Patrik Edblad's Blog, page 2

Identities → Goals → Habits

Try this exercise if you feel like you lack direction in life.

For each of the cornerstone areas of work and love:

Write down your desired identity.Set a goal that aligns with your desired identity.Establish a daily habit that will lead you to your goal.

Here’s what this looks like for me:

WorkIdentity: A remarkable writer, educator, and coach.Goal: Send a new edition of One Percent Better every week.Habit: Two hours of deep work first thing every morning.LoveIdentity: A present, loving, and playful fellow human.Goal: Do two hours of mindfulness meditation every week.Habit: Meditate for 20 minutes every day at lunch.

The beauty of this exercise is that it helps you discover both who you want to be and what you need to do every day to be that person.

I hope you’ll find it as helpful as I have!

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Notifications: Off

Your ability to be present largely determines your performance at work and the quality of your relationships.

And there’s a quick, easy, and free tweak you can make to improve that ability drastically:

Turn your notifications off.

Research shows that people who disable their email notifications become about 10 percent more efficient at work1.

Over a year, that adds up to an extra month of productivity!

And if you disable all notifications, you’ll likely reclaim massive amounts of time.

Most people spend a staggering 100 hours per month on their phones2.

Over the course of a lifetime, that’s 11 years!

Notifications are insidious.

They seem harmless but left unchecked, they will continually hijack your attention and steal your time.

So, before you go about the rest of your day, I encourage you to disable all inessential notifications on your phone and computer.

It will only take a few minutes and might give you years back.

FootnoteThe Procrastination Equation by Piers SteelIrresistible by Adam Alter

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Energy Matching

Your energy fluctuates a lot throughout the day.

And if you want to perform at your best consistently, it’s good practice to schedule your days accordingly.

For instance, I’ve noticed that my creative energy is substantially higher in the morning.

So, I’ve scheduled a non-negotiable two-hour time block for writing each workday morning.

After lunch, my energy is better suited for less focus-demanding tasks.

So, that’s when I do other business-related tasks like having meetings, updating my website, and answering emails.

In the late afternoon, I typically do my best running, so that’s when I usually hit the trail.

You can think of this strategy as energy matching, and it’s a simple two-step process:

Reflect on what your energy levels are typically like at different times during the day.To the extent possible, schedule your tasks accordingly.

The better you manage your energy, the more you’ll get out of your time.

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AM & PM Bookends

It’s usually very difficult to control what happens in the middle of your day.

But you can almost always control how your day starts and ends.

In his book, The Compound Effect, Darren Hardy refers to these start- and endpoints as AM and PM bookends1.

At the library, bookends are placed at either end of a row of books to keep them upright.

And in our lives, we can use this as a metaphor to keep our day-to-day activities in order.

Solid AM and PM bookends make the mess between them easier to handle.

So, with that in mind, I encourage you to reflect on these questions:

What would my ideal AM bookend look like?What would my ideal PM bookend look like?

The better you design your mornings and evenings, the more you’ll get out of your days.

FootnoteThe Compound Effect by Darren Hardy

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The Habit Calendar

Whenever you want to create new behaviors, it’s a good practice to measure them.

Research shows that people who track their progress are much more likely to get their desired results.

For instance:

People who keep a daily food log lose more weight faster1.Smokers who log their cigarette consumption are more likely to quit2.Students who track their study habits feel more motivated and focused3.

One simple, fun, and effective way to track your behaviors is to use a habit calendar.

This is a tool you use to measure your progress on your desired habits month-by-month:

There are three major reasons why a habit calendar is so beneficial:

It continually reminds you to act on your most important habits.It provides instant gratification each time you put an X on it.It creates habit streaks that you’ll want to keep going.

If that sounds helpful, I warmly recommend you create a habit calendar.

Write down a few simple habits and put the calendar someplace where you’ll see it often.

You’ll probably be surprised at how quickly your new behaviors will start to form.

FootnotesWeight Loss During the Intensive Intervention Phase of the Weight-Loss Maintenance TrialSelf-Efficacy and Motivation to Quit of Smokers Seeking to Quit: Quantitative Assessment of Smoking Cessation Mobile AppsApp-Based Habit Building Reduces Motivational Impairments During Studying – An Event Sampling Study

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The Work Shutdown Ritual

Computer scientist Cal Newport ends his workdays with a ritual that looks roughly like this1:

First, he reads through his master task list and schedules what’s urgent in the near future.

Next, he reviews his calendar for the next two weeks and confirms which appointments and deadlines are coming up.

Then, he reviews his plan for the current week, notes what got done today, and revises the remaining days.

And finally, he closes his computer and says his magic phrase, “Schedule shutdown, complete!”

The beauty of a protocol like this is that it helps you get any lingering work-related tasks out of your head and into a system you trust.

So, if you tend to worry about your job in your free time, I highly recommend you create a work shutdown ritual.

It will make it much easier to leave work at the office and be fully present at home.

FootnotesDeep Work by Cal Newport

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Luck Surface Area

Imagine arrows falling randomly from the sky.

Only these are magical luck arrows that you want to get hit by.

The best way to get hit is to increase the size of your “luck surface area.”

You can think of this as a target you carry over your head.

The bigger your target is, the more likely it will be to get hit by an arrow.

And the size of your target is largely up to you.

If you, for instance, would like more lucky breaks in your career, you could increase your luck surface area by:

Building a valuable talent stack to make yourself uniquely qualified if an interesting position appears.Sharing your work online to demonstrate your expertise to employers, partners, or customers.Connect with many people in your industry to allow more opportunities to find you through your network.

You can’t control where the arrows land, but you can maximize your chances of getting hit.

So, instead of just hoping to get lucky, make it as likely as possible for lucky breaks to occur.

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Talent Stacking

Alexandra Botez is a chess player, entertainer, and content creator.

She’s not #1 in the world at any of these skills, but she’s good at all of them, and that’s enough.

Her unique combination of skills has made her one of the most popular chess streamers in the world1.

Cartoonist Scott Adams calls this approach “talent stacking.”2

By developing a set of skills that complements each other, you can create a unique form of competence.

And that’s a much easier and more realistic path to success than trying to be the best at one specific thing.

So, stop asking yourself, “How can I become the best at what I do?”

And instead, start asking yourself: “How can I create a powerful combination of skills?”

It will most likely take you much further, much faster.

FootnotesAlexandra BotezHow to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams

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Via Negativa

Via negativa is a Latin phrase that means “the negative way”.

It’s also a powerful problem-solving technique you can use to find solutions through subtraction.

Imagine, for instance, that you want to get more done at work.

If you’re like most people, you’ll intuitively look for things to add:

A new productivity app.A focus music playlist.A better to-do-list.

But it’s usually easier, faster, and cheaper to find things to remove:

Quit social media.Turn off notifications.Block distracting websites.

You can add a lot to your life by subtracting from it.

So, whenever you want to find a better way, consider via negativa.

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Input Goals

Most people tend to set output goals like:

Get fit.Publish a book.Have 10,000 followers.

But these kinds of goals are ultimately outside of your control.

So, focus on input goals instead:

Work out five times a week.Write for two hours a day.Publish quality content daily.

In the words of novelist Robert Louis Stevenson:

Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.

The better you take care of the inputs, the more likely you’ll be to get the outputs.

So, focus on what you do — not what you might get.

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