Hey all,

Recently, I've been reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. In it, he writes on what he calls "Quadrant II activities" - tasks in our life that are incredibly important but not time sensitive. These activities are things we know we should do but often don't get around to because they aren't urgent.

For example, learning a new skill, creating a sleep/gym schedule, and building relationships with others are all things you can do almost whenever. It doesn't particularly matter if you start going to the gym now or in a week, as long as you start. Right?

But, it's this kind of thinking that leads many of us (me included) to put off doing meaningful things in our lives, the tasks or habits that keep us healthy and happy for long after we've completed them. Tasks like:

• Improving your diet
• Habitually getting regular exercise
• Improving your sleep
• Goal setting
• Investing in relationships
• Learning skills
• Looking for opportunities outside of our current involvement
• Checking in on your mental health.

These tasks can improve your life, but they aren't time-sensitive. However, we have got to remember that while they aren't urgent, we have to do them at some point to start reaping their long-term rewards.

Anyways, in the book, Covey goes on to list some more ways to incorporate and plan around more of these Q2 activities, and I highly recommend you read it for yourself if you'd like to learn more.

However, while useful, I think many of the self-management techniques Covey lists are a little involved for people like you and me. They entail reworking how you plan your week, sacrificing free time, or even hiring people to delegate tasks to. That's not really something most of us can do immediately.

But, while reading, I was reminded of a rule I use that can help us improve ourselves until we have the time to perfect our self-management systems. It goes a little something like this:

Live your life normally, but add 1 project.

For me, this rule has two stages - a higher level and a granular one.

At the highest level, it means always adding a project to your life on top of your routine. For example, right now, the Q2 projects I'm working on are building the habits of reading books regularly and writing this newsletter which in the long term will hopefully help me encounter new ideas and build an audience.

At this level, the goal is to incorporate and "stack" habits on top of each other so you can continuously do more things effortlessly. So, for example, at some point, I'm hoping writing these newsletters and reading books will come more naturally to me. Instead of writing for half a day like I do now, maybe a newsletter will only take an hour or two. And once that's done, it becomes part of my "normal life" and I can move on to a different project, such as fixing my sleep schedule or finding a more consistent way to get engaging exercise. In this way, you can develop a bunch of beneficial habits one by one that will pay dividends for years to come.

At the granular level, this rule is even simpler- it's just about realizing that small tasks can fit between leisurely activities. Ideally, this means completing a bit of a forward-thinking Q2 task. For example, if it's Sunday, I'll plan out my goals for the oncoming week between games of League of Legends (yes, I am ashamed). Or another good example from a couple months ago is that I set up email filters for myself between games. Hell, you could even look up "10 things I can do to improve my quality of life" to figure out some small things you can do.

Otherwise, I just try to remember that 10 minutes is 10 minutes and fold my laundry or clean a little bit of my room while playing or scrolling instagram, saving 10 or 20 minutes of my future time.

Anyways, that's all I've got for today. I hope I helped teach you something or gave you a perspective you hadn't heard before.

And if you're willing, I'd love to hear from you - did I teach you anything today? What are some projects you're working on right now? What did you enjoy, and what could be improved? Hit reply if you feel like it!

Thanks for reading, and have a great week!

Ethan

Things I'm Enjoying:

📚 Books - Both 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey and Atomic Habits by James Clear were inspirations for this weeks newsletter and I think they've really helped me make permanent improvements in my habits and day-to-day happiness.

💻 Website - Realtime Colors. Color theory is hard so I've made a lot of use from Realtime Colors in creating potential colors for this website's color scheme. Unfortunately, I don't have Ghost's "Creator" plan yet so I've had to settle for this blue and off-white scheme, but I will probably use Realtime Colors again when I upgrade to add more flair and cohesion.