Good habits

• Physiological sigh for calming down from alertness/stress. (#TODO Cite - I think it was Huberman).

• Wake up and go to bed early. This is easier said than done especially during winter. Some tips for this include:
  • Aim to get yourself out of the bed as soon as possible.
  • Keeping your alarm device far away from you so you have to get up to turn it off.
  • Stop talking to yourself inside your mind after you wake up. This stops you from thinking about reasons to not wake up.
• Have a strict cutoff time for screen usage.

• Spend some time along with your thoughts at least once a day.
• Do some mindfulness activity.
• Write down things you are grateful for.
• For self-introspection, always use verbs to analysis why we did well/not well, and never use labels.
• Reward effort (e.g. saying 'Great work' even if it was not a success) instead of using labels (e.g. 'You are very intelligent!').
• Instead of saying 'I have to do this', say 'I get to do this' - especially for boring tasks.

• From the No Boilerplate YouTube channel: 'Regarding life, notice the negatives and feel the positives. Also one thing at a time, most important thing first. START NOW. Choose something that is important and JUST DO IT.'
• To stop TODO lists from growing out of control, start with a fresh list every day and archive the previous one. If old items are important enough you would remember them, in which case you can add them to your current day's list as you go.
• Don't do on the spot scheduling.

Some points from Frank Stajano.

• Try to solve problems as much as possible. Give yourself some distraction free time for each question, and if you cannot solve it in this time, do something else and return to it the next day.
• Do tasks now rather than leaving them for later, especially things like trying to understand things.
• Prioritizing things: List pros/cons and assign quantitative values to choices, and guide yourself by relative values of these choices. Kill perfectionism. Always dump everything in your mind into a TODO list, this frees mental space. Come to terms with the fact that you will not be able to finish eveything in the TODO list, never ever. The only sensible approach to a TODO list is to assign tasks as urgent and/or important, doing urgent ones first and then the important tasks. Ideally, you should plan ahead so that you will not have a task that is both urgent and important. Urgent here means urgent for you, not others.
• Some points from Dr.K
  • Pace back and forth every now and then.
  • Replace consumption with production, the creative process is more important than the creation.

• Some points from Cal Newport. Develop the deep buckets of life:

  • Craft: How to build systems that ensure work is handed before deadlines consistently, and its quality is slightly above expectations? Adopting a multi-scale planning philosophy helps, i.e. see whats coming up, plan out weeks, give every minute a job, have some autopilot jobs, do some process engineering like using Trello etc.
  • Constitutions: Have a good diet and some hobby. Discipline from this moves to other aspects of your life.
  • Community: Get involved with real people to sacrifice nontrivial time, and serve on behalf of other people.
  • Contemplation: Figure out your values and rules, start with version 1 which is updated as you move on. Read relevant philosophy, documentaries etc. and fed your mind.
  • Celebration: Have a hobby tat allows you to appreciate things that have nothing to do with work.

  For each of the above, start with one nontrivial habit which you can track, continue for 3-5 weeks and tweak them as you go. Having a hierarchy of plans helps: A semester wise strategic plan that informs weekly plans that in turn inform daily plans. It is better to associate communication channels to roles/type of work rather than individuals.

• Some points from Andrew Huberman.
  • Take caffeine a bit later in the day.
• Some points from Better Ideas:
  • To avoid procrastinate, be bored, i.e. sit in a room with no phone etc. Eliminate the ability to do anything except for what you have to do. Deleting distractions simply works.
• Other points:
  • Always do problem sheets, and take your time with them in the beginning, i.e. write down all thoughts etc. and look at the solutions as the very very last resort.
  • Rereading and highlighting does not work.
• Locations can be used to generate creativity, at least 3 different mechanisms according to Cal Newport:
  • Whiteboard effect: Being around other interesting people.
  • Novel stimulation: Seems that new abstract ideas come up in novel situations/environments, and open your mind.
  • Avoidance of the familiar: Very familiar stimuli can close your mind, e.g. seeing a colleague at work may remind you about their email you may have to reply to etc.
• Strictly minimize the usage of things that cause overstimulation e.g. mobile phones. Some suggestions for creativity hacking based on locations:
  • Have a separate space for creative and more deep thinking, e.g. a small conference room with just your notebook. It can even be a walking path, basically the idea is to make sure your deepest thinking is done in a different location.
  • Every week, go somewhere novel and interesting to work - can be a coffee shop, somewhere in nature, a public library, museum - a place where you put some effort to get there.
  • Every season, gather others you work with, and bounce ideas with everyone.
  • Say to yourself "just 10 minutes" when you not in the mood to do something.
  • A goal without a plan is just a dream.
  • org-capture template which has an entry for each of the SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable/Accepted/(know the) Actions, Reasonable/(be able to assign) Resources, Timely/Time bounded.
  • Distinguish between goals and shallow tasks (like cleaning, which can be done while listening to a podcast etc).
• Learning (if we retain the knowledge, recalling and applying it when needed) is not studying (physical process done to produce learning).
• Cognitive load theory: Short term memory can process few chunks of information at a time. This theory suggests that we should keep this limit in mind, and load only few pieces of information at a time. If we load too much at once, we are more likely to forget and more likely to unable connect the information with what we already know.
  • Intrinsic cognitive load: Comes from the difficulty of the material. In this case, we can divide information into bite size chunks and start with the simpler stuff.
  • Extraneous cognitive load: Information not relevant to what you are learning. This load is increased if we keep getting distracted by external information or the learning method is ineffective. Receiving information alternatively from 2 or more sources (split-source format) also leads to learners remembering less content.
  • Germane cognitive load: Happens when loading new information to the existing schema and linking this new information with existing information in the long term information. We need to spend time organizing what we already know.
  • Prioritizing is more important than scheduling.
  • Open loop tasks (obligations/commitments made which are not noted down anywhere except in your brain) create a lot stress - GTD is all about having a full system where everything is written down somewhere (A place for everything and everything in its place).
  • Avoid the syphilian mindset "I'll do work today to be relaxed tomorrow" because it will be the same.
  • Look into multiscale planning (which was apparently also used by Godel).
  • Always ask about what to ignore/deoptimize so that you can optimize for what is important.
  • Start now! That is, choose something that is important and just do it.

• Spend more time on activities with long term rewards, e.g. jlearning new skills, new friendships, creative hobbies.
• Spend less time on activities that give empty dopamine highs, e.g. social media.
• Learn to forgive yourself if you relapse from doing good habits and avoiding bad habits.
• Avoid triggers such as state of minds like boredom, anger, self-pity.
• Have risk-free activities for when you are not in the mood for productive work, e.g. watching documentaries, drawing, reading etc..
• Fix places and activities, e.g. working at the office, reading in cafe's, sleeping in bed.
• Stop putting stuff off for later, do things now.
• Some notes I wrote in paper under "Towards a life philosophy", probably inspired from what Cal Newport says:
  • Why am I writing this? ['this' refers to this note titled "Towards a life philosophy"] Because I want to return to how I felt when I was fully motivated, like in high school, when I was going for the top score in Mathematics and did all the problems in all the textbooks from start to finish.
• Jung's red book: Willingful self-sacrifice is where you find your purpose, in something greater/more valuable than your existence.

• Ikiga: (a) What you love. (b) What you are good at. (c) What the world needs. (d) What you can be paid for.

  Passion (a,b) Mission (a,c) Vocation (c,d) Profession (b,d)

• David Goggins
  • Hope \(\neq\) Belief.
  • You cannot control hope, hope is bullshit, its not in your hands.
  • You need to create belief, not belief as in "You gotta believe in yourself", rather, the belief that you harness through hardwork and dedication and is something you know you are capable of because you have gone there several times in those dark times.
  • Always do something to the best of your ability.
  • Alter ego: A mental version of yourself who would force you to do what you have to do - what the determined mind can do is amazing.
  • Motivation is not a permanent fix, one needs to learn to perform without motivation nor purpose.
  • You need to be your best self without motivation.
  • Every night have a 2 hour block where you meditate and stretch.
  • Run every single morning at 5am.
  • Outwork your self-doubt.
  • Confidence comes from what you built.
  • Don't make your dreams your master, put work behind the dream. You should be the master of your dream.
  • Don't be ashamed of things you did - face them, fix them and make it better.
  • Physical fitness:
    1. Strength: Ability to generate force. 5 reps heaviest, don't go too hard. Normally in the 5-15 rep range, with 0-2 reps in reserve (its very important to have 1-2 reps in reserve). 4 days/week - 2 days upper-body, 2 days lower-body.
    2. Stability
       • Every time something hurts its an energy leak.
       • 2 days/week on a dedicated DBS (with instruction).
       • Step-up exercise is good.
    3. Zone 2
    4. Vo2 max
• From the No Boilerplate channel: Regarding life, notice the negatives and feel the positives.

• Cue, Craving, Response, Reward: The habit loop. As time passes, rewards become associated with cues. Time and location are important cues, use them like I will [habit] at [time] in [location] rather than something like I will read this month Also change the environment to trigger cues for good habit - one space one use is a good rule. Similarly, making cues for bad habits invisible will help drop them.
• Make the habits you want to develop clear, and keep score of them visually via for e.g. a progress bar.
• Bundle something you have to do, e.g. some chore, with a good habit.
• Make hard habits attractive by associating them with positive experiences.
• Have accountability partners.
• Aim to change your identity rather than being goal oriented, e.g. I will be a good researcher instead of I will write X papers.
• Remember that motivation comes after the habit has started.
• "I'm going to start writing the book" instead of "I want to write a book" - instead of focusing on the result, focus on the process.
• If you care about getting the result/outcome, you will focus on the system. The system should generate a great book, you can't have that makes it the number one best seller.
• Define your perfect day and reverse engineer your choices from there.
• What's your definition of success? For Ryan Holiday, it is having more autonomy, more control over your life. Having free morning to write, time to spend with your kids etc.
• Saying yes to something means you say no to someone else, normally the no's are cashed out of your family's account.
• Having some pre-game/pre-work routine to quickly get to your flow state helps a lot - for James Clear its listening to a special playlist in the same order on his headphones.