Reddit reviews The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

I wake up early fairly consistently. Most Saturdays I sleep in until 8am, but throughout the week 5am is the norm. Today just happened to be 2:30am, so consistency as far as exact time isn't really a thing for me.

My morning routine I've adopted from Hal Elrod's Miracle morning. I originally read a synopsis found here after hearing about the concept. I read some reviews and thought the book was pointless to read, but I'm finally reading it now and not hating it. I thought the synopsis would be enough and the book itself would be full of fluff, but it's both inspiring and informative.

Essentially, the morning begins with 6 things. How much time you spend on each is up to you. Depending on homework, work and other tasks I have planned, I'll spend up to 2 hours doing these things and sometimes I just rush through it so I can work. Of course, again not so consistent, I do skip the routine altogether some days and I notice those days don't go too smoothly afterwards.

1. Silence/Mediation/Prayer. I'm not religious at all but strangely, I find myself praying in the morning. I find entreating myself is a way to solidify who I want to be and forces me to visualize solutions (#3). Silence and mediation is pretty self explanatory, it helps you relax. I often defer this part of my routine so that I can work on something and then meditate to relieve any stress it causes. Finally, this is a good time to remember to stretch.
   
   
2. Affirmation. I do this in two ways. I either in my writing (see #6) or during/after my mediation I'll start. Affirmations for me basically consists of repeating my goals and my personal Mission Statement (if you don't have one you should, this idea I adopted from the The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People). I end essentially forcing myself to be very excited. Not really a though process just a feeling, a rush of energy to get started.
   
   
3. Visualization. As I mentioned, I do a little prayer routine most mornings. This forces me to visualize my goals. Sometimes I just visualize something specific, like the other day I had a bench trial. Maybe I'm planning a hike or learning something new. Today I visualized next week and thought about what the week would look like in retrospect. Then I did the same for the month, and thought about my goals as if they had been achieved.
   
   4.Exercise. I usually wait till about 6 or 6:30 to wake my girlfriend up. We take our dogs for a walk and I usually run off midway with our bigger dog (she walks the little dog back to the house). Sometimes I just walk the whole route with everyone. Afterwards I'll either follow up with a workout or hit the shower. Exercise really awakens the body and of all of these things is the most important. I feel like it's great for depression, axiety and many other ailments, but then again I'm not a scientist and don't care to back up this claim for the sake of this post.
   
   
4. Reading. Not necessarily following this order, I'll often read something during the first part of my morning, before exercise (then I can think or talk about it while I jog/walk). I try to find something good on reddit, pick up a book I'm reading, or I'll work on a tutorial (web development, programming) which often involves reading. I avoid the news and negative articles for obvious reasons. Today, this thread was my reading, so it can be anything in my opinion.
   
   
5. Scribing. I usually write last. I try to write something very simple so that I don't lose motivation. The reason that writing is important in the morning is, if you write about the day before you are forced to remember something that would easily be forgotten. Writing also is a good way to do Affirmations and Visualizations, as well as plan out your day. This used to be really hard for me but then I just decided to keep it simple-stupid. So in other words, a few sentences suffices when I'm not in the mood. On the other hand, this morning I wrote a blog post and now I'm writing this. The point is, though, whatever I write doesn't have to be the length of a book.
   
   Speaking of which this post is becoming a book so I'll stop it here. Hope that helps or inspires someone. I recommend the books I've mentioned, but from what I understand Miracle Morning has basically been summed up in this post but like I said I'm enjoying it so far. As far as when you wake up, I think the earlier the better, personally and 6am just does not cut it for me.
   
   Lastly, I should mention a good way to remember the above is the acronym SAVERS. Thats why I didn't put things in order of what I do necessarily, but in the order that fits the acronym.

There’s a ton going on here, so sorry for the block of text, but I’ll try to touch on everything.


I'm just now emerging from a prolonged battle with anxiety/depression. I feel like I've progressed a ton from where I was 4 years ago, but I'd be misleading you if I said it was a quick fix.


I find that my depression gets worse the more I fall into a routine. When you feel tired and down all the time, it's easy to get stuck in a rut where you just wake up, go to work/school, go home and eat/watch TV. It's easy, and you already feel like shit, so why would you do anything that seems like it would be even more stressful? However, your life gets worse because you're doing nothing to improve it, so you retreat deeper into your hole in an attempt to feel safe. The cycle worsens. You really need to bombard yourself with stimuli to force yourself out of that comfort zone. Your survival instincts kick in and it at least allows me to feel a bit more in control of my life.


Anxiety is a bit easier. If you can identify the situations that cause you anxiety, confront them regularly. Start with baby steps and move on from there. Example: If you have social anxiety, start by asking an old friend to grab coffee with you before trying to hit a nightclub. If you're like me and just have general anxiety with no specific source, exercise is the only thing I've found that really seems to help.


You may want to try reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People . I read it a few years ago, and with a bit of tweaking to fit me, I've been able to use the first portion of the book to really help me set and reach goals. That could really help improve your self-esteem.


As for the guys you're meeting online, make sure you're being clear about what you want. I think 90% of the problems between people of opposite genders are just breakdowns in communication. You're telling us that you feel like those guys are just in it for phone sex, but are you telling them that? What exactly is your end goal perusing r4r?

I don’t think being sober or celibate (at least for the time being) is a major problem if you understand the connotations they carry. A lot of people will assume you’re boring when you tell them you don’t drink. They may also feel uncomfortable drinking around you which would lead them to avoid inviting you to social situations where alcohol is involved (See: almost every social gathering in your 20s). You need to go out of your way to be fun and outgoing. You also need to abolish any urge to criticize anyone ever about their drinking habits. These two things will shut your social life down as a non-drinker.

Not wanting sex right away is understandable. I haven’t slept with most of the girls I’ve dated. However, the lack of sex definitely carries a connotation. When I’m in a relationship with a girl and things aren’t really escalating physically, I tend to assume she’s just not that into me. If the sexual holding pattern persists for too long, and she doesn’t do anything else to show that the relationship is escalating in her eyes, I’m grabbing my parachute and jumping ship at the next possible opportunity. If you’re getting more interested in a guy, but you’re not ready to make that jump, you’re going to have to discuss this with him and respect his decision one way or the other.


TL;DR – Focus on self-improvement first by setting long term goals and creating a plan to attain them. Respect your own beliefs and feelings, but be aware of how they may make other people feel.

Glad you enjoyed it!

I tend to place a high priority on looks in apps. Not always, but many times. Reddit is no exception. RiF looks too dense to me, the font is too small, and it resembles the website way too much. I like Relay for how nice and airy it looks, there's a bit of space between posts. It's smooth, and I can scroll between comments using the volume key.

I greatly prefer My Effectiveness over Todoist. The main reason that made me shun Todoist was it's complexity and the requirement to sign up with an account or login using Facebook/Google. In contrast, ME is free and is based on your phone. But the biggest thing keeping me with ME is it's philosophy. It helps you keep everything in context, to sort to dos (or "actions", the way they call them) by not priority but objective ("Importance") and subjective ("Urgent") urgency. The way it is designed is based on the book 7 habits of highly effective people (Amazon, university PDF), which I haven't read but just based on this app is probably worth a read.

I highly recommend you check out their description of how the app is intended to be used.

Edit: Just saw your edit. Yeah, aCalendar and Etar are pretty familiar. What sold me on Etar was that it is open source and completely free, no in app purchases even. The developer even put his github source on the app page. I've been trying to move to FOSS (free and open source software) apps as much as possible. My only concern is that the app hasn't been updated since December 6. Not really a major concern for now, since it works great and looks great with not bugs that I can tell, but it makes me wonder if it is still in development.

Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Here is a really short trick -
Try to make it seem as though you are taking a real interest in what they are saying, and then ask at least two follow up questions about their topic, making sure these are not yes/no questions. Most people are just waiting for their turn to talk. The key to charisma is making the other person feel that you genuinely care.

I haven't read any of the five that made the list, but I absolutely recommend Fight Club and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. They're both very good for anyone - man or woman - to read.