The only thing that stopped me from infinite scrolling

this is my monthly habit tracker and mood Checker days of the month down the side habits I'm tracking across the top and space to write daily how I'm feeling there are four other things I now do by simply using a pen that have stopped my infinite scrolling and also completely changed everything that I eat and drink the first step towards conquering my mindless Doom scrolling addiction was to pay attention to the cues so whenever I was at my desk I would sit with a pen by my side whenever I got the urge to check my

phone or the internet I'd write down the time and what it was that triggered this feeling I really had to persevere with this and do it over a period of time but eventually I noticed a pattern in my behavior getting into the habit of reaching for a pen instead of my phone was fundamental for many years I was simply using a folder like this and a pen and paper but I did find that over time this diary became a bit of a mess as I wrote down different ideas for work or if I took notes

from a phone call I've since upgraded to the remarkable paper Pro and I really swear by this device but everything that I'm going to show you can be done just as easily using a folder like this and a pen what gets measured gets managed once I got into the habit of reaching for a pen instead of my phone I started tracking my other habits using a simple card like this the reason being that the simple Act of measuring my habits increased my motivation to actually do them and this is how my habit tracking has evolved

and I quite like the visual layout of how my habits attract going back over the past few months and I'll show you how I set this up down the left hand side I write the days of the month and along the top here I will write down the habits that I want to track this month and these habits can be anything at all that you want to track the idea simply is that every day that you do this habit you put a cross in the box so if I show you my habit tracking for January

here you can see I've actually colorcoded the different habits I want to track in green I have my exercise habits that I'm tracking the reason why I'm tracking so many particular exercises is that I'm trying to rehabilitate my knee so I can get running again in blue here I have coffee 12:00 p.m. which means I'm trying to stop drinking coffee before midday water only so aside from coffee the only other drink that I want to have is water no added sugar 10 pm time these habits speak for themselves and book audio book is me trying

to educate myself every day by reading or listening to some non-fiction here in Orange we have amwap story worthy and three key tasks and these are my three journaling habits that I do every single day and I will talk more about them later and on the right hand side we have the highlights column this is simply a couple of words with the Highlight for what happened that day I've highlighted a few in yellow here such as slept to solid 8 hours the reason why I've highlighted that is is that for me that's quite unusual I

don't sleep particularly well and the highlights column can be used for anything you want I just like to write down either the most memorable or the most interesting thing that happened that day as a kind of brief snapshot to remind me of what happened and on this habit tracker you can see that there's three columns here which each have red or purple lines all the way down them and this is because I have successfully managed to do that habit every single day for a month this idea comes from the comedian Jerry Seinfeld when he was

starting out as a comedian he wrote a joke every single day to get into the habit of writing more jokes and every time he successfully did this he put a Red Cross into his diary the idea is that you don't break the chain you keep it going as long as you can so anytime that I'm able to complete a habit for a whole month i' like to draw a purple line connecting all of the crosses and the Quest for the purple line really does motivate me to do my habits but the are some habits in

my habit tracker which I'm not trying to do every single day such as running and you can see in January I've only been for 1 two 3 four five six runs and I do find that having all of my habits laid out in this visual form particularly now with this color coded system as well it's really really useful I find it really interesting just to go back in time to look at the months and see what habits I was tracking see how that was going and also just see what the highlights were from each month

ch change what you eat I'm now going to show you how completely overhaul my diet changed what I ate without any friction whatsoever so if I go back into my diary from a couple of years ago there's one particular diary entry that I'm going to read to you which is on the 12th of April 2023 woke up and looked at my phone ran fifth 5K run on consecutive days squandered any benefits by eating too much junk food chocolate crisps salted nuts finished boys ice cream at the Italian restaurant another poor day diet wise here's the

bit which is interesting came up with the idea to track all of my food so I was obviously feeling very frustrated this day because I'd done the healthy bit i' gone for a run but then I completely undid all this good work by eating a whole lot of rubbish so shortly after this I simply started writing down everything that I was eating so here you can see my food diary for the 13th of April 20123 which is the day afterwards what I was very careful to do here during this period when I was obviously just

prone to eating a h of rubbish I think it was the Easter holidays and be given loads of Easter eggs I wasn't restricting myself with anything that I ate all I was doing was writing down and tracking everything that I ate over time this slowly evolved to the point where I decided to allow myself to eat and drink anything that I wanted but the caveat was if I wanted to have something I had to write it down in my food diary before I ate it and the process of forcing myself to write down everything that

I ate before I ate it completely changed how I ate it's all about becoming far more Mindful and conscious of the things that we're eating when you have your food diary starkly laid out in front of you with a list of everything that you're eating in one day it has this very strange effect where it compels you to change your diet story worthy one of the most interesting books that I read last year was story worthy by Matthew dicks and the key thing that I took away from this book and which I've now implemented into

my own life is what he calls homework for Life the idea behind this is that you find the most storyworthy moment from your day and you write it down so here you can see January 2025 the 3rd of January I spent half an hour searching for my car key it was trapped down my trouser leg don't ask and on the 21st of January Tom's favorite thing to do when he gets home from school is to sit on the toilet in my office and read Empire magazine it's my favorite thing to do too so the idea

is that you just find the little moments or the little either humorous moments or most storyworthy moments that happen to you each day and you write it down this is really one of the best ways to document your own life because it only takes a couple of minutes and I think particularly as somebody who makes videos as well writing down these tiny little moments which happen every day just spark so many great ideas and I've had ideas for YouTube videos that come off the back of just doing this exercise I thoroughly recommend it amwap in

my habit tracker that I use every month one of the journaling exercises that I try and do every single day is amwap and amwap stands for as many wins as possible the idea behind this is quite simple at the end of each day you simply write down as many wins as possible that have happened to you so here you can see that I'm trying to use my amwap journal to emphasize the positive things which I'm tracking through my habit tracker so five K rundown in chury 16 1 12,000 steps feeling positive and inspired about the

year ahead so I'm not only tracking the things which I've done that day but I'm also tracking my mood with this as well and I think for somebody who's an overthinker which is me using this journaling exercise has really helped kind of clarify my thoughts and it just reminds you that if you do this every single day the world is a good place it's a good place to be in the best time of day to do this journaling exercise is last thing at night in fact it's the very last thing I do before I do

my final journaling exercise which is three key tasks three key tasks is a very simple thing to do and the idea is that you simply write down the three most important tasks that you want to achieve tomorrow the most important task is the first thing that you put on your list and that's the first task that you'll tackle the very next day I don't necessarily plan out my working day in great detail but by making my three key task list basically I'm ensuring that if nothing else gets done that day as long as I do

those three key tasks I kind of feel like I'm on track and you might find it really useful to just score out your three key tasks once you completed them each day having that as a visual reference for how you're progressing and plowing through your to-do list can be very motivating these five writing exercises are things that I try and do every day I think when these exercises are done consistent L on a daily basis they can have a huge transformative effect and it all stems from the idea that instead of reaching for your phone

or going online you nurture the habit of grabbing a pen instead it's the only thing that has stopped me from infinite scrolling so a lot of the ideas that I'm talking about in this video have been given to me through books that I read by people like BJ fog James Clear near e Matthew dicks and videos that I've seen online by people like Ru thank you all for the inspiration [Music]