Breathe

One of the quickest ways to hack into your relaxation response is through your breath. While you could go all Wim Hof here, the small investment of five minutes in a simple breathing protocol each evening can yield a big benefit in putting you into deep recovery. Here’s one we got from Brian Mackenzie, co-founder of XPT Life with Laird Hamilton and creator of The Art of Breath seminars. Do a nasal inhale, a breath hold and a nasal exhale with a 1:3:2 ratio. So try a four-second inhale, 12-second hold and eight-second exhale, while laying down. If the hold is too long, simply start your exhale when you feel you need to take another breath. Or if the hold makes you anxious, try scaling back to a four-second nasal inhale and eight-second nasal exhale. Struggling to fall asleep? Repeat the breathing sequence. We bet you’ll be out long before you can count 100 sheep.

Read

When Tim Ferriss was putting together his latest bestselling book, Tools of Titans, he noticed a few commonalities in the habits of the innovators he’d interviewed over the years. The most consistent practice? Almost all of them read for at least 30 minutes a day. This is shown to not only boost vocabulary, but also improve memory, learning and cognitive performance in general. Sure, we know many people like to fire up their Kindle or iPad to read, but doing so can interfere with the melatonin production necessary for quality sleep by exposing you to junk light. Reading a real analog book has all the same benefits, adds in that tangibility of a nice deckle-edge hardback that’s often lost in this digital age and removes the light issue. Not much of a book person? Then pick up a magazine about something you’re interested in and read that instead. The effects of reading can be so profound that in the UK, mental health professionals sometimes prescribe reading to people with stress and anxiety issues. Plus, if you’re a parent, reading is one of the best ways to further your child’s learning – that goes for aunts and uncles, too.

Organize Tomorrow

Why do we insist on starting each day in such a frantic hurry? One of the reasons is because we underestimate the time it takes to do everything in the morning and so end up running around like a kid on a school playground (though with less fun). One way to preempt this is to set your alarm for 15 to 30 minutes earlier than usual, and then go to bed a quarter to half an hour earlier, too. This is just a small shift that won’t mess up your sleep pattern, but will give you more time to get coffee made, lunches packed and everything else you need to do first thing. Plus, if you leave the house a bit before usual, perhaps you can beat at least part of rush hour and get a jump on your commute. It’s also beneficial to write out a few to do’s in the evening, and then re-arrange the list to prioritize two or three must-do’s at the top. Good ol’ pen and paper are fine. You can also use your phone’s calendar to create time blocks for business, school and personal tasks, and/or use an app like Wunderlist. This way you’ll start tomorrow feeling focused and purposeful.

 
Newsletter

Only the best. We promise.

Contribute

Join our community of contributors.

Apply