As I discussed in my daily action plan for 2016, I’ve been doing the same six things every day for the last 30 days (I started in late December). There hasn’t been much consistency in order nor particular time of day. I’m simply doing everything between waking up and going to sleep for the night. Overall, I’ve been quite surprised at how quickly the results have started stacking up.
The six things that I’m doing are:
- Read 20 pages
- Play piano for 20 minutes
- Express gratitude
- Make the bed
- Meditate for 2 minutes
- Write at least 500 words
In all honesty, it has been quite a challenge, but I’ve seen some pretty incredible results that come along with these daily practices. My goal is to continue doing these six things for the rest of the year, but here’s what I’ve found after just 30 days:
I’m getting better at piano. I’ve been able to practice some patterns that I wasn’t able to do previously. I play boogie piano, which is a pretty aggressive form of piano music. My arm would get tired and I didn’t quite have the coordination necessary to play for very long. It took about two weeks to go from hardly being able to do it at all to relatively solid. In days 14-30 I’ve become more consistent and don’t lose rhythm as much.
My writing speed has tripled. When I set out to write at least 500 words per day I did so with the idea that I needed to generate a lot of content. Writing for my book, my upcoming course, blog posts, and guest posts would likely take up all of the 500 words per day and more. The reason I made this commitment is because it has always taken me quite a bit of time to write blog posts. I’d generally have many breaks while writing or various distractions that occur during the process.
The amazing outcome of writing at least 500 words every single day is that I’ve become much, much faster at writing and even more focused while doing so. It has seriously helped me establish the habit of just sitting down and writing instead of thinking too hard about what to write. It used to take me half a day or longer to write an 800-1000 word blog post and now I can do so in less than an hour. I didn’t notice it until about 20 days in or so, but there has been an obvious shift in my ability to write faster and it’s been really great. As I continue to write for the rest of the year I hope this trend continues.
I’m reading more than ever. When I started out reading 20 pages per day, it didn’t feel like I’d be making much progress. It really didn’t seem like I’d be moving through books very quickly at that pace. In the past, I would read very sporadically and often not finish books at all. Well, I can definitively say reading 20 pages per day has absolutely blasted me through books. After 30 days, I just finished my second 300 page book – which is way more than I’ve read in any 30 days prior. I’ve also noticed that this practice has helped me in other areas as well — consistently taking in new information from the same sources has allowed me to compound the data in my head. It has helped me reach my own conclusions and give me ideas of what I want to talk about here on the site. Reading daily has really boosted my writing practice as well.
I’m mailing more cards. For 29 years of my life I was pretty terrible at mailing thank you cards. While I would feel gratitude and express it over the phone or via email, I really don’t think I was expressing it in a very meaningful way. To this day I don’t know why, but I’d always feel a lot of resistance when it came time to write thank you cards. I just didn’t want to do it. With the approach of expressing gratitude daily, I’ve taken to writing cards and truly enjoy the process of doing it. After receiving a postcard late last year from my friend Cat Snapp it really helped me realize the significance of getting something unexpected in the mail. When you take the time to reflect and put your appreciation down into words, it really means a lot. There’s a huge benefit to me as well, as expressing that gratitude and reflecting upon it makes me quite happy as well.
I’m starting every morning with success. It may be small, but making the bed every morning has been a tiny change that has a big impact. It’s an act of beginning the day and being able to check something off my daily action list right away. I’ve learned to enjoy the process and like to make sure the bed looks really nice before I move on with the rest of the day. I’m not sure what it was, but something eventually just clicked and I started truly enjoying it. It was a similar experience to when my perspective flipped on doing laundry after reading The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up.
I find a moment of stillness every day. Let’s be real, two minutes is not very much time to spend meditating. I had originally wanted to do 20 minutes of meditation but ended up skipping it for several days before officially starting this project. In order to beat resistance, I decided to lower it to a stupid-easy amount of time, just two minutes, so that I would feel ridiculous if I didn’t do it. That has indeed helped me do it every single day, but I’m not sure that I’m seeing any life-changing results from doing it. I am fairly certain that there will be tangible benefits as I increase the time up to 10 and 20 minutes, but for now, succeeding at doing it every single day is what’s important to me right now.
I’m pleasantly surprised at the benefits of doing these six things every day. The best part is that these are all things that I would continue doing every day in just about any scenario. Even if I won the lottery and never had to work for money, I’d still do all of them. They’re all things that bring me great joy and allow me to work on what matters most to me. By starting on these things now and doing them every day, I’m working to build a foundation of daily habits that will eventually become my vision, the ideal day I’m working towards.
I would highly recommend picking even one single thing to do every day. It may not seem like much, but after a few weeks the results will truly compound and make a lasting difference in your life.
Mindy says
February 9, 2018 at 4:50 pmI can see that this blog post is 2 years old, but I just have to say that this is one of best things I’ve read in a while. I’m totally going to do this. I have a lot of solid good habits in place (whole-food diet, daily exercise, regular decluttering after getting rid of half our stuff in 2013 & 2014 [7000lbs!], spending time outdoors daily], but I have some things I want to really move forward on. I’m making my list and starting today. Thank you for the inspiration!
Anthony Ongaro says
February 13, 2018 at 4:44 pmThanks, Mindy! I appreciate the note. 🙂
kddomingue says
September 17, 2016 at 8:23 pmLate to the party……just stumbled upon your blog……but wanted to comment on this. Due to an unpleasant childhood, I’ve had issues all of my adult life with “have to’s”. But at 56 my husband and I completed a major gut job and remodel of our master bath/closet. It’s not huge or fancy but it is EXACTLY what I wanted. I wanted this one perfect space in my home to stay nice. So I made it a point to clean the bathroom EVERY night. Doesn’t take more than 3 minutes. The closet stayed neat and tidy because I made sure to pick up anything that was out of place in the morning when I got dressed. That led to making the bed every morning when, before, I had always argued that it was a waste of time since I was just going to mess it up again that night. It only takes two or three minutes and the room looks so nice with the bed made. That led to making sure that, even if I didn’t get to washing the dishes for some reason every night, the coffee was prepped for the next morning, the counters were cleared and the dishes were at least rinsed and put in the sink. Which led to the dishes being washed because if you’ve gotten to the point of putting them in the sink, how much longer is it really going to take to wash them? New routines just seem to keep popping up in my life every two or three weeks, lol!
So, despite years of being anti routines and anti “have to’s”, I seem to have negotiated a truce with the some of the issues from my childhood that have haunted me for so many decades. A great deal of anxiety that I wasn’t really conscious of carrying around has disappeared as these routines I’ve adopted have morphed into habits. It’s nice. I’ll continue reading your blog to scan for ideas and a bit of encouragement. Thanks!
Matthew says
March 3, 2016 at 7:31 amIsn`t life and interesting thing. I have spent a more time going over and re-reading your blog posts than I normally would for any other blog, and as I have mentioned before in a comment of mine, I seem to get just a little bit more from them each time I read.
In the past 48 hrs I have been continplating the ideas in this particular blog post and reflecting on my daily habits, or lack of, No, let me rephrase that, it is probably more accurate to think of them as `repeated inconsistency habits`.
I have been thinking about the inconsistency of what I do for personal or professional activities and why I get frustrated with myself, and where it happens. As I think about this blog post I have to connect it with your post on `a morning routine`. Actually I can connect this blog post to a number of other blog posts of yours and they are very much complimenting ides and subjects.
I have notice my inconsistency in my mornings and how this reflects on my day. How dawdling over decisions and just doing things because I have to do gets me into the wrong frame of mind straight off. Examples of this are having no set time to get up before the `oh crud I’m late` kicks in, which then results in me grabbing any clothes available and missing a shower until my lunch hour allows me to do so. Not getting up means checking email or news blogging bed as a distraction to making the decision to get up, or hitting the snooze button, or just cursing the fact I have to get up or work when I don’t want to, and then pulling the covers back over my head and drifting off.
What I have done is set myself the action to wake up at 6am, not too early but early enough to shower, have breakfast, clean my teeth and be ready to work. I have only done this for two days (Tues/Wed), but what I noticed was the quiet moment I had of `me` time before the family woke up, and that felt precious. I also put out all the family cereal bowls, spoons and boxes of cereal for the family. I found time to wash up the breakfast things, wipe the kitchen side down before I headed out for work, which left the kitchen in a more tidy state and made me feel more content.
Yesterday today I also took the time to lay out my clothes for the day the night before, so once I was showered there was no decision or faffing about getting clothes out etc, it saved time and required no thought, it smoothed out my morning.
Today was an interesting experience, and one that has just made me release the importance of being flexible in a morning routine and looking at building in small variants to remove stress caused by something blocking your normal way of doing things. I thinks this could be one reason I have not been able to keep to many routines in the past, I think I get discouraged when things don`t go `the way`.
My wife works on a Thursday and Friday, she wakes up at 5:45 and jumps in the shower, so when my alarm went off at 6:00 this morning I was immediately faced with an obstacle to my previously successful two day experienced routine. Darn it! Guess what? I was overcome with previously experienced feelings of small quantities of negativity because my positive intention of having my routine was quashed. This throw me off today completely and those feelings of contentment and calm felt in the past two days weren`t there and I have fallen back to my known muddle unproductive self.
But, what it has made me realise that is that from Sat to Wed I could have a morning routine, but Thursday/Friday, if I wanted the same feelings of inner contentment and preparation for work, I would need to tweak my morning in to a second routine, that way my mind would hopefully accept that there was some order to Thursday and Friday and the decisions and obstacles would go no a smoothness would be there. It maybe that the weekend needs one morning routine, Mon-Wed another and Thur-Fri another. All three based around the same core routine but tweaked to accommodate others needs for their mornings.
The funny thing is my wife and I went to my sons parents evening las night to understand how my 4 year old is getting on with school. Good news for us is that he is settled, getting on well socially, showing strengths academically in areas with extra encouragement needed in others, to the extent of what is expected of his age.
On the walk home I said to my wife all the things we were old as kids and out adults, practise, little but often, frequency and repeated effort brings results, not mass cramming when under pressure, etc, etc. I said to my wife that I would do some small daily handwriting work with him, and I would actually do it it him so it could be a dad/son activity not just a `sit down and do your homework son` type experience.
Then as soon as I walked through the door it hit me like one of those comedy sketches where someone swings a plank around and it hits the unto-warn person on the back of the head. I as a parent and person with a 36 year life experience know all this stuff and will undoubtedly try and teach it to my kids, but yet, I am not living it myself.
What I realised, as I led in bed last night was that I have many of the tools and knowledge to improve myself, but I have either not learnt to utilise them properly, forgotten how too.
I might even go so far as saying, as a famous British comedy duo say in a sketch `I am playing all the right notes, but not necessary in the right order`.
Evelyn says
February 8, 2016 at 2:52 pmGreat post, Anthony! I do the exact.same.thing. every day too, but it’s mostly because I’m in the lots-of-tiny-kids-vortex. I change 20 diapers a day and read 20 books a day and do 2 loads of laundry a day… but the difference is that what you’re talking about is personal development activities. 😉 Ohhhhh. I do actually prioritize quiet time every day. It is my sanity. And I do try to make the bed every day. It’s amazing what peace and energy that little task provides! 🙂
Evelyn Fuertes says
February 8, 2016 at 11:25 amNice post, I do have to agree on the making the bed part. For most of my life my bedroom has been a war zone, however, one day I was just so fed up with tripping over shoes, that an amazing thing happened. I started to tidy up, and soon got into the habit of putting everything away as soon as I changed. This also morphed into making the bed. It’s been maybe a year or two now that the bedroom is essentially clutter free and the bed if not made in the morning is made in the evening.
The space has much better energy. As a reformed slob it feels great to see things tidy. also by keeping up on it it literally takes me 2 minutes to tidy up.
As for meditation, I am able to get in some guided meditation before bed. I tried to do it in the morning but that just doesn’t work for me. I have felt a difference, something to consider if you want to pursue.
Audrey says
January 28, 2016 at 12:45 pmGreat post, Anthony! A few weeks ago, I challenged my mom to do 5-10 minutes of sun salutations with me every day. We live in different states, but we both love yoga and mindfulness, so I thought it would be a neat way for us to stay connected and feel good in general. I just finished a post about my daily routine as well! After reading your post though, I’m inspired add guitar playing into my daily routine to promote its consistency.
While I’ve been reading your blog for months, I never thought to leave a comment. Shame on me. I’ve decided, however, if I’m going to spend time reading the writing of others, I shouldn’t be mindless and disengaged. Instead, I am trying to develop a new habit of engaging every time I sit down for a stint of blog reading. So, thank you for your consistently thoughtful and inspiring writing. I hope you’re having a great start to 2016!
Angela @ Setting My Intention says
January 24, 2016 at 10:38 amI really want to try and write 500 words a day. That’s encouraging to know that doing it as a daily habit has helped your focus and speed in writing blog posts. It takes me a lot longer than I’d like to write blog posts! I’ve been meditating and praying for a few minutes every day and it’s definitely refreshing – but surprising how hard it is to just be still for a few minutes!
Anthony Ongaro says
January 25, 2016 at 3:11 pmIt has been super helpful! If 500 seems like too much, start with 100. You can always do more on a day that feels right. The funny thing for me is 500 per day often becomes 800-1000 if I hit a streak. The major benefit is doing it daily has allowed me to ride in a groove when I find them.
Winston Bailey says
January 24, 2016 at 8:59 amThank you Anthony……
Anthony Ongaro says
January 25, 2016 at 3:12 pmThank you, Winston.
Eve says
January 23, 2016 at 9:42 pmGreat post! I love daily habits like that although my experience is to get them all done in 1 big morning ritual first thing after waking up if possible. Some things work, some things don’t so I make small adjustments at the start of every month.
Anthony Ongaro says
January 25, 2016 at 3:14 pmEve, thanks for your kind words. Ideally, I’d stack these habits in the morning and get most of them done right away. Due to my current work schedule I find myself having to do many in the evening as well, though.
Anne says
January 23, 2016 at 12:20 pmI love this. This is soooo inspiring me! Thanks so much for sharing!
Anthony Ongaro says
January 25, 2016 at 3:15 pmThank you Anne, those kinds of comments are what keeps me going! I appreciate you reading.
leswalters says
January 23, 2016 at 11:59 amThanks. So intriguing and delightful and very personable. I’ve compiled a list of 11 things that I’m considering to do every day… but the it’s in the doing not in the listing. On the list is to leave a comment every day. Thanks again.
Anthony Ongaro says
January 25, 2016 at 3:16 pmThanks Les, I’d recommend just starting with a few and then adding as you find success with the first ones I appreciate your comment.
Simply Save says
January 23, 2016 at 11:28 amI’m glad to hear you’re having positive results already! I recently got rid of Netflix and cable because they were distracting me from what I really want to do with my time, and I’ve noticed my reading has gone WAY up. Also, I LOVE getting mail so I try to send thank you cards as well. I hope you stick with that one because getting mail is fun! 🙂
Anthony Ongaro says
January 25, 2016 at 3:17 pmThanks Heather! I am honestly pretty surprised at how quickly some of these results started to add up. As you eliminated Netflix & cable, the big problem is still social media & reddit for me. If I can eliminate most of those two things I’ll be doing really well!
Simply Save says
January 25, 2016 at 5:19 pmI still need to work on social media as well!
Kizzy Bass says
January 23, 2016 at 2:32 amWhat a fantastic idea. I love your choices and think I may introduce some of them into my daily schedule to see how I get on. Thanks for sharing
Anthony Ongaro says
January 25, 2016 at 3:19 pmThank you Kizzy! Keep me posted on how it goes. -A