8 Tiny Things You Can Do To Immediately Improve Your Life In Less Than 3 Minutes

1 – Pick up your To-Do list and put a ‘complete by’ time/date on each item. How many times have you finished the day with several tasks left on your ever growing To-Do list. This will shift the ambiguity of a task and turn it into a schedule with a deadline and man does it work.

2 – Clear the junk off of your desk and your desktop. We’re visual creatures and we all need to understand that physical/digital mess will most certainly cause a great deal of mental mess. Even if you’re OK with not being tidy, give it a try. You may be surprised.

3 – Take a break to do a 3 minute breathing exercise. Set a timer for 3 minutes, close your eyes, breathe in through you nose and out through your mouth. Focus on things like — the movement of your chest/stomach with each breath, the contact you feel between your body and where you’re sitting, the sounds/smells around you. Also great in the morning or midday as a small reset to your mind.

4 – Delete all content applications that have desktop alternatives, from your phone. I’m talking Facebook, Linked In, Twitter etc. Have a designated time where you check these using your desktop/laptop, rather than having those instant dopamine-inducing happiness vampires with you at all times, draining you of productivity and life… This one will make you come up with 99 objections and justifications for why you shouldn’t. However, I’d encourage everyone to have at least a week long experiment and see how they feel.

5 – Every night before bed, write down 1 very actionable but substantial goal for the next day. If all else fails, you still need to achieve that goal. Whether it’s going for a run after work, writing 3 more paragraphs on your blog or completing a part of a project you’ve been doing.

6 – Watch this 1 minute video on how to identify a stroke. Trust me. With strokes being a relatively common occurrence. The knowledge will greatly improve your life when it matters.

7 – If you’re the person that skips breakfast because ‘you don’t have the time’ or aren’t hungry, spend 3 minutes and eat something in the morning. Your body is coming out of a fasted state and your brain absolutely requires something to work and no, coffee doesn’t count. Think an apple, a piece of toast with peanut butter, oats. Bonus points if it’s high in protein and fat. Your brain and mental state will thank you. Do this one regularly if you can!

8 – E-mail, call or talk to that person about that thing that you’ve been putting off. You may have been lazy with it, you may have forgotten all about it, you may be fearing the confrontation. Whatever it is, it’ll take 3 minutes… and if it doesn’t, you can do it anyway and then message me complaining that it didn’t take 3 minutes. At least you will have gone ahead and done it, which is enough for me :)

If you enjoyed this article or found it useful, I’d really appreciate that lovely digital clap that seems to be the writers equivalent of crack cocaine on here.

Here’s another article that I think you’d like — It’s 4 Practical Strategies for Dealing With Procrastination.

I’ve also go this newsletter that you might be into. I send a tiny email every other weekend (if that) with some useful or cool stuff I’ve found/made. Don’t worry, I hate spam as much as you. Feel free to subscribe :)

Sah out.

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