Resolutions v Habits

Resolutions v Habits

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habitWill Durant, American author It’s that time of year when many of us start to feel guilty because we’ve already given up on our New Year’s Resolutions. If that sounds like you, then I have a suggestion – try thinking about establishing new habits, rather than setting bold resolutions. Almost everything we do is a habit. Some of them do us good, like brushing our teeth, and some of them are maybe not so helpful – like having biscuits with every cup of tea you drink (guilty as charged!). Our brain is an incredible thing. Every […]

Think Big … Act Small

Think Big … Act Small

I seem to have been getting the same message from a few different places this week! I’ve been reading ‘The One Thing’, a practical book about getting things done by focusing on one single task at a time. In order to work out which task we should be doing, authors Gary Keller and Jay Papasan suggest that we need to start by thinking big – good advice that you will hear in virtually every goal setting book and blog post out there. What I like about their approach is how they go on to argue that we then need to start working on the smallest possible task that will move […]

4-minute miles and 2-hour marathons

4-minute miles and 2-hour marathons

Last weekend in Berlin, Eliud Kipchoge set a new world record for the marathon of 2:01:39. He averaged 4:38 per mile, and took an astonishing 78 seconds off the previous record. Kipchoge has trained for years in order to set that world record. For decades he has monitored his diet and sleeping habits, has run hundreds of miles a week and spent countless hours in the gym, all to get his body into the best condition possible. Without that physical preparation, he couldn’t run the way he does. But there’s another side to the story. Back in 1954, Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile barrier. Before Bannister’s run, most people […]

What Can You Do With 10 Minutes A Day?

What Can You Do With 10 Minutes A Day?

Is there anything you’ve always wanted to learn? Maybe a language? A musical instrument? Or how to build a website? One of the things that holds most of us back is the idea that the thing we want to learn is too big – when you’re just starting out, it can seem overwhelming. You’re probably familiar with the old joke about how to eat an elephant … the answer is ‘one bite at a time’. I think we all know this, but it can be something that’s difficult to apply in real life. Taking that one bite – especially the first one – seems a bit pointless. It doesn’t feel […]