📚 Elastic Habits, 50 Book Giveaway, and Gift Guide for Readers.

👋 Hey everyone,

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🥳 50 Book Giveaway

You still have a few days left to enter the 50-book giveaway!

All you have to do is share your unique referral link below and get 1 person to sign up, that’s it:

PS: It was my 30th birthday this week.

If you’d like to get me a gift, all I ask is that you share a link to my newsletter on social media. It’s a small task that would mean the world to me.

📚 Book Summary:

This week’s book is “Elastic Habits” by Stephen Guise.

I still haven’t found a habit book better than “Atomic Habits”, but this book was a decent read and relatively short (around 200 pages). If you want to build a new habit going into the New Year, consider checking it out.

Here are 3 lessons from it:

📖

1) Create Elastic Habits

One of the most important lessons from this book is that you want to create elastic (or flexible) habits.

For instance, let’s say you set a goal to read for 30 minutes every morning at 7am.

You achieve this goal every day for four days so you feel like you’re on a hot streak.

Then the next morning, you accidentally oversleep so you have to skip your morning reading session to make it to work on time.

Instead of thinking that you’ve lost your streak or failed to hit your habit, you want to be flexible and still complete your habit, just at a different time.

So maybe you do your 30 minutes of reading after dinner or before going to bed.

It doesn’t matter when or where you do it, as long as you still complete it that day to keep your streak going.

So if you miss your usual habit time, be elastic and adjust it to another time later in the day, instead of thinking you’ve lost the day.

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2) Create Multiple Ways to Win

Conventional habit wisdom makes it seem like you only have one way to win:

You either hit your daily habit goal or you miss it and fail.

But the truth is that your motivation and willpower will vary from day to day.

Some days you’ll be highly motivated to hit your habit goal but other times you won’t be.

The solution to this is to create multiple ways to win.

That’s why author Stephen Guise recommends having 3 goals for each habit.

Let’s stick with our previous reading habit example.

Instead of saying “I have to read 30 minutes every day" to consider it a win, you want to set a mini, plus, and elite habit goal:

• Mini: Read for 5 minutes today

• Plus: Read for 30 minutes today

• Elite: Read for 60 minutes today

This way, you have a smaller goal you can hit for the days when you don’t have much energy as well as a bonus goal you can achieve for the days when you have a ton of energy.

Having more ways to win will lead to more momentum and positive reinforcement which will help solidify and strengthen your new habit.

📖

3) Create Lateral Habits To Keep Moving Forward

Another excellent tip from the book is to create lateral habits.

A lateral habit is a habit that’s similar to your original habit.

It’s not the exact habit you had in mind, but it’s still moving you in the right direction.

For example, let’s say you want to lose weight so you set a goal to bike for 30 minutes every day.

However, one day there’s heavy rain so it’s dangerous to bike outside.

Instead of taking the next day off, you can drive to the gym to do a 30-minute jog, a 30-minute ride on a stationary bike, or go for a 30-minute swim in the pool.

Here are a few more lateral habit examples:

As a result, you’ll have multiple ways you can move forward toward your desired goal,.

✅ Actionable Advice:

1) Be flexible with your habits: If you miss your regular habit time, do it later in the day.

2) Create multiple ways to win: Have a Mini-habit, Plus-habit, and Elite-habit goal.

3) Create lateral habits that will help you move toward your goal even if it isn’t your typical daily habit.

💎 Weekly Gem:

If you’re looking for a holiday gift to get a friend or family member, check out these items:

• Reading Pillow

  • This is a must for every reader. It makes reading a physical book much more ergonomic, comfortable, and enjoyable. I also use it to hold up my laptop while writing (in fact, I’m using it right now).

• Kindle Paperwhite

  • I got this Kindle for my girlfriend and she loves it. It’s super light, has a long battery, and makes it easy to read at night. It’s also a huge space saver–instead of having a hundred books in your apartment, you can have them all inside your Kindle.

• Sony Noise-Cancelling Headphones

  • These headphones are one of the best purchases I’ve made all year. I use them to listen to audiobooks on my daily walks or at the gym. I also love the noise-canceling setting that lets me read books even in noisy environments like the park or coffee shop.

• Bamboo Reading Tray for Bathtub

  • I have two friends who love reading books while enjoying a nice hot bath. This reading tray makes it easy to keep your book (and perhaps a glass of wine) dry while doing some relaxing reading.

Thank you for your support, read on everyone!

-Alex W.