"Zen Habits" by Leo Babauta

• Smile, breathe and go slowly. -- Thich Nhat Hanh
• If you feel stressed out and overwhelmed, breathe.
• Breath. And enjoy each moment of this life. They're too fleeting and few to waste.
• Be at peace with being still.
• All the rushing around is counter productive.
• Just be in the moment.
• Slow down. Be present. Find happiness now, in this moment, instead of waiting for it.
• Life can be ridiculously complicated, if you let it.
• If you live without goals, you'll explore new territory.
• Goals as a system are set up for failure.
• Plans are not really different than goals. They set you on a predetermined path.
• Don't worry about mistakes.
• Always remember: the journey is all. The destination is beside the point.
• Solitude, in these days as much as ever, is an absolute necessity.
• The best art is created in solitude, for good reason: it's only when we are alone that we can reach into ourselves and find truth, beauty, soul.
• Take a walk every day.
• Think of nothing that happens as either good or bad. Stop judging, and stop expecting.
• When you stop judging things as good or bad, you are no longer burdened by the emotions of this judgment, and can live lighter, freer.
• Without the human mind, things just happen, and they are not good or bad.
• It's our expectations that force us to judge whether something is good or bad.
• When people disappoint you, it's not their fault. They're just being who they are. Your expectations are at fault.
• Accept people for who they are.
• Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. -- Zen proverb
• In the chaos of the modern world, there is a beauty in simply doing.
• When walking, walk. When eating, eat. -- Zen proverb
• Excesses lead to all kinds of problems, but the biggest problem is that life is less enjoyable.
• It's the little things that make life enjoyable.
• We've been conditioned to believe that busier is better, but actually the speed of doing is not as important as what we focus on doing.
• The most important step is a realization that life is better when you move at a slower, more relaxed pace, instead of hurrying and rushing and trying to cram too much into every day.
• Life as a whole is better if you go slowly, and take the time to savor it, appreciate every moment. That's the simplest reason to slow down.
• Take responsibility for your life.
• Your environment doesn't control your life--you do.
• Do less. Cut back on your projects, on your task list, on how much you try to do each day.
• Focus not on the quantity but quality.
• Have fewer meetings. Meetings are usually a huge waste of time.
• Practice being comfortable with sitting, doing nothing.
• Realize that if it doesn't get done, that's OK.
• Start to eliminate the unnecessary.
• Simply learn to live in the present, rather than thinking so much about the future or the past.
• Slowly eliminate commitments.
• Unsubscribe from everything.
• When you find yourself wanting to buy something, pause. Then think of how you can live without buying it.
• Think of the restrictions you impose on yourself, and see if you can lift a few of them.
• The number 1 creative habit: solitude.
• The number 2 creative habit: participation.
• Creativity flourishes in solitude. With quiet, you can hear your thoughts, you can reach deep within yourself, you can focus.
• Don't consume and create at the same time--separate the processes.
• Just get it out, no matter how crappy the first draft.
• Teach and you'll learn.
• Most of the important stuff is available for free.
• Find others who are doing it [the thing you love] well and study them closely.
• You'll learn most be doing. Start doing it for free.
• Never stop learning, getting better.
• Start small, expand only as much as your income allows. Buy as little equipment as you can get away with at first.
• If you get good at something you'll be in demand.
• People who wake late miss one of the greatest feats of nature, repeated in full stereo vision each and every day--the rise of the sun.
• You should have one goal that you want to accomplish this week. And every morning, you should decide what one thing you can do today to move yourself further towards that goal.
• Make time to pursue your passion, no matter how busy you are.
• The people you make friends with are so much more important than your job or the things you buy.
• There are really only two steps to simplifying:
• Identify what's most important to you.
• Eliminate everything else.
• Focus on the essential tasks and eliminate the rest.
• Learn to say no. If you can't say no, you will take on too much.
• Simplify your wardrobe by getting rid of anything you don't actually wear.
• The key to keeping your life simple is to create simple routines.
• Learn what "enough" is. Figure out how much is "enough". And then stop when you get there.
• Have a place for everything.
• Simplify your goals. Instead of having half a dozen goals or more, simplify to one goal.
• Single-task. Multi-tasking is more complicated, more stressful, and generally less productive. Instead, do one task at a time.
• Set just three very important things you want to accomplish each day.
• Go for quality, not quantity.
• Always ask: Will this simplify my life? If the answer is no, reconsider.
• Clutter is a form of visual distraction, and everything in our vision pulls at our attention at least a little. The less clutter, the less visual stress we have.
• If you think about your goal every day, it is much more likely to become true.
• Motivation is not a constant thing that is always there for you. It comes and goes, and comes and goes again, like the tide.
• Whatever you do, don't give up.
• Start small. Start really small. If you're having a hard time getting started, it may be because you're thinking too big.
• The four laws of simplicity:
• Collect everything in one place.
• Choose the essential.
• Eliminate the rest.
• Organize the remaining stuff neatly and nicely.
• Examine all your commitments, and ask yourself if they are really important to you, if they give you great value for your time, and if they are related to what is truly important.
• Simplifying isn't meant to leave your life empty--it's meant to leave space in your life for what you really want to do.
• You should focus on the few things that get you the most benefit.
• The key to Haiku Productivity is to limit yourself to an arbitrary but small number of things, forcing yourself to focus on the important stuff and eliminate all else.
• The rule of Haiku Productivity is: put limits on everything you do. That's it. One rule.
• Example: 1 goal at a time. 2 times you can check email per day. 3 most-important-tasks per day. 4 batched tasks. 5 sentence email limit.
• 5-sentence rule: No email can be longer than 5 sentences.
• By restricting yourself to a small number of things, you force yourself to focus only on the essential.
• Once you've simplified your life, the way to keep it simple is by creating simple systems for everything you do regularly.
• People find greatest enjoyment not when they're passively mindless, but when they're absorbed in a mindful challenge.
• The simpler the tools, the better.
• Ten habits of Zen-to-Done:
• collect: Carry a small notebook and write done any tasks, ideas, projects, or other information that pops into your head. Get it out of your head and onto paper, so you don't forget it.
• process: Make quick decisions on things in your inbox, do not put them off.
• Process your inboxes at least once a day, from top to bottom, making a decision on each item: do it, trash it, delegate it, or put it on your to-do list or calendar for later.
• plan: Set MITs for the week and day.
• Each day, create a list of 1-3 MITs and be sure to accomplish them.
• do (focus): Do one task at a time, without distractions.
• simple trusted system: Keep lists simple, and check them daily.
• Don't create a complicated system, and don't keep trying out new tools.
• organize: Have a place for everything.
• Put things where they belong, right away, instead of piling them up to sort later.
• review: Review your system and goals weekly.
• During your weekly review, you should go over each of your yearly goals, see what progress you made on them in the last week, and what action steps you're going to take to move forward in the coming week.
• simplify: Reduce goals and tasks to the essential.
• Remove everything but the essential projects and tasks, so you can focus on them.
• routine: Set and keep routines.
• find your passion: Seek work for which you're passionate.
• Getting things done is really about one thing, and one thing only: overcoming resistance to doing what we need to do.
• Become aware of resistance. Once you become aware of it, you can fight it, and beat it.
• Become a pro. The professional, unlike the amateur, comes to work ready to work.
• Before you start the day, be very clear about what you want to accomplish.
• Close all programs except the ones you need to do the important task in front of you.
• Make your first important task a daily appointment.
• Just sit down and start. Only doing actually helps. And the only way to do something is to just start.
• It's paradoxical, but if you work fewer hours, and know that your time is limited, you will be more focused.
• You're only productive if you are doing work that moves you towards a goal.
• If you have an impulse to buy something you don't absolutely need, put it on a 30-day list.
• Make your finances automatic.
• You can save thousands a year with a smaller house. Many times, if you get rid of a lot of clutter, you don't need a large house.
• A cell phone is not a necessity. It's a convenience.
• Simplify your [todo] list down to the barest essentials, and you can eliminate the need for complex systems.
• Slowly, you can eliminate your commitments to a very small number--only have those commitments in your life that really give you joy and value.
• You don't need a huge to-do list to be productive--just do the stuff that matters.
• Here's your planning system each day: write down your three most important tasks on a sheet of paper. That's it. Check off those tasks when you finish them. Devote your entire day, if possible, to those three tasks, or at least devote the first half of your day to them.
• Do your MITs first, and then do all the small tasks at the same time.
• If can't afford to buy something with cash you have now, then you can't afford to buy it.
• The basic idea of the debt snowball is that you apply and extra amount of money every month to your smallest debt until it's paid off, and then take the amount you were paying for that debt and apply it to the next biggest debt, and so on until you've paid off all your debts.
• What are you good at? What excites you? What do you read about? What have you secretly dreamed of?
• The biggest obstacle for most people is self doubt and fear of failure.
• Take how much you usually do, and do less than that.
• Spend at least five minutes each day doing nothing.
• Finding your passion:
• What are you good at?
• Unless you're just starting out in life, you have some skills or talent, shown some kind of aptitude.
• What excites you?
• What do you read about?
• What have you spent hours reading about and researching?
• What have you secretly dreamed of?
• Learn, ask, take notes.
• Pick one thing from the list that excites you the most. This is your first candidate.
• Now read up on it, talk to people who've been successful in the field.
• Make a list of notes of things you need to learn, need to improve on, skills you want to master, people to talk to.
• Study up on it, but don't wait too long before diving into the next step.
• Experiment, try.
• Here's where the learning really takes place. If you haven't been already, start to do the things you've chosen. Pay attention to how you feel doing it--is this something you look forward to, that gets you excited, that you love to share?
• Narrow things down.
• I recommend that you pick 3-5 things from your list, if it's longer than that, and do steps 5 & 6 with them.
• Pick one, or two at the most, and focus on that. You're going to do the next three steps with it: banish your fears, find the time, and make it a career if possible.
• If it doesn't work out, you can try the next thing on your list--there's no shame in giving something a shot and failing, because it'll teach you valuable lessons that will help you to be successful in the next attempt.
• Banish your fears.
• This is the biggest obstacle for most people--self-doubt and fear of failure. You're going to face it and banish it.
• First, acknowledge it rather than ignoring or denying it. Second, write it down, to externalize it. Third, feel it and be OK with having it. Fourth, ask yourself, "What's the worst that could happen?" Usually it's not catastrophic. Fifth, prepare yourself for doing it anyway, and then do it.
• Take small steps, as tiny as possible, and forget about what might happen--focus on what is actually happening, right now.
• Find the time.
• Make the time, dammit! If this a priority, you'll make the time--rearrange your life until you have the time.
• Do what it takes.
• How to make a living doing it.
• This doesn't happen overnight. You need to do something, get good at it, be passionate about it. This could take months or years, but if you're having fun, that's what's most important.
• When you get to the point that someone would pay you for it, then you're golden.
• Build a reputation, find people who are interested in what you do, demonstrate your knowledge and passion.