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Ever since I read Ray Dalio's Principles, I've wanted to be much more intentional about developing, internalizing and documenting the principles that guide my personal and professional life.  [1]

Mark Twain once said that, "The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read."  But the man (or woman!) who reads, and yet takes no action, still has no advantage over the man who cannot read.  And it dawned on me that, although I've read a lot of great books with tons of great ideas, I usually don't remember much about the ideas I've read.  And I put even less of those ideas into practice.

I recently resolved to change that failing.  

Let's start with an actual example:  I read somewhere that "Complaining is not a strategy." 

Upon reflection, I realized that, when stuck in an unpleasant situation, I often just sit and grumble, which accomplishes nothing positive. Conversely, high output people waste zero time complaining.  They jump directly to solutions or, if there is no practical solution, simply maintain a positive attitude, even in a negative situation.    So, to improve myself, I've decided that "Complaining is not a strategy" is a principle I want to internalize.

The first step is simply remembering it.  In the past, I would have read that and thought, "that's cool, I'll try to complain less."  And forgotten about it five minutes later.

But this time I did something different.

I emailed myself with just a subject line that read:  "Complaining is not a strategy."  Along with a link to where I originally read the idea:

And, since I have the email with the link, here's the original Tweet where I discovered this phrase:

Here's the magic:  Gmail had recently introduced the "snooze" feature.  So, I simply snoozed that email until the following day.

The next morning, as I scanned my inbox, I thought "oh yeah, Complaining is not a strategy" and snoozed it again.

After a while, I started snoozing it for longer periods of time.  If I start to forget it again, I go back to snoozing it daily until I feel it's re-internalized.  I've created my own poor man's "Spaced repetition" learning system.  And while I'm sure there's a slicker way to do this, email is the only place I know for sure that I'll see every day, even when on vacation (which, as it turns out, is a time that I needed daily reminders to complain less when in useless situations at an airport, in a line, etc).

Now, I know this system is working because I've started to catch myself in the act of complaining and I actively stop myself.  And even voicing the phrase helps ease the tension that others feel.  When someone with me starts complaining, I just respond, "Yeah, this situation isn't great, but what can you do?  Complaining is not a strategy."  Or "Don't argue with reality" (which is another related idea I've been snoozing).

I've now built up dozens of these ideas and I feel for the first time in my life, I'm actually remembering, acting upon, and internalizing great ideas that I read in books.

The only caveat is this:  after you build up a lot of these, it sometimes happens that you get a large number of them all at once.  When that happens, it adds a bit of time to my email routine, but email can be a slog anyway.  Now, at least, it's a slog that improves my character a tiny bit.

That's my "life hack" for today.  Would love to hear others in the comments!

Sincerely,

Clint Watson

BoldBrush/FASO Founder & Art Fanatic

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Footnotes:

1.  I'm defining a "Principle" loosely as an idea, value, or practice that I want to remember, internalize and incorporate into my way of living.