Here Are the ESSENTIAL Habits for Personal Development

I love talking about habits… a lot. I know that this is because habits do really drive the direction of our lives, and it is our habits that change the trajectory of what our results will be.

For example, our eating habits will determine what our health will look like. Our study habits will determine what our grades will be. Our learning habits will determine how knowledgeable we are going to be over a course of a few years.

It is our habits that drive the course of our personal development. Personal development is actually a really exciting journey, and it’ll be much more easier to be excited about when we are willing to build and develop the habits that come with them.

This blog post is going to outline three main categories of habits that are essential for personal development, and can kickstart the direction of self-growth.

These three main categories include:

• Productivity habits.
• Health habits.
• Mindset habits.

PRODUCTIVITY habits

1. Plan & Prepare Your Week Beforehand

A great habit to begin weekly is planning and preparing your week beforehand. Not only does it allow us to become more organised, it also enhances productivity.

Here are some reasons why you should plan your week at the start of the week, if you’re not yet convinced:

1. You save valuable time each day – this is because whenever you start planning your day, on that same day, you waste valuable time that you could’ve used to just get started into what you need to do.
2. Reassurance that everything you need to get done will get completed on time.
3. Make less decisions throughout the week – because really, making decisions do take up time. Because we want to save time, it’s better to get it over and done with, so that throughout the week, we don’t waste time on trying to make small decisions.

All three reasons help us feel more organised in our lives, and helps us to manage our time effectively. Because honestly, when we feel like we’re being productive, we tend to feel happier and most times we want to do more. But also, managing our time at the start of the week also allows us to allocate activities that we are going to enjoy most.

Read blog post on how you can plan and prepare for your week.

2. Working on Things One at a Time

Lets cut to the chase – it’s going to be overwhelming if we have so many things that need to get done. If we multi-task them, then the work may not be of high quality. So, we got to work on a task one at a time to actually produce higher quality work.

The blog post on organizing our lives mentions placing your priorities in order of importance, and then organise them by deadlines, or by the workload.

Then, work on them, one at a time. Work on the next one until the other one is finished. If you have several tasks that have the same/similar deadline, still work on them one at a time. That’s why we plan our week beforehand (as outlined in Habit 1). Schedule in when you’re going to work on each task throughout the week, so you know ahead of time that you’re going to be able to work and complete them on time.

Focus on them one at a time, so you can produce your best quality work. Multi-tasking is probably not going to be the way to go, especially since it’s not going to affect just one task… it’s going to affect all the tasks that you’re trying to do.

3. Making the Most out of Travel Time with Learning and Growing

How many hours in a week do you think that you spend your time traveling? Whether by car, public transport, or just walking?

And how much of that travel time do we listen to something? Such as music… or a podcast?

Think about this…

Maybe instead of listening to the same music over and over again, you can actually end up learning something, just by replacing music with a podcast.

Have you ever experienced getting a song stuck in your head because you’ve heard it so many times? You can use that to your advantage!

Imagine listening to a helpful podcast or audiobook over and over again, imagine what would end up getting stuck in your head.

Maybe you’re not an audiobook or podcast person, but think about this – think about how many hours in a week that you travel… it’s got to add up to several hours right? Imagine if you spent those several hours learning something through a podcast.

What would you rather have by the end of the week? A song stuck in your head OR something new that you’ve learned stuck in your head? Think about it.

4. Working on Things According to Temperament

One popular advice is to wake up early for the most focus. But just because it’s popular, it doesn’t mean that we have to do it. If we work better late at night, then we can work late at night. We work according to our temperament so that we’re able to work as effectively as we can.

My personal temperament is that I do my studying early in the morning, and I work on my blog in the afternoon. Since I need my most focus and attention for college work, and I have the most focus early in the morning, that’s when I work on those tasks.

Definitely take the time for you to figure out what your temperament is.

If you’re unsure, then you can do some trial and error here.

Schedule out your work time at different times of the day throughout the week, and evaluate what time suits you most based on the following factors:

1. How focused you are.
2. How much you get done.
3. How effective your work is.

Then when you plan out your week (as mentioned in Habit 1) and do your tasks, you know that you need to schedule it when your temperament is.

5. Developing Routines

Let me just tell you… I LOVE routines.

Morning routines, night routines, skincare routines, exercise routines, eating routines…. blogging routines!

Routines have an interesting concept – routines are pretty much a series of good habits that are all put together into a series of steps, that you repeat every day (or on a regular basis).

Think about it. Your morning routine is filled with your habits such as brushing your teeth, taking a shower, having breakfast, reading, journalling, etc.

Your exercise routine is filled with your exercise habits such as your stretches and your workouts.

Pretty much, developing routines are so beneficial because it allows you to put together all your good habits at once, and do them on a daily basis.

And having routines is a habit because you get to the stage where you do your routine without even having to think about it. That’s why it’s so crucial to have effective routines during your days. Not only does it allow you to keep taking the action needed to keep growing, it’s an easier way to keep up with your habits as well!

6. Planning Dead Time

Have you ever found yourself, when you’re out, waiting in line, or waiting for something and you just don’t know what else to do other than go on your phone and do random things? That little time is called dead time.

Overall, dead time refers to those little blocks of time that you have in between doing something. You want to plan out what you want to do at that block of time, so you can even save more time during the day.

First, list all the small tasks that you can do anywhere in short amounts of time. For example, it may include answering messages, checking some emails, or doing some brainstorming for work. So the next time you’re awaiting something, you can save time later on in the day from doing them.

HEALTH habits

1.Exercise

I’m going to break some news here – there is no excuse to not exercise during the day.

In terms of the “no time” excuse – we have 24 hours in the day, we can find at least 1/2 an hour of the day to do some exercise.

In terms of “no money” excuse – we don’t have to go to the gym. There are countless fitness and workout videos on YouTube that don’t even cost money.

In terms of the “weather” (when you don’t really want to go to the gym and are not able to take a run because it’s raining) – there are walking and running on the spot workout videos on YouTube.

As you can tell, there’s literally no excuse.

Whether we want to exercise to lose weight or to stay healthy, those who have accomplished their goals for exercising didn’t make an overnight life change. There wasn’t a “special” secret that they used to accomplish their transformation.

Literally search up “workout” on YouTube and there are thousands of videos on there. You just need to pick one.

2. Meal Prepping

This is considered a habit that takes away the habit to unintentionally snack.

I’ve seen tips where they have encouraged meal preparation at the start of the week to make sure that your eating habits are on the right track, your budget is on the right track, but also so you can save time during the week as well.

I won’t go into too much detail on how to meal prep, or even convince you why you should meal prep. Just think about how much time you’ll save from meal prepping in the mornings or evenings, and how much money you’ll save from impulsively buying food if you didn’t have time to prepare food.

3. Moving around every 30 minutes

I’ve experienced it myself where I developed bad posture because I didn’t move around a lot whenever I would have 5 hour study sessions. I would literally sit on the desk for 4 hours without getting off my seat… it was not healthy.

Luckily with my FItBit, it reminds me if I haven’t moved around for an hour, and it helped me to be more mindful to move around more.

When you think about it as well, moving around does count as your physical activity, if you move around enough every single hour you’re awake.

Put a reminder on your phone if you need to. Move around… or at least get off your seat.

4. Drink WATER

This is an obvious one. But here’s my little twist to this habit. Drink 2L of water a day. Yeah that’s too obvious as well isn’t it?

But here’s my personal suggestion that may or may not work for everyone.

Get a 2L Water bottle since that’s usually the average water intake that an individual should drink. The reason why I use the 2L water bottle is just a personal preference. I personally hate refilling my water bottles. Because of that, after finishing my first bottle, I would never refill it and as a result, I would never drink my required water intake.

Getting a 2L water bottle was so beneficial because I never had to refill it, and I knew that as long as by the end of the day I finished the bottle, I drank my required intake.

MINDSET Habits

I would highly recommend reading my blog post on how our diet is not just the food that we eat... it would help you understand the importance of these habits.

1. Reading Books or Inspirational and Educational Content

Everything that we see with our eyes count. I have learned personally to never underestimate the power of the content that we consume.

If there is a TV show that constantly makes you feel bad about yourself, it may be time to cut that out. Just like how you would cut a particular food out of your diet if it’s making your stomach hurt every time you eat it. There were TV shows that I stopped consuming so much just because it gave me anxious feeling about it after I watched it.

Instead, I started reading books that helped me to learn and grow myself… especially in the morning! We wouldn’t eat junk food first thing in the morning right? It’s the same with the food for our mind, we consume the “mind food” and “breakfast” that will fill us up for the day.

Overall, just be mindful on the content that you consume. That even goes for the newsletter articles you read on the internet, and social media. Make sure that the positive and uplifting content you consume outweigh the negative content.

2. Listening to podcasts

Linking back to one of the productivity habits, maybe instead of listening to the same music over and over again, you can actually end up learning something, just by replacing music with a podcast. If you want to enjoy listening to podcasts, make sure that the podcast is on a topic that you’re interested in.

Honestly, regardless on what the topic is, you learn a lot of things from podcasts. So even if a podcast is about perfumes, at least you spend hours of your travel time learning about something!

What would you rather have by the end of the week… a song stuck in your head OR something new that you’ve learned stuck in your head? Think about it.

In terms of the perfume example, being an expert on perfume sounds better than singing the same annoying songs over and over again unconsciously.

3. Following social media accounts that actually add value.

It’s pretty much common sense that in order to have a healthy body, we need to eat healthy, exercise, get enough sleep, and just taking care of our health in general. And all of that is great because if our bodies are feeling weak, we can’t really expect to have the energy to do what we set ourselves out to accomplish.

Is someone really taking care of their body if they are continuously eating a lot of non-healthy foods? Of course not. So, can someone have a healthy mind if they’re continuously letting so much negative input come in? – No. It’s the same idea just like with our bodies.

I mean, if we knew that a certain food had poison, we wouldn’t eat it because there’s a very high chance that we can die from it. We’d want to stay away from all sorts of poisonous food at all times. We wouldn’t even want to touch them. But then when it comes to our minds, we all at one point had let junk in and let it easily influence us.

One example of this is social media.

How many times have we scrolled through our feed and felt bad about ourselves.

But also, how many times have you gone through motivational, educational, and inspirational accounts and you felt a bit of hope and felt better about yourself?

Like I said in the first mindset habit, don’t underestimate the power of the content that you consume. Everything that is put into our mind counts. We may not know it, but all the input that is put into our minds would eventually influence our own lives. Just like how eating one hamburger won’t instantly make you gain weight – you gain the weight when you’re consistently eating it on a daily basis.

It’s the same exact thing with our minds. All those small things that seem so insignificant would eventually be noticeable in the long term. Everything we do counts.

So revise the social media accounts that you follow… take note of the accounts that make you feel better about yourself, and the ones that make you feel worse about yourself.

The accounts that add value to your life are the ones that are worth keeping.

Enjoy The Personal Development Journey One Day at a Time

Ultimately, personal development does not have to be made out to be a complex journey. When you think about it, it’s actually a quite simple journey, but it does take time and patience with ourselves.

That’s why we need the patience when we are developing habits. We already know that developing habits is really important… they’re automatic. We want to be able to do things that are automatic for us to do and we don’t even have to think about whether or not we’re going to do them each day. That very thing is going to take a lot of time for it to become automatic and that’s okay… we just need to wait it out.

It’s key to consider that this personal development journey isn’t an overnight transformation. It’s going to be a series of small steps one day at a time, which would eventually accumulate to a much bigger change.

So just take this personal development journey one day at a time… we will all get to a place that we want to be 🙂

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Our Diet is Not Just the Food We Eat

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