17 Easy Habits To Start Today That Will

Help You 5 Years From Now

By Drake Baer | Business Insider 21 hours ago

Bill Dickinson / flickr

W hat can we do today to help out our future selves in 2019 ?

A recent Quora thread was full of such contemplations, originally addressed to a

23-year-old physics student but applicable to everybody.

Here are the takeaways.

1. Pick up an athletic hobby that you can do through the

years. Otherwise, the sedentary lifestyle you start in college and continue into
the office will do awful things to your posture, back, and gut. Your office job is
trying to kill you. It's your job to prevent that from happening. David Cannon

2. Write down the key points of what you did for the day. This may seem
trivial, but it will show how you spend your day. Harvard Business School
research shows that as little as 15 minutes of written reflection at the end of the
day can make you way more productive on the job. Stan Hayward

3. Talk to one stranger every day. Strangers = opportunity. Opportunities to

make new friend, to get new ideas, to get rid of that fear of talking to strangers, to
start a business venture, and much more.Who you know predicts your career,
happiness, and health, so expand your network as much as you can. Ashraf
Sobli

4. Learn to listen well. People love to talk about themselves, so cultivate the
ability to let them do that. Charles Tips

5. Waste less time. Life is composed of days, days of hours, hours of minutes.
And you only get so many in a lifetime. Anonymous

6. Find happiness in the process of accomplishing your dreams. Avoid

the "deferred life plan." Instead of "doing what you have to do" now and then
"doing what you want to do" at some hazy time in the future, find a way to do
what you like today. Dan Lowenthal

7. Build strong friendships, and be kind to people. You're more like your
friends than you think. Edina Dizdarevic

8. Diversify your experiences. The broader your life experiences, the more
creative your ideas and the better you can relate to people. Dan Lowenthal

9. Save money. Put a little bit away with each paycheck, and do it automatically
so you don't miss it. India L. J. Mitchell

10. Drink with old people. They've been there, done that, and have lived to
tell you the tale. Ben Hinks

11. Start meditating. It trains your brain to be able to deal with the madness of
each day. Anonymous

12. Learn to work with shame and doubt. Everybody experiences these
emotions, as sociologist Bren Brown has evidenced, but few people learn how to
healthfully cope with them. Diego Mejia
13. Go outside. It's easy to stay indoors all the time. So go for hikes. Cognitive
psychologists have shown that a little "wilderness bathing" can be a tool against
depression and burnout. Stephen Steinberg

14. Get to know people who are different from you. If you're a liberal,
make friends with conservatives. If you're part of Occupy Wall Street, befriend a
banker. If you're a city mouse, get to know a country mouse. Why? Many reasons,
one of them being that we make better decisions in diverse groups. Judy Tyrer

15. Date everything. Whether you're connecting with a person, taking notes
during a meeting, or stuffing takeout into the fridge, knowing the date of when
something happened is useful in ways you can't predict. Dee Vining

16. Read novels. Fiction is "emotional and cognitive simulation;" novels train
you in understanding other people's experiences of life. Anunay Arunav

17. Set minimum goals. Read 15 pages a day, do 20 pushups, floss one tooth.
This way you can break gigantic projects into day-sized tasks. Christopher
Webb

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