How to build and stick to habits, even with a busy schedule. And why habits are so important for introducing changes and achieving goals at work and in your private life. We will also give you lots of practical productivity habits you could try out.
⭐️ Key things you will learn from this episode:
- Why habits are so important
- How to Build and Stick to Habits, Even with a Busy Schedule
- Examples of Small Habits That Lead to Better Focus and Efficiency
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🙋 Meet the Host
- Michael Sliwinski (@msliwinski)
- Magda Błaszczyk (nozbe.pl/magda)
🔗 Show notes
- The Power of Habit
- Atomic Habits
- Journaling shortcut by Michael
- New to-do shortcut for Nozbe
- Ideas Dumping
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Read this episode’s transcript if you prefer
Hey, and welcome to our No-Office podcast. Probably this is my first time on the English-language version. Yes. Hello. Hello, Magda. Hello. I’m Magda. I’m a Nozbe team member. I take care of marketing and sales, and Today we are together like physically together with Michael. Yeah, we’re together physically. We’re in the same room And this is our conference room in a hotel because we have a Nozbe reunion. So we have a meeting of the whole Nozbe gang of the whole Nozbe team and we work from our homes, so we were remotely but we meet once or twice a year on these kind of reunions and this week we are in Warsaw. This is the symbol of Warsaw. The capital of Poland. It’s the capital of Poland and we are enjoying ourselves here. We just had a very cool game outdoors and then stopped to start training so it’s good that we came back here and now we’re recording this podcast. So for our American friends listening this is 10 a .m. but for us it’s already 4 already 4pm. So we already had a big morning today. Anyway, it’s good to be back. It’s good to see each other. It’s good to hang out, spend time together. And now it’s time to record a podcast about working in a productive way. And what do we have for today? Yes, something really practical and maybe something that is obvious. But when you think of it, it becomes less obvious but more sophisticated and more magical, actually. Habits, the small habits that help you do the fantastic things just like that. Small habits, big wins, like how you can really by automating yourself kind of, by getting some routines in place, you can actually achieve great achieve great things. When you think of it for the first time, you think routines, rituals, it’s something that is not creative, you don’t like engage, but at the same time, let’s think about it. If you elaborate on some actions and if you make it a habit, you don’t have to think, you don’t have to focus on it and waste your mental energy and to waste your nerves. When you start doing things more automatically, you have more space, mental space and physical space for something that is more creative and more demanding. Today we will be covering lots of ground about habits. Some of the tips we’ll give are coming from very cool books on habits, from Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit, or from Atomic Habits, by Lira. Yeah, and then here are some Nozbe people coming, right, as you can see on the video. Probably that was your first and the last time you could have seen them. Anyway, so we’ll talk about these, also some ideas from effortless and essentialism. But anyway, let’s get to the habits. Let’s get to do the first ideas why habits are important and good for activity. Yeah, I think the first argument for creating habits and building habits is that what I mentioned, that it reduces the decision fatigue when you have to make so many decisions every day from the very early morning and in the afternoon you are just a wreck. You can’t make decisions anymore, so you are less productive and less efficient. If you build habits and if you make many things during your day automatically, you save this mental energy and it’s easier for you to stay productive even longer? - Yeah, I mean, it’s even proven that once you get a habit in place, it physically moves in your brain. So this kind of habit, this kind of ritual, this kind of movement action comes to this additional brain, this backup brain, and this frontal cortex, which is responsible for creative thinking is being freed because some things are happening automatically. - Yeah, it becomes something you do and not something you plan you think about. It’s just something you do automatically. - It’s like when you’ve been driving a car for a long time, you can drive a car almost automatically and just think about completely different things whilst you’re driving a car in a safe way. So anyway, yes, that’s so true. Anyway, so what habits also do is they build consistency. It’s something that people who are chaotic like myself, need to be consistent with things. So for example, I am consistent with this podcast for now, because I do it every second Wednesday, and I’m recording it always on a Wednesday, always 10am Eastern time, I have a template, people are doing it with me, so there is a series of things. It’s a big habit, it’s a big sequence, But it helps me be consistent and it creates this, for me, this environment that I can be consistent with these things instead of just doing things on the web. Yeah, like nothing gets for free because first we sat down and we planned everything. We prepared all that structured and only with this prepared structure we can be consistent. So first you have to put some effort, some effort, but then it happens almost automatically. So that’s why, you know, the only thing creative that we had to think for this episode is, you know, to think about the ideas to talk about, but everything else was kind of almost automatic. Yeah. And with certain behaviors, they become kind of habitual. You then run on autopilot, like actually on autopilot. You don’t have to do anything it just happens and it frees up a lot of your mental energy. Habits also improve self-discipline and ask any coach about athletes and the ones who are achieving success are very disciplined because also these coaches prepare habits for them. The cool example was from I think a book “Essentialism” by Greg McEwen and Michael Thelps of his whole habits designed by his coach to you know to become you know gold medal swimmer. They for a whole days are structured every minute is planned they know what to do they don’t have to think they just know breakfast first training gym second training lunch. Just execute and you know get a gold medal maybe we and we didn’t get any gold medals, but yeah, still. - Habits are really good also when you are trying to work on your personal growth with drinking water, with losing weight, with gaining weight, with learning languages, with just becoming an expert in some area. Habits are really good for that. This is the key, actually key to success. - Yes, and of course, the habits, they create this structure, the structure where you know where things are, how things should be done. We always talk about our favorite habit of our company is that on Friday, we do a weekly review. And it’s also a habit that we do so that we can have this structure that from on Monday, we are not going to work to think, huh, what should I do today? I’ve already planned on Friday, so I know exactly what I should do, you know? Yeah, and also the idea of habits and the thing that I mentioned about learning languages is a really good fund for Duolingo, the app for learning languages, right? So they are based on this mechanism. Yeah, they are creating a habit of you just logging in for just even five minutes just to learn something new in the foreign language and that you do it every day. - Yeah, so they make you, they make you tell for how many minutes you get involved and then they just trying to execute. - Exactly, and they even have this, you know, streaks and you have to make sure that you really do it every day and There’s a streak freeze, all that stuff. They gamify it very well. But the idea is this, that you start learning your language every day. - Yes, if you, they have this notification that usually it buzzes on your phone after exactly the same time, when they check you usually, here’s the application. So the next day, they will remind you at the same time, and with the same sound, and they will just ask you to do 15 minutes of language learning. That’s how it works. You can do it. And in long term, if you do it for a year, this kind of habit, you can maybe speak a language in a year or speak a basic language in a year. So that’s why habits create this long term benefits for that. Even the small habits. Yes. Okay. how habits are built and how can we create them in our in our minds and in our lifestyle? Yeah, so there is this whole concept of from The Power of Habit by Charles Duhig, the concept of there’s a trigger, routine and reward. Yeah, it’s a loop, it’s a habit loop and it always begins with a trigger with something that makes you start doing a behavior or an activity or something. Yeah, and his example was like, you know, he goes, he passes by a bakery and so this is a trigger every day to work and then he goes and buys a donut, which is not really, and then he gets reward because it’s really a delicious donut. So that’s one of the habits, And of course, then he realizing that he changed his route to work, to pass by, you know, fruit shop and gets a get a piece of fruit. So like to change. So what you can do is you can manipulate that when you see, you know, the trigger, the habit and the reward, so that you get the same kind of thing, the same of rush, but in a different way. Yeah, because we started with the trigger. So this is something that motivates or makes you do the thing. Then the second level of this loop is actual action or behavior, and then at the end, obviously you have a reward. It’s like in Pavlov’s experiment. Yeah, the dogs, they heard the sound, then they were given something to eat, and then they were happy because they got food. So it works like that. Another example to illustrate the trigger and the routine and the reward is, for example: you are working, you are focused and suddenly your phone buzzes or just you can hear the notification. You reach for the phone, you see, oh, someone liked or someone commented on my post and then you’re happy because someone appreciated and someone did something good for you. So this way, you start to repeat this behavior because once it was nice for you, so the next time you hear the telephone, you will reach for it because maybe there will be something pleasant waiting for you. - And this way, you know, when you observe yourself and you observe the, and you know how it works, you have kind of a hack or a recipe what to do next to do with these triggers and maybe you can change, you know, the trigger or maybe you can change what you do after the trigger happens or maybe you can change the reward that what you’re expecting. So it’s all you can play with that. Yeah, this is important. This is the model. This is this loop is actual key and secret to any habit. So Yeah, you have to really, if you have a problem with something or you want to build a habit, you have to first create those three points to make it happen. We illustrated it only with the negative examples, but there are obviously nice examples. For example, our colleague, Emilia, she, after work, directly when she closes her laptop, she goes to the living room and she starts exercising. And this is a routine. Straight after work, close your computer, go to the living room and start your daily sports routine. And afterwards you have some endorphins you feel good. So this is the reward trigger closing and finishing up the work, then behavior, doing some exercise, reward, endorphins and feeling the satisfaction that you did something for you for yourself, for your body, for your health? - Yeah, let’s talk about more examples. So for example, morning routine. Morning routine is something really important because even if it’s a small routine, it’s something you can design every morning to happen. So in my case, the morning starts pretty chaotically because I have to send my girls to school. So, you know, have to prepare breakfast and all that stuff. So So everything is out of control. The girls are hungry, and then they’re not ready. We have to check if they’re ready. But at the moment, they are out to the school bus at 8 .10. This is a trigger for me. Girls are out. My morning routine starts. And then I take my iPad, I take my coffee, and I prepare, and I do my, for example, morning journal. And I do all that. And very often first, the trigger is like, we do, I talk to my wife, we discuss our morning, and then she goes up to prepare to go to work because in my household, my wife goes to work, I work from home, and then I sit downstairs with my laptop and with my coffee and prepare myself for the morning. So like really there is a trigger and then there is the routine and in this routine you know things happen like you know we discuss things with my wife there is journaling like several things happen in this morning before eight between eight and nine a .m. and this way when I start my work at nine I’m ready. Yeah I think many people have this and they really recommend this morning routine many people just tell it’s enough that to make your bed in the morning. It will be the first thing you do in the morning. It will be something that you can check off your list and it gives you this feeling of, okay, I did something, I did something specific, I made my bed, let’s go further into the day. I also, in the morning always I take my daughter to school. At the same time, I’m walking my dog and then when we come back, I just make myself a cup of tea. I sit down and I open my computer and I start working. Yeah, it’s just a cycle. It’s every day like that. And I know and it helps me because I don’t have to think about it. I don’t have to think whether I will drink a coffee or I will have a sandwich. No, it’s tea and then work. Yeah. Another example of the Like it’s what you do, like later when you start work, what you do, how you start working in the morning. And there are also two ways. So you should listen to yourself, like what works for you. For many people, something that, you know, Brian Tracy wrote in his book, “Eat the Frog.” That you should eat the frog in the morning. So you should tackle the most important thing, the most important task in the morning. The most difficult - It’s scary. - Exactly. And our colleague Emilia, she just told us before this show that she does that, she exactly starts with that. And in our case, even in my case, I prefer to have a warm up. I prefer it from nine to 11. I prefer to work on lighter tasks, also have some meetings because I’m an extrovert who works from home, so I like meetings in the morning, so I connect with my people, with people who I work with, you know, exchange ideas and get fired up. And then at 11, from 11 to 1, this is where my core hours, this is where I do, I tackle the big things, I tackle the most important tasks. So I prefer the warm up first, you know, something lighter and meetings to get fired up, to get more, you know, warmed up. And then And then I do my work. - Yeah, but both versions, they are based on this habit loop. So first you have the trigger. So let’s say you go upstairs to your room or you sit down in front of your computer. Then you either do your warm -up and check off some tasks and– - Also feel better energized. - Yeah, because you did something. So you have your reward. Or As in Emilia’s case, she does the huge horrible thing and then she’s also rewarded. Huge important task. She’s doing great work for our company, it’s not horrible, it’s amazing. I just wanted to make it dramatic. Yeah, but in the end also she has this reward that, okay, this is done, I can move on. So every habit is based on the same structure. What else? What other habits that we have and that we recommend that you build? It’s writing priorities, planning your day and just indicating three most important things, or maybe not three, some people have more or some people have less items on their priority list, but this is a good habit. Yeah, That’s a good habit because you should not start work and think what you want to do. Because if you do that, your brain will be like, “Ah, let’s check social media.” It will try to do the easiest things to do. Whereas if you prepare, like if you do a weekly review on Friday and then you prepare your priorities for next week or at the end of your workday, you prepare priorities for next day, This way you have already them, you know set up so this way when you go in the morning and You just you have a list of your progress ready So you’re not no longer, you know deciding on what to do. Yeah, it’s a decision fatigue Exactly morning you spend a lot of your mental energy on deciding whether which which task to tackle You’ll be tired and if you prepare prepare the list of the to the list before, then you are ready to go. Exactly, so this is the thing, you know, the trigger is you open Nozbe on your priority list and then you have your priority list and you just go tackle your priorities. Of course things come up and stuff, you can reshuffle priorities, maybe you can do the priority number two first and then number one later, you decide, but you have it there, you’ll have to decide on what to do. Yeah, another example from our colleague Emilia. She has this habit of preparing the to -do list for the next week on a Friday during the Friday weekly review week before. So on Monday, when she comes to work with rested and fresh mind after the weekend, she already has the list of things to take care of because she did the job on Friday. Yeah, it’s like, it’s like, I remember David Allen when I was trained by David Allen on getting things done, he said that, you know, weekly review, he was talking about weekly review, which we really endorse. And thank goodness, it’s Friday or mighty Friday, like we have it when you go to nobby .com /Friday, we talked about Fridays. And then you should do the weekly review. And on the weekly review, he said, you know, I think once a week on a weekly review and prepare what I have to do next week, and I’m confident that next Friday I’m going to think again, you know, so he goes on the autopilot for the whole week, execution. So it’s like extreme, you know, habit, habit situation where he generates all the ideas before and then just goes execute the things. Again, as Again, as we mentioned, this kind of habit creates this structure, yeah. - Yeah. Another example, drinking water. It’s very popular thing now. It’s everyone knows that we need to drink a lot to hydrate our organism and stuff, but it’s really difficult when you are, you know, during your day, you have so many things to do, you are stressed, you are running from one meeting to another, you just forget to drink. So it’s nice to establish a habit that will make you drink regularly. So you can have these triggers that, for example, in the morning you wake up, you get off your bed, you drink a glass of water, which is prepared on your side table the night before. Then after coming back from walking your dog, you drink another few sips of water. Then, after the first task, you drink another glass of water. If you don’t want to pour water all the day to your cup, you can prepare a big bottle and you can even make it more fun by drawing lines on it and even writing some funny notes on each line that will represent the part of the day when you drink and when you have to get to the line. Or you can be like me and if you’re a gadget guy and you have an Apple watch, you can have a complication and an app where you can track how much water you drink. And this is especially so many applications. Yes, it’s especially useful when you’re building a new habit, when this is not yet ingrained and you want to make sure that you the, you know, two leaders or three leaders of water that you are scheduled to drink today. So this way you can track it very easily because, you know, it’s on your wrist, you just hit and you just log drinking water. And it’s so easy. And when Magda was speaking, I was doing the sounds of water to, you know, add more drama to the podcast. So yeah, so drinking water is very good, very good and very important. And, you know, being It’s also, it keeps your mind fresh. - Yeah, and as you said, for building and establishing a habit, it’s really nice to also have a tool to track your progress and to track how you are doing. So it can be either your notes, or maybe your friend who will observe how you are doing, or obviously applications, there are so many of them. - Yeah, there are so many applications for like particular habits, there are applications like to kind of of those tricks. Also in Nozbe you can have tasks that are recurring. So when they’re recurring, you just hit them and they come to incoming every day. So this way you can track stuff. Also, as we mentioned, the structure, like for example, for this podcast, we have a template. So this template helps us also with the habit of podcasting when we create a new project for the template. Every two weeks, we create a new project from a template for this podcast where we prepare everything, you know, for each day. And it works. It works amazing. It’s a very simple checklist that we prepared before, and it’s really nice. It feels so good to just check out the things. And also, you know, when you have a template, the cool thing is that you don’t have to overtake it. You just make a simple template and you prepare your first project from that. And then as you’re doing the project, you’re like, oh, I forgot about that. So now I need to add it. So we added directly to the template. So next time, our template, like we’ve already done– this is the third episode we’re doing in this new structure. And our template has already changed twice. We have improved things. We have simplified things. Just by observing ourselves as we’re doing it, what do we need a reminder for, what do we need a special task for or not, it’s very easy. Yeah, but still every fortnight it gets easier and easier and it’s more and more automatic. This is this compounding effect, you know, that you do something regularly, as we mentioned, and then with each iteration it just gets faster and easier and more effortless. Yeah, because you are a custom, yes. I’ve already done it so many times that it’s more and more automatic and it takes less of your mental energy and it saves you more energy for important stuff. Another example, drinking water, then we can move on to some exercises and to sport. Many people have troubles with forcing themselves to practicing sport and to going jogging or going for a walk or going to the gym. And I like I know I know that. But again, why not establish a habit and why not to make this this route this path to jogging, let’s say, or to the gym easier and as automated as it’s possible. So after work, let’s say, what you do, you go to the place where You usually put your t -shirt, your shorts, your running shoes, your water bottle, and you want to have everything ready, because if something is missing, it can be a really nice excuse not to go. Oh, I know this. If the shirt they wanted to wear for this kind of particular joke is not there, I’m like, “Ah, I’m gonna joke again,” because, you know, I need the shirt, like, you know, and it’s, of course, it’s a It was like, you shouldn’t do that. Like you just take any other shirt. But your brain is very smart, and that’s the problem. When the brain is very smart, it can find a way to find an excuse very easily. That’s why it’s really important to lay these things out. Also, like I heard some people in the morning, before they work, they also go for a walk, just to clear their mind. So especially people who work from home, as they don’t commute, and they don’t have to be stressed in a traffic jam, what they can do is just go for a walk around the house or maybe around the neighborhood, just to have a walk in the morning before, like kind of disconnect from waking up and then breakfast, having a walking to work, which basically is making a loop to come back to the same place. But this way they way, it’s another trigger. I came back from my walk, now it’s time to work. I heard situations like that. On the other hand, I also mentioned several times on this podcast and on my blog that sometimes what we do is we do meetings while walking, especially because our meetings are virtual, like we talk. What we do is We take the phones, we put a FaceTime or Zoom, and we talk to each other while walking. If there is nothing that we have to show on the computers, if we want to discuss something. So this way is an excuse for both people to just go for a walk, get some steps in, breathe in some nature, and discuss the subject that they want to discuss. That’s a good idea. Yeah, and also getting back to running, to jogging. For me, a very good motivation not to give up jogging was just setting an appointment with my friend. Wednesday, 10 a .m. or 11 a .m., we meet in the same spot in the park and we jog together. This way you can’t let yourself to let your friend down or not to appear if you said you would be there. So that’s also a good thing to have your partner in crime and to motivate yourself. Yeah. Accountability partner is a professional name for that. Exactly. I mean, you know, it’s the partner in crime also sounds great. But, you know, accountability partner is like that’s dramatic maybe. But anyway, this is how I started running 12 years ago. I also had a running buddy and it was like every Tuesday, 9 .30 and I had to show up, you know? And the cool thing was when we did the run on a Tuesday, then if I did additional run on the Thursday, it felt like a bonus. It felt like, whoa, I’m an overachiever now. Like I rent twice, you know, in a week. So it’s like, you know, you’re really lowering the barrier of entry that it’s really easy, you know, effortless to run with somebody and then everything else, it just feels like a bonus. Which is another way of rewarding yourself. It’s another way that it’s, you know, you get a reward like I did something great, you know. I’m a hero. - Yeah. While some people are having trouble with sports, some people are having trouble with reading. There there’s also a good idea to establish a reading habit. Many people encourage like productivity experts, encourage you to read a book at least several pages in the very morning, right, right after you get up because your brain is still fresh and is not tired with decision-making and stress and all the job. So the knowledge you get from the book or the story you want to remember or memorize from the book will stay with you longer and it will be easier for you to adhere the knowledge. So yes, reading, heaven habit. I get up, I go to drink my water, I sit on the couch, stealing my pajamas and I spend 15 minutes reading. Yeah, in my case, you know, I delegate reading to other people, I get books read to me because I listen to audiobooks. You’re the boss. I’m the boss. So, I’m just like, these authors should read this to me, you know, all right, that’s why. So the cool thing is that this way when I go sport, it’s my additional motivation to go running. My additional motivation to go running is that I want to listen to an audiobook and this way I get to kill two birds with one stone. So that’s great. Again, you are an overachiever. Yes, of course, definitely. Reading, so now writing. I always admire you about your journaling thing. I’ve never managed to force myself to writing a journal even as a teenager. I really hated myself for that because all my friends were journaling and I couldn’t go like for longer strike than three or four days. And tell us how did you do this? Yeah, so for me journaling, I heard the benefits of journaling of writing things down and preparing the day, you know, before and stuff, so I made it also semi-automatic. So first of all, I made it really effortless to journal. So for me, it’s a shortcut that I do in the morning and in the evening, and it asks me questions and based on the research and reading very smart books, I came up with this idea that in the evening, my shortcut is asking me how did they went, if there’s anything I would improve and what I really liked about the day and what I have to plan for tomorrow. And then in the morning, it’s a gratitude exercise. So it asks me what I’m grateful for that happened yesterday, maybe an opportunity or something small. So I do that. So I just fill out fill in the blanks. And basically this way I journal. It’s a great trigger for me to journal. If I want to write more, there’s always an open-ended question like anything else. And then I can just write something else. But the idea is to just answer these questions. And it really helps me out and helps me stay consistent. And another thing, as we discussed, trigger activity and reward. My trigger for the morning journal is exactly when my girls are out and I have my eye button in the morning, I have my coffee. This is why I do my morning journal because I prepare for my day. And in the evening, my trigger is I go to bed. And usually we watch with my wife, we watch like one episode or maybe two episodes of something while in bed. So before we do that, and before I put my iPhone to the charge, I just take my iPhone, fill out the journal for the evening, and then put the iPhone to charge, and then we watch something and it’s done, so it’s ready. - Okay, so you type on your iPhone. - Yes, yes, my journal, you know, the shortcut works across the Mac, the iPhone and the iPad, so it doesn’t, again, another thing, it works on all of my devices. So this way, I have no excuse. Like if I’m in front of my iPad, I can do journal there. If I have my iPhone with me only, I can still journal. - So these are not like the long stories that you write there. No, they’re like - A short– - Compressed– - Yes, yes, yes. Journal is not, you know, but again, it compounds. So like, for example, when I do my quarterly review, like every quarter I do a big review of everything, I read my journal for the last quarter. This is the only time I read my journal actually. But then there are so many stories there, you know, short stories, but so many stories like what happened, you know, how I felt and all that stuff. So I can really, you know, remember these things and maybe think about, you know, some conclusions from that. So it is a kind of a sneak peek of what, you know, how I was during the last three months. Okay. Another example very similar to that, noting things down and writing. Yeah, noting things down. Yes. It’s a great habit that everyone should follow and should establish. Right, things down. remembering and going with your thoughts or some commitments in your head, in your memory is so tiring and so stressing and it makes me feel very nervous. So my favorite habit is just whenever I have something popped to my mind, I just take my phone or a piece of paper, I just write it down. Just not to walk with it. Yeah, just last week, we promoted on our blog, on our Nozbe blog, there is this shortcut that I also built that adds tasks to Nozbe, also from the watch, also from the phone, like you just say to Siri, new to do, and then you just write it down. And even if this idea is not per se to do, if it’s not really an actionable item, but it’s something you want to Remember, just say it, it will go to your single actions in Nozbe, and this way when you go open Nozbe, it’s going to be there. So then you decide what to do with it, or if it’s actually not relevant anymore, or maybe it’s going to be a project or a note that you’ll take. But it’s so comfortable that you don’t have to. Exactly. You just say to Siri, “Be new to do,” and then you just tell her what’s on your mind, and it’s done, and you know it’s saved in your trusted productivity system. You have to think about it. Exactly. Exactly. So it’s it’s again, a fortless. It’s just so easy. And this way, like, I remember you gave me this before recording, you gave me this example that a friend of yours was thinking about something like paying a bill (the car insurance), exactly before going to the cinema. And she wouldn’t write it down. Like, and you were like, rightfully, like, why would you think about your car insurance when you want to enjoy a movie? I would die. I would just, for me, the movie wouldn’t bring any joy if I just remember, “Please don’t forget about it. Don’t forget. Remember. Remember.” No, no, it’s not the way to go. So this is why, again, it takes a little bit of time. You have to download, for example, the shortcut. You have to configure it, like prepare it. But once it’s there, it’s easy easy to create the habit of just saying to Siri or remind me about this or whatever, and this way it’s always saved. You know where it is, you know where to find these things, because it’s also when you write things down you want to make sure that you know where these things are, and then you know that at least once a day you’re going to process them, you’re going to see them. I don’t use this shortcut yet because this is a new thing, but what I do is I just take my phone, I unlock it, I tap on the noseby because it’s on my first screen, and I just go to single tasks, and I dictate the task, just using the phone’s option to dictate. And then it transfers to text, so it’s not a voice note, but it’s a text note in the in Nozbe. Yeah, the detection right now is pretty good. So even if it’s not, you know, 100 % exactly what you wanted to say, you will know what you wanted to say. So it’s easy. But don’t count on your mind, reminding you about things, no, no, no, it shouldn’t. Yeah, it’s counterproductive and it’s really, it’s stressful. Yes. Now, talking about another good habit, and this is something that a friend of yours, who’s also a coach, she recommended this to me. I’m a kind of person that is pretty harsh on myself. And I have this inner critic that is really severe. And she said, okay, Magda, next time, when, when, when this critical voice inside your head speaks or when you think or you make presumptions about something that is not true, but it makes you feel bad because I make a lot of presumptions. So whenever you do this, just stop, try to detach yourself from this, how to detach, you can drink some water, you can take several deep breaths and then go back to this issue and think whether there was really so much of negativity in this or it was just your presumption. You just have to analyze it from a perspective and think about it. It can be an email that you interpreted as someone being angry with you or maybe someone being disappointed with you or it’s even during the live chat or live-life consultation when you think someone is being negative, or someone is refusing something that you offer them, you have to just take a big breath and detach for a second. These are like the milliseconds. And just ask yourself if it’s really, or it’s just your presumption, and then continue. And this is also habit, yeah? So whenever you feel bad, you feel stressed, oh my god, oh my god, then stop, breathe, detach, think what can be the actual thing, and then go back to the conversation or to write in your email. Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I do exactly for the morning is this gratitude practice, like I want to be grateful for things, thankful, because it also gets me excited, you know, I’m this, I’m America this way, this way. I have to be excited every day and look on the bright side of life. That’s why having this habit of gratitude also helps me be fired up for the morning and think about the good stuff and not so much dwell on the bad stuff. And that’s why this gratitude habit is something that I really like in the morning and also you know, have been praising about it and I can confirm that it works and it’s really good. And it’s also the habit of how you talk to yourself or how you think about yourself. Instead of I said, “Oh, I messed up.” You can say, “Oh, I learned something valuable.” Or, “Oh, I’m crap. I’m not good in that.” Then you can say, “Okay, it’s not perfect, but what can I learn what I can take out of it. So it’s also the way, the habit, the habitual way you think and you talk to yourself. Recently, you know, I was talking about this with some friends about this fact that I am very quick, for example, if something bad happens to me, I’m very quick of taking responsibility for it, saying, you know, I’m not putting your guilt on you. No, no, no, but Yeah, kind of, but being responsible for it, which means I want to learn something from it. But I was too much, again, intro critic, trying to put responsibility on me. And I recently read this thing, I heard somebody say that what you should ask is, how will I complicit in it? So, if you’re complicit in something, it means, okay, you had maybe there is something you could have done differently, but it’s not all your responsibility. So, this way, being complicit is less severe critic than I did this. And people who are watching this, my iPad is, I think, reading the room differently because it just gives thumbs up to everything we do and everything we say like Magda is being so if you if you if you are watching this you will see all these thumbs ups it wasn’t our idea but you know our ipad is like yeah i should have i should have disabled this option but anyway um yeah sum up just build your habits and try to reduce this reduce the number of decisions, reduce your mental effort every day by automating things and by building habits and having actions becoming routines, rituals even. Yeah, I mean, we know that the key to productivity is reducing also the barrier of entry to make something simple, effortless, like as effortless as possible and do it with joy. So habits help you with that. They help you prepare the structure and all that stuff. So really, I hope we have given you enough ideas and examples to start your own habits, to build up on your habits, to build up better habits. - Our examples were really simple, yeah, but probably in your job, in your private life, you can think of more personalized ideas, but it’s all about trigger, action, reward, and establishing it for a longer time. Yes, we have a few questions from live listeners. One is surely asking if Tosby will be connecting to Android tasks the same way the Siri does. In Android, we have it differently. You can have a widget that is like you can type a task directly on the Android screen. So you can add a widget where it’s really easy to type a task quickly, also use voice. So that is already there if you configure the widget on Android. And another question by Emilia_BY., do you think it’s harder to build good habits when working remotely? I think it’s on the contrary, because you are all by yourself and there are no external triggers that could make you, that disturb you. Yeah, there are no annoying co-workers who are just, you know, barging into your office, because it’s your home office. I love my home office. I mean, if you’ve been checking out my blog, you could see the history of my home office. I’m basically remodeling almost every year or every two years. And one of the reasons is that I can control this environment. This is my home office. This is my kingdom. This is the room where it happens, you know? And I love it. And I think when you’re working remotely, it’s just much easier. It’s much easier because then also we get set boundaries. At this time, please contact me. At this time, please don’t contact me. This way you also have more time for deep work. And I know this firsthand from, for example, my wife. My wife, she has like a more traditional job where she goes to an office to work, but not every day. She has an option to work from home. And very often when She has to write a longer document, a longer thing. You know, she’s a lawyer. So when she has really to focus, she prefers to stay at home because then she can control the inputs. She can control the environment who is conducting her and this way, you know, she can make it happen. - Yeah, okay then. So thank you so much for being with us. We hope you enjoyed it and we hope that will take out something even a tiny bit for yourself. - And as always, this production of No Office Podcast was sponsored by Nozbe, our tool, our app. And I’ll give the last voice to JJ, who would like to share why he likes Nozbe. - JJ Robertson, I’m on Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I am a holistic health coach, focusing on weight loss and fat loss. And I’ve used Nozbe every day, my personal life, and in my business life. So Nozbe really helped me out with organizing my life and keeping me focused. And in the past, with different businesses, I’ve used everything, Trello, Asana, all the major getting organized things. And I’ve always come back to Nozbe from my own personal use whenever I had a chance. I’ve always introduced Nozbe to different businesses because it just works. Thanks JJ and thanks everyone listening. Thanks for live questions to everyone on this live broadcast and to all audio listeners. You will check all the show notes. Everything will be nicely prepared for you so you can check everything we’ve discussed, all the links here in the show notes. And I hope you like the show and hope you share it with your friends and with people who might need a slight push to start building habits. You might see that they struggle with some things. So maybe some of these examples will be good for them. So if you could share this episode with your friends, we would really appreciate it. Thank you, and see you in the next episode. See you in the next episode. Yeah, bye-bye.
