This quote apparently originally came from Ecclesiastes 3:1 in the bible:

“There’s a time for everything that is done on Earth”

Most interpretations of this line could be paraphrased in two words — “divine timing”

I’d like to employ this line in a totally different way.

I love optimizing my habits & routine so I can be healthy, feel good, work actively toward my goals, & fill my own cup (so that I can pour from it). I was talking recently to a friend about how certain activities feel hard to do even if we enjoy them & they enrich our life. She wishes she read more lately, and I have a hard time sitting down to respond to my recent penpals. There’s nothing inherently difficult about these activities, and they’re things we want to do. And yet there’s so much friction.

I offered a possible solution based on my own reading habits: carve out a certain time of day (or place) where you consistently read (or do a high-friction activity).

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First thing in the morning

As an example, every morning when I’m taking Chinese herbs, I take ~20 minutes to drink them up, and wait a bit to let my body process them before eating breakfast. This allocation of my morning is very consistent. If I’m on an herbal formula, I always drink my herbs first thing in the morning and wait ~30 minutes before eating anything. With this built-in time, I sit on my couch and read. It’s one of my favorite routines!

I picked up The Anxious Generation (in my ongoing effort to renegotiate my relationship with the internet & social media and after my sister gushed about it) from my library after waiting in line for a couple months, and I have only 2 weeks to read it since there’s a long line & it’s newly-released book. It’s nearly 400 pages and it reads like a long essay (plus reading non-fiction isn’t my usual go-to), so it sometimes feels like homework.

Instead of letting it feel like a chore, I can delegate my reading of this statistic-heavy tome mostly to my mornings where I’ll be sitting quietly drinking my herbs.

At the gym

I’ve also been reading a lot of finance & entrepreneurship type books and I read them exclusively at the gym for a similar reason. I simply cannot sit at home and read a book about building a small business or managing my wealth, but if it’s the only book I have with me at the gym, it makes my time on the elliptical fly by. In the past few months I’ve started & finished 5 books on the cardio machine at my gym. I plan to write an entire post about this as it’s one of my favorite things ever.

What are some times (e.g. right before bed) or places (e.g. on the subway to work) where you can insert a habit that you’d like to cultivate?