Now that we’ve talked about habits and provided you some tips to help you improve or keep new habits. Today I’m going to share with you the three small habits that I (Adam) have started to incorporate this year.
Habits don’t have to be big, long, or even over complicated. The three that I have started take about 30 min total… and one depends on how quickly I read!
The first one is actually something that I tried a few years ago, but it didn’t stick. So, here I am again, using these new tricks to help make it a routine. I don’t really ever know what’s going on in the world – unless it’s sporting news.
Number 1: Read more news articles!
How?
In the previous BLOG we discussed the idea of stacking (created by BJ Fogg and implemented by James Clear in his book, Atomic Habits). To recap – you take your new habit and stack it on top of something that you already do.
We start each morning by walking Layla. Then we go to our new favourite coffee shop (aka our kitchen) for a couple of double espresso americanos *from our new Christmas gift – Breville 870XL). …We are still working on our coffee art.
While I’m drinking my coffee, I will read two news articles: Canadian news and World news. So, I’ll stack reading the articles on top of something I already do daily – drink coffee. If coffee starts to trigger reading news articles, by the end of 2021, I will have read the internet 😐
I’ve watched a friend (Tuffy) post IG stories with him completing crossword puzzles (with great penmanship, I may add)! I also once did a military course and each morning our instructor would take the newspaper puzzle games and put them on the whiteboard. He used it as a way for the class to solve them to start engaging our brains for the day. Which brings me to my second habit:
Number 2: Do brain puzzles for 10 minutes each morning!
How?
Well, I’m cheating a little bit, but I am actually creating a double stack. It’s a bold strategy, Cotton! (Dodgeball, 2004 reference). When I finish reading my news articles for the morning, I’ve committed to working on brain puzzles for ten minutes. I’m not going to necessarily finish them. Just work on them to warm up the brain! Oh yeah, where did I get these puzzle books… Megan stuffed one into my stocking this year for Christmas!