This content was originally published on BlueZones.com. Published here courtesy of Blue Zones and Tony Buettner.

From our research in the healthiest and happiest places in the world, here are some habits to take up in 2018 —they’ll enrich your life and boost your health and happiness levels too.

Instead of focusing on an outcome like “lose 20 pounds” or “exercise every day,” focus on acquiring life-enhancing new habits. We are creatures of habit and products of our surroundings, so optimizing our environments and routines will yield a much higher rate of success.

Don’t try all of the things below at one time. Choose a few, make them habits, and revisit when they’re part of your daily routine.

Good news, you don’t have to ditch your morning coffee

In original Blue Zones areas, people drink up to two or three cups of black coffee per day! The American Heart Association found that consuming coffee, both caffeinated and decaf, was associated with a lower risk of total mortality.

However, if your morning joe is filled with cream and sugar, then slowly weaning off the sugar and switching to a non-dairy milk is a new habit to take up this year. To really Blue Zones your coffee or tea routine, make coffee or afternoon tea dates with friends or family to chat, laugh and get that face-to-face time that’s so important to health and happiness.

Get a dog

Furry friends like cats and dogs help with loneliness and companionship and happiness, but getting a dog also encourages people to walk often and regularly.

Invest in smaller plates

To avoid meal stuffing, use 10n-inch plates. Research shows that when you go from a 12-inch plate to a 10-inch plate, you end up eating 23 percent less.

Eat more beans and pulses

Instead of focusing on what you’re going to cut out of your diet, start by focusing on what you need to add into your meals.

Beans are the No. 1 longevity food and a staple in all five Blue Zones regions. A cup of beans are standard among the world’s longest-lived people, so stock up on chickpeas, lentils, black beans, kidney beans, soybeans and all other beans and pulses. You can enjoy them in hummus, soups, stews and salads.

Know and nurture your purpose

Having a purpose in life is a proven link to living longer. What’s the most likely demographic to live past 100? Women who’ve had children after 40.  “Embrace your ikigai,” as they say in Japan. “Ikigai” is your reason to get up every morning.

Create downshifting, stress-relieving habits

Chronic stress leads to inflammation and is the foundation for every age-related disease, including Alzheimer’s and dementia. Centenarians in the Blue Zones regions of the world have effective ways to manage stress on a daily basis. For Sardinians, this means a glass of wine and a chat with friends at the end of the day. For Seventh-Day Adventists in Loma Linda, this means a quiet nature walk during Sabbath. As an alternative to downshifting at happy hour, try meditating. Even just 10 minutes each day can improve your outlook and lower stress.

“Downshift” is one of the Blue Zones Power 9, the lifestyle habits shared by the longest-lived people on earth.

Enjoy wine at 5

People in four original Blue Zones areas drink alcohol moderately and regularly. Studies show moderate drinkers have a lower chance of mortality and an increased chance of maintaining cognitive abilities into old age.

“Wine at 5” is one of the Blue Zones Power 9, the lifestyle habits shared by the longest-lived people on earth.

Find a new hobby or join a group

Get a new hobby or nurture one you already have by joining a meetup or community group. It can be a book club, starting a garden, or a walking club. Even two hours of bowling can burn 490 calories, and having fun will give you a healthy happiness boost too.

Sit down to eat meals with family and friends

The happiest kids in the world, Dutch children, sit down to eat breakfast with their family more regularly than any other kids in the world.

“Loved Ones First” is one of the Blue Zones Power 9, the lifestyle habits shared by the longest-lived people on earth.

Get enough sleep

Do your best to always sleep 7.5 hours a night, which helps keep your immune system functioning at its best. People who sleep 6 hours a night are 30 percent less happy than people who sleep more.

The post 10 habits for healthier, happier life appeared first on Norton Healthcare.

First, it is OK to lose some detail. A lot of people get sidetracked because they aren’t doing any one thing for half an hour, and so they decide to describe each individual minute or activity, and then the whole task becomes overwhelming.

I was up with the toddler at 5:25 a.m. this morning. During the next hour, we read several books, I made coffee, we played a bit, we watched the Olympics, I changed a lovely diaper and so forth. On my log, the 5:30 and 6 slots became “coffee/watch Olympics w/A.” Plenty of weekend slots become “hangout w/family.” I often just write “work” during my work slots, even though I might be on the phone and then on email and then writing something, etc. If I wanted to drill down on work hours in order to boost efficiency there, I might decide to be more granular. If I thought that my multitasking was so bad it was destroying my life, then I might want to track individual distractions. It is a personal choice, though, based on goals.

Second, time tracking is more about landmarks than continuity. I notice that during days I am off my computer, I do a quick glance at the clock occasionally and make a mental note of the time and what I am doing. This then allows me to reconstruct the day later based on these markers. It is kind of like if you were describing how to get to the local library (go out the driveway, turn left at the light, turn right past the fire station, then a left at the stop sign and you’ll see it!). I can generally do a full 24 hours this way. If you are just starting to track time, that will be harder, but you can jot down a few highlights on a sticky note or something and reconstruct the whole thing on a log later.

During days you are near your log sheet, it helps to have some sort of trigger to remember to record your time. A practical one: Every time you take a bathroom break, write down what you did since the last one.

Another reason this becomes easier: People’s lives have certain rhythms. After a few days you will likely notice that you are getting up around the same time and eating around the same time and doing similar things upon returning home. You don’t have to remember as much because you can make an educated guess that if you were showering at 7 a.m. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, the odds are good you did so on Thursday as well. Weekends can be a free-for-all, which is what makes them harder to track. But it is precisely because weekends are nebulous that it can be enlightening to track them.

I don’t find time tracking onerous, which is why I’ve been doing it for the last 16 months. When I have people reconstruct the previous day in workshops, it seldom takes more than a few minutes. But if you do find it to be a pain, it might help to tell yourself that it is only for seven days. Or even just for three! (Sunday-Monday-Tuesday could give a good picture of many people’s lives). The insights gained from tracking can help you tweak your schedule, and then you never have to do it again if you don’t want to. But you might want to! I find it helpful enough that it’s worth the effort.

Follow Laura Vanderkam’s blog at LauraVanderkam.com.

The post Laura Vanderkam shares her strategies for tracking your time appeared first on Norton Healthcare.

No matter your lifestyle, family unit, professional or personal demands, you’ve no doubt been overwhelmed by feeling like there aren’t enough hours in the day.

We caught up with time management expert and bestselling author Laura Vanderkam for some quick tips on how to make the most of the time we have. She’ll be dishing out a lot more during the March 12 installment of Norton Healthcare’s free Go Confidently speaker series.

Mastering the balancing act

Time management is something most of us have struggled with.

Even Vanderkam is no stranger to the struggle. About 10 years ago, the then-new-mom was faced with a challenge: How do I master the balancing act of parent and professional?

“I knew I wanted to do both things,” Vanderkam said. “I was drawn to people who were doing both — succeeding personally and professionally.”

She set out on a mission to slow the proverbial flying of time, or at least better manipulate it.

“There’s no perfect hack to free up all kinds of time in your life; no special trick with email or special thing around the house to make chores magically take less time,” Vanderkam said.

No one particular thing will change your life completely, but Vanderkam suggests a number of strategies you can implement to make the most of your time.

Identify what’s important to you

“What will change your life is deciding, even though the house is messy, I want to read this book,” Vanderkam said.

Many people wait until everything else is taken care of before doing the things they want to do. Ringing phones and overflowing inboxes are just a couple things that demand our attention.

“If you spend all of your time on those things, the day can get away from you — the week, month, year — and then you never spend time on the things that are important but not necessarily clamoring for attention,” Vanderkam said.

Think about what you want to spend more time doing, and do it.

“That unread email will still be there, but you will have made progress on the thing that is important to you,” Vanderkam said.

Journal your time

Vanderkam says one of the best ways to get a sense of where your time is going is to write it down in a journal. People generally think they have a good idea of where their time is going. Until they journal it, they don’t have a realistic sense of how it’s being used.

Once she started tracking her time, Vanderkam discovered that even though she works from home, she was spending a lot more time on the road than she thought.

“I realized I was spending about an hour a day in the car for various things that weren’t a daily commute, and I wasn’t doing anything with that time that was meaningful to me,” Vanderkam said.

She decided to make better use of her time in the car by listening to audiobooks and podcasts.

Build space in your schedule

Saying that you don’t have enough time is an excuse. If something is a priority, you will make time for it. If it’s not a priority, Vanderkam reminds us that it is OK to say no. You are in control of your time.

“Time is a choice,” she said. “Of course, there will be terrible consequences if you don’t make certain choices, but in the long run it is a choice.”

Many successful people Vanderkam has studied have a surprising amount of open space in their schedules.

“Being busy is not a badge of honor,” she said.

Open space invites opportunity in a way that a cluttered calendar just can’t do. It’s about realizing that we don’t have to do everything.

Plan, plan, plan

Planning is key. It’s something Vanderkam didn’t do earlier in her life.

“I realized that people who were having fun weekends, as opposed to weekends that were all chores, were thinking ahead to make sure they had time for things that were fun and rejuvenating,” she said.

Thinking through her weekends ahead of time is a strategy Vanderkam adopted when she became a mother. Scheduling activities in advance helps ensure everyone’s needs are met and the things that are important to us actually happen.

Planning doesn’t mean you have to relinquish spontaneity in your life.

“You just need to get the structure in place and then you can be spontaneous within it,” Vanderkam said.

For example, if you and your partner have a babysitter for the night, you can create spontaneity within that planned evening away from the kids. Maybe you choose to walk or drive around a neighborhood and spontaneously select a spot to dine for the evening.

Think in terms of 168 hours

You may feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day, but there are plenty of hours in the week — 168 to be exact. Vanderkam challenges us to stop pressuring ourselves to accomplish it all within 24 hours and start thinking in terms of 168 hours.

“Many people find this to be a complete breakthrough in terms of no longer feeling like they are failing at everything,” she said. “Just because something didn’t happen today, we don’t have to say it is not a priority in our life or it is not important to us.”

One example of how this can yield positive results is with exercise. If you didn’t exercise today, you’re not a failure. Just make sure you find time for it within the 168 hours. Maybe you choose to exercise four times per week — you’ve got a full seven days to make that goal happen. There won’t be a perfect time every single day for exercise. You have to make it happen when you can.

The post We all have the same number of hours in a week – how to make the most of them appeared first on Norton Healthcare.