Our life mostly consists of habits, good and bad. Habits can come and go, but some of them have proven so essential, I'll call them my non-negotiables. There's a famous saying: Sow a thought and you reap an action; Sow an act and you reap a habit; Sow a habit and you reap a character; Sow a character and you reap a destiny. Over time, I understood that even the smallest daily actions—the ones we commit to even when no one is watching—compound into a better body we have, clearer mind and so on. Only after starting, sticking and stacking these habits, I've started to see a cleaner picture what I wish to become. Habits, and then goals based on those habits act as anchors even if we're struggling. So here's my list of non-negotiable habits: 1. Gym It makes more sense to say "exercise", but that wouldn't be the truth. Gym, which you pay money for, which you have to go in at specific day and time, where a coach is waiting for you, works way better than just "exercise". I've signed up to lose weight initially—with time realized on my own experience that it's helpful beyond that. Regular exercise improves mental clarity, sex drive, makes you more resilient, happier, stronger (duh). I would also add that gym can act as a stepping stone to start building other good habits. It teaches you that results take time and effort, and getting out of habit is costly. Getting results is hard, losing them is easy. At times you'll be weaker, others - full of energy and unstoppable. But it doesn't matter: consistency wins motivation and fluctuation. 2. Cooking Healthy Food & Dieting Despite food delivery services are available almost everywhere at the tap of a button, there are huge benefits to cook your own food. Money is just one small aspect of it. I'm not a professional cook and also I'm lazy: so my food is simple and nutritious. It's also easier to maintain diet: You cook for yourself. If you make yourself fast food, you're conscious of it. If you order it, well, that's it. That's what someone else cooked, not me. Yes, you may hate yourself for ordering fast food, but you didn't put time and effort into cooking it. Food delivery apps are designed to make you choose and order fast, and they often (always?) promote fast food. Choosing and ordering ready-made food is not the same as cooking it. Did I mention that home-cooked meals are tastier? Let me guess: it has to do with the effort you've put in. If you get into the habit of cooking, you'll realize that ordering it in fact takes MORE time. Food delivered to you loses its taste and quality fast, so you're incentivized to order daily, which... takes time. You'll get bored of one restaurant, you'll have to search for another one. Contrast that with simple cooking: once a week. You also have to wait for the delivery guy, answer the phone, pick your order, unpack it. Once I started working out, it became obvious that gym wasn't enough to achieve results that I want. It's proven that losing weight is calories in, calories out. What You Eat Is What You Get. Your situation might be different and you may not need dieting, but: What if you became sick and your activity would go down? What if you've stopped moving? Exercise and diet go hand in hand, they're useful together: If you were only dieting and now started eating junk food - game over. If you were only exercising and became too lazy - game over. If you were doing both, but one of them fails, it's bad as it is. But at least it's not a complete fuck-up. 3. Writing There's a saying that reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. I agree, but I would say that writing is even more important. Reading is passive, writing is active. One might argue that one is impossible without the other, and they may be right. But how many people do you know that do write? Even if we count the ones that don't publish their thoughts, I bet it will be a smaller number than an already miniscule number of readers. I don't even remember my initial motivation behind writing, nowadays I just do. It helps me reflect and organize my thoughts. Even in the age of AI, it is (and will be) an important and high value skill. What did LLMs learn from? Writing. If you're a writer - you have to write about something, you have to write. And since you have that need, you'll start to get ideas on what to write about. And those ideas will spawn new ideas. 4. Quality Sleep Humans need food, water, oxygen and sleep. It's our recharging mechanisms. I've started to see the benefits of quality sleep only after experiencing horrible insomnia, difficulty waking and getting up AND following a specific, strict sleeping schedule. For me it's bedtime at midnight and getting up at 8, for you it might be different. But don't overlook consistency. You'll have to have a long sleep experiment, where you'll stick to a sleep schedule for quite some time, and you'll understand. Even on the weekends. Every. Single. Day. Otherwise, keep being tired and sleepy, I can't help you. 5. Walking Walking gives us space for self-reflection, makes us absorb Vitamin D, breathe fresh air for a change and stretch our mind (lol), body and legs. It makes us discover new places and our mind wander. It's not the same as gym.