Random Tips to Improve Your Life...Today

5–7 minutes

Do you ever think, “I wish there was a simple way to fix this problem.” I believe each of us has the power within to improve our own lives. In fact, I’ll go as far as to say, we have the power within to improve our lives TODAY. Curious? Intrigued? Then here are three random tried and true tips that are sure to improve your life…. TODAY.

Sometimes we have to notice the single point of friction…

Have you ever noticed the little tasks you continually put off? “Why do I do this every time?”, you ask yourself. Well, in my judgment, when we notice these things, there is generally a single point of friction. Project management recognizes these as single points of failure. Meaning, the one single point in a project where the whole project might collapse and fail.

How do we recognize these points of friction, and also, how do we repair them, decrease them, or best yet, remove them? Allow me to give you a personal example:

We have a small, 8 quart trash bin in our bathroom. Now, I get an absurd amount of satisfaction from an empty trashcan. But time after time, week after week, I find that bin filled to the brim. And time after time, week after week, I see how much more we can fit into it before we absolutely must empty the bin.

One day, after being so completely frustrated with my behavior, I asked myself what the single point of friction was? Was the can too small? Should I buy a larger bin? NO! We would simply fill up the larger bin and I would be faced with the same challenge – only on a larger scale.

What I realized was that the trash bags are stored in the kitchen: In the kitchen, under the sink, behind the kitchen trash can, at the back of the cupboard. So when it was time to empty the bin, I had to go through seven (7) steps, just to complete one task. I had to (1) walk to the kitchen, (2) pull out the kitchen trash bin, (3) pull out the trash bags from the back of the cupboard, (4) replace the trash can, (5) close the cupboard, (6) walk back to the bathroom, and (7) then I could empty the trash.

So what’s the fix? You guessed it! That’s what I like about you. You are one smart cookie! I simply started storing trash bags in our bathroom closet. Friction removed. Problem solved.

I don’t know what areas you struggle with, but I encourage you to consider and determine the single point of friction, and start to repair that first. This one little tip will improve your life and help you solve so many little every day problems.

We have to choose our battles wisely…

Each of us has things we would love to stop doing; those little bad habits we continually do again and again and again. We want to stop them, but somehow, we just continue in our own misery.

Like the single point of friction, I believe to improve our lives, we must choose our battles wisely – and sometimes, we can choose to use simple brain hacks to fix those pesky bad habits.

Again, allow me to give you a personal example. I have mentioned how I keep a donation box going at all times. (https://forwardourmail.com/declutter-your-house-and-gain-a-calmer-space/) When I find an item that no longer serves us, I simply place it in the box. When the box (or boxes are full) I load up the trunk for the charity shop. But what keeps me from leaving those boxes in my trunk for days on end is no less than beautiful.

When I need to make a donation drop off, I fill my trunk on the day I’ve scheduled a grocery pick up. Why? Because I learned the hard way that they cannot load my groceries with a trunk filled with donation boxes. So, I load the trunk for donation, drop off the boxes, and then swing by the grocery for pick up. Two birds – one stone. Or rather, two errands, one trip.

My advice to you is to see where you can use little brain hacks to improve your life, and start being intentional with implementation.

It helps to make a list and check it twice…

There are other ‘little’ things we all would like to change that don’t have a point of failure or need a brain hack to fix. These things simply need a behavioral change. And truthfully, you are the only one who can make those changes. But there is a little advice I can offer that I believe will improve your life.

For instance, we live in a second floor apartment with a two car attached garage on the ground level. We keep a large black bin inside the garage, right beside the door, to hold our trash bags until we take them to the compactor. But time after time, I empty the kitchen trash and place the bag at the top of the stairs.

There is only one flight of stairs and one door between the apartment and the garage. So in this instance, the fix is to simply stop the behavior. The fix is to walk the bag of trash down the 19 stairs, open the door, and place the bag inside the holding bin.

But there are often several behaviors we may want to change. When there are several things we may want to address, my advice is to make a list of these little habits, and simply address them one by one. Every time I find myself wanting to just drop that bag of trash at the top of the stairs, I choose to fix the behavior. I just walk the bag down the stairs and out the door. No reasoning, no justifications, no excuses.

Once the new behavior becomes a habit, I pick the next thing to change and repeat the process. It may be something simple, it may be something that takes more effort. But to improve your life, we simply have to choose the behavior to change, and work until we’ve successfully changed it.

If we want to improve our lives, sometimes we have to start small…

Sometimes there are big things we can do that improve our lives in big ways – and sometimes there are small things we can do that improve our lives in big ways. Finding single points of friction, utilizing brain hacks, and intentionally changing behaviors are three ways each of us can improve our own lives…and the best part is, we can start doing them TODAY.