mattyblog

Simple Advice for Building Habits

All credit for this advice goes to the YouTube channel of Christopher Budnick, and specifically the video they made called "How to read every book you own". I really love this channel. Channels like this are such a breath of fresh air on YouTube where it seems like everyone is trying to sell something or game the algorithm to increase exposure at the expense of a soul. Christopher's videos have soul in spades. They are fantastically produced and the content is right up my alley.

Christopher gives a lot of great advice in that video but the thing that stuck out to me the most was in his suggestion of visualizing a future-you where you are successful in your habit. The example of the video was reading books every night. Imagine your future self maybe a year from now with a successful reading habit and also think about how that makes your future self feel, and how transformative that could be for you. I think this is so simple and great!

I thought it would be fun to try and use my typewriter to write about Christopher's advice and some feelings I had about it. I provided a transcription below the photo of my post. I typed this on some newsprint with narrow margins, and used an iphone to take a panoramic photo of it. Panoramic photos of text are very sensitive to changes in the elevation of the phone it would seem. I'll experiement with better ways of scanning or photographing these in the future.

A panoramic photo of a message created by a typewriter on a sheet of newsprint.

Typewritten note transcription

I came across some advice recently. The simplicity of it took me a little off-guard. The subject of the original discussion was in developing a reading habit. I'm in something of a transitional period of my mid-30s right now and have been having a struggle of my own in developing good habits for myself. A shedule of household work, sleep hygiene, eating right - everything. I used to read a lot but stopped years ago after getting into a rough patch mentally. The specifics aren't very important, but a lot of things in my life I was able to take care of previously became very challenging for me. Reading books was one of the many things I just sort of stopped doing during that time.

I've started and stopped trying to resume the habit of reading a few times now but I keep bouncing off of it. I think I may be able to get myself back into the habit now that I've heard the advice: imagine what your future life would be like if you read for 15 or 30 minutes every day. Imagine how that would benefit your future self.

That is all the advice was. Just to imagine a slightly more self disciplined self. It isn't self-critical, it is self-positive. Just imagine how transformative having spend that time reading could be.

Visualizing a goal in this way I feel is very powerful. It is so easy to get caught in a shame-cycle when we fail to meet our goals but having an idea of what success looks like for yourself - at least for me - allows me to get through the low spots when self discipline might be the most difficult. It also allows you to focus on what you want to get out of the habit/hobby/whatever. It focuses you back to your ability to grow and change for the better, and not wallow or become stuck where you're at.

Simple enough.