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Nothing is harder to do these days than nothing

What do social media, credit cards, and habit stacking have in common?

August 30, 2021

Hey there —

What do social media, credit cards, and habit stacking have in common?

Your grandmother (bless her) is completely clueless on how to use them. Oh, and they’re all helpful tools that carry a nasty double-edged sword.

You can leverage social media to network and unlock opportunities. However, you can also become addicted to dopamine snacks and before you know it, opening Twitter is the equivalent of checking the fridge when you’re not hungry.

Credit cards allow you to make hefty purchases (and become a travel reward fiend). They can also put you in debilitating debt. We blame the outrageous APY.

Habit stacking, which is when you stack a new habit on top of an existing one, allows you to easily implement positive new habits in your routine. But unintentional habit stacking can hinder your productivity.

Reddit user DraconFox knows what we’re talkin’ about here.

This is the curse of unforeseen consequences. When we absentmindedly pile unhelpful habits on top of one another, we end up hurting ourselves.

Unintentional habit stacking directly impacts our fringe hours, too. Fringe hours are the minutes in between signature tasks. You know, the gaps of time that float before meetings, work, or social activities. And these days, a pocket of boredom is immediately filled with social media or another mundane activity.

The not-so-good news: these unintentional micro-habits that take place during our fringe hours end up impacting the quality of our lives. The little things add up.

Spend 30 minutes on TikTok before getting up each morning? After a year, that’s a total of 7.5 days. Impressive. Also frightening.

Conversely, the opposite is true. This is a double-edged sword, after all. We can train ourselves to adjust our habit stacking for good and use fringe hours to our advantage.

Write 150 words a day? By this time next year you’d have a 54,750-word book.

Send one cold pitch every week day to a recruiter, agency, or dream client? After a year, that’s 260 queries.

Walk 30 minutes a day? That’s roughly 2 miles. One year later, you’d have walked a cool 730 miles. For reference, the entire length of California is 770 miles. 😵

The point is this: Your fringe hours matter, and if you fill them up with unintentional habit stacking, it might take a toll.

But the good news is: it’s also a reminder that you don’t need large swaths of time to accomplish something really big. You actually have way more time than you think.

The Magic of Non-Doing

Article | by Paul Millerd

Nothing is harder to do these days than nothing.

But online writer and solopreneur Paul Millerd argues it’s one of the most important things you’ll ever do.

Paul defines “non-doing” as a state of mind where you do things naturally with a spirit of light-hearted playfulness. There’s no “I should have sent in that email” or “I didn’t work enough today” thoughts to plague you. It’s how you escape from the cult of efficiency and just enjoy the moment.

But in our world, the cult of efficiency is strong. We’re programmed to believe productivity equals doing more and making it bigger. But when you enter a state of non-doing, you’re closing yourself off to thoughts such as “I should be making more money” and “I need to have a bigger audience.”

This mindset gives you the clarity to see the things that matter and create space in our lives for those things to show up.

P.S - Paul met his wife while he was in a state of “non-doing” and idly sitting in a park in Taipei. So if you’re looking for a SO we’d suggest you’d try this out.

TL;DR

Embrace the feeling of non-doing and see where it takes you.

The Internet Dream

Article | by Prashant Abhishek

The majority of people have yet to grasp the true potential of the internet.

But what does it mean to take advantage of being online to harness your full potential?

Welcome to Internet Dream, a short essay written by Prashant Abhishek who breaks down how one can build a lifestyle of their choice thanks to the internet. The land of opportunities, it’s no secret that the internet allows you to learn unlimited skills, build out your tribe, and build an online reputation. The question is, um, how?

Prashant drills into our noggins that the number one way to correctly use the internet is to switch from a passive consumer to an active creator. It’s about building something people will find useful, which will either fall into media or code. From there, you’re golden.

Take Prashant’s advice and begin building out the skillset so you can play the great online game (instead of it playing you).

TL;DR Switch from passive consumer to active creator so you can build a lifestyle of your choice using the internet.

Decision Fatigue: How a Burden of Choices Leads to Irrational Tradeoffs

Article | by Anne-Laure Le Cunff

The average adult makes around 35,000 decisions a day.

It’s no wonder that decision fatigue slams into us like a truck on a daily basis. This is when our decision-making skills get worse as additional choices require a full cognitive battery. Turns out we can’t make decision after decision without paying a biological price.

This might all sound like a bunch of hoopla, but decision fatigue is very real. Consider:

  • A study with 1,100 parole hearing decisions investigated what was the most powerful factor in whether parole was granted or not. The result? It wasn’t the nature of their crime or background. It was when the judge hearing the case last took a break.

  • VIPs like Barack Obama, Steve Jobs, and *ahem* super interesting and handsome filmmaker Matt D’Avella only have a couple of everyday outfits. Why? To limit the amount of decisions they make in a day.

  • There’s a reason why retail stores put little knick knacks like toys, accessories, or candy near the cash register. Near the end of your shopping session, you’re more likely to throw them in your cart without thinking. Hence the “impulse purchase.”

The not-so-good news is that it’s kind of impossible to avoid these 30-something thousand decisions a day. The good news is that there are strategies to drastically reduce decision fatigue’s impact.

Founder of Ness Labs Anne-Laure provides some excellent advice on how to manage decision fatigue, including asking for help from others, making decisions in advance, and changing your mindset about willpower. Here’s to avoiding impulse purchases. 😌

TL;DR

The more decisions we make, the worse we’re going to be at weighing options and making the right choice. Mitigate decision fatigue by directing mental energy towards the choices that count.

Akta

For this week’s creator spotlight, we’re shining a light on Akta, a part-time dentist and yoga teacher 🧘 Check out Akta’s Youtube channel if you’re looking for videos on mindful living, yoga, and slow living. Or, if you want to find out how to “become the main character of your life” 😉

Why do you create? Who is your content for?

I make YouTube videos because I enjoy it. I was unemployed for almost a year because of Covid-19 and I had just moved into a flat by myself. Suddenly I had all of this free time, and I felt drawn to creating. I wanted to challenge myself by putting myself out there because I’ve struggled with social anxiety and lacked confidence, so I jumped on Youtube to really put myself out of my comfort zone. It definitely worked, and it made me fall in love with creating videos!

The biggest lesson you’ve learned since you began creating content?

I’ve learnt that putting yourself out there on social media doesn’t have to be a big deal. At first, I was really secretive about it. I used to block people I knew in real life on Instagram to try and avoid them finding out about my Youtube channel. Nowadays, I talk about it openly with family and friends, and no one really cares!

One thing you wish you knew before you got started?

I wish I knew how much fun it would be so that I would have started earlier! I’ve been watching Youtube for 10 years secretly wishing I could do it- now I know there is no reason I couldn’t back then too!

One piece of advice you’d give to aspiring creators and self-development nerds?

Don’t overthink everything. You don’t have to constantly improve yourself and change, or keep up with everything that everyone else is doing. Just do the things that you want to do. It really is that simple.

Would you rather have to listen to your least favorite music for the rest of your life or have to say the “YOOUUUUUUUU!” from Crank that by Soulja boy every time you say the word “you”?Say the “YOOUUUUUUUU!” from Crank that by Soulja boy every time you say the word “you” because I actually do break into song whenever I say words which are familiar lyrics, so this would be pretty normal for me!

Written by Alice Lemée