Personal development is a lifelong process but it doesn’t have to take you
more than a few minutes to start improving yourself.
If you’re familiar with the two-minute rule you know that any big goal can be broken down into smaller tasks. Some of these small tasks take less than 2 minutes to accomplish but they are likely to get you moving towards your larger goals and ambitions.
Just take 2 minutes out of your day after you read this article.
Complete one of these tasks to improve your overall well-being and become more productive:
1 Drink more water
A glass of water may seem like the smallest of baby steps towards self-improvement and productivity but it’s still a step forward. We often neglect the recommendation to drink 8 glasses of water each day. Your body needs water to maintain bodily functions and keep you healthy. Also, dehydration may cause headaches, fatigue or problems with your skin and a lot of people are actually dehydrated.
They just don’t know it. So drinking eight glasses a day isn’t easy if you’re
not thinking about it. So don’t be afraid to congratulate yourself when you’ve
actually achieved eight glasses a day.
I personally keep a full glass of water near my desk at all time and I’ll drink like crazy all day, the secret is to keep the glass of water full and you also have to use a pretty large glass of water.
It’s a psychological trick called the availability bias that makes your brain think:
“Wow there’s a bunch of water there, I should drink some water!”
A downside of this is that you have to go to the bathroom quite a lot more but it really makes a substantial difference on your productivity and your energy levels.
2 Eat Whole Foods
As a general rule the fewer the ingredients the more nourishing the food. If you want to have more energy and feel better throughout the day swap out some processed meals for Whole Foods.
You can enjoy things like fruits, vegetables, eggs and nuts things that you can actually pronounce :)
Cut down on chemicals, dyes and other ingredients that you can’t identify. I suggest taking a look at your next meal — how many ingredients can you actually identify. If you don’t know what you’re eating you’re more likely to ingest something that will make you feel sluggish and unproductive throughout the day.
I know this is like one of the most basic rule but you can really improve how you feel just by making small changes.
3 Practice Gratitude Daily
I know you guys hear this from others a lot but positivity and gratitude really help to melt away your stress even when you feel that you are down.
And an attitude of gratitude can show you the light and keep you from feeling that you’ve hit the bottom. With a clear and grateful mind you will be more likely to move forward.
It’s been proven; people that are primed with gratitude are more likely to reach their goals.
For some people gratitude is a difficult thing but something you can start doing is keeping a small journal next to your bed whenever you go to sleep and right before you go to bed write down everything on a single page you were grateful for.
As the nights pass you’ll soon have an entire notebook filled up with gratitude. Once you learn the power of the law of attraction something I’ve talked about in other articles and the neuroscience of the reticulated activating system.
You will start to understand how truly important having a positive and grateful mind is for becoming successful. It’s actually crazy how many research studies can hold this down.
4 Pick up a Book
I also recommend cutting down on some screen time and opening your mind with a good book. You can always learn something from reading even if it’s just a new vocabulary word.
Ebooks and Kindles make it easier than ever to carry around the knowledge of the universe while you travel or you curl up on the couch or even when you’re going to the bathroom.
Maybe you don’t have two minutes to read a whole book, well take two minutes to get some recommendations from your friends and family members.
All it takes is a quick click online to queue up some books on your tablet. When the books are waiting for you you’re more likely to actually read them.
Again I do the same thing that I do with the water using the availability bias. I keep lots of books around me so I’m more tempted to learn from them and actually read them. In fact, right now I have 2 personality textbooks on my desk because right now I’m doing some research for another article.
5 Listened to a TED talk
Maybe you prefer consuming inspiration with audio, but you can hop online on YouTube and learn from great speakers in a variety of different fields.
If you don’t know what to watch, first watch some TED Talks
If you have a specific subject that you want to learn about an ex. the psychology you’ll probably be able to find a TED talk on it. If you’re open to anything you can really explore a whole world worth of different subjects. With Ted from happiness to urban planning to biology, it’s actually crazy how many videos they have.
I personally have been watching a ton of material on personality psychology. In fact, there’s actually a couple of colleges and universities out there that
literally record their entire lectures of the semester and upload them.
6 Forgive Someone
Now we’ve all been a victim of wrongdoing at some point in our lives. We’ve all made mistakes. But when someone does something wrong to us. Our tendency is to keep that in our brain instead of forgiving.
We have to work on forgiving other people even if they haven’t directly
asked for it. Forgiveness is a small gesture that doesn’t just benefit the
person who did you wrong when you let go of a grudge.
You also let go of the stress the anxiety and the other negative feelings that you had that you’ve been carrying on to for a long time.
I recently finished a course titled psychology of beliefs and after doing some research start to realize that the severe consequences to your mindset if you start to hold grudges.
7 Join a group of supportive individuals
Now it might feel hard or difficult to accomplish your dreams alone and in fact, words of encouragement and additional resources can help you find opportunities and boost your mood.
Being a member of a supportive group gives you more motivation and a sense of connectivity.
Always remember smart people understand when they don’t know about things and they don’t refrain to ask for help.
When you ask for help instead of trying to struggle through something on your own, you save time and you save yourself from the frustration it brings into your life.
But where do you find a group that is willing to support your journey?
Well, think about the group that you want to join and go online to meetup or Facebook. The two great sources to find supportive communities
and events.
Meetup and Facebook groups are becoming a more popular way to reach
out to like-minded people and connect with them. These groups are often run by experts in their field who offer counselling and resources but most importantly most of them are free to join.
You can also search for events to attend through these groups.
8 Congratulate Yourself
When you reward yourself positive reinforcement will encourage you to keep going and keep growing.
Even when that reinforcement comes from within. I suggest to take a moment of this day and reflect on the ways that you’ve improved your overall well-being.
You can also plan to complete these actions again tomorrow. The more you consistently contribute to your self-improvement, the faster you and the rest of the world will start to see results.
9 Use the 80/20 rule
An Italian economist named Vilfredo Pareto discovered this 80/20 rule. This is also known as the Pareto Principle. This rule states that while you are doing anything 80% of the results will come from 20% of the efforts.
For example, he observed that 80% of the peas in his garden came from 20% of his pea plants.
In order to maximize efficiency, I would suggest you identify the most important 20% of your work. Then look into how you can automate of cut down on your remaining 80% of work.
This will enable you to find more time to do things which have better results.
To maximize efficiency, highly productive people identify the most important 20% of their work. Then, they look at ways to cut down the other 80% of their schedule, to find more time for the things that make the biggest impact.
So these were the rules I follow in my life. Which one of these you will be following in yours? Let me know in comments.
