In this guide, I’ll show you how to replace mindless habits driven by compulsion and external rewards with mindful habits that are driven by conscious choice and internal rewards.

The problem with today’s screen environments is they are designed to hook us on external rewards (extrinsic motivators) at the expense of the internal rewards (intrinsic motivators) that make us feel satisfied and fulfilled.

By applying these mindful habits you can free up your time, energy and attention to consistently hit your most challenging goals.

3 Key Principles For Building Mindful Habits That Stick

Before we begin, I want to share with you 3 key principles from James Clear’s book Atomic Habits that, when applied together, can help you accomplish any goal you set for yourself by making focus, discipline and flow states much easier to achieve.

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Apply these principles to start breaking the mindless habits that destroy your focus, discipline and motivation and make mindful habits stick in your daily routine:

1. Pareto’s Principle

“80% of the major results come from 20% of the input.”

Focus means saying no. Most things are distractions from what matters most to you.

Social media feeds us with endless dopamine loops of shiny object syndrome so it’s important to clarify what major results you want in your life.

Clarify your values and write out 5 to 10 dreams that you have in order to start setting long-term goals. Then you can start to systematically eliminate all the mindless activities that steal your focus and hijack your attention.

There are only a few crucial tasks that contribute the most toward each of your key goals.

Ask yourself:

“If I could work only 2-3 hours a day, what tasks would I do to achieve the big goal?”

Each morning, these tasks should be the only things you do before lunch.

Shallow tasks deplete your dopamine and energy. Start with the deep work to create small wins and momentum for the rest of your day.

2. Parkinson’s Law

“Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.”

If you want to win the war for your attention, you need to develop laser-like clarity and focus by shortening the time horizon of your goals.

The single most powerful productivity habit is to pre-plan your week by setting clear goals and then start each morning by doing your most meaningful and challenging tasks before lunch.

Don’t just create a to-do list for your morning deep work sessions, you should also create a not-to-do list.

This way you can start to mindfully observe what external cues and internal emotions pull you away from your goals and work to re-design your environment to remove these distractions.

Ask yourself:

“What is my north star or the most important goal I want to achieve this week?”

Write out one personal and one professional goal each week and unpack how you will accomplish each of them step-by-step.

Then plan out your weekly schedule to create urgency, schedule time blocks, make tighter deadlines and ruthlessly prioritize. This will free up your time so you can relax, and recharge, which will increase your focus and energy when you’re working.

Try using this simple 3-step process: what is the outcome, how will I achieve it and why is it so important to me?

3. Environment Design

“Environment is the invisible hand that shapes our behavior.”

Our environment delivers the cues that trigger certain behaviors.

If you want to create behavioral change, whether to make good habits stick or to eliminate bad habits, you must start by improving your environment.

If you’re surrounded by people who share your goals and values it will be a lot easier to live up to them. Make yourself accountable. Paying attention is hard so it’s best to remove the distracting technologies that profit from your anxiety and procrastination.

An environment high in flow triggers such as novelty, complexity, unpredictability and high consequences related to your goals makes it much easier to train your mind to stay focused for longer periods of time and to get into a flow state.

Ask yourself:

“How can I design my environment so it is easy to do what’s right and difficult to do what’s wrong?”

If you want to stick to those crucial tasks that really move the needle to achieve your most important goals consistently, then you need an environment that makes you mindful.

Subtract your negative environmental cues by deactivating notifications, hiding the apps in some folder or logging out of social media apps when you need to focus.

How To Free Up Your Time, Energy And Attention:

Here are 10 life-changing mindful habits that you apply to free up hours a day of time, increase your energy and improve your attention span.

If you want the full guide and checklist, you can get my free Mindful Habits Guide in Notion.

1. Digital Mindfulness

Digital mindfulness involves customizing your digital world for focus and learning to control your urges.

Digital mindfulness starts with observing and identifying your distraction triggers so you can customize your digital environment to mindfully observe your urges and break free from the ever-present craving for digital dopamine hits to discover something new and relieve boredom.

The average person today spends 10 or more hours a day staring at screens and most people check their smartphone first thing in the morning, triggering a cycle of instant gratification and mindless scrolling that continues to suck away their time, energy and attention all day long.

Naturally, this makes sustained focus very difficult without a stimulant, an external stressor or a high-pressure deadline so building the habit of mindful technology use is crucial to having consistent focus and energy.

Digital Mindfulness Checklist:

• ✅ Reduce Screentime: Check your daily screen time averages and set a goal to reduce it by at least 1 hour per day in the next 30 days by removing distracting apps or limiting your daily time to use them.
• ✅ Distraction Journal: Complete a distraction journal over the course of a full day to identify your external notifications and internal emotional triggers that trigger your cycle of procrastination.
• ✅ Mindful Mornings: Create a mindful habit of not checking your smartphone before lunch. This one habit can give you 2-3 hours of deep focus each morning which can be enough to double your productivity.

2. Vision Mapping

Vision mapping involves creating a long-term vision for your life and setting clear goals to achieve it.

Do you have your goals written down and displayed on an easily accessible visual map on your wall or computer screen background so you can easily visualize them and track your progress as you work to achieve them?

Most people don’t and as a result, this age of constant distraction and shiny object syndrome makes it almost impossible to achieve important long-term goals without getting sidetracked.

Vision mapping involves achieving clarity by journaling and writing out your goals and desires so you can clarify what you love to do, what you’re really good at doing and the key problems you want to solve in the world so you can develop a powerful sense of passionate purpose.

Vision Mapping Checklist:

• ✅ Lifetime Goals: What goals do you want to achieve in your lifetime? What legacy do you want to leave to your family, community and the world when you die? Write down 5-10 goals you want to achieve.
• ✅ Vision Map: What goals can you accomplish or make significant progress on in the next year? Clarify the process you will follow and start setting daily, weekly and monthly goals to measure progress.
• ✅ Creative Visualization: Regularly visualize the process you will follow to achieve your goals and then spend some time journaling about their why, what and how and how they connect to your daily activities.

3. Laser Focus

Laser focus involves planning out your week to develop clarity and then scheduling your most important work in daily deep work sessions.

The single most important productivity habit is pre-planning your work and time blocking at least 1-2 hours each morning to start your day with your most important work first.

When you’re working online, there is literally a war for your attention so if you don’t go into that battle with a game plan you’re regularly going to get sucked down the rabbit hole of distraction.

The habit of laser-like focus develops when you have complete clarity about your weekly goals and then a clear plan of what tasks you will complete each morning to accomplish those goals.

Laser Focus Checklist:

• ✅ Weekly Planning: Set aside 20-30 minutes for a weekly planning session where you set clear goals, schedule your most important work in daily deep work sessions and review your previous week.
• ✅ Deep Work Browser: Customize a separate “deep work” web browser that you only use for your daily deep work sessions where all your distracting websites are blocked.
• ✅ Laser Clarity And Focus: Start each morning with clarity about the most important tasks you will accomplish first and then work for 1-3 hours with laser-like focus.

4. Flow States

Flow is an optimal state of mind where we feel and perform our best doing meaningful and challenging activities.

Have you ever been so immersed in an activity that you felt like time had slowed down? Chances are, you were experiencing a flow state.

Flow is defined as an optimal state of consciousness in which we feel and perform our best. It refers to those moments in the zone when focus becomes so intense that everything else seems to disappear. Action and mindfulness begin to merge. Our sense of self disappears. So does our sense of time.

And while that is happening, all aspects of mental and physical performance go through the roof.

The gateway into flow states is developing laser-like clarity about what is most important each day and then focusing on it with zero distractions for uninterrupted periods of time.

✅ Flow States Checklist:

• ✅ Flow Rituals: A daily flow ritual usually involves a combination of visualization, breathwork and meditation practices that will charge up your body and sharpen your mind for a single-pointed focus on your most challenging work.
• ✅ Energy Management: Consistently achieving flow requires time, attention and energy management so you can structure your peak window of productive work for uninterrupted focus and then fully unplug in the evening and follow active recovery rituals.
• ✅ Brainwave Entrainment: If you struggle with overthinking, or find yourself easily distracted and struggle to stay focused on a single activity long enough to get into flow, try using brainwave entrainment music in the Low Beta or High Alpha range as a shortcut into the flow state.

5. Creative Dreaming

Creative dreaming involves using liminal and dream states for creative problem solving.

The magic of effortless creativity happens in the gap states when your mind and body are at rest and you can turn your intentions and visualizations into creative dreams with practices of liminal dreaming and lucid dreaming.

Liminal dreaming involves accessing the creative power of the two in-between states between waking and sleeping: the hypnagogic state (when you are falling asleep) and the hypnopompic state (when you are waking up).

Lucid dreaming involves “waking up” inside your dreams and learning to control them. Together, these dream practices offer a rapid way to develop better self-awareness, overcome negative trauma and tap into the power of your subconscious mind.

With these practices, you can access liminal states that are very similar to psychedelics but without the risks. They also help you develop a habit of consistently accessing these powerful transformational states on the threshold of waking consciousness.

Creative Dreaming Checklist:

• ✅ Yoga Nidra: Need to catch up on sleep and pay off your sleep debt without feeling drowsy after napping? Try the ancient practice of Yoga Nidra to fully rest your mind and body and enter a state of dreamlike peace where visions from your subconscious naturally flow through your mind.
• ✅ Liminal Dreaming: Start noticing that space where you feel fully relaxed just before you drift off into sleep. In the morning, pause to replay the dreams you remember and then visualize the most important thing you will accomplish that day and observe the feelings, images and emotions that arise.
• ✅ Lucid Dreaming: When you go to sleep at night put yourself in a relaxed state by thinking of 5 things you are grateful for that day and set the intention to have your subconscious mind work on your most important goal and help you wake up in a dream to explore it more deeply.

6. Deep Sleep

Deep sleep is the slow wave brain activity that regenerates tissues and neurotransmitters each night.

How well you rest, relax and recharge during the day will determine how deeply you sleep at night. For optimal focus and energy, you should structure your day for regular walking, natural light and meaningful social connection (not social media).

Balancing your circadian rhythm and understanding how your ultradian rhythm functions is crucial for knowing when you focus and push onward and when to relax and take a break for restoration and recovery.

To optimize your time in deep sleep it’s a good idea to track your sleep cycle and heart rate variability. Deep sleep flows naturally when you manage your stress response mindfully and allow your nervous system plenty of time to rest, recharge and reconnect.

Deep Sleep Checklist:

• ✅ Sleep Rhythm: Follow a consistent sleep schedule where you wake up and go to sleep at the same time every day and then create a morning routine to charge yourself up and an evening routine to power yourself down.
• ✅ Light Therapy: Reduce exposure to blue light from your screens after dark by using blue light-blocking screen protectors, screen-dimming apps or light-blocking glasses. If you live in a place with short days in the winter, get a light therapy device or go outside first thing every morning.
• ✅ Heart Rate Variability: Track your sleep cycles and your heart rate variability each morning so you can measure your sleep quality improvements and start to reduce the effects that chronic stress has on your nervous system and depth of sleep.

7. Peak Experiences

Peak experiences are self-transcendent glimpses of awe, unity and connectedness.

Peak experiences involve feelings of unity and connectedness where we transcend our normal way of thinking and open up to new possibilities.

They are crucial for maintaining a positive mindset and reconnecting with real life and purpose in this materialistic world full of influencers and mass media intent on capturing our attention.

Peak experiences happen when we intentionally plan for extended unplugged periods doing the things we enjoy, with the people we love and having meaningful shared experiences that add joy to our lives.

For me, my most powerful trigger for peak experiences is at least 2 days hiking, camping and practicing mindfulness in the mountains completely unplugged from the digital world.

Peak Experiences Checklist

• ✅ Defining Moments: Think of defining moments of your life and what triggered them. Then think of one year-defining thing you can do in the next year that will be equally memorable, something you can look back on and see it as something special that defined your year.
• ✅ Awe And Wonder: Write down a list of things you are most curious about and the times in your life when you felt the most awe and wonder. Regularly visit the places that inspire you with awe and learn to mindfully inhale, exhale and expand that feeling of awe to transcend into something bigger.
• ✅ Nature Immersion: When was the last time you spent 2-3 days in nature and completely unplugged? Spending a couple of days immersed in the beauty of the natural world can do wonders for your mental health and help you reconnect with something special that is lost in the human-designed world.

8. Mindful Walking

Mindful walking involves bringing your attention to the enjoyment of your senses rather than being lost in your thoughts and judgements as you walk.

The one thing that no food, pill or supplement can reverse is the negative effects of a sedentary lifestyle. The easiest way to counter the long-term degenerative effects of sitting all day is with a daily mindful walking practice.

While sitting meditation is an ideal practice for syncing up your mind and body in a deeply restful and embodied state of mindful presence, the principle of meditation can be applied to mindful walking so you spend more time outside each day.

When you’re walking, notice the beauty all around you and how it makes you feel: the vastness of the sky, the vivid color of flowers, the care people take for their yards and homes, the plants and trees dancing in the breeze, the play of light and shadows, the warmth of the sun on your skin.

Mindful Walking Checklist:

• ✅ Morning Walk: Increase your exposure to early morning light to balance your circadian rhythm by going for a mindful walk first thing in the morning, ideally during the golden hour that lasts for about 60 minutes after sunrise.
• ✅ 10,000 Steps: Set a goal to walk 10,000 steps a day (about 90 minutes of walking) that you can easily track with your smartphone and break up your walks by listening to podcasts, audiobooks and taking calls while moving.
• ✅ Mindful Hiking: Set aside at least 2 hours a week to go hiking on an unpaved trail in the forest and immerse yourself in the natural world. Walking in a forest creates an effect called soft fascination that naturally opens our awareness, reduces stress and makes mindfulness easy.

9. Deep Embodiment

Deep embodiment is tuning into your senses in a flowing meditative activity.

When most people think of mindfulness, they think of formal sitting meditation. This made perfect sense in Buddha’s time when people worked outside all day and wanted to rest their bodies and sit — but today, it’s common to sit all day inside.

The antidote to the most sedentary way of life in human history is mindfulness in action. The magic really happens when you integrate mindful awareness into daily activities by mindfully observing, enjoying and expanding your senses.

Try putting yourself in situations, environments and activities which involve extensive novelty, complexity and unpredictability that trigger what the ancient Greeks called ecstasis (ecstasy, enjoyment, aliveness), catharsis (vulnerability, healing, release) and communitas (celebration, reverence, kinship).

Deep Embodiment Checklist:

• ✅ Embodied Mindfulness Mindfulness in the modern world can easily become this rigid, mechanical thing that just keeps us living in our heads. Practice mindfulness of the body, while moving, while making love, and while eating so you can integrate mindful awareness into your felt experience and expand your enjoyment of each moment.
• ✅ Embodied Flow: One of the most powerful flow triggers comes from challenging activities such as mindful movement (yoga, qigong, martial arts), outdoor recreation (surfing, skiing, mountain biking) and live performance (teaching, performing, jamming).
• ✅ Deep Connection: So much communication today is completely disembodied through Zoom and smartphones. Make a habit of regularly hosting potlucks, taking people you respect out for lunch and organizing group gatherings to form deeper friendships.

10. Lifelong Learning

Lifelong learning means following your curiosity and always upgrading your knowledge and skills.

The best way to stay young, sharp and interesting is to constantly follow your curiosity and interests down the rabbit hole. I recommend dedicating at least 2-3 hours each week in your calendar to intentional and undistracted self-directed learning activities.

Imagine if you took that 1-2 hours a day that gets sucked into the vortex of social media and dedicated it to reading a book, watching 2-3 documentaries and listening to more podcasts? Exchange shallow “sound bite” knowledge with deep “subject expertise” knowledge.

Remix what you learn by launching your own creative projects and fill in your gaps in understanding by testing what you know in the real world. Try sharing and teaching what you’re learning on your favorite medium whether it’s writing, video, podcasting, etc.

Lifelong Learning Checklist:

• ✅ Reading Books: You can read a short book every week or a longer book every two weeks by reducing social media time and dedicating an hour a day to reading. If sitting and reading isn’t your thing, listen to audiobooks or podcasts to explore subjects that interest you.
• ✅ Online Courses: Take online courses where you can take what you learn to build creative projects like websites, videos or guides that allow you to demonstrate and share your knowledge and skills. A great portfolio will make you stand out more than a resume for high-paying creative jobs.
• ✅ Teach Workshops: I really like the workshop model for taking what I’ve learned and making it into something actionable that I can teach others. It’s easy to host workshops for local meetups, and business groups or just host it on Zoom and invite the people you know from email and social media.