Waking up earlier will change your life it will make you more resilient, productive and happy.
You’ll Get More Done
Wanted to start that fitness routine but struggled to find time? Get up while the world is still asleep and get it done.
Wanted to start a blog, but been unable to find the time to write? If you get up an hour early you can use that time to write for 30 minutes to an hour.
Or maybe you wanted to start eating healthily. If you get up early you’ll have the time to make a nutritious breakfast which will set you up for a healthy day of eating.
You might want to become more erudite, if so you can get up early and read for 30 minutes to an hour.
Getting Up Early Is A Life Hack
Our Habits both good and bad determine what our lives are like. When we get up early we free up time to build important habits.
How To Get Up Early
As a rule of thumb go to bed 8 hours before you want to get up. Want to get up at 6? Go to bed at 10.
Want to get up at 5 go to bed at 9.
Try and make your room cool and completely dark, and sleep in a quiet environment. If you live in a noisy area you can use earplugs.
Get Some Sun
Getting sun throughout the day (especially in the morning) helps reset your natural body clock by increasing the sleep hormone melatonin which makes you feel sleepy at night.
Even If You Go To Bed Late Try And Get Up At The Same Time Every Day
By doing this you’ll reset your natural body clock and build routine.
Use A Habits Tracker To Build The Habit
I use James Clears Atoms app it’s free. Click below to see what it’s about.
I like the app because it gets you to make a statement for why you want to start the habit. For example if you want to build the habit of getting up early your statement might look something like this:
I will get up early at 6AM everyday so that I can get more done, and have more time for myself which will make me happier.
Waking Up Early Helps You Become More Resilient
Getting a head start on the day is a superpower. You’ll give yourself the time to do things that matter which helps you become more resilient as you’ll be less likely to succumb to disorder and chaos.
Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise – Benjamin Franklin
The Bottom Line
Getting up early is an underrated life hack that can free up precious time for you to do the things that matter. Remember getting up early frees up time and time is the one thing we can never get back.
I was listening to a podcast where Seth Godin was talking about some powerful writing advice he learned from Isaac Asimov the famous science fiction writer.
I’m paraphrasing but it went like this.
Isaac Asimov wrote from dawn to noon every day without fail.
By doing this, Isaac said that your subconscious realises “No matter what I’m going to be writing so I might as well write something good”.
I think we can all learn something from this.
Some practical takeaways I’m implementing into my own life.
Get started and continue without fail, eventually, success will follow you precisely because you forgot to think about it.
Let the subconscious do its thing. When we get started with any habit it usually takes a momentous effort to get started but once you get the wheels in motion the habit takes care of itself. It takes on a life of its own, it becomes autonomic.
There’s power in starting. The more effort you put into something the better you’ll get at it and the more likely you’ll succeed.
Don’t rely on motivation to get started. Get started and the motivation will come.
Authenticity in writing only comes from writing consistently. You find your voice by writing. Authenticity is found in the work.
Isaac Asimov Was A Fan Of Habits
Isaac Asimov wrote over 500 books. This type of output simply doesn’t happen without habits.
His pioneering work on science fiction shows how powerful habits can be.
Choose What You Want To Get Better At
Focus on getting better at it one day at a time. These small improvements will compound to create extraordinary results.
The Bottom Line
If we want to get better at anything in life we need to commit to getting better at it one day at a time. If you want to get better at writing write one blog post and publish it every day. If you want to get good on the guitar play it every day. This line of thinking works for anything you want to get good at. Even if you can’t do x task every day ( for example, weightlifting you can’t do it every day it’s too hard to recover from three to five times per week is the sweet spot) commit to get better at it every week.
Recently I was at Sainsbury and I was deciding which tomatoes to buy the cheap ones or the expensive ones.
Sure if I buy the cheap ones I would have saved money, but the downside is they taste like shit, or to be more clear they taste like water.
On the other hand, if I buy the expensive ones I get some hand-picked vine tomatoes full of flavour. You can smell the sweetness on them.
An Important Lesson
I decided to buy the more expensive ones and didn’t regret the decision.
Sometimes at face value things can be cheaper or be seen as a “good deal”.
But what we need to ask ourselves is will I use/ consume x product and do I truly need it?
If the answer is no I’d say don’t buy it.
The Fallacy Of Bargains
Picture this:
You’re out at your local shopping centre and you see a TV marked down from £1000 to £500 and you think “That’s a good deal” and buy it even though you already have a good TV at home.”
Because you didn’t need the TV this isn’t a bargain. Well done you’re now down £500.
Quality Over Quantity
Going back to the shit tomatoes. A very important lesson is that if something is poorer in quality (but maybe cheaper at the time), don’t buy it in favour of what you want and need. Albeit what you need may be more expensive.
A Life Directed To Spending Money On Only What We Want And Need
If we can get better at this we’ll save vast amounts of time and money across our lives.
When we squander money on things we don’t need, we waste time by sourcing out unnecessary things.
By spending our valuable money on things we don’t need we’re also short-changing ourselves out of more time, because for most people time is money.
Smarter Uses Of Money
Education
Saving
Investing
Experiences
Not spending money on anything we don’t need.
The Bottom Line
Life would be much better if we could all stop spending money on things we don’t truly want or need. And if you aren’t sure if you need something or not as a rule of thumb remember this “Spend nothing if it doesn’t truly help others or yourself”.
Austin Kleon is an author who’s written several books. I’ve read two books by him, How To Steal Like An Artist and Show Your Work.
How To Steal Like An Artist shows you how to create and curate your work, show your work gives you a guide on how you can get people to notice your work.
I’ve found both books helpful for my blogging journey. Here are the 3 best pieces of advice from Show Your Work.
1. ” Even for professionals, the best way to flourish is to retain an amateur’s spirit and embrace uncertainty and the unknown “
An amateur has nothing to lose, an amateur hasn’t achieved anything yet. They have something to prove. They’re willing to try different things and experiment.
The amataer pursues her work not for money, not for fame, but out of love.
This is what we need to be like.
” Thats all any of us are: amateurs. We don’t live long enough to be anything else. ” – Charlie Chaplin
Austin also writes about Sturgeon’s law. The Science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon said that 90% of everything is crap.
Meaning that 90% of science fiction is crap, 90% of blog posts are crap, and even 90% of my writing is crap. The thing is you never know how people are going to react to your work.
My most successful blog posts were the ones that I didn’t think were the best at the time.
Whatever we produce, a large amount of it will be crap, we just need to produce the best and most useful content at the time, and hopefully some sticks.
If we stay an amateur it gives us the opportunity to try different things with our content and get more comfortable with the fact that not all of our content will be a roaring success.
2. ” The best way to get started on the path to sharing your work is to think about what you want to learn, and make a commitment to learning it in front of others “
We all have interesting experiences and we’re all usually good at something or a few things.
If we all share our experiences and provide useful content around them. It not only helps us understand ourselves and our experiences better. But it helps us help others and connect with people.
One of the reasons I write so many book reviews on this blog is because I want to think about the information I’ve learned so I can implement it more effectively in my life.
When I share book reviews it also helps others gain valuable insights and knowledge so they can improve in their lives.
Blogging and sharing your content is a win-win I think if you’re generally trying to help people with your content nothing bad can come from it.
3. ” Make stuff you love and talk about stuff you love and you’ll attract people who love that kind of stuff. It’s that simple”
Previously on this blog, I would only write about things that would give me a lot of traffic in regards to health and fitness.
I do enjoy health and fitness but this is my blog. And if there’s something else that interests me that I want to write about and I think others will find it useful. Why shouldnt I write about it?
The more we love a topic or are interested in something the easier it is to learn about it and to explain it to others. It almost comes naturally.
Reading Obituaries
Austin talks about reading obituaries, to see how other people lived and to reconcile himself to the shortness of life and the fact that we all will die someday.
Knowing that we’re going to die some day can be an extremely motivationg factor. Because we only get so much time. If we don’t produce our work now, when will we?
Knowing that we can die any minute forces us to use our time more effectively and forces us to do the the things we know we should do.
Dave Ramsey is one of the go-to experts to help you manage your money better.
Our financial health is important because if we can handle our money in the right way our lives instantly become easier.
Having a lack of money or being in a dire financial position can wreak havoc upon our lives.
I belive this book gives a great foundation on personal money management and if we follow Daves advice I believe we can reach financial freedom.
Below are my top 3 takeaways from this book. I recommend you read the full book. It changed my life.
The Best 3 Pieces Of Advice
” People run around buying things they can’t afford with money they don’t have to impress people they dont even like, and they do it in record numbers. Worse, they seem to get away with it! “
In my own life I try to buy things that actually make my life better or help me improve as a person. I try to invest in myself. Or I invest in things that actually make more money than I’ve put in.
I used to buy expensive clothes which ultimately put a dent in my bank balance. Now I buy nice clothes that are good quality, I just make sure I’m buying them at a bargain or at good value for money. I only buy things if I need them.
Its never smart to buy clothes or (insert anything else) to impress others. All that matters is that you’re happy with the things you buy for your own satisfaction.
Doing things for external praise alone is futile. We’re born alone and we die alone. We need to first and foremost do things for ourselves.
” If you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else”
Dave is a big proponent of first of all becoming debt-free ( apart from a maximum of a 15-year mortgage).
Once individuals become debt-free, he talks about cutting your credit cards up and increasing your income in your career.
Once people are debt-free and they’re in full control of their income and they’re budgeting correctly he says to invest 15% of your income in stocks.
If we can take full control of our income and invest properly, later in our lives we can live like no one else.
To put this into perspective if you invested £500 per month in the s&p 500 index fund with an average interest rate return of 10% annually (although historically it returns closter to 12% anually on average since its inception ) for the next 30 years you’d make an astonishing £1,130,243.
On paper this would make you a Millionaire. I think this advice is extremely important. Because investing is so valuable to building wealth.
Because if you invest £0 in 30 years you’ll make £0.
The Office of national statistics reported that the lifetime earnings of working-age people in the United Kingdom equates to £566,000.
The facts are clear, we can all make enough money to do well in this world, it’s how we use it that matters. We need to use money to make money.
According to Proverbs 22:7: “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender” (NIV). I was confronted with this scripture and had to make a conscious decision of who was right—my broke finance professor, who taught that debt is a tool, or God, who showed obvious disdain for debt. Beverly Sills had it right when she said, “There is no shortcut to anyplace worth going.”
Among pop culture Its very common to maximise the amount of debt that we can obtain. In order to finance things we don’t really need. Examples of this are houses and cars well above our means.
Dave believes that we should be paying for everything in full. But he does make one exception. When taking out a mortgage he says take out no more than a 15 year mortgage and pay no more than 25% of your take-home pay on that mortgage per month.
So if someone earns £2000 per month after tax. Dave argues that the maximum term of this mortgage should be 15 years, and that you should pay no more than £500 on the mortgage every month.
Dave’s advice has helped me a lot and I’m sure will help you.
The barbell squat is one of the best exercises you can perform for lower body strength.
But it’s more technical to perform compared to most exercises.
And when an exercise is more technical there can be more mistakes made when it’s executed.
So in this article I’ll provide you with the 5 biggest squat mistakes and I’ll give you tips on what you can do to avoid making these mistakes.
1. Rounding Your Back
Throughout the barbell squat it’s extremely important that you keep your back in a neutral ( straight ) position.
Because if your lower back rounds under load, there’s a higher chance you’ll end up with a slipped disc.
Whereas if your lower back is in a tight and rigid position and doesn’t flex/ round under load.
All of the force will be balanced around your intervertebral discs resulting in a more efficient and safer exercise.
When performing the squat it’s extremely important that your hips and shoulders rise at the same time. This will ensure that you’re not rounding your back.
2. Letting Your Knees Cave In
Letting your knees cave in while squatting can result in chronic injuries of the patellar tendons and surrounding tissues.
The good news is that, this mistake like the previous one is easily fixed.
You need to make sure that when you perform the squat you think about keeping your knees out.
Also a good stretch that you can do to practice what it feels like to have your knees in proper alignment is described below.
Stand up and use a stance where your heels are at about shoulder width apart with your toes pointing slightly out.
Squat all the way down to the bottom postion of the squat and push your elbows against your knees.
Hold this bottom position of the squat, with your elbows pushing out against your knees so your knees are in line with your toes.
Make sure you hold this stretch for 30 seconds and perform it for 3 sets on the days you don’t squat at the gym.
3. Performing Quarter Squats
When you barbell squat, the lower you go with correct form, the more musculature you work and the more effective the exercise becomes.
It’s okay if you can’t squat all the way down ass to grass.
But at least squat to parallel. This means that you should squat low enough for the top of your thighs to be parallel with the floor.
If you squat any higher than parallel, the squat becomes less effective.
If you have difficulty getting in a deep squat position, practice the stretch I mentioned in mistake number 2.
4.Wearing The Wrong Footwear
Wearing the wrong footwear can have a big impact on how you perform the squat.
When you perform the barbell squat it’s very important that you squat with shoes that have a solid base.
My favourite type of shoes for squatting are powerlifting shoes.
You definitely don’t want to be squatting in running shoes or trainers.
Because these types of shoes have a soft cushioned base.
Which results in excessive movement when squatting.
Powerlifting shoes help you squat from a sturdy supportive base.
Squatting in running shoes or trainers is like squatting on pillows.
5. Breathing Incorrectly
Breathing incorrectly will make squatting very uncomfortable and dangerous when you’re lifting heavy weights.
It’s extremely important that before you squat you take a big breath and hold it.
This helps keep your whole body tight and it will stop your back from rounding under heavy loads.
Here’s a trick to help you take a big breath and hold it:
Once you take a big breath, put your tongue in the roof of your mouth.
This will help you keep tight throughout the squat movement.
The Bottom Line On The Biggest Mistakes When Performing The Squat
As long as you stay tight, keep your knees out, squat deeply (without your back rounding) and wear the correct footwear. Performing the squat should be relatively easy to do.
Performed with heavy weights, squats are extremely tough. Although it’s one of the best exercises you can do.
Below is a great video on how to perform the barbell back squat.
The dead hang should be a fundamental stretch in your exercise repertoire.
Over time, lifting heavy weights especially when you perform movements like the squat and deadlift can cause your intervertebral discs to pinch and move.
When you hang from a pull up bar the small intevertrebal ligaments and muscles stretch and the compression of the pinched discs decrease.
Which results in the nucleus pulposus ( the soft, gelatinous central portion of the intervertebral disc that moves within the disc with changes in posture) moving back into a more favourable allignment.
Note: When performing the dead hang you may hear some clicks and pops but this is normal. Your spine is just moving back into a more favourable allignment. You should instantly feel relief in your back.
How Do You Perform A Dead Hang?
1. Take a wide over hand grip on the pull up bar with your thumbs facing each other.
2. Take a big breath and hang.
3. Slowly exhale so that your body relaxes while you’re hanging.
4. Tilt your chin forward towards your chest.
5. Hold the stretch for 45 seconds and perform the dead hang for 3-4 sets after your weightlifting workout.
If you can’t hold the stretch for 45 seconds thats fine. Just work up to 45 seconds.
You’ll find that you’ll get better each time you perform the stretch.
Here’s a video of how to perform the dead hang.
When Should You Perform The Dead Hang?
Perform it after your weightlifting workouts.
Especially after workouts where you perform the barbell squat and deadlift.
The reason being is because these exercises are the most likely to pinch your intervertebral discs.
Whats The Best Grip For The Dead Hang?
There are 4 different grips you can use for the dead hang.
The neutral grip (palms facing each other).
The pronated grip (thumbs facing each other).
The supine grip (palms facing towards you).
One armed grip (neutral, pronated, or supine).
The grip you choose doesn’t really matter. Because each grip will result in a good stretch and help loosen your upper body and back.
Personally I feel the best stretch when I use a pronated (overhand) grip. But the other grips can work fine as well.
One Armed Grip (Advanced)
The one armed grip is not for beginners. You need to build up to this.
Start with a double overhand (pronated) grip and progress to the one armed dead hang. Although you don’t need to do one armed dead hangs to get all the benefits of the dead hang.
How To Improve Your Dead Hang
The easiest way to improve your dead hang is by doing 1-2 sets at the end of every strength training workout.
Make sure you time how long you can hang for. And aim to improve your time every session.
You can use a smartphone to time yourself.
Your grip strength might limit how long you can dead hang for but it will get stronger over time. I recommend you use liquid chalk.
Liquid chalk will help you grip on to the bar for longer.
The Bottom Line On The Dead Hang
The dead hang is a great way to increase your upper body mobilty as well as decompressing the spine.
The dead hang should be a fundamantal stretch in your exercise repertoire. I recommend that you perform the stretch at the end of every workout.
Intermittent fasting is where you fast (don’t eat) for a certain amount of time, and then you have an eating window where you can eat your calories.
One popular method of intermittent fasting is called 16:8 intermittent fasting. Here’s what it looks like in application:
Fast (don’t eat) for 16 hours and then have an eating window of 8 hours.
For example, this is how I’m doing intermittent fasting now:
7 am- Wake up have a glass of water and a coffee.
12 pm- Break the fast by eating my first meal.
6 pm – Drink a protein shake. (30 grams of protein powder with water).
6:30 pm – Go to the gym to lift weights.
8:00 pm – Eat dinner
What Are The Biggest Benefits Of Intermittent Fasting?
The biggest benefit of intermittent fasting is that you can eat fewer but larger meals.
Say for example, you need to eat 2000 calories per day to lose fat.
If you split those calories up into 2 meals each meal would be 1000 calories each.
1000 calories is a lot of food to eat per meal. Which is also very satisfying and filling.
And for me, eating fewer but larger meals while intermittent fasting makes it easier to enjoy cheat meals now and then while trying to lose fat.
Because usually cheat meals contain a lot of calories.
Apart from this main benefit. There aren’t any superhuman benefits to intermittent fasting.
What Are The Biggest Downsides Of Intermittent Fasting?
The biggest downside to intermittent fasting is that you have to go 16 hours or longer without food.
For some people this is uncomfortable.
For others who work shift work (e.g emergency workers and engineers) Intermittent fasting might not be feasible to stick to in the long run.
To Intermittent Fast? Or To Not Intermittent Fast?
If you do intermittent fasting, great if you don’t do intermittent fasting then great as well.
It really doesnt matter. Theres no wrong or right way for what time you eat your meals or how many meals you eat per day.
Provided that you’re eating enough calories for whatever your goal may be:
Then you can eat at whatever time you like and you can choose however many meals you prefer.
(Please note the requirements for different goals below):
For example, if you’re eating fewer calories than you burn, are eating enough protein and are strength training you’ll lose body fat.
If you’re looking to build muscle you’ll need to eat slightly more calories than you burn, eat enough protein and lift weights.
And if you want to maintain your weight, all you need to do is eat around the same number of calories as you burn every day, eat enough protein and lift weights.
I hope this article has been helpful. What are your thoughts on intermittent fasting?
As well as blogging on this website Henrypaget.com (sorry for the shameless plug). I also answer questions on Quora.
My answer to the question “what 10 things have you stopped doing in your life?” Seems to have been particularly useful to a number of people.
Somehow my answer managed to get over 129,000 views, and over 600 upvotes on Quora. So hopefully long time readers of my blog will find it useful as well.
1. Stopped watching porn. It wastes a lot of time and it gives unrealistic expectations, life is much better without it.
2. Stopped using Instagram, Facebook and twitter. I find that I don’t compare myself to others as much. And I have more time now.
3. Stopped bad mouthing others. It doesn’t achieve anything and makes you look bad.
4. Stopped regularly drinking. I would always feel down and depressed the next day. I only drink in moderation now.
5.Stopped hanging around with people who weren’t good for me. For example friends who regularly drank alcohol and smoked and weren’t positive influences on me and didn’t want the best for me.
6. Stopped being jealous. If someone has achieved something great that’s amazing. Because it means it’s possible for us to achieve great things to.
7.Stopped focusing on things out of my control. And started focusing on what Is In my control.
8. Stopped being judgemental. As the saying goes be strict with yourself and patient with others.
9. Stopped sleeping in all the time. I find I’m much more productive and happy if I get up early.
10. Stopped complaining. It doesn’t achieve anything and most of the times makes things worse.
What 10 things have you stopped doing, that have had the biggest impact on your life?
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