Insightful Creator #2 - Breaking the Chains. Addictions into Habits.

Read time: 5 minutes.

Welcome back, creators.

The last issue of Insightful Creator was focused about expotentially increasing your productivity and organising your workflow.

Today we will go around another practical aspect - habits. But as I often go in broad detail about my topics we will discuss the bad side of it too.Addictions.Let's get into it.

This one is pretty personal for me.

I have introduced myself already in Issue #1, but as well I can do it again.

17 year old student and autodidact. Writer, solopreneur and self improvement hobbyist.

But it hasn't been that way forever. Would you believe that merely 2 months ago I was a...

Loser? Hard pill to swallow and that is completely understandable. 

Video games addiction took their toll on me already. But I won't let you share the same fate.

You must be better than me.

You can fight addictions and succeed.

Many say that when you fall for them you are already lost.

I say otherwise. There is a way out.

But it's not an easy one. While being addicted might have took its toll on you I need to remind you of a simple fact.

Dropping your addictions fucking hurts. 

I won't sugar coat it. It is a hurtful process which requires loads of willpower but do not worry.

If got over my addictions then so can you. 

Today I will help you do exactly that and also show how I replaced bad habits with good ones.

Here is what I recommend. Write a list of things that destroy you and there is a need to end them.

There is no point in escaping from the truth. Face your problems like a warrior.

Here is what I have done wrong, so you don't have to do the same

There are people out there telling you this:

"Drop the bad habits now at an instant, or you will end up as a loser."

The single worst thing that is said here is to do it at an instant. Let me tell you something...

Dropping an addiction built up over the course of many years will take also great many years to fully be mended and forgot about.

If you choose to drop it right now then there is a 95% chance that you will fall back to your old ways over the course of few upcoming days.

What I advice you to do is...

Develop a plan for dealing with your cravings and triggers

This one is a gamechanger.

Develop a plan to deal with your cravings and things that make you relapse on the bad habits. Here is how you would go around doing that:

• List three things that make you relapse on your addiction most frequently

• Replace them with similar habits but not destructive ones (for example: watching gaming content - creating content or consuming valuable content)

• Try to minimise the amount of triggers day by day

Relapses happen, but they are merely setbacks - NEVER give up afterwards.

Filling the gap in your life with good habits

When you remove a thing that you were hooked on for so long it is quite normal to feel empty and purposeless. 

You need to incorporate good habits in place of the bad ones.

And here are just a few that come into my mind:

• Reading books

• Meditating

• Hitting the gym/calinesthics

• Journaling

• Learning valuable skills

• Creating monetisable skillsets from learnt skills

• Becoming a creator and outputting content

• Honing your social skills

• Freelancing

• Reworking your diet plan

And on and on and on it goes...

Try to start with replacing a little window of your daily time with those.

15 minutes? Cool, that is enough to get started with. Progressively overload and increase it.

Rome was not built in a day.

Keep that in mind. And now, let me bring you something to your mind...

Single greatest book about implementing the right habits and increasing your productivity overall:

You were right. It's "Atomic Habits" by James Clear.

"Hey Seb, wouldn't Deep Work be a better example of a book about productivity then?"

I would say... no.

Deep Work was mentioned in past issue but it's a book about productising your workflow.

Atomic Habits is all about productising yourself.

All that you need in life could be summarised in this simple Step-by-Step plan:

• Recreate your mindset from ground up

• Implement good habits

• Stick to them and constantly work on yourself

• Let the effects compound over time.

Atomic Habits helps you realise the importance of second stage + it guides you through it.

It acquaints you with the following things:

• How habits are incorporated into your identity

• Four stages of habit formation

• How to link new habits to existing ones

• Goldilocks rule in real life

• How to create good habit systems

You can also search up a summary to expand on the topic even further. I recommend Shortform app for this.

Every single addiction is a disease.

But the thing is that you can replace bad habits with good ones.

It's all about zooming out and taking a broad perspective about things.

"Addiction is the only prison in which locks are on the inside."

I'll leave you with that quote, friends.

Thanks for tuning in. See you all at the top!