6 Zero-Cost Tools to Improve Your Life Significantly

Barnan Das -

When we think about improving our lives we often associate it with comfort or pleasure. Unfortunately, neither comfort nor pleasure makes us healthy, truly happy, wealthy, or wise. In this article, I am going to talk about tools that’ll cost you nothing but can improve your life significantly.

1. Sleep

Sleep is not an optional lifestyle luxury. Sleep is a non-negotiable biological necessity. An average adult needs 7-9 hours of sleep. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you can function well with less sleep. Nobody can. Thinking you can function well with less sleep is like a drunk person thinking they feel ok to drive.

Find what is the appropriate amount of sleep for you - your sweet spot. Your sweet spot is when you do not need an alarm to wake up in the morning and feel completely rested. For me, it is 7.5 hours every single night.

If you want to learn more about sleep and why it is critical, you can read the book Why We Sleep by Dr. Matt Walker. He is a Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. If you prefer a crash course instead, here’s a 20-min YouTube video.

2. Walk

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention recommends at least 150 mins of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity every week. It has a positive impact on overall health and decreases the risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.

Researchers at the Max Plank Institute of Human Development found that spending time outside is linked to greater gray matter in the prefrontal cortex areas of your brain that affect cognitive control, regulation, and planning.

Walking is a great way to achieve these goals. Walk for 30 mins daily, in nature, preferably away from crowds and automobiles. If you can’t find such a place, walk anywhere outdoors.

3. Meditate

10 mins of mediation a day can have a huge impact on your mental wellbeing. You feel calm and rested.

Meditation doesn’t come easily to most people. Our minds are full of thoughts and it is hard to shut them off.

If you have tried meditation before but couldn’t stick to it, it is probably because you learned it from the wrong person or the wrong source. “There are no bad students, only bad teachers” - Mr. Miyagi, Karate Kids.

To lower your barrier to entry, try a guided meditation practice. There are tons of free YouTube videos such as this. If you would like to go all in, I recommend the Waking Up app by Sam Harris. Sam Harris is a renowned neuroscientist, philosopher, and author who has practiced meditation for more than 30 years.

4. Read

If there is one habit that can disproportionately impact your well-being, career, relationships, and life, it is reading. You won’t ever come across any wise person who doesn’t read a lot.

30-mins of reading nonfiction a day can go a long way.

Most people don’t read regularly because they don’t see any short-term benefits. But, all good things come from consistency and compounding effects. On a podcast, Naval Ravikanth once said, “read what you love until you love to read”.

Reading may not be 100% free if you buy all new books. You can get used books in good conditions on eBay at less than half the price. If you’re not able to or don’t want to spend money on books, try using free resources such as Project Gutenberg (it has approximately 60,000 free ebooks), and your local public library, or borrow them from friends. I don’t recommend downloading pirated versions from questionable websites. An author puts years of learnings in one book. One should not disrespect their effort.

5. Write

If reading nonfiction sparks several ideas in your brain, writing is a way to connect those ideas and find patterns that you could have never come up with if you only consumed. The best way to describe this is through the image shown below.

Pic courtesy: David Parell

Writing is one of the most ancient forms of documenting ideas. Writing gives you clarity of thoughts. You can’t write well if you don’t have clarity of thoughts. Writing helps you establish thought leadership which can open several opportunities for your career and personal life.

Write like the way you talk. Don’t write to impress others. Write for yourself, such that you can refer to them in the future. Paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley-based startup accelerator, has written several essays on how to write, including how to write briefly, writing like you talk, how to write usefully, writing simply, and putting ideas into words.

If you’re just getting started, you can refer to these books on writing: The Elements of Style and On Writing Well.

6. Stop Consuming News

You read that right. Stop. Consuming. News. The continuous overflow of news via TV channels, online articles, social media, and WhatsApp (!!) is sucking your precious time and energy.

There was a time when people used to get one newspaper a day. That’s it! Even if you wanted to get more news there wasn’t any other source. This was followed by radio station news broadcasts. Then came television with only one channel that broadcast news once or twice a day. Cable TV came soon after with multiple channels that had news in their scheduled programming. This was followed by many news channels broadcasting news 24x7. Then came an inflection point in technology with the internet, social media, and a smartphone in every pocket. In 2022, you are consuming way too much news. You are consuming it every time you unlock your phone.

Naval Ravikanth once tweeted “The goal of media is to make every problem, your problem” and I cannot agree more. News media make money off of your attention. So, they try their best to grab your attention and keep you engaged with click-bait headlines and often overly colorized information.

If you notice, most of the non-physical news media are free these days. But remember, if you’re not paying for a product, you are the product. You are part of the revenue stream of the news media.

If you’re concerned that you’ll miss out on important information if you don’t consume news, rest assured, you won’t. Anything important enough for you to know will find its way to you.

Stopping consumption of news is a controversial topic and I plan on going deeper on this in a future article.

Hope you can explore a subset of these tools and experience their benefits. If you want to start trying a few, here is the order of priority I recommend:

  1. Read
  2. Sleep
  3. Walk
  4. Meditate
  5. Stop consuming news
  6. Write