Make it easy
- I have a widget on my lockscreen to create a new note with Drafts. It's the lowest friction way I've found to take a quick note[1], and while it's still annoying to interrupt a conversation or activity to jot something down, I write WAY more notes than I did before.
- I own a smart scale which logs my weight automatically when I use it. My historical weight has never felt important enough to warrant keeping a log, but this scale makes it literally zero additional effort to do so, and I've found it useful having the data.
- I don't own a car, so I walk and bike everywhere. This builds a baseline level of physical activity into my life without ever having to think about it. (additional exercise recommended)
- I got one of those phone cases that has a built in wallet. There's permanently one less thing I need to find and grab when leaving the house, and it's great.
- I have smart lights which automatically turn on in my bedroom when my alarm goes off. This doesn't exactly make it easy to get out of bed, but it certainly makes it harder to fall back asleep. And it's a system that I don't need to think about once it's configured.
- I used to have a strong preference for in-person therapy instead of a virtual session. But the convenience of not having to make a round trip across town, and being able to schedule a session anytime -- even in the middle of the work day -- is simply too good.
- I enable auto pay on all of my bills.
- I aggressively unsubscribe from all unwanted recurring emails (and good god there are SO MANY). Permanently decreasing inflow in this way makes it easier to stay on top of my inbox because it decreases the number of emails to process every day.
- I keep my kindle at my bedside table so that it's easy to read a book instead of using my phone in bed. I have considered (but probably will never actually go through with) buying a second kindle just so I can permanently have one kindle at my bedside table, since sometimes it does get moved if I take it somewhere.
- I carefully manage the apps on my phone's home screen so that the most accessible apps are those that encourage behaviors I want more of in my life.
I think a similar workflow with voice memos (ideally audio recording + speech-to-text transcript) might be even better, and is something I'd like to explore ↩︎
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