Even one change in daily routine can positively affect our lives. Paying attention to habits and trying to form new ones can bring us closer to long-awaited success.
Habits in different areas of life, such as sports or the ability to manage finances, demonstrate our perspectives. Fighting bad habits is a small victory that leads people to the right path. In our article, you will learn more about how to create new healthy habits and live the life of your dreams. James Clear's work and advice from books like Atomic Habits, which you can find below, will help you with this.
1. Distract less and concentrate more
It is difficult to focus on work issues when various triggers distract our attention. Social networks are the worst enemies in this situation. It's not easy to resist the temptation to open TikTok for a new video, right? We forget about essential tasks, being stuck on the phone for several hours.
You can try one option – a function of limiting time for social networks on the smartphone. But if you are ready to fight your distraction habit totally, there is a bolder step. Delete phone applications for a time until you do everything planned. Also, we advise you to read our Deep Work summary, where you can find out how to be less distracted and more productive.

2. Remember that being busy is not about productivity
Everyone is used to the pattern: the more hours we work — the more results we get. Yet, working efficiency does not depend on the time we spend on it. Usually working 9 hours a day, people pay more attention not to the main point in the planner but to different small tasks.
The study of Wilfred Pareto confirms this fact. He proved that we get 80% of the result by applying only 20% of the effort. It means you need to pay less attention to secondary things and instead focus on the important ones. By the way, you can find more details and evidence of this method's effectiveness in the 4-Hour Workweek summary, which demonstrates several practical life examples.

3. Being a good listener is a valuable habit
The people around us have a big impact on our success. New contacts can bring a lot of benefits, as well as moral support – motivation, and inspiration. How to establish contact with others and replenish your surroundings? The main secret is the ability to listen. Sounds easy, right? In fact, this is a whole art.
People can be too self-centered, so they don't like interlocutors who only talk about themselves. Instead, try to be a quiet and curious listener. In this way, you can learn more about valuable experience from successful “speakers” and hear their advice for starting your career path. Our How To Win Friends And Influence People summary will help you form better communication habits and find influential acquaintances.

4. Don’t worry about your mistakes
You open Instagram and see the perfect picture. Someone has a successful business while another person is in a happy relationship. Admiring these photos, you think how easily these people got everything. But you don't even guess how many failures they had on their way to having such a life.
There is a tip for you: don't be afraid to make mistakes. They are a part of our life that brings experience. When it is difficult to get out of a situation, and problems have piled up — use the "Do something" principle. Try to do at least something; it won't get any worse! This one and other methods on how to approach difficulties more easily are described in our The Subtle Art Of Not Giving AF summary.

5. Understand why you want to do something
There is no great result without a goal. You must know what you are striving for and what the endpoint will be. This way, you can understand where to move, how to build a "success plan", and what daily steps to take. So it will be easier to follow a specific goal and not be distracted by momentary temptations.
Write down your main goal and divide it into several smaller ones — the stages of the plan. So you will see a complete picture of the future work. Imagine a tree with many branches in your head - each of them is your "how to act" point. We also recommend you to read The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People summary to know about similar secrets for achieving what you want.

6. Appreciate your free time
The 168 Hours book reminds readers how to use their free time properly. Imagine waking up on your day off when you don't need to go anywhere. Do not rush to open Instagram and forget about lying on the sofa in front of the TV. Instead, make a list of tasks that await you.

It's time to act right now and set aside points to do while you're not busy. Write first the items you can complete in 10 minutes, then those that can be completed in 20 minutes, and so on. Now the most crucial thing: just do them when you have free time. Success does not like laziness, and lazy people often stay overboard.
7. Say goodbye to bad habits with ease
To form new habits, it is necessary to get rid of old harmful ones. People spend years trying to quit smoking or eat fewer sweets. Unfortunately, it all requires effort and strong willpower. But what if we tell you all this can be 100 times easier if you replace a bad habit with a better one?
Instead of another cigarette, you can do more useful things, such as running or going to the gym. By replacing one addiction with another more positive habit, you will be in a winning way. Various organizations for the fight against alcoholism or drugs use this method. Many studies show that it really works, and you can be sure of this by reading the confirmation in The Power Of Habit book summary.

8. Do not overcomplicate your life
Why do most people think all goals are achieved through difficulties, pain, and tears? It is just a typical human perception of work — the illusion of an overwhelming path. Yes, no one talks about the easy way to success, but everything is not always that dramatically bad.
The author of the Effortless book, Greg McKeown, tells from his experience how you can spoil everything by making things difficult for yourself. Having a negative experience, he formulated the concept of "Effortless Inversion" which emphasizes finding a simpler solution instead of going down a complicated path. Complexity is not always efficiency and a guarantee of a good result — remember this.

Getting better is always a trying process. Forming new positive habits is not so hard if you follow the rules above and those from the books we have suggested. The authors share their invaluable experience, effective methods, and the latest research that helps take a step closer to success every day. First, don't forget to read our Atomic Habits summary, which contains many tips on how to break out of the cage of bad habits and become a better version of yourself.
Another wonderful book on this topic is Better Than Before by Gretchen Rubin. It includes an ordered list of useful habits worth paying attention to. Besides the sources already mentioned in our article, we advise you to read the Happier Hour summary, where you can learn how to be not only successful but also happy. Our summaries contain a lot of interesting advice, so we recommend the Four Thousand Weeks summary that will help you value time, distribute it correctly, and not chase every minute.