9 Simple, great habits that are surprisingly not popular

We all have our rituals and our life hacks that give us great results. Often, they appear simple and common sensical. However, they are often not done.

Common Sense is that which is Commonly Absent.

-Anonymous

So, I decided to ask the audience on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Here's the summary of some profound things I learnt from the informal, crowdsourced survey. Don't let the simplicity of most of these habits fool you. They are simple, but to do them consistently is not easy.

Well Being

• Sleep - 7 hours a day; this is highly under rated. Matthew Walker's book "Why we Sleep" is a great primer and the 8 min video below is a good summary.

• Meditation - this was one of the most popular recommendations. For most people, it seems daunting; I used to have a regular practice but have lost my way. However, given a plethora of high quality apps like Insight Timer (Free), Calm.io, Mindspace and more, it is an easy one to try and cultivate during these trying times. Perhaps one can start with 10 minutes of a daily, guided medication.

• Pranayam (Yogic Breathing Exercises) - there is a lot of good content on YouTube or ask your neighbourhood Yoga teacher or practitioner. A good one to start with is Anuloma Viloma and Nadhi Shodhana.
• Daily Exercise - 30-45 mins a day. Enough said!

Going Inwards and Growing

• Daily Journal - I have never tried this but have heard enough people talk about this as having a big impact. Having spoken to some of them, it truly helps you reflect and separate the minutiae of day to day existence from what really matters and what you are grateful for.
• Having some sort of a Spiritual Practice that helps one and centring oneself and feel connected with the world. Some people read a couple of Shlokas or Verses from a spiritual text, some may want to follow ancient philosophers teachings from thousands of years ago, or some might just want to offer a prayer or a chant.
• Gratitude - Practising gratitude and celebrating small joys of life. We have enough to be thankful for. AJ Jacob's book, Thanks a Thousand, covers a deceptively simple idea: the author decided to thank every single person involved in producing his morning cup of coffee. The resulting journey takes him across the globe, transforms his life, and reveals secrets about how gratitude can make us all happier, more generous, and more connected. There's also a nice podcast episode with Jacob and Ferris on 10 strategies to be happy via gratitude.

• Helping Others - lots of folks mentioned helping others, showing empathy, and paradoxically, even asking for help all create a lot of joy. From Albert Einstein, to Mother Teresa to Gandhi, everyone has said that only a life lived for others is really worth living.

Professional Effectiveness

• Reading - As Charlie Munger has said, he does not know of a single smart person in his life who does not read. All of us have heard about this but need to invest in making a daily ritual around this. I'd written a blog post on how to read 5x more books a few years ago.
• Organising yourself - Ideas such getting things done (GTD), zero inbox, calendarising your personal life, to having a clean workspace and more came up here. My takeaway was that organising oneself digitally and physically, so one can produce one's best work is important.

To summarise, I feel like all these practices collectively help us manage our purpose, our energy and our focus very effectively. Given the current "work from home" situation, I challenge each one of us to pick up one of these habits and give it a whirl for 21 days. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

I'm committing to practising Pranayama and Gratitude daily for the next 21 days. What are you going to try?

Special thanks to all the folks who suggested the various topics and my colleague, Shikhar Prateek, for his contributions to help organise the various crowdsourced habits.

(Amit is a Managing Partner at Prime Venture Partners, an early stage Venture Capital firm based out of Bangalore, India. Prime VP invests in category creating, early stage companies founded by rock star teams. Prior, Amit has held leadership positions at Makemytrip, Google and IBM.

Mind Trails is my weekly newsletter of starting points & learnings from books, podcasts, articles quotes and smart people that has moved me in the last week or two. Find my other blogs on LinkedIn & my tweets at @amitsomani)