How to get your life back together (+exact action plan)

This video is brought to you by Squarespace. From websites, online stores, and marketing tools, and analytics, Squarespace is the all-in-one platform to build your beautiful online presence and run your business. It's been a month since the new year started. You probably told yourself that this year is going to be different, or if you are like me, you maybe even made a video about it.

Hi guys, it's me, Judy. What's up? For those who are new here, I'm Judy and welcome to my channel! I've got like 20 22 goals and how I'm gonna approach them and all that stuff. You might practice the desired habits for a while, but you probably slip back into the bad habits or the old habits that you wanted to change. Why is it so hard to build new/good habits and so easy to slip back into bad/old habits? How can we, how can we build the habits that we desire? How can we become the successful better version of ourselves? James Clear explains all of this in his best-selling book, which is also one of my favorite books, Atomic Habits. Today we are going to cover all of the reasons and also the ways that you can implement into your life and improve your life.

Hi guys, it's me, Judy. If you're new here, I'm a medical student in Italy, and on this channel, we like to talk about productivity, languages, self-improvement, college life—basically everything. So, if you're into these topics, make sure to subscribe so that you won't miss new content. Okay, so let's start talking about building new habits and changing your old behaviors.

There are basically four fundamental laws when it comes to building a habit and becoming a better version of yourself. Law one is make it obvious. So basically, in order to build your desired habits like exercising, reading more, or you know, being more productive generally, you firstly need to understand your current habits and you need to be aware of them. In order to do that, we're going to use a system called a habit scorecard.

So basically, a habit scorecard is a scorecard where you write all of your daily habits from waking up to going to bed, once again, and sleeping, and starting the next day. You give them a score. If the habit that you perform is something good, that basically means that you know, it makes it easier for you to be the desired version of yourself, then put it a plus. And if it's neutral, then put it an equal sign. And then if it's something negative, you put a minus. In that way, you can be more aware of your current habits.

So, let's say waking up is neutral, brushing your teeth is natural probably, or if you're trying to build a habit, maybe it's a positive thing for you. Okay, so let me give you an example of a scorecard: so basically, you snooze alarm, that's a negative habit. You wake up, natural habit. Go to bathroom, neutral. Brushing your teeth properly, natural if it's already a habit. You go to the kitchen, you make yourself a cup of coffee. If you're trying to avoid caffeine, maybe that's a bad thing. And then you maybe check your phone and scroll through social media, that's a negative thing for me, so I'll put a minus.

In that way, you will score all of your habits, all of your current habits. You try to bring more awareness to them. At this point, we're not going to judge any of these habits; you're just observing what you're currently doing. Because in order to solve problems, you should be aware of them first. Maybe there are some habit loops that you didn't realize before that are affecting you in a bad way.

So do that, and the marks that you give to those habits, so like positive, negative, or neutral, really depends on your goals. For somebody else who is trying to lose weight, maybe eating less is a good thing, but for somebody else who's trying to gain weight, it's a bad thing. So it totally depends on your goals. So you should be clear about the goal that you want to achieve first.

So the second thing that we're going to do in order to make it obvious is connecting time and location. Stephen Covey, who is the author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, says that stop setting goals. Goals are pure fantasy unless you have a specific plan to achieve them. The main reason why people fail at achieving a goal is lack of clarity. We need to have an exact plan in order to achieve a goal. You should be really specific about when to do what, so I will behave at time in this location.

So let's say I will read 15 minutes at 9:00 PM in my bed. You should make clear when you are going to perform this act and where you are going to perform your desired habit in order to make things obvious. The third thing we're going to do in order to make our desired habit obvious is that stacking habits. So basically, you're going to combine your desired habit with your current habit that you do in autopilot mode.

So basically, with the habits that you don't even think before performing them—like waking up, brushing your teeth, or maybe making a cup of coffee. Let's say you want to meditate, so you're going to combine this habit with making a cup of coffee, and you’ll say "I’m going to meditate five minutes after making myself a cup of coffee after waking up in the kitchen at 8 PM."

The fourth thing to know in order to make your habits obvious is that environment matters more: prepping the environment in our favor. So if you want to read more, then you should place more books around the house. If you want to drink more water, then place more water bottles around the house so that it will be obvious for you and then so that it will be easier for you to perform that act. James Clear says that motivation is overvalued; environment matters more.

If your environment is designed in a good way for your habits, then you're more likely to act towards your goals. So now let's talk about the law two, which is make it attractive. When you reward yourself after performing your desired habit, you're more likely to perform that habit once again. In order to make a habit attractive, I found three important tips that they give in the book, so I'm going to share with you guys.

The first one is reprogramming your brain. The mindset that you have is actually more important than you're probably assuming. So if you're currently thinking that exercising is suffering or making you tired, "I don't like exercising," you should change that mindset. You should rather think in this way: "After exercising, I feel much better; my mental clarity increases, and I feel much better. I feel so refreshed after working out." So in your mind, you should replace the meaning of the certain habit.

So exercise is not equal to tiredness or something boring, but exercise is equal to well-being. In that way, you can change your mindset. And then the second thing is temptation bundling—basically combine two habits; one of them is a thing that you need to do, and the other one is a habit you want to do. For example, I love watching animes, so let's say I want to run regularly. So I will watch animes while running, so I'm basically combining two habits—one that I need to do (running) with one that I want to do (like watching an anime).

Or maybe you can listen to an audiobook while lifting some weight. So basically, you're combining the habit that you want to perform with something that you really enjoy. In that way, it makes things much easier. And then, another thing that you can do in order to make your habits attractive is that joining a community. Join a community where your desired habit or desired behavior is normal. If you want to run more, join running clubs. If you want to read more, join book clubs. If you want to be more productive and if you want to, you know, achieve your goals, maybe find an accountability buddy so that these people will keep you comfortable and motivate you, and you can grow together.

As I said, environment matters more than motivation; therefore, surround yourself with people whose normal behavior is your desired behavior. If you want to study more, surround yourself with people who study regularly. If you want to grow more, surround yourself with people who have a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset.

So the law number three is make it easy. But before talking about making the desired habits easy, I want to introduce you guys to Squarespace, who is today's sponsor, which made making a website super easy for me. Squarespace is the all-in-one solution for those who want to build websites or sell services, products, etc., and market your businesses. One thing that I really like about Squarespace is that you can sell like ebooks, audio files, or digital products or other digital downloads by creating digital products.

When a customer purchases a product from you, like a digital product, they're sent a download link, and that link expires in 24 hours. If a customer clicks on the expired link, Squarespace will send a new link to the email address used for the initial purchase. Also, there are so many other analytic tools that you can use in Squarespace to grow your business and track what your customers are interested in and why they are visiting your site or, you know, in order to understand your customer needs and grow your business.

Squarespace is such a great platform to use. If you are ready to launch, head to squarespace.com/hamma to save 10% on your first purchase of a website or domain using code RUDIOHAMA. Thank you, Squarespace, for sponsoring this video. Now let's get back into the video.

So basically, in order to make a habit easier for you to perform, there are four things that you should be careful about. The first thing is repetition. The more we repeat something, the more easier for us to perform it next time. So at some point, you start to do it on autopilot. No matter how it's going to be hard at the beginning, it's not going to be hard always. So it's always important to repeat the habit that you want to build.

There is also like a famous saying that says it takes 21-ish days to make it a habit, so repetition is always important. Repeat, repeat, repeat. It's about everything. Learning a language? Repeat. Do you want to have a good physique? Go to the gym and repeat it. When I get bulkier and gain weight, eat more and repeat it. It's all about repetition.

The second thing is reducing the friction. You need to reduce the activation energy for doing something. So basically, the more easier it's for you to perform that act, you're more likely to do it. If your gym is super far away from where you live, you're less likely to go to the gym. But if you're working at home or maybe you're going to a gym that is new to your house, you are more likely to go to the gym and actually, you know, do an exercise.

So make things easier for you. And also, another way that you can make things easier is that lower your expectations. Don't say, "I'm gonna exercise every day." You can even say that "I'm just gonna go to the gym." Like even, you know, showing up is enough. "I'm gonna go to the gym and show up every day," not even like working out. Showing up is enough.

Or don't say, "I'm gonna read every day for 30 minutes," or "I'm gonna finish a bunch of books this year." Say, "I'm gonna read one page every day." Like even one page is enough because the hardest part is starting, not actually the continuing thing. If you read only one page, that's totally fine, but most of the time, you will probably find yourself reading more than one page, and that's completely fine.

You should lower your expectations, and you should reduce the friction in order to perform a certain act. The third thing that you should do is priming the environment. If the environment is designed for you to act that habit, it's much easier for you. So if you want to go to the gym regularly, then prepare your gym bag before going to bed so that you can go to the gym the next day, and all you need to do is grab your gym bag and go to the gym.

Or if you want to start working or studying immediately after eating your breakfast, maybe after, you know, ending the day, tidy up your desk so that it will be clean and nice, and you will be more likely to start immediately the next day. The other thing that you can do in order to make things easier is by following the two-minute rule.

The two-minute rule says that if the action can be done in less than two minutes, you should do it now. So such as maybe tidying your desk, tidying up your bed, or maybe responding to that email that you've been delaying, do these many tasks. Actually, with the time, they will build up, and you're more likely to procrastinate and procrastinate or procrastinate. I know that feeling, so the two-minute rule is really important, and we should do it more.

So the law four of changing your habits and changing your behavior is make it satisfying. So James Clear says that what is immediately rewarded is repeated, and what is immediately punished is avoided. So use punishment and reward system in order to perform your desired habit. When it comes to the rewarding system, most people think like maybe buying a gift or something, but it can be simple as tracking your habits.

You can create a Notion page, have a track or a function in Notion, and every single time you go to the gym or you read or, I don't know, you do your desired habit, you can tick the box, and it gives you true satisfaction, to be honest. And if you're old-school, maybe you can cross the calendar, and in that way, you can track your habits and reward yourself.

And for punishment, you can tell your friend that every time you will do, like, "This is this habit, I'll give you five dollars." In that way, you can maybe find an accountability buddy, and you can give each other money to punish yourself because who wants to do that, right? But you know, sometimes life gets in the way, and sometimes we just cannot control our lives, and we cannot maybe do the habit.

But what should we do in those types of days is that following the two-day rule—not two-minute rule, but two-day rule. So basically, when you are trying to build a habit, you imagine yourself like building a chain. So with the habit scorecard, you see all of the ticks, right? The thing that you're trying to do is not skipping any of your desired habits two days in a row.

Let's say you want to run every day, okay? Maybe that's your habit. Let's say you want to become a runner or you want to run regularly. You're not going to skip running two days in a row. Maybe it was, like, rainy last day, but no matter what, you're gonna go for a run the next day. You're not gonna skip any habit two days in a row because when we skip habits two days in a row, we're more likely to fall back into our old habits and give up on our new ones because the new ones are not comfortable for us; they're outside of our comfort zone. That is why it's not about current habits, right?

So you're not trying to fall back into that loop, so don't, don't, don't skip your habits two days in a row if you want to make them a routine, a part of your life. So maybe you were like watching this video until this point, and you start to think, "So what am I gonna do right now? Like, I'm so confused." I'm gonna give you an exact action plan so that you can implement it into your life.

So my desire, my top two desired habits are exercising regularly and reading regularly. So the step one is for me to create a habit scorecard to see my daily routine—like what I'm doing. I actually don't know what I'm doing every single day, so in order to be aware, I'm going to create a habit scorecard, you know, from the moment that I wake up. I'm going to add like pluses, minuses, and equals so that I can see the areas that I can change and exercise more and read more after being more aware of my current habits.

So I need to make it obvious, clear about time and location obvious in order to perform that act, right? So I'm going to tell myself that I'm going to work out at 5:00 PM every day in my living room or anything, or I'll tell myself that I'll read before going to bed at 11 to like 12 AM ish in my bedroom, so making time and location clear. I will know when to do these habits.

So the step three will be making these habits more attractive. You know, going to the gym every day is kind of tempting for me, so I'm only going to say that I will take my gym bag and I'll go to the gym, and showing up is enough. Even if I end up not working out, that's totally fine. I'm gonna still take my habit card, and for reading, I'll tell myself that I'm only gonna read one page every day. Even if I end up reading only one page, that's gonna be okay for me because it's much better than doing nothing. We're still growing. Yes, it's very in a slow pace, but that's totally fine.

And the step four is gonna be making it easy. So I will put my gym bag next to the door, so when I'm leaving the house, the only thing that I need to do is grab my gym bag and go to the gym. And also, I'll place my Kindle next to my bed so that before going to bed, I can grab my Kindle and start reading. And then the last step, so step five, is making it satisfying. It's really simple. You can create a habit tracker in Notion or in the calendar, and then you can tick or cross every single time you do that habit.

And in that way, we can build our habits and we can become the better version of ourselves. I'm actually gonna make a vlog where I show all of these so that you guys can follow along and build new habits too, so stay tuned for that video because I'm really excited for that video. I hope that this video was helpful for you to build new habits and become your best version of yourself because this year we're gonna become our best version of ourselves, and we're not giving up, okay?

We're pretty clear about that. Thank you for watching this video, and thank you, Squarespace, for sponsoring this video. See you guys in my next video. Bye.