According to the book Pick Three by Randi Zuckerberg former marketing
head of Facebook;
you can focus on only 3 things out of 5, i.e.
Work, Family, Friends, Fitness and Sleep
So, if you decided to spend time on Studies, Sleep and Fitness you
won't be able to make time for Netflix or friends and family. Now YouTube is
filled with a lot of self-help advice and video essays to Kickstart 2020 but
we are not here for that rather we will be talking about ideas that we
personally use and has to the test of time so in our context, we'll talk about fitness,
work and sleep and how to use tech to turn them into a habit.
Excercise
So, let's get started when it comes to exercise most people think of a
fit body, however, the biggest reason to exercise is a healthy brain according to
the John Ratey book Spark;
Exercise is the single most powerful tool available to optimize the brain.
Studies have shown that exercise can help us cope with
stress ADHD and can improve our ability to focus and to learn new things. I
exercise because it makes me efficient at work and it doesn't have to be
hitting the gym any kind of physical activity that you enjoy is exercise can be
running, swimming, playing a sport, cycling or even brisk walking.
Now one of my favourite things that will get you into exercise is
Fitness mats I've been using the AmazFit Bip for quite a long time and the primary reason is the standalone GPS tracker but here's the alleged part the
activity reminder I work a lot on the computer and sitting for hours is not
good for your posture. So, like every fitness band this has an activity a reminder which pushes me to be active every hour and just to show you the drawbacks
of the sedentary lifestyle, you are born with the J-shaped spine and you end up
with an s-shaped one.
Overall the bigger picture here is to pick a physical an exercise that works for you could be lifting weights cycling running walking playing a sport anything that works for you and use the relevant tech app to track it and keep yourself motivated.
Sleep
Now when it comes to sleep you might have heard most successful people
claim they sleep five hours a day but there is still ambiguity amongst the fact
how many hours should you actually sleep according to the popular author and
scientist Matthew Walker;
There is an adaptive balance to be struck between wakefulness and sleep in humans that appears to be around hours of total wakefulness and around hours of total sleep for an average adult.
So to get that proper eight hours of sleep for most I started tracking
my sleep the fitness band helps in that case next I gave up on media
consumption and most of my smartphone usage for that I use Google's native
digital well-being app wherein I can provide app limits so when that is reached
you cannot use the app until the next
day additionally I use the Do Not Disturb mode quite a lot while I'm working so
I am not distracted by those Whatsapp notifications moreover I made a rule to
not use my phone an hour before going to bed and to deal with that I read from
a Kindle or a physical book you can also use audible which is a fantastic book
source the point is we avoid the smartphones blue light before going to bed the blue light coming up from your smartphone messes up your circadian rhythm and
causes those random incomplete sleep patterns.
Work
So, the third thing to focus is work and, in our context, we'll take
it as learning a skill and disclaimer don't learn it from YouTube, Reddit
comments, podcast or Twitter. Yeah the flipside of these platforms is that the information is pretty concise and surface
level it might be good in order to create an opinion and win a battle in the
comment section but you're not gaining any knowledge out of it for that you
have to read books as you would already know Bill Gates the co-founder of
Microsoft is quite passionate about reading
you can visit the GatesNotes.com to know about the books he read and his review
on those but as a popular convention you have always been taught to pick up a
book or read a newspaper every morning this is how you read but Nah, that's not
the only way you read I use Kindle quite a lot and the biggest reason is zero distractions
moreover, it's portable easy to use doesn't require maintenance the other side
is Kindle and audible come at a cost but if you look at it in hindsight you are
investing in yourself you're
investing in gaining knowledge.
For other book-related summary apps here's my personal experience on
those I use an app called Book Book for a brief period of time it summarizes a
book for you in the form of a chat conversation it's on similar lines like
blink lists but soon I realized is doing more harm than good in the long run I
am eliminating the habit of sitting
down and reading a book plus I'm getting too quick to jump to conclusions
reading an entire book makes you think about the subject introspect and
research more about the topic whereas the summery only tells you what's the book about and the
readers interpretation of the book so
to summarize there are three takeaways from this article do a fitness activity
not just to stay fit but to also
train your brain and track it with an app of fitness man stay motivated and
continue it in the long run second sleep eight hours a day instead of five to
six hours track your sleep avoid smartphone usage because sleep is as important
as anything else third finally learn new skills and read more books if physical
books work for you do that else consider audible or even Kindle and rather than
getting all your sources from Quora and Reddit.
To end this we firmly believe that tech will change life as we go on
and health and finance are the two biggest sectors that would be most affected
by tech in the coming years let us know your thoughts in the comment below.
