

“Smile, breathe and go slowly.” - Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Buddhist monk

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter.

The idea of being mindful — being present, being more conscious of life as it happens — seems a bit impossible to many of the super busy.

But not only is it possible, I’d submit that it’s desirable, and that it’ll help the busy (and non-busy) achieve their goals and enjoy life more fully.

One of my favorite web big shots, Digg.com founder Kevin Rose (who is actually heading several companies and multiple other projects), has “be mindful” at the top of his resolutions for 2009. I hope he’s doing well, and I’d love to hear how someone as busy as he is implements a resolution like that.

But in case Mr. Rose, and other super-busy types, are having trouble being mindful and living life to the fullest, this guide will help.

Enjoying Life and Achieving Goals
It seems contradictory to those who are used to sacrificing living for pursuing their goals … but cultivating mindfulness will help you achieve your goals and enjoy life more.

Focusing on one task at a time, putting yourself fully into that task, is much more effective than multi-tasking. Focusing on one real goal at a time is also more effective. I’ve proven it to myself time and again over the last few years (see My Story for more). Focusing on what you’re doing right now is highly effective. You’re more productive when you’re mindful.

But more importantly, being present is undoubtedly the only way to enjoy life to the fullest. By being mindful, you enjoy your food more, you enjoy friends and family more, you enjoy anything you’re doing more. Anything. Even things you might think are drudgery or boring, such as housework, can be amazing if you are truly present. Try it — wash dishes or sweep or cook, and remain fully present. It takes practice, but it’s incredible.

One Month Challenge
The best method I can offer for learning to be present, the best method for practicing, is to focus on it for one month. Make focusing on being present a habit. If you make it your only focus, I guarantee you’ll get better at it, and more importantly, you’ll get into the habit of remembering to focus, of remembering to practice, of being more aware.

Do a one-month challenge. It’s the best method for forming new habits, and it works for being present. A good way to do this is join the monthly challenge on the Zen Habits forums or on The Power of Less Challenge forum. Then do the following:

• Tell people on the forum what your monthly challenge will be (focusing on being present).
• Log in daily to report on your progress. This gives you the accountability and motivation needed.
• Do the tips below every day for a month.

“Do you have patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?” - Lao Tzu

How to Be Mindful

1. Do one thing at a time. Single-task, don’t multi-task. When you’re pouring water, just pour water. When you’re eating, just eat. When you’re bathing, just bathe. Don’t try to knock off a few tasks while eating or bathing or driving. Zen proverb: “When walking, walk. When eating, eat.”

2. Do it slowly and deliberately. You can do one task at a time, but also rush that task. Instead, take your time, and move slowly. Make your actions deliberate, not rushed and random. It takes practice, but it helps you focus on the task.

3. Do less. If you do less, you can do those things more slowly, more completely and with more concentration. If you fill your day with tasks, you will be rushing from one thing to the next without stopping to think about what you do. But you’re busy and you can’t possibly do less, right? You can. I’ve done it, and so have many busy people. It’s a matter of figuring out what’s important, and letting go of what’s not. Read more: The Lazy Manifesto: Do Less.

4. Put space between things. Related to the “Do less” rule, but it’s a way of managing your schedule so that you always have time to complete each task. Don’t schedule things close together — instead, leave room between things on your schedule. That gives you a more relaxed schedule, and leaves space in case one task takes longer than you planned.

5. Spend at least 5 minutes each day doing nothing. Just sit in silence. Become aware of your thoughts. Focus on your breathing. Notice the world around you. Become comfortable with the silence and stillness. It’ll do you a world of good — and just takes 5 minutes!

6. Stop worrying about the future – focus on the present. Become more aware of your thinking — are you constantly worrying about the future? Learn to recognize when you’re doing this, and then practice bringing yourself back to the present. Just focus on what you’re doing, right now. Enjoy the present moment.

7. When you’re talking to someone, be present. How many of us have spent time with someone but have been thinking about what we need to do in the future? Or thinking about what we want to say next, instead of really listening to that person? Instead, focus on being present, on really listening, on really enjoying your time with that person.

8. Eat slowly and savor your food. Food can be crammed down our throats in a rush, but where’s the joy in that? Savor each bite, slowly, and really get the most out of your food. Interestingly, you’ll eat less this way, and digest your food better as well.

9. Live slowly and savor your life. Just as you would savor your food by eating it more slowly, do everything this way — slow down and savor each and every moment. As I type this, for example, I have my 3-year-old daughter, Noelle, on my lap. She’s just sitting here quietly, as the rain pours down in a hush outside. What a lovely moment. In fact, I’m going to take a few minutes off just to be with her now. Be right back. :)

10. Make cleaning and cooking become meditation. Cooking and cleaning are often seen as drudgery, but actually they are both great ways to practice mindfulness, and can be great rituals performed each day. If cooking and cleaning seem like boring chores to you, try doing them as a form of meditation. Put your entire mind into those tasks, concentrate, and do them slowly and completely. It could change your entire day (as well as leave you with a cleaner house).

11. Keep practicing. When you get frustrated, just take a deep breath. When you ask yourself, “What should I do now, Self?”, the answer is “keep practicing”.

“When you drive around the city and come to a red light or a stop sign, you can just sit back and make use of these twenty or thirty seconds to relax — to breathe in, breathe out, and enjoy arriving in the present moment. There are many things like that we can do.” - Thich Nhat Hanh

I’ll leave you with a video from one of my favorite mindfulness teachers, Thich Nhat Hanh (check out his books, Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life, and True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart):

—
Also read:

• Write To Done: The Culture of Sharing: Why Releasing Copyright Will Be the Smartest Thing You Do

—
Read more about simple productivity, focus and getting great things done in my book, The Power of Less.

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Ian Newby-Clark of Bad Habits.

The New Year, Chinese or otherwise, has now passed. The parties, and any hangovers, are long gone. Unfortunately, for many of you, your New Year’s resolutions are only memories. The gym bag sits forlorn in the corner, the bean sprouts wilt in your fridge. Your intentions were good, I know. You resolved to get into a new exercising habit, eat better, spend more time at work, spend more time with the family, or volunteer for a local charity. Or maybe all of the above (Yikes!)

To those of you who are sticking to your New Year’s resolutions I say CONGRATULATIONS! Don’t be too smug. For those of you who have not, I say CONGRATULATIONS!

Why would I congratulate people who haven’t stuck to their resolutions? Simple. They MADE resolutions. Deciding to change yourself, really committing to be a better person in some way, is not a decision arrived at easily. The fact that you decided to change yourself means that you’ve taken stock of yourself. You’ve reflected. You haven’t let the powerful forces of rationalization prevent you from committing to self-change.

“But,” you say, “I failed. That’s terrible isn’t it? It’s so depressing. Why even bother trying if it’s so hard?”

I have news for you: You are not perfect. You are not all-powerful. Self-change is hard, so it’s not terribly surprising that you didn’t get it right the first try. So, stop feeling so bad. It’s like when someone gets thrown from a horse. What do the horsie-types say? You’re supposed to get up, brush the dust off, and get back on that horse! That’s what you need to do right now.

Follow these steps:

1. Tell yourself, “It’s okay. I failed, but there’s nothing new in that.” Think of all of the other times you’ve failed. Re-read Leo’s post on how great failure can be [link to that post]. Don’t let the powers of rationalization take you further, though. Don’t give into the thought: “It’s okay. I don’t need to be better. It wasn’t all that important anyway.” Ask yourself this: If changing yourself wasn’t so important, then why did you decide to do it in the first place?

2. Congratulate yourself for wanting to be better. As a social psychologist, I know how extremely easy it is for people to excuse themselves their shortcomings. Your decision to be better takes moral courage.

3. Figure out what went wrong. Were you too ambitious? Was your plan too vague?

4. Form a plan that is informed by your failure. If you didn’t get to the gym because you slept in, plan to go to bed earlier. If you ate the wrong foods because you found preparing healthy food too time-consuming, find ways to make it less time consuming. If you stayed too late at work (again and again), schedule events with the family earlier in the evening.

5. Get going!

Read more from Ian Newby-Clark at his blog, Bad Habits.

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter.

A lot of us get stuck in inaction –procrastinating, doing a lot of unimportant tasks to avoid the important stuff, worrying about failing or about being perfect, having a hard time starting, getting distracted, and so on.

It’s time to start forming the Action Habit instead.

And it’s really not that hard if you focus on it for a little while. Like any other habit, start in small doses, little tasks, just short bursts, and then build on that momentum.

Some quick steps for forming the Action Habit:

1. Figure out your key actions. Focusing on the right actions is just as important as the doing. Don’t spend a lot of time in this step — just quickly decide your Top 3 actions for today.

2. Pick one key action, and visualize the outcome. How will it look when you’re done? Again, don’t spend a lot of time here — just form a quick picture in your mind.

3. Just start. Tell yourself, “Do it now!” Make it a mantra. Don’t mess around with tools, with distractions, with anything that will get in the way of doing this task. Strip away everything but the task, and get going!

4. Focus on the moment. Just be in this task, don’t worry about the future or what mistakes you might make or might have made before. Just focus on doing this task, as best you can. Immerse yourself in it.

5. Get to done. Complete the task. Feel good about it! Pat yourself on the back!

Now repeat with the next task. The more you practice this habit, the better you get. Do it in small doses, and keep practicing. You’ll fail sometimes. See the next section for how to deal with that. But don’t let failure stop you — just practice some more.

Barriers to the Action Habit

But what if you’re having trouble actually taking action? Some quick thoughts:

• Don’t worry about perfect. Too often we want to create the perfect plan, but while it’s important to know where you’re going, it’s more important not to get stuck in the planning mode. And while it’s important to do your best, perfection isn’t necessary.
• Stop fiddling. Are you messing around with your software or other tools? Are you playing with fonts and colors and other non-essential things? Stop! Get back to the task.
• Remove distractions. Turn off the phone, email, IM, Twitter, etc. Shut off the world around you, and just focus on the doing.
• Improve it later. Just do it now. You can make it better later. Writers call this the sh*tty first draft — and while it sounds bad, it’s actually a good thing. You’re getting it done, even if it’s sloppy.
• Break it into smaller chunks. Sometimes the task is too intimidating. If the task takes more than an hour, start with a 30-minute chunk. If that’s too big, do just 10 minutes. If that’s too hard, do 5. If you have to, just do 1 minute, just to get going.
• Stop thinking so much. Thinking is a good thing. Overthinking isn’t, and it gets in the way. Put aside all the thinking (analysis paralysis) and just do.
• If you can’t do something … figure out why. Maybe you don’t have the tools. Maybe you don’t have the authority. Maybe you need something from someone else. Maybe you’re missing some key info. Maybe you don’t know how to do something and need to read up on it, or be taught how. Maybe you just don’t want to do it, and you should drop it altogether. Figure out what the barrier is, and solve it.

—
If you liked this article, please share it on del.icio.us, StumbleUpon or Digg. I’d appreciate it. :)