7 Good Habits That Are Easy But Powerful
We usually describe our habits as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ depending if they help or hinder our efforts to live our best lives.
They are the things that we do regularly and without thinking. Often, we do them (or don’t do them) on auto pilot.
Which can make it really hard to start (or stop) doing them.
Good Habits In Life
There are some amazing habits that can literally take your life to a whole other level.
The bad news is that they can be really hard to implement. Not impossible. Just harder.
Maybe they require a lot of time, a lot of energy or maybe just the level of effort required is just too hard.
We’re only human, right?
But the great news is that there are some good habits that are surprisingly easy to implement.
Better yet, they can actually make a big impact.
And let’s face it, there’s a lot to be said for climbing the hills before the mountains.
Good Habits That Are Easy To Start
Now I know ‘low effort’ or ‘easy’ means different things to different people. But the following 7 habits don’t require a lot of time, effort or special tools to implement.
These habits can improve your productivity, your happiness, your finances and your mindset.
Pretty powerful right?
1. Practice Gratitude
Gratitude is a wonderful feeling of happiness that comes from having appreciation.
You may already consider yourself a grateful person.
But do you actually practice gratitude on a regular basis? Or only when things are going well?
Which is great of course, because when life is going well, and you’re able to really feel grateful and thankful, your joy magnifies.
But you can really lift your game when you can also practice a grateful mindset in the not so great times too.
Shifting your mindset and focus to all the things that are going well in your life, does wonders for your mental health, your happiness, your productivity, your relationships – basically your entire life!
And the best thing is, it’s free and extremely easy to make this one a habit!
What exactly do I need to do?
You don’t need a lot of time, or any fancy tools to practice gratitude, but you do need to make it a daily habit.
A simple way to get into the gratitude habit is to keep a journal right next to your bed. A blank notebook is great, or a cheap diary works well too.
Then simply spend a few minutes first thing in the morning writing down 3 things you are grateful for.
Repeat this again when you get into bed each night.
It doesn’t even matter if you’ve written ‘I’m grateful for…. air/food/shelter’ etc over and over again. The important thing is you’re training your mind to focus on the good things in your life and making gratitude a habit.
It does wonders for your mindset!
2. Save 10% Of Your Income
An oldie, but a goodie.
It’s actually not about the percentage. It’s about the habit of putting away a set amount of your income so that over time you are seeing your net worth increase.
This simple habit is not only going to increase your financial wealth, but it’s also going to build your feelings of confidence and security, which are also very important.
What exactly do I need to do?
Sometimes it feels that life is so expensive, there is no way that you could possibly put away 10% of your income into savings.
But you have to start somewhere.
If 10% is too much for your current situation, then start lower. Even if you have to start at 1% and build up from there, you will still see the benefits that having savings provides.
The easiest way to set up this habit is to have an automatic deduction from your pay.
Make sure it goes to a separate bank account (preferably even a separate bank) with no card access, so that it doesn’t become too tempting.
This ‘set and forget’ approach will have you in the savings habit very quickly and before you know it, you will glance at that ‘10% Account’ and be amazed that it’s yours.
3. Meditate
The research keeps on stacking up on the benefits of meditation.
Believed to reduce stress and improve your physical, emotional and mental health, it’s hard to see why anyone wouldn’t at least try to include a little meditation into their daily habits…
Okay, well it’s probably due to time, not knowing how to meditate or a previous failed attempt.
What exactly do I need to do?
Luckily, you don’t need to have access to expensive classes, the luxury of an hour each day to dedicate to it or already have a Zen-lifestyle to enjoy the benefits of meditation.
Download an app on your phone, find a style/guide/length of mediation that suits you and just get started.
Even 5 minutes a day will make a difference.
Check out the free 7-day introductory course to meditation on the app Insight Timer.
4. Prioritize Tasks
There will always be countless demands on our time, yet only so many hours in the day.
You might feel productive if you’ve crossed a few items off your to do list, but are those tasks the most important things that you should be spending your time on?
When you’re able to prioritize your tasks, you will feel more in control of your time, more productive and you will be spending your valuable time on things that make the biggest impact in your life.
What exactly do I need to do?
Get clear on what’s important to you.
Not only the fun stuff of course, but what tasks are going to lead to the life that you desire?
The best way to implement this is to rework your daily schedule to include your top 5 priorities for the day and then work everything else around them, instead of the other way around.
If you aren’t sure what your priorities should be, this habit might take a bit more time to set up.
A great way to do this, is by using the ‘Eisenhower Priority Matrix’ – a tool for considering all the tasks, wants, needs and demands on your time.
From there you can clearly see what tasks you can set up as routines, what tasks you need to automate and where you should be prioritizing your time.
Related: 9 Realistic Tips To Simple Living
5. Batch Tasks
One of the most effective productivity hacks, batching tasks, is something that you probably already do in some parts of your life.
The trick is to apply it to more areas of your life – to increase productivity and reduce decision fatigue and overwhelm.
It can be applied to your work tasks, managing your household tasks, working on a business idea or a big scary goal.
Firstly, batching requires you to group similar tasks together so that you’re avoiding the distraction with other types of tasks. Your mind can then focus and maximise your concentration, therefore increasing productivity.
In the work environment, an example might be that you batch all your bookkeeping type tasks together. You will collate receipts, invoices, pay bills, reconcile accounts etc all together.
You mind will be focused on all your ‘finance’ type tasks and getting this all completed rather than attempting to multitask your finance tasks, plus answering client emails, then writing a report, then researching something that was said at that last meeting, then following up on a separate project, talking to colleagues etc, etc…
You can get into the flow of the tasks required and get it all done.
What exactly do I need to do?
Think of all the tasks that you’re required to do. Then batch them together into groups by either a common task, tools required, time required etc.
Some common examples of task batching can include cleaning, laundry, weekly meal preparation, managing your finances, replying to emails, running errands etc.
Related: Laundry Hacks!
6. Time-Block
Following up on batching your tasks together, the next step to increase your productivity, is to allocate a set block of time to complete these ‘batched’ tasks.
Because your focus is set, and you know exactly what you need to complete, you simply allocate a set time for this batched task and get it done.
What exactly do I need to do?
Considering the batched tasks, what time of the day/week will work best and lock out the required time in your calendar.
For example, I might block out 30 minutes on a Monday night from 7-7.30pm to review anything to do with the household finances. I will:
- Open all mail/emails etc relating to bills/finances
- Schedule bills to be paid
- Review our ‘wants & needs list’
- Check account balances
- Sort and file any records that need to be kept
When 7.30pm on Monday night comes around, I know that I’ve efficiently dealt with all household finance matters, until the next week. Done.
7. Meal Prepping
The concept of ‘meal prepping’ has become a bit of a buzz term in the last few years.
Yet it’s not a new concept. Maybe just one that we’ve all gotten a bit lazy with, in this fast-paced world of convenience foods.
The common misconception about meal prepping, is that it’s too time consuming. But it really isn’t! In fact, it saves a lot of time and energy over the week.
The benefits of getting into the meal prepping habit are huge, including:
- It saves you time (it’s a task you can ‘batch’)
- It saves you money as you only buy what you need
- It can help with maintaining a balanced and nutritional diet
- It’s better for the environment
- It lowers stress, by eliminating last minute meal chaos
A great habit to get into, right?
What exactly do I need to do?
Work out an ideal time where you can dedicate a few hours each week (I like Sunday afternoons), where you can:
- Plan out the meals you and the family need for the week
- Write out a grocery list and shop according to this plan
- Prepare as much as you can now to save you time during the week
You can make meal prepping as simple as you like. And you could prepare ahead all meals or just a few, whatever works for your schedule.
I have a friend that struggles with her and the kid’s breakfasts each morning, so she meal preps these each week to reduce the morning chaos.
Personally for me, the chaos erupts in the evenings in my house, so the more dinner meal preps I can do on a Sunday, the better for my stress levels!
I’m always on the hunt for ideas that make life a bit more productive, leaving more time for the important and fun things! I’d love to hear from you if you have any other great habits that are surprisingly ‘low effort’ to implement into your life.
