Hello, everybody!
In this video, we are going to discuss
some ways to start living a more intentional life,
and really make time to do everything you want to do.
Although everyone has the same 24 hours a day, there are things you can do and incorporate into your daily life
that allows you to be more efficient and more organized for those 24 hours,
and that will really make a difference in the long term.
The first message I'd like to get across is that every single day should be the first of January.
That means that if for some reason you are failing at starting over, you can try again tomorrow.
New Year's resolutions are something that should have a symbolic meaning only.
If you've promised yourself you would go vegan in 2018,
and you haven't gotten into it in the middle of March,
that doesn't mean you should only start trying next year.
You can try tomorrow.
If you fail again a week later, you can try the month afterwards.
Your process in achieving your goal is as important as maintaining a steady rhythm,
so don't fuss over your lack of regularity and just give yourself the chance to start over
slowly, but surely paving your way to what you've set out to do.
One of the most important things on how to get more out of each day is learning the power of habit tracking.
I've always been very skeptical about habit tracking before but as soon as I got into it,
I understood why people were relying on it so much.
In fact, habit tracking does not only keep you accountable for your daily habits,
but it also gives you a sense of accomplishment and progress.
With the habit tracker, you can commit to doing something every single day and stick to it.
The best thing is that you can do your habit tracking in a journal, a habit tracking app, or a piece of paper.
It's as simple as marking a daily task every time you do it, and be able to look at the big picture,
and understand what are the tasks that you are easily repeating on a day-to-day basis,
and those you're failing at.
If you are passionate about a ton of things, or like to improve specific aspects of your life,
follow that basic rule of one step at a time.
Planning your life while including tons of new activities all of a sudden is overwhelming,
and the first step for failure.
Allow your mind and your body to enter a new routine and incorporate these habits slowly
maxing up the intensity of those activities.
For instance, perhaps you want to have a new habit of drinking lemon water first thing in the morning.
That habit will probably be easier to achieve than something like practicing Japanese every single day.
Give yourself time and add one task each couple of weeks,
varying in intensity.
If you're failing at some tasks, it's time to rethink your strategy.
Maybe you're trying to compromise on long stretches of time doing something.
Maybe there are some habits that you should start committing to do weekly instead of daily.
So find out what's wrong and build up from there.
Rethink your strategy and understand whether it's really important and beneficial to do that particular thing daily,
or if you should be doing it only every other day.
For instance, if you're trying to learn two languages at once,
perhaps focusing on both every single day will be a turn-off in the long term.
For instance, if you make a habit of studying language one on a Monday,
language two on a Tuesday, and then language one again on a Wednesday,
perhaps that will be enough to hold you accountable for learning without overwhelming you.
Also, understand that habit tracking is not supposed to be something that you need to add on forever,
but instead recycle as you move on.
Making time for everything is a consequence of knowing what to prioritize and when.
For instance, if you started 2018 by compromising to drink eight glasses of water a day,
you need to go back and see whether that is working out for you or not.
If you have successfully tracked three whole months of eight glasses of water intake,
perhaps it's time to consider that a job well done,
and remove that habit from your tracker for next month.
Removing a habit from your habit tracker is a sign of success as you've seamlessly
incorporated that habit in your life in a way that doesn't even require anymore tracking.
It's very important to learn how to create a to-do list and stick to it as your foundational productivity habits.
I uploaded a video last week with five
productivity tips on how to make sure you get everything you need to get done on a daily basis.
So go check that out in case you're interested.
Another thing you need to think about is how you're planning your goals.
I've always been a big fan of resolutions,
but I like to keep it real by making monthly resolutions and only a couple of yearly resolutions.
Dividing goals by month and creating themed goals for every month can be less daunting
than compromising to do something for
365 days in a row.
(Each) one of my board journals has a quarterly or a monthly goal setting overview
where I attribute a theme for each month and then assigned tasks and goals related to that theme
instead of stretching them out over the year.
For instance, I can have a month dedicated to health and fitness,
and that's when I will get into a steady workout routine,
healthy eating and so on,
and really focus on that newly acquired habits.
90% of the time when I finish that particular month,
I will carry on those habits to the next month
because I've been doing them for the last thirty days.
I also have a very specific month for YouTube stuff, where I create content in bulk,
scheduled for the next six months of videos,
review and redesign my website, and so on.
Another month can be focused on spring cleaning and de-cluttering.
The important concept you need to retain is that time is a flexible thing,
and you can do everything you want with it.
Developing daily routine is a great practice,
but so is a great practice developing weekly or monthly routines, or habits.
I want to thank HiNative for sponsoring today's video
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I hope you've enjoyed today's video, and I'll see you next week.
Bye!