Happy Saturday, friend!

We’re back again with another edition of Productivity + Habits + Fun

😃 Fun Fact of the Week

Jennifer Lopez inspired the creation of Google images.

People were searching for this dress at such a high volume that Google created the entire Google images category! This is her iconic dress from the 2000 Grammys.

🐦 Tweet of the Week

This is post is asking about how quickly we try and incorporate a new habit.

I’m going to twist this a little bit and offer some advice:

When building a new system of habits, go slowly by incorporating just a few at a time.

If they’re related, you’ll have a higher likelihood of maintaining them.

For example: If you begin training for a marathon and also want to drink more water, those will support each other.

If you wanted to begin training for a marathon and read for 30 minutes before bed…

Hopefully you see that those two activities are potentially at odds.

But here are two solutions:

1. Intentionally schedule your run and your bedtime reading into a calendar for accountability.

2. If the reading goal is more about gaining new info more than relaxation, you can listen to an audio book during your run.

What habits are you trying to build in the New Year?

💪 Featured Productivity Tip (Part 1 of 2)

This is one from Mr James Clear and his book Atomic Habits.

Friction: the resistance experienced before beginning an action

Have you ever noticed that some actions are easier to begin than others?

Sure, maybe we have a special motivation to get in the car, drive to the store, and buy some candy. That one can be pretty easy.

But what about the actions we need to do for an improved life?

For example, let’s say one of our current goals is to lose weight and get into better shape.

Some things we need to do could be: eat a healthy breakfast, go for a short run, only eat healthy snacks.

Those are fantastic micro-goals that make the big goal achievable.

But how likely are you to consistently do those things if you have friction between you and those actions? 

(Spoiler: you’ll begin with inspiration, and then you’ll fizzle out. Remember that most New Year Resolutions are abandoned by the end of January.)

So let’s reduce the friction on these micro-goals:

• Eat a healthy breakfast:

  • Buy the food you need ahead of time so that it is already in the house

  • Set your skillet on the stove the night before

  • Have your cooking utensils beside the stove

  • In the morning, while you’re waiting on the coffee to brew, you can begin cooking your breakfast.

  • Rinse and repeat

• Go for a short run:

  • Sleep in your exercise clothes

  • Have your shoes by the door

  • Have your water bottle front and center in your refrigerator

  • Set a 5 minute timer to stretch

  • Immediately go for that run

  • Back-up plan for weather: jump rope, recumbent bicycle, yoga video on YouTube

  • Rinse and repeat

• Only eat healthy snacks:

  • Remove unhealthy snacks from the house

  • Buy your healthy snacks ahead of time

  • Spend an hour on Sunday batch preparing your snacks for the week

  • You can do this with your lunch and dinner as well

  • If you prefer, you could do this batching 2 or 3 days a week instead

  • Pro tip: while out and about, always have one of your healthy snacks on hand to prevent an unhealthy impulse purchase

  • Rinse and repeat

Do you see how setting little things in place ahead of time can make it easier for you to keep yourself on track?

Is this something you already do?

Check-in next week for part two!

🎶 Music Sales By Format

This is so fascinating to me.

From the changing trends to the progression of color, this infographic is

🧓 7 Habits For Extra Years

We’re still very early in the New Year, so I wanted to look for some healthy habits for inspiration.

The following 7 habits are the most beneficial for a long and healthy life:

1. Physical activity

2. Not smoking

3. Drink in moderation

4. Manage your stress

5. Stay connected to others

6. Maintain good sleep hygiene

7. Follow a healthy diet

Obvious tips, but it never hurts to review the basics!

Here is the link to the original article.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Do any of these already factor into your New Year Resolutions?

🤔 Decision-making Idea

Automation Bias: We’ve come to rely so much on automated systems that we tend to trust in the automated corrections more than our own correct decisions.

Example: While texting, you assume that autocorrect has made the correct spelling for you.

Day to day, this isn’t a big deal.

But over time, if you’re even one degree off-track, you can wind up in a wildly different spot than the one you originally wanted to be in.

The solution?

Whenever you find yourself in autopilot, take a moment to consciously assess what’s happening.

Project the path from that action and ask, “If I keep doing this, where will I be in a year?”

That’s a fantastic test to help you adjust your course as needed.

🧠 Quote of the Week

Let’s look at this quote from this lens:

• Within 1 hour of learning something new, we forget about 50% of the information

• Within 24 hours, we forget approximately 70%

Those statistics with that quote paint a dire picture: we seem destined to lose information as quickly as we gather it.

But I don’t think that’s entirely true.

We’re really maintaining the ~30% that is the most important or meaningful.

To look at progress perhaps more concretely, I do agree that we’re better off by maintaining streaks of activities day after day.

Something I do every single day is practice Spanish with Duolingo.

I can’t say it will make me fluent the same way speaking with a native will, but it does help reinforce key ideas like the grammar and vocabulary.

Keeping a daily streak in one activity is equivalent to “keeping the blade sharp and bright.” It keeps the rust of forgetting from setting in.

What about you? What’s something you do daily to keep yourself sharp?

Special Message

Thank you so much for spending some of you precious time with me. 🙂

I’m always looking to improve, so hit “reply” and let me know what you think!

Have an awesome week.

Sincerely,

Steven Sanders

PS - I hope to see you on X, Instagram, and LinkedIn!