The Three Alarms

Hey friends,

I’ve recently started coaching sessions with CEO coach Eric Partaker. Eric and I initially connected when he was a student on my Part-Time YouTuber Academy – enrolment for our next cohort opens next week if you’d like to join the waiting list 😉

Anyway, in his book The Three Alarms, Eric has a great insight about forming new habits. He points out that behaviour change usually follows from identity change.

Let’s say your goal is to eat more healthy food. If you think of yourself as a healthy person who automatically makes good food choices, it’ll feel much easier to eat healthily than if you saw yourself as a donut-craver who lives in constant self-denial.

Likewise, if you think of yourself as someone who loves going to the gym (repeat after me: ‘I love going to the gym’ 😭), it actually becomes easier. You’ll hold yourself to a higher standard, do the thing, and build your confidence.

OK, but how can we sustain this approach?

Eric’s technique is to set 3 alarms on his phone. Each alarm is for a specific time of day, and labelled with an identity he aspires to:

6:30 am: World Fitness Champion

9:00 am: World’s Best Coach

6:30 pm: World’s Best Husband and Father

That way he’ll get a nudge at the appropriate time, reminding him of his goals. I’ve been playing around with this myself:

And for the last couple of days it’s been working.

The alarm rings, I look at it (slightly confused at first) and switch it off. But those 3 seconds give me a much-needed nudge to go to the gym, call my grandmother, put the work laptop away, etc.

Obviously this effect could wear off over time – I’ll report back in a few weeks’ to let you know. 📆

Have a great week!

Ali xx

🎓 Skillshare – Courses for Everyone

If you haven’t used Skillshare yet, you’re missing out on an amazing learning opportunity.

They host loads of video courses where you can learn to code, bake a cake, draw, and everything in between. I have several courses on Skillshare myself, including my 4-hour guide for getting started as a YouTuber, which I’m super proud of.

If you’re interested, this link gives you a whole free month of Skillshare, including a bunch of my other courses 🎈🎉

Thanks to Skillshare for sponsoring this issue of Sunday Snippets. 🙏

♥️ My Favourite Things

🎙️ Deep Dive Podcast – Prof Russell Foster: The Science Of The Body Clock. Russell’s a world expert on the circadian system. We discussed how sleep affects your life quality, how the circadian system works, and common sleep myths

📱 App – Obsidian. I’ve been loving Obsidian recently. It’s a ‘tool for thought’ app similar to Roam Research, where you can create interlinked notes, and discover new connections between ideas. I connect it to Zotero so I can import all the research references for my book.

📚 Book – Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking. As the title suggests, the book points out some hidden advantages of being an introvert, and has tactics for helping introverts make the most of life.

🧭 Web Browser – Sigma OS. A pretty powerful new browser based on Chrome (and can use all the same extensions). The key feature is that it lets you create different ‘workspaces’ for projects you’re working on, where you can group all the relevant tabs. The shortcuts are pretty good as well.

✍️ Quote of the Week

Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.

From Letters from a Stoic by Seneca. Resurfaced using Readwise.