n the same way baby steps lead to success, small habits have the ability to change your life.
For most people, it takes about two months for a habit to become an automatic behavior. This means that after two months of waking up every morning to grab your phone and scroll through countless TikToks or answering emails before you get up it ends up becoming an unconscious habit. It’s the equivalent of automatically stretching your body out after opening your eyes. You don’t think about these things, you just do them.
But these unconscious habits ultimately lead to minor inconveniences in many ways. For example, wasting time on your phone every morning leads to procrastination, plus, you’re using up dopamine (a neurotransmitter responsible for motivation, pleasure, and learning) in the process, delaying even more activities that require you to have energy to complete. Think of dopamine as an action currency. The more you release dopamine by engaging in unconscious and time-consuming behaviors like watching TikToks in the morning, or even smoking and drinking coffee, the less you’ll have left to spend on the tasks that really matter to you.
The best way to counteract this vicious cycle of wasting time and being low in dopamine is to start with the activities that require less dopamine first. One example of such an activity that is powerful yet simple is making your bed in the morning! Read more…
