25 ways to a better life

Published in Intentional Living on Oct 28, 2024

The 10 guiding principles

  1. Consume less. Create more
  2. Get rid of many of your things (or at least your attachments to them)
  3. Focus on habits and systems. Goals are great as a "north star" but you want to create a regiment that makes them effortless to attain.
  4. Start a gratitude journal
  5. Practice activities that facilitate mindfulness (mediation, yoga)
  6. Dream big, but start small. Many plans fail due to being overwhelmed and not knowing where to start. Chip off a piece (any piece), and start there.
  7. Get really clear on your values. Make a list of them (on paper)  Rank them in order.  Refer to it when making big decisions like moving, careers or relationships. Physically look at this list, do not try to recall it from memory.
  8. Bring your ego down a notch. Even if you think it's already exceptionally low.
  9. Unless you work in a physical job, maybe re-think retirement. It's a capitalist construct to extract maximum labour from you in your good years. Consider doing the things earlier in life that you put off for retirement.
  10. When a risk or life choice keeps coming up as a recurring theme, maybe its something to listen to. "Do it now. Sometimes later becomes never." 

Getting back your time

  1. Delete your Facebook account. Trust me, your personal life and business will be okay. 
  2. "How you setup your phone's home screen is how you live your life." Replace social media with books, podcasts, fitness apps. Or even better:
  3. Delete all social apps from your phone. Use the web versions. Yes, some have less features, but using the web version makes it a more intentional behaviour. 
  4. Move your chat groups from social media into iMessage, Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp. 
  5. Avoid the "passive" friendships/relationships on social media where you just observe people in a feed. Connect one-on-one as much as possible. 
  6. Turn off all notifications from all of your apps. Be ruthless with this. Your phone is a constant attention-sucking device. 

Money

  1. When buying something that seems cheap or a good deal, look at the future (total) costs. For a new car, check out the maintenance schedule, price out new tires for it. For a printer, check out how much toner will cost. Often times this far exceed the purchase price.
  2. Don't buy the extended warranty, it's overpriced peace of mind. Instead put aside the equivalent amount into a investment or saving account. Worst case scenario, you use it for repairs, but more than likely you will keep a majority of it. Take yourself on a vacation with the money to reward yourself for making good choices
  3. Always view large purchases/expenditures in terms of the amount of life (hours worked) to obtain it: "The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it." - Henry David Thoreau

Isn't it a little crazy that we defer living life in the present for the promise of being able to one day do all those things we dreamed of?

Past is dead, future is uncertain; present is all you have, so eat, drink and live merry.

Albert Einstein