How to Change Your Life: A User’s Guide

‘You will never change your life until you change something you do daily.’ ~Mike Murdock

By Leo Babauta

Start with a simple statement: what do you want to be?

Are you hoping to someday be a writer, a musician, a designer, a programmer, a polyglot, a carpenter, a manga artist, an entrepreneur, an expert at something?

How do you get there? Do you write your intention on a piece of paper, and put it in a bottle and launch it to sea, hoping it will manifest? No. The universe isn’t going to make this happen. You are.

Do you set yourself a big goal to complete by the end of the year, or in three months? Sure, but that doesn’t get the job done. In fact, if you think back on most examples in your life, setting big long-term goals probably doesn’t work very often. How many times has this strategy been successful?

I’m going to lay down the law here, based on many many experiments I’ve done in the last 7 years: nothing will change unless you make a daily change.

I’ve tried weekly action steps, things that I do every other day, big bold monthly goals, lots of other permutations. None of them work except daily changes.

If you’re not willing to make it a daily change, you don’t really want to change your life in this way. You only like the idea of learning to draw/speak Japanese/play guitar/program in php/etc. You don’t really want to do it.

So make a daily change. Let’s dig into how it’s done!

How to Turn an Aspiration Into a Daily Change

Let’s name a few aspirations:

• lose weight
• write a book
• stop procrastinating
• fall in love
• be happy
• travel the world
• drink more water
• learn Spanish
• save money
• take more pictures
• read more books

How do you turn those lofty ideas into daily changes? Think about what you could do every day that would make the change happen, or at least get you closer to the goal. Sometimes that’s not always easy, but let’s look at some ideas:

• lose weight – start walking every day, for 10 minutes at first, then 15 after a week, then 20 … once you are walking for 30-40 minutes a day, make another change — drink water instead of soda.
• write a book – write for 10 minutes a day.
• stop procrastinating – I can already hear the ironic (and original!) jokes about how people will deal with procrastination later (har!). Anyway, a daily action: set a Most Important Task each morning, then work on it for 10 minutes before opening your browser/mobile device.
• fall in love – go somewhere each day and meet/social with new people. Or do daily things that make you a fascinating person.
• be happy – do something each day to make the world better, to help people.
• travel the world – save money (see next item). Or start selling your stuff, so you can carry your belongings on a backpack and start hitchhiking.
• save money – start cutting out smaller expenses. Start cooking and eating at home. Sell your car and bike/walk/take the train. Start looking for a smaller home. Do free stuff instead of buying things.
• drink more water – drink water when you wake up, then every time you take a break (once an hour).
• learn Spanish – study Spanish sentences in Anki and listen to Pimsleur tapes 10 minutes a day.
• take more pictures – take pictures at lunch (but dear jeebus, not of your lunch) and post them to your blog.
• read more books – read every morning and before you go to bed.

You get the idea. Not all of these are perfect ideas, but you could come up with something that works better for you. Point is, do it daily.

How to Implement Daily Changes

This method is fairly simple, and if you really implement it, nearly foolproof:

1. One Change at a Time. You can break this rule, but don’t be surprised if you fail. Do one change for a month before considering a second. Only add another change if you were successful at the first.
2. Start Small. OK, I’ve said this two bajillion times. No one ever does it, though. Start with 10 minutes or less. Five minutes is better if it’s a hard change. If you fail at that, drop it to 2 minutes.
3. Do it at the same time each day. OK, not literally at the same minute, like at 6:00 a.m., but after the same trigger in your daily routine — after you drink your first cup of coffee in the morning, after you arrive at work, after you get home, after you brush your teeth, shower, eat breakfast, wake up, eat lunch, turn on your computer, first see your wife each day.
4. Make a huge commitment to someone. Or multiple people. Make sure it’s someone whose opinion you respect. For example, I made a commitment to studying/coding PHP at least 10 minutes each day to my friend Tynan. I’ve made commitments to my wife, to other friends, to readers of this blog, to readers of a newspaper on Guam, to my kids, and more.
5. Be accountable. Taking my programming example with Tynan … each day I have to update a Google spreadsheet each day showing how many minutes I programmed/studied each day, and he can (and does) check that shared spreadsheet. The tool you use doesn’t matter — you can post to Facebook or Twitter, email someone, mark it on a calendar, report in person. Just make sure you’re accountable each day, not each month. And make sure the person is checking. If they don’t check on you, you need to find a new accountability partner or group.
6. Have consequences. The most important consequence for doing or not doing the daily habit is that if you don’t, the people will respect you less, and if you do, they’ll respect you more. If your accountability system isn’t set up this way, find another way to do it. You might need to change who you’re accountable to. But you can add other fun consequences: one friend made a promise to Facebook friends that he’d donate $50 to Mitt Romney’s campaign (this was last year) each time he didn’t follow through on a commitment. I’ve made a promise to eat whale sushi (I won’t fail, because eating a whale is repugnant to me, like eating a cow or a child). I’ve promised to sing a Japanese song in front of strangers if I failed. The consequences can also be positive — a big reward each week if you don’t miss a day, for example. Make the consequences bigger if you miss two straight days, and huge if you miss three.
7. Enjoy the change. If you don’t do this, you might as well find another change to make. If the daily action feels tedious and chore-like, then you are doing it wrong. Find a way to enjoy it, or you won’t stick to it long. Or find some other change you enjoy more.

That’s it. Seven pretty simple steps, and you’ve got a changed life. None of these steps is impossible — in fact, you can put them into action today.

What daily change will you make today?

How to Combat Indecision

Why is it that sometimes you just can’t make decisions?

The Agony of Feeling Indecisive


Indecisive. The inability – or the temporary paralysis – to decide when presented with more than one choice.

Have you ever felt indecisive?

It is like an itch that you cannot scratch, one that keeps you from doing anything else until you make your decision and move on.

You may need to decide which major to pick for your university, whether to stay in your job or quit to build your business, and if it’s a good idea to marry your boyfriend or wait longer to get to know him. And a billion other decisions that on the surface seem easy enough but for an indecisive mind, they are pure agony.

And it’s not like you haven’t done your due diliegence.

You have done all the hard work and research to arrive at a smart, informed, educated decision. You have weighed your options, done the pros and cons exercise, and even tackled the “worst case scenarios”.

So then you sit down for the umpteenth time to finally decide.You talk to yourself rationally about your ‘best option’ and how it makes the ‘most sense’, and you tell yourself that it is definitely, without a doubt, absolutely and positively your ‘final decision’. Period.

Except you pause again. You second guess one thing and the next and the whole thing falls apart again. You lose all faith in making the “right” decision for yourself.

The indecisive feeling returns and it has brought along a new friend, depression. Not only are you back to square one, you are also feeling depressed that you have wasted all that time without making any progress.

Fear of Deciding “Wrong” Is A Myth


One reason is that making a decision feels so final, so permanent and so irreversible that you keep dragging your feet.

Your greatest worry is this: What if you decide wrong?

What if you choose the wrong path, pick the wrong partner, or choose the wrong job? If every decision dictates the subsequent events that follow in life, would you not then be “ruining” the chances of success and happiness by choosing wrong?

Such is the insanity of the human mind. In fact, this worry is so enormous that you never even consider the remote possibility of deciding incredibly right!

Or yet another remote possibility that there may not even be a right or wrong to choose from, only an experience to live through.

Your mind tells you to fear the wrong outcome and so you absolve yourself of the responsibility of making a decision, because, you explain to yourself logically, if you don’t decide, how can you decide wrong?

Well, it turns out that you can decide wrong because indecision is still a decision and it’s the worst decision. The worst outcome of all is not deciding “wrong”. It is not deciding at all. With indecision, you give up the power to decide and you essentially hand that power to others to decide for YOU.

There are no wrong decisions if you make the best decision at the time with all the resources and information at your disposal. If you choose to await further instructions, that’s fine but decide when the time feels right without worry or procrastination.

There are no mistakes. If you choose the “wrong” major, you learn from it. If you pick the “wrong” partner, you also learn from it. And if you even choose the “wrong” job or career, God knows you will so learn from that too.

Deciding wrong, making mistakes and failing at your relationships or your career can be the best thing that happened to you. But not deciding at all, not living with intention, not charting your own course with your own values and desires, or staying locked up in a careful state of doing very little so as to be safe, those are the recipes for regret and depression.

I only see TWO outcomes here with only ONE truth:

The TWO Outcomes: Either (1) you make the decision or (2) someone else makes the decision on your behalf.
The ONE truth: Only you know what’s best for you. Anyone else that decides for you is only making a wild uneducated guesses on your behalf.

One Question to Ask Yourself When Feeling Indecisive

I know how it feels to be indecisive, and how to wish that someone would make that decision for you so you don’t have to do it. I know because whenever that happened to me, I would go ahead and let others decide for me. I let the opinion of friends impact my decisions and my path, and sometimes, I just sat there not deciding until the windows of opportunity closed shut and the choices vanished before I acted on them.

And that is how I know that deciding is far better than not deciding at all.

There is a simple singular question to ask yourself when you feel indecisive:

What’s better: a life of mistakes or a life of procrastination?

Think long and hard about this one. Think about what it means to decide and move on with your own story or to sit there, biding your time, dragging your feet only to wake up to closed doors and lost chances.

And know this, you cannot blame anyone else for your indecision. It is in your own powers to change that now.

When I help my clients make difficult decisions in their careers and lives, I am careful never to tell them what to do, even if they wish I did but instead to give them the tools and systems and help they need to make the best decision on their own. That’s true empowerment.

And that’s what I want to give you now: empowerment. You are in charge of your own life. The reason you are afraid of making a decision rarely has to do with the decision itself, so look deeper. Maybe you are just waiting for approval on your decision? Maybe you need validation? Maybe a part of you needs a guarantee that it will all work out?

Well, stop waiting for those things, sweet heart!. Life does not come with guarantees, validation is the last thing that can help you and seeking the approval of others will lead you to disappointment.

Mistakes Or Procrastination? Take Your Pick!

With mistakes, you learn, you grow, you adapt, you toughen up, you gain experience and wisdom, you mature and you become a better person.
And this is only if you make the wrong decision, which is all relative.

In the grand scheme of life, making your own decisions is exercising one of your greatest human rights. Why would you ever give it up so that others make decisions for you?

With procrastination, you lose opportunity, you miss out on life, you regret, you worry, you second-guess, you depend on others, you give up your powers and become a lesser version of yourself.

Choose mistakes over procrastination. Every Single Time.

Arriving at Decisions

Do your homework, your research, and your due diligence. Seek the expert opinion of everyone you respect. But in the end, make your decision on your own, with an open heart and a brave heart and trust yourself to do it right. Let it go and stop obsessing over it after it’s done!

Trust yourself that whatever reality presents beyond your decision is going to be the best thing that happens. And you have the power to change course again if need be, but the course you have now chosen is the perfect choice with the information and conditions present to you.

Over to you. Tell me in the comments below if this perspective helps you make the decisions that paralyze you and what has worked better for you?

Simple Ways to Get Considerably More Done

by Jeff Haden

This post is in partnership with Inc., which offers useful advice, resources, and insights to entrepreneurs and business owners. The article below was originally published at Inc.com.
In the spirit of the topic, let’s get right to it:

1. Eliminate one ego commitment

We all do things that have more to do with ego than results.

Maybe you serve on a committee because you like how it looks on your CV. Maybe you teach at a local college because you like the words “adjunct professor.”

Or maybe, like me, you write a weekly column for your local newspaper mostly because you like when people recognize you at the grocery store.

The things you do mostly for ego are mostly a waste of time. Think about something you do mainly because it makes you look important, smart, or cool. If it provides no other “value,” drop it. I’m dropping my weekly newspaper column.

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Anything you do that serves the greater glory of you is a waste of time; besides, the best glory is reflected, not projected.

2. Create a happy shelf

I have a shelf full of old Photoshop books. Haven’t opened them in years, so I replaced them with family photos.

Makes me happy. When I’m happy, I do better work. You will too.

3. Stop looking for that extra 10 percent

I’m somewhat competitive. When I start to do something, within a short period of time I start wanting to do it better than other people.

Okay, I’m overly competitive.

Take cycling. I’m faster, fitter, etc. than the average person. But compared to the fast guys, I’m nothing. They can drop me within a few miles. Drives me crazy. Makes me ride more and train more and spend tons of hours on a bike–and for what? So I can hang with them for a couple more miles? So my time up a certain mountain is only 30 percent slower than theirs instead of 40 percent?

The kind of improvement has no real importance. Sure, I may get in better shape, but at that point the improvement to my overall health is incremental at best. And in the meantime I spend hours on cycling that I could spend on working towards more important goals.

Or I could just spend more time with my family, the most important goal of all.

So this year I’ll stay in good shape but I won’t worry about working to keep up with the fast guys: One, I never will, and two–it really doesn’t matter if I do.

Think about something you already do well but are trying hard to do even better. Then weigh the input with the outcome.

Sometimes “good” truly is good enough, especially if that 10 percent gain is hugely disproportionate to the pain required to reach it.

4. Craft your “just say no” elevator speech

Entrepreneurs work hard on their elevator speech. They revise, they hone, and they rehearse because their elevator speech is important.

It’s also important to know, with grace and tact, how to say no.

Most of us default to “yes” because we don’t want to seem rude or unfriendly or unhelpful. Unfortunately, that also means we default to taking on more than we want or can handle.

Maybe your response will be as simple as what I plan to use, “I’m sorry, but I just don’t have time.”

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Whatever yours is, rehearse so it comes naturally. That way you won’t say yes simply because you think you should; you’ll say yes because you think it’s right for you.

5. Eliminate one “fun” commitment

I used to play fantasy baseball and football. Now I just play fantasy Premier League soccer. When I think about it, I have no idea why.

I could rationalize that it creates a nice break in the week. I could rationalize it’s like a “mental health” activity that lets me step aside from the stress and strain of business life. I could, but that’s not true.

I just do it because I’ve always done it, and once I start every year I don’t want to quit because, um, I’m not a quitter. (I know that sounds stupid, but I’m willing to bet you do at least one thing for the same reasons.)

Look at the things you do because you’ve always done them and decide if it’s time to stop.

Here’s an easy test: If you wouldn’t do something while you were on vacation, there’s no good reason to do it when you’re not.

6. Set limits

Deadlines and time frames establish parameters, but typically not in a good way. We instinctively adjust our effort so our activities take whatever time we let them take.

Tasks should only take as long as they need to take–or as long as you decide they should take.

Try this: Decide you’ll only spend 10 minutes a day on social media. Just 10.

The first day you’ll get frustrated because you won’t get everything done you “need” to get done. The second day you’ll instinctively skip a few feeds because they’re not as important. The third day you’ll re-prioritize and maybe use a tool like HootSuite to get better organized.

By the fifth day you’ll realize 10 minutes is plenty of time to do what you need to do; all that other time you used to spend was just fluff.

Pick a task, set a time limit, and stick to that time limit. Necessity, even artificial necessity, is the mother of creativity. I promise you’ll figure out how to make it work.

7. Rework your nighttime routine

Every day the first thing you do is the most important thing you will do: It sets the tone for the rest of the day.

Prepare for it the night before. Make a list. Make a few notes. Review information. Prime yourself to hit the ground at an all-out sprint the next day; a body in super-fast motion tends to stay in super-fast motion.

8. Rework your morning routine

Then make sure you can get to that task as smoothly as possible. Pretend you’re an Olympic sprinter and your morning routine is like the warm-up for a race. Don’t dawdle, don’t ease your way into your morning, and don’t make sure you get some “me” time (hey, sleep time is me time). Get up, get cleaned up, get fueled up–and start rolling.

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My elapsed time from bed to desk is about 15 minutes, so there’s not much I can improve there. So I’m going to take a different approach. I normally check email first thing; now I’ll get at least one important thing done.

Sprinters don’t do cool-down laps before they race. Neither should we.

9. Rework one repetitive task

Think of a task you do on a regular basis.

Now deconstruct it. Make it faster. Or improve the quality. Pick something you do that has become automatic and actively work to make it better.

Even if you only save five minutes, that’s five minutes every time.

10. Eat one meal differently

Eating can take up a lot of time, especially if you eat out. Deciding where to eat, what to eat, driving and ordering and waiting and lingering… ugh.

Pick one meal to eat efficiently. Turn 30 to 60 minutes of dead time into 10 minutes of refueling and recharging. Bring something healthy you can eat at your desk, like tuna and a salad or fruit. Or eat a meal replacement bar.

Use that meal to fuel up in a healthy way. Then move instantly on to doing something productive.

You’ll feel better. And you’ll get more done.

11. Outsource one task

I was raised to think that any job I could do myself was a job I should do myself.

Starting next week the kid down the street will cut my grass. He can use the money. I can use the time.

12. Fix that one thing you often screw up

I’m terrible about putting meetings and phone calls on my calendar. I figure I’ll get to it later and then I never do. I spend way too much time, often in a panic, trying to figure out when and where and who…

All that time is wasted time. My commitment: I will immediately enter every appointment into my calendar the moment I make it–regardless of what else I might be doing.

You probably have at least one thing you tend to mess up. My wife often misplaces her car keys, and when she does she (and I) spend too much (because any is too much) time looking for them.

Maybe you don’t file stuff properly. Maybe you put off dealing with certain emails and then forget them. Maybe you regularly find you’re unprepared for a call or meeting.

Whatever your “thing” is, fix it. You’ll save time and aggravation.

13. Rework your commute

According to the Census Bureau the average commute is 25 minutes. (Here’s a cool map showing average the commute times across the U.S.) That’s almost an hour a day you’re probably wasting.

Make it productive instead. Review your to-do list and think of the best way to knock off those tasks. Listen to a podcast or audiobook. Make a couple of calls–not ones requiring focus or important decisions, but ones to check in, review progress, network, etc.

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Shoot, learn a language. Studies show speaking at least two languages may slow the onset of dementia and Alzheimer’s in an aging brain. (Reason enough, eh?)

Don’t let your commute be dead time. Get things done you won’t have to do later; if nothing else you’ll get to do something you actually enjoy during the time you free up.

14. Pick one task during which you won’t multi-task

Plenty of research says multi-tasking doesn’t work. Some research says multi-tasking actually makes you stupid.

Maybe you agree. Maybe you don’t. Either way, I feel sure there is at least one thing you do that is so important you should never allow a distraction or a loss of focus.

Choose an important task and when you perform it turn everything else off. Focus solely on that task.

See if you do it better.

I bet you will–and I bet you’ll extend the practice to other tasks.

Innovative thinking: Great advice from a pc cult icon-Woz

 I highly encourage anyone to read iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon.

This book will allow you to peer into the mind of a real engineering genius - Steve Wozniak. Founding member of apple computer and the entire personal computer industry. I would like to share an excerpt from his book that I found to be true in what I have personally observed in corporate America over the years. This is great advice for all young engineers, artists, inventors, entrepreneurs and points out some of the dangers of group-think and why "design by committee" could be fatal to your organization.

“[ ]... my advice has to do with what you do when you find yourself sitting there with ideas in your head and a desire to build them. But you’re young. You have no money. All you have is the stuff in your brain. And you think it’s good stuff, those ideas you have in your brain. Those ideas are what drive you, they’re all you think about. But there’s a big difference between just thinking about inventing something and doing it. So how do you do it? How do you actually set about changing the world?

Well, first you need to believe in yourself. Don’t waver. There will be people—and I’m talking about the vast majority of people, practically everybody you’ll ever meet—who just think in black-and-white terms. Most people see things the way the media sees them or the way their friends see them, and they think if they’re right, everyone else is wrong. So a new idea—a revolutionary new product or product feature—won’t be understandable to most people because they see things so black and white.

Maybe they don’t get it because they can’t imagine it, or maybe they don’t get it because someone else has already told them what’s useful or good, and what they heard doesn’t include your idea.

Don’t let these people bring you down. Remember that they’re just taking the point of view that matches whatever the popular cultural view of the moment is. They only know what they’re exposed to. It’s a type of prejudice, actually, a type of prejudice that is absolutely against the spirit of invention.

But the world isn’t black and white. It’s gray scale. As an inventor, you have to see things in gray scale. You need to be open. You can’t follow the crowd. Forget the crowd. And you need the kind of objectivity that makes you forget everything you’ve heard, clear the table, and do a factual study like a scientist would”

Engineers have an easier time than most people seeing and accepting the gray-scale nature of the world. That’s because they already live in a gray-scale world, knowing what it is to have a hunch or a vision about what can be, even though it doesn’t exist yet. Plus, they’re able to calculate solutions that have partial values—in between all and none.

The only way to come up with something new—something world-changing—is to think outside of the constraints everyone else has. You have to think outside of the artificial limits everyone else has already set. You have to live in the gray-scale world, not the black-and-white one, if you’re going to come up with something no one has thought of before.

Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me—they’re shy and they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone—best outside of corporate environments, best where they can control an invention’s design without a lot of other people designing it for marketing or some other committee. “I don’t believe anything really revolutionary has ever been invented by committee. Because the committee would never agree on it!”