For eleven months and maybe about twenty days each year, we concentrate upon the shortcomings of others, but for a few days at the turn of the New Year we look at our own. It is a good habit.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Observe yourself as you go through a typical day. Stuff happens to you. As it does, you immediately judge it and label it. Dozens of times. Hundreds of times. So often that you no longer recognize that you're doing it. It is a deep-seated habit.
I am constantly hustling and finding new things. You try to manage so you don't look back and see huge gaps of time that you missed with your family.
Research has shown that it takes 31 days of conscious effort to make or break a habit. That means, if one practices something consistently for 31 days, on the 32nd day it does become a habit. Information has been internalised into behavioural change, which is called transformation.
It's not a bad idea to occasionally spend a little time thinking about things you take for granted. Plain everyday things.
The time at our disposal each day is elastic; the passions we feel dilate it, those that inspire us shrink it, and habit fills it.
There's a tendency to fall into certain habits, but if you tell yourself not to do that and if you don't stay there too long - I think if you start staying for too long, you tend to fall into certain bad habits, and I tried not to do that.
It's very easy to get caught up in everything that's going on and just daily stuff being a distraction. When you have all that taken away from you, your daily activity becomes a lot more subtle, and you appreciate it all a lot more.
The more you focus, the more that focus becomes a habit.
I never really do the New Year's Resolution thing. I kind of just try to stay focused, not get too distracted, and do the best I can. And that's something I like to tell myself every year around New Year's.
To this day I always insist on working out a problem from the beginning without reading up on it first, a habit that sometimes gets me into trouble but just as often helps me see things my predecessors have missed.