Life is hard. Most people have the long term goal of becoming the best version of themselves. However, that is not easily achievable because we’re busier than ever. This reason among others makes our ability to make healthy changes in our lives very difficult.
Are you living your best life? Probably not. I wasn’t.
Below are three steps I’ve taken over the past year to improve my quality of life.
Life Tip #1 – Become a Digital Minimalist
This is my favorite lifehack because it was where the greatest change in my life occurred. I found this hack from a YouTube Channel called Better Help. He has a ton of great ideas of ways you can improve your life and I highly recommend subscribing and watching his content. The video is below:
If you didn’t watch the video, this is my CliffsNotes summary.
People are addicted to their phones largely to the blame of app developers.
Certain applications like Instagram are designed like a slot machine at a casino. Every time you swipe up to refresh your news feed (trigger), you get a new batch of content from your friends (reward).
We get addicted to the promise of a reward each time we use the app and find ourselves in the most inopportune times checking our phones to satisfy our “itch”.
The solution to this problem is to achieve digital minimalism.
According to the book summary of the book Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, Digital minimalism can be defined as “a philosophy of technology in which you focus your online time on a few carefully selected activities that support the things you value.”
Since it’ll be completely unreasonable to go off the grid completely, you need to find a healthy balance. Take actions on things you can control like:
- 1. Find out which apps you don’t need and delete them.
- 2. Disable notifications for the apps you do need.
- 3. Limit your time on your phone to one hour a day.
I have disabled all the notifications on my phone to apps that aren’t important. Only notifications to important stuff like my phone calls, messaging from close friends and family get through to me. I’ve signed out of all my social media accounts which forces me to manually log in whenever I would like to check my accounts.
By applying these changes to my life, my screen time has been cut down to an average of one hour a day.
Life Tip #2 -Write Down Your Thoughts!
The world isn’t getting easier to deal with because there is so much negativity out there, just watch the news for 5 minutes. Each person is fighting their own complex battles and in some cases, doesn’t take the necessary steps to maintain their sanity.
We need to lighten our daily burdens by writing down our thoughts and plans.
All you need to start is a marble notebook and a pen. Spend 5-10 minutes just writing down whatever you need to get off your chest.
Writing down your thoughts allows you to track patterns and find ways to better optimize your life.
Life Tip #3 – Get Some Reading In!
Whether it is your favorite book or simply reading the news, reading allows you to activate your imagination, increase your vocabulary, and broadens your knowledge horizons.
You can learn more by reading this article I found on Lifehack.org.
Most of the world’s top CEO’s spend a great deal of time reading. Blinkest reported the Bill Gates reads up to 50 books a year! Most of them attribute to what made them successful in reading books.
Conclusion
These three life hacks have really worked well for me. It doesn’t mean it’ll work for you. Put your best foot forward to see for yourself.
Be sure to check out my latest article about how I had an “ah-ha” moment while car shopping.
