What am I doing now?

Hello, Habits (Fumio Sasaki)

Another great book by Fumio Sasaki. This book is all about habits. Chapter 1 talks about willpower, chapter 2 defines what habits are, chapter 3 outlines 50 steps for building or breaking habits, and chapter 4 concludes with how our lives run on habits. Sasaki’s ability to write poignant insights on simple ideas is what makes me love his writing.

I loved this book. I think you should read it.

Why is it so hard to build habits?

Because we choose immediate gratification over delayed gratification. Behavior is based on rewards and punishments. We think immediate rewards are better than delayed rewards. For example, would you want $10 today, or $15 two days from today? Most people would want the $10 today. This is called hyperbolic discounting. Sasaki writes in chapter 1, “people tend to overestimate the rewards in front of them and underestimate the rewards and punishments that exist in the future.”

How do we build habits?

Sasaki writes in chapter 2, “to form a habit is to change the part of yourself that’s an animal—the part that’s governed by your unconscious.“ What he means is that building habits is a physical process in the brain. When we do something pleasurable, the brain builds neurons that associate the actions (routines) with those feelings (rewards). It’s cause and effect: I see a pizza (trigger); I ate pizza (routine); eating pizza made me feel good (reward); you should eat more pizza. The more we do the action, the stronger that association becomes. The neurons become bigger. Eventually, the habit will become automatic.

Greatest hits from chapter 3

In Chapter 3, Sasaki offers 50 steps for building and quitting habits. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Step 2. First, decide you’re going to quit.
  
• Step 4. Quit completely—it’s easier.
  
• Step 5. Know that you always have to pay the price.
  
• Step 12. Realize that enthusiasm won’t occur before you do something.
  
• Step 13. Whatever you do, lower your hurdles.
  
• Step 18. Make your targets ridiculously small.
  
• Step 20. Do it every day (it’s easier).
  
• Step 33. Keep records of your habits.
  
• Step 39. Look only at the targets in front of you.
  
• Step 41. Stop worrying about how long it will take for something to become a habit.
  
• Step 44. Overcome each challenge along the way.
  
• Step 49. Make peace with the knowledge that your habits will eventually collapse.

Nugget Ideas

1. Talent is made through effort; effort is maintained through habit; habits can be learned.
   
2. Everything is based on rewards and punishments.
   
3. More free time makes us unhappy; we want to be doing things.
   
4. Many actions are not driven by our awareness. But we blame our awareness when we do the wrong things, “oh! I wasn’t paying attention, I was distracted!” Awareness and willpower are not the causes of our actions.
   
5. Forming habits is like resisting a single marshmallow to get two instead; over and over, until you start feeling the two are so much better than the one. The goal is to use all means possible to resist the single marshmallow in favor of the two.
   
6. Break down the triggers and rewards of your habits. Where was I? What time was it? How was I feeling? Who else was there? What had I been doing?
   
7. You won’t regret doing good habits; you will regret not doing them.
   
8. Little hurdles add up to big hurdles. Waiting for the text editor to load encourages you to quit before you start. Every hurdle impedes action. It doesn’t matter how good the reward is if the culmination of hurdles means you never get it.
   
9. Spend more on the initial investment to increase the punishment for quitting. The author spent $5000 on a guitar when he wanted to learn how to play; it encouraged him to stick with it rather than waste that investment. The alternative approach of buying something too cheap while trying something out is fine, but it doesn’t encourage you to stick with it, because the pain of quitting isn’t much.
   
10. To build good habits, have the right tools.
    
11. Make the task so damn easy you can’t not do it.
    
12. Write a diary in a foreign language.
    
13. Don’t wait for a good time to start. Start today, now.
    
14. Consistency is the default if it’s done every day. Otherwise, you introduce hurdles like maintaining the frequency of the habit.
    
15. Don’t make up excuses as you go. Decide ahead of time what your exceptions will be.
    
16. It’s not too late to start.
    
17. Satisfaction goes beyond how good you are at something. Joy isn’t found just in the results.
    
18. “A plan relieves you of the torment of choice.” —Saul Bellow, attributed.

Favorite Quotes

These quotes are from chapter 3:

“Things that take time don’t get used.”

“Columnist Frank Crane wrote, as one of his ten daily resolutions, “Just for today, I will be happy.” “Just for today” is the opposite of “I’ll do it tomorrow.” It doesn’t matter if you don’t act tomorrow. But you do it, just for today. And then, you think the same way when tomorrow comes.”

“There is suffering in continuing to practice habits. But compared to the regrets we have when we don’t practice them, I think it’s far better to do them. By accumulating failures in our attempts to do something, we will someday gain a greater amount in rewards. If we don’t make the attempt, we’ll have the same regrets anyway, and we’ll also have a sense of self-doubt. So we can choose whichever seems to be even slightly better: doing the task at hand, even when we don’t want to.”

The first five days are the hardest.

Today marks the fifth day since I quit YouTube and Reddit. In Hello, Habits, Fumio Sasaki says that the first five days are the hardest when trying to quit a habit. I agree.

Every day for the last five days, I wanted to scroll on Reddit. Sometimes I get the itch 10 times a day or more. I would catch myself swiping on my phone to find the app. Only to abruptly realize that the app wasn’t there. Oh, that’s right, I’d think, remembering that I deleted it.

When I sat down for a meal, I’d feel a lack of something else to do. I’ve watched YouTube videos while eating for so long that eating without it was excruciating. Now I listen to audiobooks to ease the need that YouTube left. I like this because I’ve wanted to read and listen to more books this year. I’ve already finished 4 books!

It is interesting how automatic the need is to seek out new routines that yield the same rewards that the apps provided. Without Reddit, I find myself scrolling through college catalogs, program lists, and course descriptions to get the same fix.

Over time, it’ll get easier. The need for these apps slowly subsides. I think that if you can get past the first five days, then the next five days will be easier, and the next five days after those will be even easier, and so on. I used to use these apps every day. In a year, I doubt I will notice their absence.

Meditations For Mortals (Oliver Burkeman)

Great book from one of my favorite writers. Absolutely recommend it. All about embracing an “imperfect life.”

January 2026

1. There’s so much information that you have to choose what to pay attention to. You can’t do it all. So learn to see it as like a flowing river. You accept what you can get and let go of the rest. I won’t read every book on my reading list for this year. But I can read the ones I most want to read. And that is good enough.
   
2. 15 minutes is a reasonable/minimal amount of time to get work done. Little bits add up to big chunks. Sometimes all you can manage is a little bit for a long way, but that leads to success.
   
3. 2-3 hours every day is the maximum for how long someone ought to work. After this, you start to get diminishing returns. Most of the best writers achieved success this way.
   
4. Just as there’s too much information to absorb, there are also too many things that claim your attention. You have to decide for yourself what your capacity to care for a certain topic will be. And then do that. Decide ahead of time that “I don’t need to have an opinion about this. I won’t care about this.” Free yourself up to focus on the things that matter. Simplified, know your business and mind your business.
   
5. Having it done is better than having it perfect. Quantity over quality is a better rule for getting things done.
   
6. Trying to make everyone happy is a fool’s errand. Learn to be disagreeable. It’s better to tell someone upfront that you can’t do x or y, instead of dragging them out and causing them additional stress and problems.
   
7. “C’est fait par du monde.” People did that. Everything you look at or enjoy or eat - someone made it. A big bridge, a cool car, a delicious meal, a magnificent book - it’s all people. And if they could do that, what can you do?
   
8. There are a lot of things that you absolutely want and need to half-ass. Not everything needs your full attention and ability. If you try to 100% everything, you’ll eventually burn out. You have to learn what should be whole-assed and what should be half-assed.

Goodbye, Things (Fumio Sasaki)

Probably my favorite book of 2024. I listened to the audiobook probably two or three dozen times now. It’s about minimalism, and it’s probably the only book on minimalism you need.

January 2026

1. “There’s happiness in having less.”
   
2. We want things, not realizing that we already have the things we really want.
   
3. We become unhappy with our stuff because we get used to having them. We think something else will make us happy, and it might for a bit, but then we’ll get used to having it. Then we look for something else that might make us happy again. And so the cycle repeats.
   
4. We use our belongings to convey our self-worth. The problem is that our collection of things starts to grow too big. “The more we accumulate and the harder we work to build a collection that communicates our qualities, the more our possessions themselves will start to become the qualities that we embrace. In other words, what we own equals who we are.”
   
5. We start to collect more things when we start to identify with our things. We feel having more things would make us happier, better, more liked, etc.
   
6. Anyone can become a minimalist. “We only think that we’re unable to part with our possessions.”
   
7. The more you give away, the more that comes back. What we gain from parting with something, time, space, freedom, energy, etc., is worth more than the thing we gave up.
   
8. Ask yourself why you can’t part with something. Expensive, guilt, shame, sentimentality, vanity, or laziness?
   
9. If you want to be a minimalist, you should make it a priority, because it takes effort to do it. And we’re more likely to take the path of least resistance (keep our things) than to part with them.
   
10. There isn’t a single item you’ll regret throwing away.
    
11. Start with junk.
    
12. Minimize multiples. You don’t need three rolls of tape. You don’t need 10 pens.
    
13. Discard it if you haven’t used it in a year.
    
14. Organizing is not minimizing.
    
15. You say, “Someday I might use this.” No, you won’t. Get rid of it. “Someday” is a terrible excuse to keep things.
    
16. “I forgot I had this!” Great! Get rid of it. If you forgot about it, part with it.
    
17. Don’t get hung up on value.
    
18. If you need something, a store will have it.
    
19. Learn to live outside of your space - cafes, libraries, etc., rather than having that stuff at home.
    
20. Keep things that you’re truly passionate about. Discard things that you don’t feel anything for. Gauge your passion for a thing by asking yourself “if I lost it, would I buy it again at full price?” Anything short of “yes” should be discarded. Don’t keep anything that’s “good enough” either.
    
21. Your memories, your sentiments are not your things. Parting with those things is not parting with memories.
    
22. Big items want small items. An iPad wants a keyboard and a monitor. Your iPhone wants a watch, AirPods, a fancy case, wireless charger, etc. Don’t have big items and the small items won’t follow.
    
23. Collections belong in museums, not our homes.
    
24. Don’t have things. Borrow things you need. Rent what can be rented.
    
25. Find accountability in social media, a blog, or others.
    
26. What items would you replace or keep if you started from scratch, from having nothing?
    
27. Some things might be harder to part with. Put those things away for a month or two, if you can. If you can, part with it. “See you later” before “goodbye.”
    
28. Golden rule of minimizing: “if you want to buy something, get rid of something else first.”
    
29. Remember the Concorde fallacy: putting in more and more money into something to the point it multiplies the initial value. An $800 iPhone doesn’t need $800 in accessories.
    
30. Admit mistakes and forgive yourself. “I thought this was a good idea but it wasn’t.” I spent $300 on winter gear when I didn’t need to.
    
31. Say no to free things and cheap things.
    
32. Cut through indecision: should I discard this? If it’s not a “hell no,” it’s a “yes.”
    
33. “The things we really need will always find their way back to us.”
    
34. “Discarding things can be wasteful. But the guilt that keeps you from minimizing is the true waste.”
    
35. Having less isn’t being less satisfied; it’s the opposite. You can learn to be more satisfied with what you truly value.
    
36. I thought about discarding this thing more than five times. Then do it already.
    
37. Some inconvenience can make us happier.
    
38. Some things spark joy. Even if it does, try to part with it, too. “Be brave and let go of things that spark joy — what you gain can be tremendous.”
    
39. “The memories of the trouble we went through to obtain a certain object, the price we paid to make it our own, or the stories that surround it will raise its value to us. But no matter how expensive or how wonderful an item may be to us, it won’t have that same value to someone else. It will simply be another item.”
    
40. Minimalism isn’t the point but a method to the point. What matters to you? You’ll find that through living a minimalist lifestyle. But it isn’t just the minimalism itself.

What are better ways to spend a life?

Instead of wasting my life away on social media, what could I be doing instead?

Reading and Studying

So many books that I’ve wanted to read, but I hadn’t made the time. Too busy being distracted. Now I’m earning that time back. And I want to spend a lot of it catching up on my reading list and my philosophy studies.

I also have many interests that I’ve wanted to explore, too. Supply chain, logistics, engineering, neuroscience and psychology, cybersecurity, poetry. I’d like to spend some time with these topics, seeing what they’re about and if any of them stick.

Writing and Journaling

I’m excited to be writing again for this blog. I believe that writing is thinking, and for a while, I had trouble articulating my thoughts and experiences. I hope with time and practice this will get easier because of this blog. I do want to start journaling too, though perhaps this blog can serve some of that role instead.

Exercising and Fasting

Becoming healthier is an absolute must this year. I’ve neglected it for too long now, and now the biggest excuses are gone. I have goals of riding my exercise bike for 30 minutes daily-ish, working my way up to an hour or more, too.

I haven’t done fasting for months, or has it been a year? I’ll start again. It felt good to do. And I could certainly eat a lot less and more cleanly.

There are lots of other things that I’d want to do, too. Learn a new skill, start giving 10% of my income to effective charities, and go back to finish my degree. But, overall, I’d like to be a better man.

Why quit social media?

Why do I want to quit YouTube and Reddit? Simply because I don’t want to be addicted to these platforms anymore. I don’t want to squander my life anymore.

I spent 3-4 hours almost every day watching YouTube content, for over a decade. It adds up to over 11,000 hours. I have spent literally years of my life on YouTube. What can I show for that kind of investment? Almost nothing.

In the last week, I spent over 18 hours on Reddit. It was the first app I opened after picking up my phone 125 times. This comes after using the app every day for almost two months straight. I was so addicted that I noticed myself thinking in Reddit posts. Sometimes it wasn’t a positive thought but a negative one, defending myself in an all-so-common Reddit argument.

Henry David Thoreau wrote in “Economy,” from Walden, that “the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” I paid so much for something now I know to be worth so little. I know there are better ways to spend my life.