by Brice Hogan
Aug 4, 2022 | bricehogan.com
Hello Everyone,
Here is your weekly dose of improvement ideas. This is the stuff I have been thinking about and exploring this week.
This week is about habits. I have been on a kick recently where most of my reading and writing revolves around a specific theme and this week is about habits. Below I listed 5 things that might help you develop a new habit.
Remember this.
"Success is the product of daily habits- Not once-in-a-lifetime transformations" - James Clear
By learning to start new habits and new things you put yourself in a position to have the success you want in anything you do in life.
As always if you have any feedback or suggestions about the newsletter reach out to me at bricejhogan@hotmail.com
Brice
What I Listened To
Why having fun is the secret to a healthier life by Catherine Price
What would you say if I told you that you need to have more fun?
More than likely you are sitting in your office, possibly working, maybe not having a lot of fun, shaking your heading saying, "Yeah I want to have more fun!"
Do you want to know what the secret of having fun is? Lean in a little closer, a little closer, Go out and do something fun. Right now. Don't sit back in your chair arms behind your head and think about it go find something fun to do preferably with someone you know.
Here are some secrets about fun:
Fun is energizing and fills you up
Fun is a feeling, not an activity
Fun is a serious thing
Fun allows us to be in the moment
Fun is when we can truly connect with others
Fun helps us feel more relaxed
Fun is a health intervention
Fun makes us happy
Fun is the secret to feeling alive
Do you see how the habit of having fun is an important habit to develop? There are studies that show that it has positive physical effects on your body and mind.
So take some time today and have some fun with someone you know.
What I Watched
How to Learn Anything Fast with Nishant Kasibhatala
One of the best habits we can develop is the habit of learning.
"A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimension"
- Oliver Wendell Holmes -
Learning requires two things:
1) Input
2) Outputs
We are really good with inputs. We pick up a book, listen to a podcast, or watch a documentary, and inputs are everywhere. But the information is completely useless if there is no outlet. The information is as good as if we never read it all.
Thus learning requires Output. There are 3 things that are required for effective output.
We are really good with inputs. We pick up a book, listen to a podcast, or watch a documentary, and inputs are everywhere. But the information is completely useless if there is no outlet. The information is as good as if we never read it all.
We need output. In order to achieve learning and eventually mastery, there are three things that need to happen.
1) Reflection
2) Implementation
3) Teach or Share
Notice there is 1 input to 3 outputs. There is a 3:1 ratio of outputs over inputs which means there needs to be more focus on action.
Reflection
Reflection is the ability to take information in, think about it, create new connections between and ideas and synthesize it into new ideas. Reflection activates the areas in our brain to help us create associations and analyze the information before taking the next step of implementing it.
This post is a result of me reflecting on the ideas in Nishant's talk and sharing with you some of the ideas I gained from it.
Implement
As the Greek Philosopher, Aesop said, "Implementation beats oration. We can talk ourselves blue in the face about something but it does not mean anything till we put it into action. This is probably the most important step of the 3 outputs. It's where we internalize the reflection and make it a reality.
Teach/Share
There is a saying "Those who can do; those who can't, teach." I hate that phrase. It's wrong I'm sure there are a few statistical outliers that can prove me wrong. In order to learn it's a combination of all 3 things.
But if you want to remember how to do something it's about recall and repetition. Reflection is passive recall. Implementation is active recall. You have the initial memory of learning (reflection), which you put into action (implementation), and now you are taking the experience of both and passing that along. This has two benefits:
It reinforces the experience in your mind
It passes the idea on to someone else
It's better to take lousy action instead of no action at all. In other words, what we do does not have to be perfect, to begin with, it's a matter of starting, and as we learn we will get better at it.
Here is one big takeaway about learning. Spend twice much time on the outputs as you do on the inputs.
A Book I'm Interested in
Train Your Brain for Success by Rober Seip
Finding books that can teach you to apply a skill are valuable to me. Learning a skill like reading faster and retaining more can put you in the top 1% of learners.
This is why I really like this book. Right from the beginning, there are exercises to help you remember more. The more you do these exercises the more you retain.
If you refer to the previous section on Learning Anything Fast it emphasizes we need more outputs than inputs to learn.
Learning faster helps us to increase the surface area of our knowledge, and do it more efficiently.
Interesting Articles -
How to Have Powerfully Effective Day By Leo Babauta
Powerfully Effective. Any article that prescribes something that canbe both powerful and effective I'm in hook, line, and sinker.
In order to make anything effective, it needs to save me time. Addition by subtraction as many will say. In this case, the answer is focus. We have so many distractions around us that pull our attention in different directions it's difficult sometimes to maintain focus.
Oh, your cell phone rings you pick it up, it turns into an hour discussion, let me check my Instagram feed, all of a sudden 15 minutes vanish. Look I'm not perfect. LinkedIn calls my name a lot and I can get stuck there at times. But if I really focus, that means no screens like I tell my kids.
Focus on what? I focus on my thoughts and write them down. In fact, I challenge you to take the 7-minute writing habit before you start your day. Something I have been doing lately.
Morning Thoughts
Every morning I take the opportunity to write down my thoughts and it helps clear my mind and focus my thoughts for the day. Sometimes it can take me a good 20 minutes or more to write. So I have tried to boil it down to 7-minutes.
The benefit is
- It challenges you to be succinct with what you write
- Because it's 7-minutes it saves you time
More time = more effective time
Hence creating habits that are effective is powerful because it allows you to free up what you didn't have before.
Quote I'm Pondering
"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself"
- Leo Tolstoy -
Let's be realistic can you really change the world? It's something I've been pondering this week, and I realized YES. YES, you can!
The individual impact you can have creates a ripple effect that you may be unaware of. It could be in a kind gesture of helping mentor someone to help them understand a business idea, and then they may go on to create the next game-changing technology.
What if you give some advice to someone who is struggling, who unbeknownst to you was about to take their life, instead they go on to help their family and their kids and so the ripple goes.
By small actions, we can change the world to be a better place. And at the core of it is YOU. YOU are the one. Taking the time to learn and become better that is at the core of change.
That has been my purpose from day one with this site, to help create ideas that allow you to go on and change who you are and the world we live in.