My fascination with habits and how they influence our daily lives started with this book. An interview with the author, Charles Duhigg to be precise. Almost two years later, I thought it was time I actually read the book.
I had already been applying many of the principles Duhigg describes in the Power of Habit in my habit tweaking experiments and they worked wonders: I gave up smoking (2 months in yeah :) and switched to a healthier diet. But most of all, I’ve developed and awareness of my habits and consequently, a capacity to change them. To make a long story short, the stuff works, so it was time I got the full picture. Continue reading “The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg – Book Summary and Key Takeaways” »
Wow! It’s been such an educational four weeks and I have so much to share I don’t even know where to begin…. Let’s start with the big picture and work towards the specifics. A few of the key lessons I’ve learnt to start with: Continue reading “How I Quit Smoking – Habit Tweaking Four Weeks On” »
I can’t decide whether I’m more interested in designing habit forming products or in finding out how to prevent products from forming my habits. Either way, Nir Eyal’s book, Hooked, is a fascinating read. It walks you through the steps that lead to forming new habits around a product using loads of real life examples and also offering a way to approach the inevitable moral questions. What follows is a subjective summary of the book with its key takaways and some of my own thoughts attached. (Emphasis is from me.) Continue reading “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal – Summary and Key Takeaways” »
Did you set a New Year’s resolution last year? Chances are you did – every second person does, every year -, but you probably don’t even remember what it was by now. Close to 90% of New Years resolutions fail. Why not try something new this time?
(Apologies for being so pompous as to quote myself here, but I did search for a good quote on habits, and beside a few ones that you already know, I didn’t find any that captures what I mean, so I had to make my own.)
Continue reading “Why New Year’s Resolutions are a Waste of Time and What You Can Do Instead” »
How little I know about some basic stuff that have tremendous influence on the quality (and length) of my life sometimes amazes me. I’m due for a blood test to determine whether I have diabetes a week from now. In the meantime, I have a chance to learn more about the things that can make me diabetic and conduct some experiments on myself.
Continue reading “Good Carbs Vs Bad Carbs or How Not to Get Diabetes” »
Do you ever see those folks standing at a busy part of town holding a questionnaire in their hands? As soon as you spot them, you’re trying to think of a polite and yet firm way to reject them. I often wonder who actually does stop to talk to them. What kind of a response rate do they get? Maybe 10%? Continue reading “How to run a survey with a 95% response rate” »
Minimalism shouldn’t be something to aspire for. It should be our default way of being.
Only, it’s not. Continue reading “Minimalism Redefined” »
source: nagymaros.utisugo.hu
We had two options. 1. Risk getting lost in the woods at night without a torch 2. Go down to the main road and take the bus back to where we left the car. Continue reading “The grass is greener in Hungary” »
For the record, I’m not saying travel makes your decisions better, although it might. What it definitely does is it makes you a better decision maker. Continue reading “How travel makes you a better decision maker” »
Although I was being conscious of staying fit and healthy throughout the 9 months of my travels, I was expecting to gain some extra weight, because I really didn’t hold back when it came to tasting local delicacies (Save the fried worm in Ecuador, but that had little to do with healthy diet and more with disgust.)
When I stood on the scale after getting back home, I was very surprised to see 78kg, the exact same numbers as when I left.
Staying fit and eating healthy can be a challenge if you are living your “ordinary” life at home. Travelling makes it near impossible: you don’t have your own space and access to a kitchen is often limited. Stacking up food makes no sense, buying ingredients for one meal at a time is a hassle. Your routines are broken, you miss out on sleep, it’s difficult to get to a gym so on and on.
So how did I not gain any weight after 9 months of travel without setting foot in a gym once? Continue reading “How to stay fit and eat healthy while travelling” »
