Donnerstag, 3. September 2015

Review: NBP116 – How to Master the Habits of Our Everyday Lives, with Gretchen Rubin

I just love the Internet because it makes expanding your horizon and knowledge increasingly easy for everyone. Each followed link may open up a new door. So let me tell you how i got here:


Some weeks ago, i got to know Rory Vaden via his insightful TEDx talk on "How to multiply your time" on YouTube. I wanted to get his book Procrastinate on Purpose and started to follow some of Rorys inspiring content on Twitter.



This led me to Chris Duckers New Business Podcast which mostly targets entrepreneurs as audience. Despite the fact that i am more a programmer or agile coach than an entrepreneur (yet) I like the podcast very much. Chris Ducker puts an energizing & refreshing voice on it together with loads of helpful tips.

Today I listened to the current episode NBP116 – How to Master the Habits of Our Everyday Lives, with Gretchen Rubin which kind of closed a cycle to me because i already knew Gretchen Rubin for her great book The Happiness Project. I haven't read her new best-selling book Better Than Before, though



In case you ask yourself whether to go and listen to the show, i will make it easier for you and quickly summarize what i got from the episode:

1. Chris asks Gretchen about what entrepreneurs can do to be "happier". As an example, many of them might report to be "always stressed out". This sounds precise but in fact is a vague phrase. Gretchen suggests that you cannot think about the solution until you identified the real problem. There could be many reasons to be "stressed out". A very common example is to be "stressed" because of the constant distractions of a messed up workplace. The solution: Just clean up and remove all the stuff. Sounds trivial but definitely makes a difference.

2. Another cause for entrepreneurs to feel "stressed out" is simply they work too much and sleep too less. Gretchen clearly states that if you rely on your brain then sleep is not optional. Well, "sleep more" sounds easy but maybe hard to achieve. So she give some examples on how to hack your habits the way you want them to. It basically comes down to make the good habits as convenient as possible to do while making the bad habits hard to do. Gretchen wrote a blog post on that which you can read here.

3. She points out that when forming habits it's important to understand whether you'r an Abstainer or Moderator. Briefly, abstainers are "All or Nothing" people while moderators do better when they avoid obstacles and strict rules.

4. Chris and Gretchen advance talking about loophole spotting. Gretchen identifies 10 categories of loopholes, one of her favorites being the One-Coin loophole. Another one is the Tomorrow loophole which i also relate to Kairos, the ancient greek term for the "right moment" or "moment of opportunity" which Gunter Dueck explained so well in his book Das Neue und seine Feinde



So the bottom line is: If you don't already haven't start "hacking" your habits now!

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