Unbillable

2 January 2025

Happy New Habits

Read time: 3:00 minutes

Happy New Year!

Enjoy the holidays?

I did — and I’m drained: heavy food, little exercise, too much alcohol.

I'm excited to get back to my old routines — and establish new ones. Like reading 10 pages in bed before falling asleep every night.

Now is the perfect time: January is calm after the year-end hustle. You have time while others ease into their year.

Do you have New Year resolutions?

Practicing them is one thing. Making them stick is another.

Most people struggle: 2 out of 3 give up their New Year resolutions within a month.[1]

Don’t worry if that happened to you in the past. You’re not alone — and I’ve been there, too.

Want a new habit to stick? For me, 3 things are key:

1. Make it easy.
2. Make it specific.
3. Track your progress.

Before we dive in, let's think of an example. A habit you want to build.

How about 5 minutes of box breathing daily?

It's one of my favourite breathing exercises. The US Navy SEALs do it, Novak Djokovic does it as part of his morning routine.

It helps you:

• Reduce stress and anxiety.
• Become calm and focused.
• Balance your nervous system.

I invite you to try it out. Or use this example as a blueprint if you want to build other habits (first).

1. Make it easy

12 years ago, I meditated for the first time. I started full-on: 10 days of silent meditation in India. Vipassana:

Lots of one-hour meditation sessions each day.

Noble silence for the entire stay — no talking, no reading, not even looking anyone in the eye.

I saw it as a challenge and sat through it.

How do you continue at home? Our teacher told us to meditate at least for one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening.

As a good student, I tried this back in Berlin. It worked incredibly well... for one day. And my frustration about this put me off meditation for years.

I later built my meditation and breathwork practice. This time, I used baby steps. I started with a minimal commitment:

5 minutes, every day.

You could lower the bar further.

But 5 minutes are a most effective investment if you want to reduce general stress and anxiety. A meta-study found this to be the threshold for an effective breathwork session — with benefits comparable to longer sessions.[2] (Of course, you can do a shorter breathing session to calm you down in a stressful situation.)

Start short and steady. Expand when you're ready.

Once you've built the habit, it's easy to expand to 7, 10, 15 minutes — if you enjoy it and feel the benefits.

Those baby steps get you a long way:

5 minutes each day
= 1,825 minutes at the end of the year.
That's 30 hours of breathwork.

20 minutes on a random day once a week
= 1,040 minutes at the end of the year.
That's 17 hours of breathwork.

2. Make it specific

Ask yourself:

• What exactly am I gonna do?
• Where?
• When?

Plan ahead and be as specific as you can. Leave no room for interpretation.

"I will do 5 minutes of breathwork in the morning."

Seems clear. But is it?

"I will do 5 minutes of box breathing on my meditation pillow in the living room first thing after I wake up in the morning."

10x clearer, 10x better.

Often, you cannot give a specific time as your schedule varies. Tie your new habit to an existing habit: waking up, having your first coffee, ending your lunch break, brushing your teeth, falling asleep, etc.

3. Track your progress

Awareness keeps you on track:

• Seeing your streak grow is rewarding.
• It’s OK if you slip once every now and then — you won't lose your habit.[3]
• Slip twice in a row, and a bad habit may start.

I use a simple excel sheet as a habit tracker. Download it here. I fill it out on my reMarkable, but you can print it for your journal or warderobe door.

You can also use one of the countless habit tracker apps out there.

Which new habit did you choose and how it did it go, Jan? Reply to this email and let me know.

Thank you for reading.

Much love,

Jan

P.S.

Share this with someone who wants to establish a new (breathwork) habit.

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