In his seminal book The 80/20 Principle, Richard Koch introduced the term “happiness habits.” On his list, he identifies, among others, exercise, mental stimulation, and spiritual stimulation for increased daily happiness.
For the sake of convenience, I’ll refer to happiness habits throughout this post, whether or not the ideas can be attributed to Koch.
Before we dive in, however, take a look at the term habit: a habit, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica, is “any regularly repeated behavior that requires little or no thought and is learned rather than innate.”
What follows from this definition is that you can unlearn certain habits and learn good ones.
As common sense as it sounds, our entire day is governed by our habits. How, then, could we claim back our time?
I think the answer is best articulated by Brian Tracy:
- You can do more of certain things
- You can do less of certain things
- You can stop doing certain things
- You can start doing certain things
The happiness habits certainly fall under the last category.
In this post, we are going to dig deep into the happiness habits. I’ll show you a simple method I use to ensure that I engage with those habits frequently.
A non-comprehensive list of the happiness habits
Dozens of habits could have been listed here, but I want to shed light on the few I’ve experimented with or I’m about to pick up.
If you want a more comprehensive list, I recommend you read this article.
Let’s dive in …
- Reading: I think the only thing that separates the avid reader and the see-what-is-new-on-Facebook guy is finding what interests them. Once you find your topic and figure out how to carve out some reading time from your agenda, you’ll end up as an avid reader.
- Exercise: Nothing new under the sun. The key, I think, is to start looking at exercise as an opportunity to socialize, enjoy your time, and improve your cardiovascular health, and not as a means to lose weight.
- Meditation and mindfulness: Science teaches us that mindful breathing relieves stress. Start small and maybe try to take one slow deep breath every day. That’s what I’m practicing recently.
- Gratitude: After reading lots of articles about gratitude journaling, I realized that I’ve long been practicing gratitude in freestyle mode. When I have time to reflect on the day, I would briefly think about the things I’m thankful for and anticipate most at the moment.
- TWWT (Thinking-While-Walking-Time): Walking benefits your health, reduces stress, and promotes out-of-the-box thinking. TWWT is one of my personal favorites when it comes to brainstorming.
- TWWT derivatives: These are all nice activities to gain some thinking time.
- TWBWT (Thinking-While-Baby-Walking-Time)
- TWCT (Thinking-While-Cycling-Time)
- TWRT (Thinking-While-Running-Time)
- Rejoining nature: From time to time I discover how beautiful nature is. Chopping wood, going for a walk, or enjoying the fresh snow are all great ways to recharge your batteries.
- Socialization: Examples include dating your spouse, joining a mastermind group, having lunch with a friend, etc.
All those habits are great but there’s a problem …
The problem
I’d been struggling with the happiness habits because I used to prioritize work over everything else. I always had an excuse to skip exercise or turn down invitations from friends. It was obvious that I needed a system …
- I tried to schedule the happiness habits either as a day-specific or a time-specific action
- I set goals and assembled a Life Plan to develop the happiness habits
- I experimented with affirmations
None of them worked very well in that sense.
Then I found a very simple yet powerful tool to develop the happiness habits …
The solution
What I found is that building anticipation is a sure-fire way to develop the happiness habits.
I use Nozbe as a task management system. And as a heavily GTD-fed guy, I put pretty much everything into my system to get things done.
It was obvious that I need to leverage my productivity system to develop the happiness habits.
So …
- I simply created a dedicated project in Nozbe (“Happiness Habits”), listing activities that I anticipate, and the habits listed above
- I set a purple color to my new project to make it more visible
- As Nozbe is syncing with my calendar, I have my happiness habits scheduled in Google Calendar
- I created sections to group related tasks together
To ensure that I anticipate the Christmas holiday, for example, I created a dedicated section to the actions that are going to take place in the holiday season.
How to maintain the happiness habits
Although having a dedicated project is cool, I must regularly check in, schedule new activities, and reschedule others.
At the end of the week, I do my weekly review. That’s the perfect time to ensure that my happiness habits are up to date. I make sure that I schedule some items for the next week and work my way to build anticipation.
Maybe my results are inherent to my dedication and have nothing to do with my methodology. Time will tell if my happiness project bears fruit but I’m already happy with the deliverables.
What method do you use to ensure that your happiness habits are cemented? Leave a comment below.
Image credit: Andreas Weiland on Unsplash
