Important Books I Read in 2018

You read some books at the right time. Something in them shifts the way you think.

It could be that you've been leading up to that shift for some time. Perhaps the book has a completely new idea to you.

I read a lot of books that changed things for me this year. Here's a list:

• Braving the Wilderness - Brene Brown
• Rising Strong - Brene Brown
• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck - Mark Manson
• Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari
• The Story of the Human Body - Daniel Lieberman
• How to Change your Mind - Michael Pollan
• Why We Sleep - Matthew Walker
• How Emotions are Made - Lisa Feldman Barret
• Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers - Robert Sopolsky
• Non-violent communication - Marshall Rosenberg
• Atomic Habits - James Clear
• This is Marketing - Seth Godin

A (Draft) System for Writing

I've taken a few days off to think through how this blog is going.

It has been over a month since I started my daily habit of writing and publishing on this blog. There have been nearly 40 posts in that time. Not all of them are amazing, but I'm proud of my work so far.

Practice makes perfect.

I try to write things that are helpful for you and tend to shy away from writing too much about myself and what I'm doing. However, I think a discussion of how this has gone might be helpful.

• I successfully posted nearly every single day, bar one.
• I have developed a habit of posting.
• I have work to do on my writing habit.

Adding the habit of posting a blog post to my evening wind down has been successful. Adding it to something I'm already doing has helped me to stick to the habit.

However, some evenings that time to post rolls around and I have nothing to post. Not to mention that even when I do have ideas, the 'daily' format leads me to skip writing any long form research pieces. I'm okay with not writing those very often, but the habit of posting to my blog is NOT the habit of writing.

So those pieces are not being worked on.

Therefore, I have decided I need to work on developing a habit of writing each day.

Here's my plan.

• Set aside an hour each day.
• For the first 30 minutes, write. The writing will be on a pre-determined topic(s) and my aim is to be free form. Less editing, more getting ideas onto a page.
• For 20 minutes, edit. Editing is a different process to writing.
• Spend 5 minutes posting. This may be the result of the writing that day, or previously written material.
• Spend 5 minutes deciding on the writing topic for tomorrow.

Throughout the day, I will continue to collect ideas through my observations of the world. All of this is collected in the Drafts app on my iPhone. Once I'm ready to write about an idea, I transfer it over to my writing app, Ulysses. Both writing and editing happens in that app. Then I move back to Drafts to look through the list of ideas for tomorrow.

I thought this system through to make sure it's as straightforward as possible to give myself the highest possible chance of doing it. There are still some gaps here that need to be worked out with practice, but the attention I've given so far to the system should yield some results I'm happy with.

The Means are the Ends

Seth Godin:

Do the ends justify the means? Is it worth lowering your standards and giving up your principles in order to find a better outcome? Many times, the means are the ends. How we choose to act changes who we choose to become. The way we choose to get to where we're going defines what it's going to be like when we get there.

Take shortcuts and you're just practicing taking shortcuts.

You can still start where you are and be the beginner. There's no shame in that.

Do it properly.

Simple, Not Easy

Sometimes we need reminding of the simple stuff.

Like "pull as hard as you can" when doing a pull up.

Or "eat vegetables."

Or "go outside."

Remind yourself of the simple things. Just because they're simple, doesn't make them easy.

Plan to Win

There's no secret to getting rid of the internal battle you have about doing exercise.

All you can do is make a schedule of WHEN you'll exercise, know WHAT you'll do beforehand, remove all obstacles beforehand (i.e. set out your clothes the night before), and make it as easy as possible for you to do it when you're at your lowest.

Make it easy on yourself. Don't make a plan for you at your best.

You know the tired, cranky version of yourself who quits? Make it so easy, even that version of you just does it.

Eventually, you might get to that point where the exercise makes you feel good. Even when you don't feel like it, you know that you'll feel better once you've started.

But! Even when you get to that point... starting is still really hard sometimes.

There's no shortcut to removing that internal battle. It's always there.

Don't avoid it or expect it not to happen.

Embrace it. Plan for it.

Aim to win it.

What if you Make it Easy?

It's easy to start a new habit. You just do it one day.

It's also easy to give up on your new habit. You just stop the next day.

What if you make your new habit so easy, it was hard not to do it? There's actually no need to make things so difficult for yourself - you can start and build amazing habits by making them easy to do.

Then you build on them by making the next, easy step.