Ask HN: What habit have you dropped or picked up that improved your life?

- No TV (and no news). Stopped watching years ago, spend more time on productive things.<p>- No video games. I binge and play again for maybe 1 week a year.<p>- Spend free time with wife, because that&#x27;s all she really wants.<p>- Workout 4-5 days a week. Lift early between 10am and 3pm, whenever I reach a good stopping point. Listen to Mixergy or similar podcast during workout. Do cardio in the evening (between 7pm and 10pm) and sit on the bike for 30 min to 1hr and read.<p>- Sleep 7-9 hrs&#x2F;night.<p>- Never set an alarm.<p>- No alcohol, tobacco, drugs, coffee, or tea. Ever. Might sound crazy, but it&#x27;s not hard since I just never started.<p>- Don&#x27;t blog or use Twitter.<p>- Cut hair weekly (short haircut, cut it myself), shave almost daily (whenever I go somewhere). A military habit, but when you look good, you feel good.<p>- Had a few close calls while deployed (was a Marine for 8 yrs) and learned life is too precious and too short to do anything but my best work and left the Marine Corps as soon as I returned from my last deployment. I started making decisions based on what I&#x27;d regret the least, regardless of outcome.

Flossing religiously. I used to be Bleeding Gums Murphy, but no more. A dental hygienist showed me the proper way to floss and now I will get up at 4am if I somehow forgot to floss before bedtime, go into the bathroom, and floss. I&#x27;ve only missed once in 7+ years. Bad gums are associated with heart disease, tooth loss, and other nasty effects. No thanks.<p>Quitting, after 30+ years, saying, &quot;God bless you&quot; (or really, &quot;Gahblessyou&quot;) automatically after someone sneezes. If you stop and think about <i>how dumb this is</i>, it feels really good to break this ridiculous cultural habit. I&#x27;ve been &quot;clean&quot; from this for 2+ years now.

Stopped reading and watching &quot;The News&quot;. What a waste of time. If there&#x27;s something important, someone will tell me about it.

Picking up the habit of working regularly on side-projects.<p>I am lucky enough to have a couple of friends interested in working on the same project as myself. The habit of all of us getting together for a couple of hours during the weekend has tremendously advanced the project.<p>It helps to work with friends or people in general, because it rarely happens that none of us are in the mood for working. And when we are, we pull the other ones in.<p>For about a year before starting this, I would only ever so often sit down to advance the project, but after starting this 1-2 times per week get-together with them, the project has improved (complete code refactoring + 2 versions out on the App Store), in about 3 months.<p>As well, myself, I have improved as a programmer and have gotten a rekindled interest in programming. I think my friends can agree that it has affected them similarly.

Regular exercise.<p>I did a CS master&#x27;s degree at night while working a full time job programming. After sitting 9 hours at work, I&#x27;d sit a few hours in class and then sit a few hours doing homework. After three years, I was a wreck. As soon as I graduated, a buddy of mine spurred me to join a gym with him.<p>Now I do heavy lifting 3 times per week and interval training 2-3 times per week. I&#x27;m not the healthiest eater (maybe I&#x27;ll fix that next), but I feel great. There&#x27;s something indescribably satisfying about breaking your own records.<p>It doesn&#x27;t matter which exercise you pick. The benefit you get from doing <i>something</i> over nothing is enormous. The important thing is that you do something that you like enough to stick with. As a non-competitive athlete, I find that fitness is 80% attendance.

Stopped playing video games and stopped regularly watching TV or TV shows (though I still enjoy movies and TV shows, I don&#x27;t make it part of my schedule). Biggest waste of time during my teenage years.

Fasting (&lt; 500cal) two or three times a week is rapidly decreasing my volume, and bringing increased mental clarity and alertness. It&#x27;s a good rhythm to get into, has a pretty dramatic (positive) effect on how I feel, and it&#x27;s a nice way to atone for yesterday...

I stopped using shampoo and conditioner. It&#x27;s the best fashion advice I&#x27;ve ever had and it&#x27;s funny that it came from a hn article. Better looking hair, better protection against cold, no more dandruff, much smaller dry scalp patches and so on. Thanks HN!

Started eating better. More fresh vegetables and lean meat, less sugar, a lot less carbs. Dropped 28 pounds so far. Huge boost to my self-esteem.

10K run every day and 10 hours of sleep.<p>The productivity gains are in the 2-3x range.

Despite having a very long wish list of things I long for to do, I am usually in for redditing, reading HN, sitcoms, booze and weed. I hadn&#x27;t opened Sublime for past two months, neither read anything nor any activity faintly productive.<p>After reading an amazing article [1], I have beginning to feel an amazing happiness with everything I am doing now and it just so simple. The trick is to ask yourself every time you start doing something: &quot;What I will be doing now, Will it help me in future in anyway?&quot;. Of course, you must not drag yourself to despise everything not related to higher gains but realize that life in the future is function of what you do now, and the decisions you make.<p>[1]: <a href="http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/10/27/procrastination/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;youarenotsosmart.com&#x2F;2010&#x2F;10&#x2F;27&#x2F;procrastination&#x2F;</a>

Switching off the sound my phone makes each time I receive an email, text or messaging notification.<p>I also stopped checking my email actively in the evening (only once before going to sleep to make sure there are no emergencies) and I try not to touch it more than once on Saturdays.<p>I have such a clearer mindset now these days.<p>Try it! You&#x27;ll see.

I stopped relying on my cellphone so often. It feels good not to be a slave to every &quot;Ding!&quot; or &quot;Beep!&quot; that I hear.<p>I also got back in my old SEGA games and cooking food my mom used to make when I was a kid.<p>I grew up in church but slacked because life got hectic. Now I&#x27;m attending when I can, I&#x27;ll read the Bible in off time and I&#x27;ve made myself more available to help others.<p>This might sound stupid, but it&#x27;s something about the times where all I could do is go outside and play football in the park with my friends that I miss. Now with my younger siblings, I see them so attached to technology, it makes me sad that they&#x27;re so trapped and in tuned with news and post from people they&#x27;ll probably never meet instead of the people they&#x27;re in front of every day...

Taming my lizard brain.<p>I was going to through a Seth Godin Book, In which he talk about amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for fight or flight instincts.<p>After that I started thinking, most of the things I worry about doesn&#x27;t end up happening. But, I was constantly worrying about it. Sometimes I wont go to business oriented community meet ups, just because my lizard brain throws some &#x27;what if that happens&#x27; at me.<p>Recognizing that part of my thoughts and reacting only to things that really needed my attention helped tremendously in shaping my time, focus and work then on.

Reading. I never used to open a book for more than 20 minutes but once I started reading books I actually enjoyed (Gladwell, Freakenomics, other books related to business, personal growth, human behavior etc) I realized what an amazing habit it is. You learn a lot, work your brain, give the eyes a break from a screen and you can take a good book&#x2F;kindle anywhere. No power needed. Start reading books.

Giving up high sugar foods completely (no soft drink, candy, dessert etc). I went from battling colds year round to almost never getting them.

I started waking up at 5.30 in the morning. Code for about an hour and then go for an early morning walk with my spouse for another.

I now sleep more (&gt; 7 hours a night). Amazing gains in what I notice - and how much easier it is to think. Like running downhill.

(1.) Eat well, drink well, sleep well, work well.<p>(2.) Quantified self: Targeting productive and unproductive time with RescueTime, and committing to explicit targets with Beeminder.<p>(3.) Less but better. Less input but better input. Less output but better output. Afford the luxury of being slow and having time for introspection and inspiration.<p>(4.) When you can&#x27;t sleep, don&#x27;t try to.

Dropped: porn and reddit (though I&#x27;m still on HN obviously)

Travelling on a kayak (Passau-Bratislava in 2012 and Krakow-Gdansk in 2013). Both the memories and the planning for the future trips (Iceland 2014!) give me something to hold on to during the dark moments. Previously I used to travel by bike, but I had stopped that for 3 years before picking up kayaking.

Stopped adding sugar to my hot drinks, completely.

Started to practice genuine Shaolin QiGong &amp; Shaolin Kung Fu. Got lucky with the master I found. Been practicing for 7 years, wouldn&#x27;t trade it for a pile of gold. It just enables me to do everything better. I mean <i>everything</i>. Most of the ordinary day-to-day stuff doesn&#x27;t bother me so much. I don&#x27;t waste as much time as before doing useless things.<p>Also reduced the amount of TV&#x2F;Internet time; started to eat vegetarian practically every day.<p>&lt;shameless plug&gt; I built this app just for that: <a href="https://routinetap.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;routinetap.com</a>. I&#x27;m working on a pure js version.&lt;&#x2F;shameless&gt;

Disconnected the TV from the aerial. I now watch a fraction of TV that I used to (via streaming or personal library).<p>I used to waste so much time watching reruns and trash TV just because it was there when I turned the TV on.

I have been building micro-habits that make small increments in improving my life. I am currently working on three things: reading, exercising and coding; every day in my personal spare time. I use an iOS app to track progress (Way of Life). The key is to make them easy to accomplish so you do them everyday and it becomes a habit that can grow into something more difficult.

I stopped eating regular meals and live of a cup of black unsugared coffee, a cup of water and a daily switched apple or can of tuna in natural olive oil. I haven&#x27;t felt healthier in years. Regular meals are not necessary to survive and with this diet you will save a lot of money, feel healthier and become spiritually awakened.

Writing like pg.

I haven&#x27;t yet - but I&#x27;m planning to ban the smart phone and tablet computer from the bedroom.

For me, it was a tidy set of lifestyle choices that I made, all at once:<p>1. Stopped drinking. 2. Started running three miles every morning, crack of dawn. 3. Stopped watching TV. 4. Cut out almost all junk&#x2F;fast food.<p>The change in my productivity and general sense of well-being has been profound.

It was a long time ago, but I used a golf scoring gadget to keep count of my daily driving excesses. Counting a behavior changes it. The awareness broke the habit. Improvements of course were to the number of points on my license and the safety of all.

Started practicing touch typing a year back. Doubled my typing speed from 30wpm to 60wpm.

Quitting smoking. Best habit I ever had. It improves my life every time I pick it up.

Stopped eating fast food and drinking any artificial flavored&#x2F;sweetened&#x2F;preserved drinks (exception beer).<p>Closely linked: learned to cook for myself and making an effort to cook something I&#x27;ve never tried once a week.

1. Going to the gym as the first thing in the morning.<p>2. Saying &quot;No&quot; more often.

I quit smoke, also, quit eating outside. The improvements were impressive:<p>1. Better sleep. 2. Better weight control. 3. Skin stopped being dry. 4. Better sex life too. 5. Good energy.<p>I never measure my work productivity.

I started running and waking up earlier. They looked so big to begin with but they were very very easy to adopt. Now i am trying to finally quit smoking once and for all.

Psychedelic drugs. They help keep priorities in order and aid creativity by forcing you to examine different points of view and approach problems from different angles.

Drinking green tea helped triple my water intake. Sharply cutting carbohydrates from my diet. Lifting weights 3X a week.<p>I am in better physical and mental shape than ever before.

Dropped politics, picked up a good office chair.

it seems almost everyone disconnect himself from the economy in some way to improve lifestyle. I myself stopped consuming sugar, started lifting weights, got married, got kids, learned how to make sourdough bread, kefir, how to build bicycle wheel, how to slaughter animal, how to keep bees... Wow it is a lot for the 3 years :)

1) Pomodoro Technique while working on tasks 2) Running &quot;StayFocused&quot; on the background while doing tasks.

less worrying about being next billion dollar app and focusing on critical thinking

- Not taking so seriously my career. - Practicing a sport, in my case swimming.

Stopped reading Hacker News.

Started jogging. Its helping me stay active the whole day and sleep better.

quit fapping<p>r&#x2F;NoFap

Starting a Keto diet

Anapana and Vipassana meditation during insomnia.

soft drinks

- I stopped trying to control life. Started focusing on how I can make the best of what Im presented in life.

Study the Bible and&#x2F;or Zen poetry every morning, preferably before reading anything else.