An addiction to distraction is the death of your creative production. Filling valuable hours with meaningless moves is the drug choice for most people.
What makes a legend or a hero, is their daily habit.
Robin Sharma.
Today marks the end of my successful Habit #2 challenge. February’s challenge was to not browse my phone upon waking up (for at least an hour) and I did exactly the same every single day of the month.
Why did I choose this habit?
I used to have this bad habit of mindlessly browsing through my phone upon waking up – example: Whatsapp, emails, Linkedin, which in turn would show some articles on various sites such as Forbes, CNN, HBR, health related articles etc., and without even knowing, I would have wasted a lot of time on this. Like most of us know, it is very easy to get distracted and lose track of time with technology these days. I realized that the sooner I put an end to this habit, the more productive I will become. I am glad I picked this as my habit #2 challenge.
What was the outcome of not browsing my phone upon waking up?
I decided to replace that bad habit of browsing on the phone after waking up with a good one and that is to read at least for 15 minutes daily and this is my February bonus habit. And am happy to say that I did read every single day of the month (except for may be one controversial day – see challenges section below). To my surprise, I did end up reading for much longer than 15 minutes most of the days. One of the main reasons I picked up the 12 month habit challenge is to become more disciplined and consistent, even if it is a tiny habit that takes few minutes but do it every single day at any cost. Reading consistently has been my dream for the past many many years. In the past, I did read a few books every now and then but not at a consistent pace. I hope I do keep this habit of reading daily through the rest of the year and rest of my life as well.
What was the outcome of reading at least 15 minutes daily?
I did read a lot, at least a lot more than ever before in a 30 day time period. I read the following books:
- Your Life Fully Charged, by Meaghan B Murphy
- 25 Small Habits, by Manoj Chenthamarakshan
- Radical Candor, by Kim Scott (I started reading this book in January but finished it in February)
- The 5 AM Club, by Robin Sharma – I would say that this is one of the most inspiring books I have ever read. This will definitely be in my list of upcoming book summary blogs.
- Gifts of Imperfection, by Brene Brown
- How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie – This is another book that definitely needs a blog post.
One thing I hope to improve down the lane is to document my notes in a way that it is easy for me to go back and refer to. I read a few books in the prior years but I am not sure how well I can explain the summary of a book, if asked. Going forward, I want to devise some mechanisms by which I can retain more of what I read. One way I would like to do this is to blog book summaries for at least a few of the books I read. More on this in the coming weeks!
What were the challenges?
A few challenges I encountered through the process were:
- It wasn’t easy to not pick up my phone and start browsing upon waking up. For the first many days, my natural reaction was to pick up the phone and click on the WhatsApp icon or Linkedin but I almost instantaneously caught myself every single time and put the phone aside, woke up and entered my office room.
- I tried my best to read in the morning immediately after waking up. But there were times when I woke up late (I have a problem where if I wake up for some reason – either an office page, or kids talking loud etc., I can’t go back to sleep for another 2-3 hours and as a result I wake up late), I didn’t have a chance to come to my office room and read since I had to get going with my day, pack kids’ lunches and get them out the door for school. And once I get into my daily routine of work, the day goes by super fast and soon it is night time and I would be extremely tired to read. There was one day when I remembered that I didn’t read that day at 11:49 PM. So technically my 15 minutes ended at 12:05 AM the next day but my daughter said the day doesn’t end until I go to bed. So that still counted 🙂
- Eventually, on days I couldn’t read in the morning, I started to read while walking on the treadmill, which seems to be working out well.
- Another challenge is to figure out what to read. If you do have any good book recommendations, please do share them in the comments.
Overall, it was a successful month. Onto the next habit for March!
Cheers,
Sirisha
