Improve Every Day

We usually avoid difficulty whenever we can, but I try to do something difficult every single day.

In this video, I’ll explain the three main reasons behind why I’ve chosen this approach.

And it all starts with the comfort zone.

When we're in our comfort zones, we're not pushing ourselves.

At the first glance, there seems to be nothing wrong with that.

Why would we voluntarily put ourselves in a position of struggle, if we don't have to?

But if we only live our lives in comfort, we might be unknowingly doing ourselves an injustice.

Hopefully by the end of the video you will be inspired to leave your comfort zone and do something difficult today yourself.

You can get "The Paradox Of Choice" book here:

US: https://amzn.to/35wP0CR

EU: https://amzn.to/2MX2amp

When we have very little choice, or perhaps even no choice, we are very likely to be unhappy.

But as you gain more options, and you have the ability to choose between them, your happiness increases.

So, obviously having choice is good.

But what's interesting, is as you get more and more options, your happiness doesn't keep increasing.

Instead, counter-intuitively, it decreases.

In fact, having too many options to choose from, can be just as bad, as having no options.

So rather than liberating us and making us happier, having a lot of options does the opposite.

Psychologist Barry Schwartz coined this phenomenon, the paradox of choice.

Because more becomes less.

When I was younger I used to play a lot of video games.

But as I grew older, they started taking too much time from my other activities.

For this reason, I started to gradually reduce the time I spent playing them, until I eventually quit.

But recently, I decided to incorporate some more down time into my schedule. And I gave video games another shot.

This is when I remembered just how fun video games can be.

It wasn't long before I was looking forward to the end of the day, just so I could hop on the computer and play. But this also got me wondering.

What exactly made those games so compelling?

And could I somehow apply those game elements to other areas of my own life to make them more desirable?

This is what I've learned.

Ending song:  Whitesand - Alchemy of Life

You can find it here:

   • Alchemy of Life - Emotional Instrumen...  

https://whitesand.bandcamp.com/track/...

https://open.spotify.com/track/10feK1...

The Happiness Advantage:

US: https://amzn.to/3n06Hlp

UK: https://amzn.to/30fWCqT

We're all lazy to some extent. And there's nothing wrong with that.

However, most of the time, it's those exact moments of laziness that make us overindulge on our bad habits.

We all have certain behaviours that we default to, and we tend to perform them almost on auto-pilot.

Those behaviours could be positive, or they could be negative.

However, instead of accepting all of our default behaviours, we should re-examine the ones that are not serving us and adjust them.

And we can use our lazy nature to our advantage here.

All we need to do is utilise The 20 Second Rule.

Does money buy happiness?

Can more money make us happier?

The answer to these questions is: Yes... And no.

It really depends on the individual, the situation they're in, and how they're spending their money.

In this video I'll examine the relationship between money and happiness.

And hopefully you'll be able to answer those questions for yourself.

Sources:

75k mark: https://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/1...

Relative position: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper...

Relative position 2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...

Lottery winners: https://www.researchgate.net/publicat...

Working more vs working less: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...

Spending on others: https://www.researchgate.net/publicat...

If you're like most people, you probably have a to-do list, and you use it to help you focus on getting things done.

If you don't have it, you might want to make one, as it brings plenty of psychological benefits.

However, I would also suggest you create a not-to-do list.

This list compliments the to-do list incredibly well, and it might be even more important.

Let me explain...

Let's say you buy a $10 movie ticket.

But 15 minutes in, you realise this movie isn't what you expected it to be.

However, because you feel like you're supposed to get your money's worth, you decide to watch the rest of the 2 hour movie.

This decision is based on your loss of $10.

But it isn't an optimal one.

A more logical thing to do, would have been to get up and leave after you had realised this movie wasn't what you wanted to watch.

Wouldn't you be better off, had you only wasted $10 and 15 minutes of your time, instead of wasting $10 and 2 hours?

Had you left early, you would've essentially gained 2 hours of extra time.

Those $10 you spent were gone or "sunk" either way. You couldn't get them back, whether you watched the rest of the movie or not.

And that phenomenon is what psychologists and economists call: the sunk cost fallacy.

It's one of the more common cognitive biases that clouds our judgement.

Instead of making a decision based on potential future returns, we make them on our past losses.

I'm sure you experienced this before:

You might have had a breakdown or you might have had an epiphany.

Either way, you had this realisation that you needed to make some sort of a change in your life.

Suddenly you knew what you needed to do, and you even had the motivation to do it.

However, when you woke up the next morning, you didn't wake up as the new person you felt like you were the night before. You woke up as the same old you, with no motivation to make the changes you planned to make.

And in the following days and weeks, no additional exercise was done, there was no progress in your learning, and you still didn't get things done on time.

You have again, fallen back into your set ways, and failed to do what you said you were going to do.

But don't worry. You're not alone in this.

I don't manage to do everything I tell myself I'm going to do, either.

But I have found a way to substantially increase my odds of following through on my desired behaviour.

Instead of relying on motivation, which comes and goes, I started applying what psychologists call: implementation intentions.

Studies mentioned in the video for further reading:

Implementation intentions:

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper...

Meta-analysis of implementation intentions:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science...

Coping plans:

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper...

You can get the book mentioned in the video here:

US: https://amzn.to/2XskwND

UK: https://amzn.to/3ghJ9oR

Nowadays everyone is constantly busy with something. But being busy doesn't mean we're using our time efficiently.

It's sad to say this, but most people completely waste their time.

And time is our most valuable resource. We can't make more of it, like we can make more money for example.

So it's wise to use our time in a way that will benefit us.

When we're bored, what do we usually do?

Most of us up end being glued to a phone, TV or a computer screen.

That might ease our boredom in the moment, and we might not even consider that time to be wasted.

But there's an opportunity cost.

That time could've been spent on a different, more valuable activity.

Specifically on something that could actually benefit us greatly in the future.

This is why in this video I'll go over 5 things that will help ease your boredom, and teach you to use your free time more productively.

There were two friends that grew up together.

However after they were done with their education, they went their separate ways.

One friend became extremely successful in every aspect.

The other friend however, became the exact opposite.

But no matter how different their lives became, those two friends still kept in touch.

In fact, they talked to each other every day.

That's because those two friends were actually the same person.

The first friend was that person's best and ideal version, while the second one was his worst version.

You and me both have those two friends inside of us. All of us do.

And we have the potential to become either one of them.

Which one we end up becoming though, is determined by the choices we make each and every day.