Establish Habits First

All opinions expressed in the blog are solely mine. This blog is not an official publication of any City of Melrose institution.  

THIS: pic.twitter.com/Z2uvUs2Jex

— Reads with Ravi (@readswithravi) December 4, 2025

"Win the morning and win the day." 

Don't make a list of a hundred habits. Develop "keystone habits" that spread like ripples throughout your life. 

1. "Always do your best." Commit to being your best every day at home, in school, and in your extracurricular activities. Model excellence. Doing your best crowds out regret. 

2. Take care of yourself - sleep (eight hours), hydration, nutrition, exercise, and recovery after vigorous activity. Sleep is a proven "force multiplier," meaning it enhances performance.

3. Think "process" over results. In sports that means attention to fundamentals, regardless of your level of play. For studying, three key elements are: 

• Pomodoro technique (25 minutes on, 5 minutes off)
• Spaced repetition (think "interval training" not cramming)
• Self-testing. What were the main points? What was the author's intent? What did I learn? 

4. Keystone habits are the core habits from which others emerge. Make good habits easier (have a 'study place' without distractions) and bad habits harder (you cannot study with constant interruption from text messages or otehr distractions). Habits become habits through repetition ("Don't miss twice."). James Clear's Atomic Habits is the habit reference. 

Lagniappe. "Writing is easy. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." - attributed without proof to Ernest Hemingway 

Lagniappe 2. Author and humorist Anne Lamott shares truth. Pro Tip: watch at 1.5x normal speed. "By the end I was deteriorating faster than I could lower my standards." #6 is gold. "If people wanted you to write more warmly about them...they should have behaved better."