59 Seconds

59 Seconds teaches you how to improve your mindset, happiness, and life in less than a minute each thanks to several quick self-improvement wins, all grounded in the science of psychology.

One of the most popular techniques in self-improvement is visualizing your goals. You sit down, close your eyes, and imagine yourself achieving your dreams, as well as doing the things necessary to get there. I’ve done it for a while as part of my Miracle Morning and found it to be helpful.

However, there’s also some opposing evidence to this with some studies finding people tend to work less for their goals if they visualize them.

One thing that’s timelessly been proven to work is this: having a step-by-step plan. When Richard examined the New Year’s resolutions of 5,000 people, he found that planning and breaking down goals made all the difference.

But to do that, you first have to know what your high-level goals even are. A great 59-second exercise to get clarity on that is to just think about your own eulogy. What do you want the speaker to say about you at your funeral? If you want to be thorough, you can even write it down.

Similar to the funeral test, this’ll show you what’s really important to you and help you align your daily actions with your biggest dreams.

You know what ruins a great idea? Thinking about how to implement it. Brainstorming is supposedly this creative process, but it really suppresses ideas, because it creates delay and friction between having an idea and getting to work. This is especially true for groups, where people often refrain from even voicing their ideas, because they fear the judgment of their peers. But don’t lie to yourself, you can just as well spend forever in “brainstorming hell” all by yourself – I know I have. Instead of procrastinating by deliberating, what if you went immediately from distracted to doing, from eureka to execution? Salvador Dalí had the perfect technique for doing so: He sat in a chair, holding a heavy key right above an upside down plate on the floor, waiting until he dosed off. The second he did, the key’d slip out of his hands, hit the plate and wake him up with a loud noise. Right on the verge between sleep and consciousness, he’d instantly start sketching the images in his mind. This is called a hypnagogic nap, and the same principles apply any time you’re distracted and let your subconscious go to work. Right when you have a brilliant insight, drop everything and start executing it. This’ll save you plenty of planning time and make you loads more productive, keeping the ideas flowing as…