968: Habits and Changes We Want to Make in 2026  ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Start Tiny And Use SMART Goals** - Start habits with the smallest possible step so they stick and scale over time. - Use SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound) to track progress. Transcript: Wes Bos Good. You're standing. We're recording this in December. Yeah, standing. That's one of my goals this year. I've got the standing desk and I've forever been a standing desk hater because I say I love the standing desk simply because you can adjust it to be the perfect height for your sitting. You can adjust your chair till you feel good and then you adjust your desk up and down so that it feels good as well but there's got to be something to to the standing right now so i'm i'm feeling It right now so i'm i'm like new you're new me i'm gonna i'm gonna be standing i'm gonna be trying to stand at least what's a good amount of hours that you think i should be standing every Scott Tolinski Week to be not as much as possible as much as possible get those legs some work get a little treadmill walk on that bad boy get them legs moving yeah do some squats you can have your desk here's Here's the the power move uh program your desk so that it automatically moves up and down so you got to squat with it that's so stupid i have work to do i'm gonna say yeah i when you have these Wes Bos Goals every year you need to like be like we always talk about smart goals right which is like it needs to be specific attainable measurable i'm doing it in the wrong order yeah uh they're Smart time-based yeah so i think i'm gonna try to stand for at least two hours a week which is not a lot But no, I hate standing. So here we go. Scott Tolinski Yeah, there's a book I read last year or the year before about taking like one small step to make any change. I think it's Kaizen. Kaizen was the book. And it was about basically like anytime you're trying to cultivate a habit or a change or anything like that, start with like the smallest possible amount. Lot, Like Wes, I'm going to stand for the first or I'm going to stand for like a minute every single day. You're like the one thing that should be the easiest. But I can stand for a minute. Okay, I can stand for 30 seconds a day. And then like slowly increase that or integrate it into your life. And that makes learning these things a little bit easier. But yeah, I do agree that as as cliche as that whole smart goals thing is, it is a good way. It works. It's cliche for a reason. Wes Bos Oh, yeah, it works. That works in like business or anything. Don't just be like, I want to do X, Y and Z more. You have to have actual numbers around it so that you can measure if you hit them or not. ([Time 0:00:22](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a667ae6c-5473-4ab5-a210-ce407b97107b)) - **Track Habits With Numbers** - Treat habit tracking as a feedback system and log measurable metrics over time. - Use a habit app or streaks to visualize progress and stay motivated. Transcript: Scott Tolinski And I personally, the types of things that work for me is like habit tracking. I did build an app habit path.io. I still use this app. It uses zero sync, local data, it's super duper fast. And I track so many habits in this thing. Even added like a feature West for tracking like, my like daily levels of things like my sleep quality or my, like irritability or something like that. So you can just see numbers over time, because I, I, I'm greatly motivated by not necessarily like I am motivated by a streak, but I am motivated by seeing the things light up over time. I love that. Wes Bos I do. Scott Tolinski And my exercise machine, I had a four year streak going a four year weekly streak going until my concussion. And then I lost that four year streak and it was devastating. But nuts. Yeah, I do think that me personally, tracking these things can help you pick something that you would I the ideal version of me would be good at this, the ideal version of me would be good At email. So therefore, I'm going to make a task or a habit that is inbox zero. ([Time 0:03:28](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ba9694f3-e513-4d2e-83a2-b6f77b3decf4)) - **One Daily Handstand Built Skill** - Scott made a daily handstand goal of doing one handstand every day and improved dramatically. - The tiny, repeatable action led to consistent skill growth without long sessions. Transcript: Scott Tolinski There's all kinds of stuff that I like wanting to improve on, whether that is like stretching or not drinking alcohol as much or I was having a shoulder pain so I wanted to hang from a bar Wes Bos So I put like hanging as a as a daily task and I hung and I fixed my shoulder but if I didn't have that I had that as well I had like a pinch in it and I couldn't like I couldn't lift things up that Were like away from my body and like I had it for like months and I finally just hung like a couple days in a row and I totally solved it. Scott Tolinski I had a goal that was like just do a handstand every day. And it wasn't like spend 30 seconds doing handstands. It was just do a handstand every day. ([Time 0:05:19](https://share.snipd.com/snip/822fec06-f533-4ec4-ab59-26559e7432e4)) - **Gain Time By Moving Tasks To Morning** - Wake up earlier by experimenting with small schedule shifts and repurposing evening tasks to mornings. - Use the extra morning time for focused work or an added gym session. Transcript: Wes Bos What else, Heather Habit, that I have here? I want to learn to wake up early. Probably my biggest flaw is that I hate waking up and it sucks. And I often think like, man, how sick would it be if I could wake up at like 530 and have a little bit more time? Because like right now I do the gym twice a week. That's just the amount of, I have two mornings a week where my wife takes the kids to school. Our evenings right now, my evenings I used previously, I used to be able to just do so much in the evenings. I used to do something every night or the house project or like coding something. And like just the way family looks right now, I just don't have that time anymore. You know, by the time you get everybody in bed, it's like 9.30 and I just don't have a time for it. So I would love to get at least one more gym day in a week and where that time comes from is probably in the morning so i need tips on like how to wake up early because leave them down in the comments Because i would love to crack that nut so you think 5 30 that's the time you want to wake up i don't know if it's 5 30 or whatever but it's just earlier like right now i just wake up and i'm just Like i hate everything it takes me like a good 20 minutes to just get going you know and i would love to just be a morning person where you could just wake up and like yeah i have my coffee and I calmly check my emails and i went to the gym and now the kids are waking up and now we can tackle it, you know, but it's just like right now, it's just like chaos as soon as I wake up. Scott Tolinski Yeah. You know what? I, uh, here's a way that you can wake up early. You can get a concussion that gives you, um, sleep issues. When I got my concussion, that was like one of my biggest things was that i couldn't sleep and then when i did go to sleep i would wake up in the middle of the night and then i would wake up again At like four in the morning and not be able to go back to sleep and i will say there was a period there before i got on some medication to help me sleep where i was getting up out of bed at like Five o'clock and going downstairs to work because I was like, what was the point? I'm not going to go to sleep anyways. And I really liked it. I was like, I didn't really like not sleeping, but I really liked that time in the morning to get my stuff done. And now I wake up at seven ish, like seven, six thirty, because the kids got to get to school and seven. Six, seven. Yeah. OK. Yeah they said it. We said it. ([Time 0:06:58](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2166e3ce-526c-4ec3-b2f4-9e8d4bf59087)) - **Do A Daily Prioritized To‑Do** - Start each day by creating and prioritizing a short to-do list to reduce scatterbrained work. - Schedule, limit, and tackle today's tasks to regain control and momentum. Transcript: Scott Tolinski Yes. Okay. Yeah. I know. It is very funny. It is. It is ridiculous. Even like the kids school, they were at like a Halloween assembly and the dance teacher comes out and she's like, is everyone six, seven today? Like the kids win nuts. It's just like so good. Gosh, it's wild. Yeah, a habit that I would like to cultivate for this year would be to really embrace my to-dos at the start of every day. That I am feeling scatterbrained or unproductive or like I'm doing this or that or I'm like not feeling like I'm accomplishing a whole lot today I you know I tell my wife she's always like Did you do your to-do list for the day and I have to shamefully go no I didn't and I know if I did I wouldn't have this problem and then I do my to do lists and then I knock things off. So like, I really need for my to do list, which I use the app, tweak.so and still really, really love this app for how minimal it is. I need for this system, for me every single morning, to do my to do's, to list them out, to prioritize them, to schedule them, to keep it organized. ([Time 0:09:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fb55d2b2-2da3-4723-abc3-810953dccca7)) - **Make Your Inbox A To‑Do List** - Use your inbox as a true to-do list: archive, do, or snooze every email immediately. - Process email first thing, then close it to protect focused work time. Transcript: Wes Bos Okay, let's talk about email. I'm the worst at email because I get so much garbage that I can't find the like actual good stuff out of it. And I've complained about this for a long time. I tried setting up a whole bunch of AI rules and it all just doesn't work. I cannot figure out how to surface the email that matters to me I get so much like slop incoming AI like cold emails and obviously I block it but they just spin up a new domain name but I need To figure out a system a to get less email you know I gotta figure out how to stop it from coming in the first place. And be another system for just like dealing with it. You know, like I hate email and I rarely go through. I go like I scan it once or twice a day and see hopefully I catch the important stuff. But sometimes stuff gets missed and I don't love it. Scott Tolinski I love Inbox Zero and I would love to help you get there. I reached I've currently reached inbox zero for the last six weeks. I hit inbox zero 244 days of last year. Oh, man. Which means I have no emails in my inbox. Let me tell you, the key to inbox zero is to use your inbox as a to do list. If it is in your inbox, you have to do something with it. If it is meaningless, you archive it, you get rid of it. If it's something you can do right now, you do it right now, or you leave it for that part of the day where you can do it. If it's something you cannot do today, you snooze it. Bingo, bango. You do that, you never have an email. The most emails I ever have is when I wake up and there's like, you know, 12 emails in my inbox total. But like, if you treat it like that, like truly like it's a to do list, man, like, not only do you feel lighter about it every day. Yeah. But for me personally, it acts as like a to do list,, another system like that, that I can truly feel like I know where everything's at. I'm never guessing, right? The things that I need to accomplish or not accomplish. Yeah. Yeah. Wes Bos It's probably not, on my part, probably not an email problem. It's more of a, like, I don't feel like dealing with this right now. And then it just stacks up. And snooze it. And then it, yeah, but then I do snooze it. But then, it's true, then I get so much. Like, how many emails have I got today alone? And I aggressively block and unsubscribe from everything. And I have about 23 emails so far since midnight. And it's, well, it's 12, 13 hours, which is not a lot. I could probably blitzer those in five minutes. Scott Tolinski I do it first thing every day, and then I close my email, and I don't open it for the rest of the day, unless I'm expecting a back and forth. But I do it very first thing, and I do it as part of my morning routine. I get into the office, I open up my inbox, and I snooze things sometimes for a week. ([Time 0:14:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6e7a4cf5-52bb-4289-b01e-1c44ff45a941)) - **Fix Systems To Prevent Clutter** - Systems reduce accumulation of physical and digital clutter better than willpower alone. - Clean existing messes first, then add simple rules to keep future items organized. Transcript: Scott Tolinski My tasks in general, I think everything in my life, I would like to have more minimal. I've done a good job of this with inbox zero as evidenced just now, but I do find my to do system, as I mentioned before, things pile up. My systems allow for things to pile up sometimes. And I don't mean just to do's and emails. I mean, physical items. Sometimes I got papers over here that pile up i got another stack of papers over here that pile up i hate papers so much my file system on my computer yeah yeah my file system on my computer And my nas drive have just become a dumping ground of like i'll organize this later and i know like there's got to be some tools i actually built a, I built some personal software for myself, Wes called File Bro. And File Bro, I don't necessarily trust it just yet. But it will hopefully solve some of these issues where you can build, it's like Hazel, where you can build these kind of like complex automations, and then just have it buzz through and Move your files around. I need to build in the ability to like undo before I really let this thing rip on my file system. But I could find like, all right, scan because it does transcripts too. So you could say, scan these video files. And anytime I mentioned the word level up tutorials, put it in the level up tutorials folder. Anytime I mention the name of the course, this is the name of the course, put in this. And then I have these complex JSON workflow documents. Wes Bos See, I did that with my email. And it was just it's all in the edge cases, you know, it works. Oh, yeah, like 93% of the time. But it works just not often enough. That year. Scott Tolinski And I don't, I don't this to work like automated for me every day. What I need this is to clean up the existing structure. Because it is like what I have is a giant pile of clothes. And what I need is those clothes to get folded and put in the right drawer. So that way when I get a new piece of clothing, I don't just throw it in the pile and I have somewhere to put it. ([Time 0:19:14](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d2620bdd-7547-4c82-93bb-a292ff9ca302)) - **Deliberately Train Typing Habits** - Practice deliberately with typing tools that show errors and finger-use patterns to improve speed. - Consider changing keyboards or habits to break recurring mistakes and boost WPM. Transcript: Wes Bos Yeah, here's one that I am going to get so much better at this year is getting faster at typing and more accurate at typing. You know, I feel I just did a test and I'm at like 75 words a minute. I would love to be in like, like on a good day, 75, you know, and like, I wish I could be at maybe 90 words a minute and like very accurate as well. Scott Tolinski Do you have a type checking tool type typing tool? Yeah. Wes Bos So I just asked on Twitter and a bunch of people sent me. There's one tool that will help you get better. And it uses an algorithm based on like it sees what you're like, what mistakes you are. For mine is I'm using the wrong finger to press I. You know, I'm using my pointer, Peter Pointer to touch I. And I should be using my middle finger. Do you want to do a live type yeah typing on the show right now let's do it because i one year from now i am going to figure out if it's my keyboard and or whatever i'm gonna i would like to do This too because i think i might be worse than you really no yes what um what is this okay i gotta sit down for this hold on ready this is it um yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna kick my mic away because I i feel like it gets in the way even though i don't look at it okay ready three two one go Woof. Scott Tolinski All right. Wes Bos What'd you get? Scott Tolinski Oh, my dear. Unmute. Okay. Man. Yeah. So I learned something about myself here is that when I was reading ahead of time, I was better than when I was just typing at like, like following the word and just typing the next word I saw. If I like read and typed at a lag i i did better um how did you do i got 62 words a minute minute with 96 accuracy okay i did 58 words per minute with 96 oh you're pretty close we're pretty close Wes Bos Then pretty close yeah i told you i'm not good not good like that's the problem is that i have a lot of accuracy and it's obnoxious when you're coding because totally then you got to go back Especially with like curly brackets and things like that so i want to get up to like 90 whores a minute and i think i can get there if you just if i just i don't know i asked on twitter people Sent me this like um a couple of websites to practice but also i'm wondering if a keyboard, because I think my problem is that I'm touching the wrong keys. That's not my problem. Or I'm using the wrong fingers. Yeah, obviously that's the problem. You're touching the wrong keys, but I'm using the wrong fingers to go to the keys. So if I maybe, what if I moved to a new keyboard to just hard break those problems? ([Time 0:22:13](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bc81cadb-2ecc-4879-a26e-1cc9db7fb819)) - **Audiobook Taste Shift To History** - Scott listens to many self-help audiobooks but now prefers history and science for sustained value. - He finds some motivational books too derivative or personally costly in lived trade-offs. Transcript: Scott Tolinski The year of learning to type fast i love it cool i agree with you on that one i gotta have that another thing i would like to do is continue listening to more like self-help book and personal Advancement books, those types of things. I do and have always loved a good self-help book. My Audible is just a graveyard of self-help books, and I'll listen to any of them. I'll listen all the way through. It does not matter if I end up implementing any of the things. It gets me a bit of juice to implement change in my life. But I did find over the past year and things were stressful with me with my head injury and just like the amount I didn't feel like I had any room for personal growth, even though I was like, I was doing a lot of healing. So I would love to get back into listening to a bunch of books. And I already have a whole bunch downloaded and ready to go that I downloaded legally off of whoever knows where you guide by legal audio books.com. But I would love to just re implement that in life and listen to more more books because I can fill my time with a lot of boring ass podcasts or you know, see, I much prefer the like interesting Wes Bos Podcast. Scott Tolinski I used to be huge into audiobooks. Wes Bos And I still am like I like the like atomic habits or whatever. But I find a lot of these self help books so cheesy. You know, I listened, I listened to this, like David Goggins, you know, everyone's crazy about how amazing this guy is. And, and like, I'm just like listening to this and being like, yeah, this guy can like, like obviously run marathons and break his legs and keep running. But like the rest of your life is in shambles, brother. You know, you have no good relationships. You're just hurting everybody in your life like all of this is at the cost of what what and like i'm not motivated by this you know like it's i find myself the older i get the less the more I find this stuff to be super cheesy i don't know why that is i don't think that i'm like becoming negative but i just like i see through a lot of this stuff like, yeah, but like the rest of Your life, you kind of sacrifice everything else in your life to get really good at running through the desert. Scott Tolinski Like the thing that turns me off of one is like when something is super derivative of something else I've already listened to before, or you can tell it's just like a reworking of these Other ideas that somebody else had. One of the things that I've been liking lately in books, especially about like technology is like, maybe like more history stories about like real things and real history. They call that history. And I do think that like those things are inspiring to me in the same way that self-help books are. So maybe that's it too. Maybe I just like have reached the limit on I've listened to all of the good self-help books and need to listen to more history or more things that I actually want to spend time on. ([Time 0:26:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7aa4d020-4c18-4452-b6e1-c66d8b02ae4d)) - **Schedule Long‑Term Habits Visibly** - Track long-term, non-daily habits (monthly/quarterly) with reminders so they don't fall through the cracks. - Use a single habit surface so monthly tasks appear alongside daily habits for visibility. Transcript: Scott Tolinski I would like to and I actually built an app for this, not vibe coded, by the way. I built this by hand, not that it matters. But long term habits where you have your daily habits and your like daily resolutions, things you want to do every single day. But there's like some things I would like to do once a month. So I built like an app where you can say, remind me to do this thing every four months, or remind me to do this thing every three months. And then like, it just has like a feed and it pops up and it says like, all right, you have two months until you have to do this again. And you could just kind of always see that what's at the top to these things that like that way you can make sure that you're like staying on top of either relationships you want to cultivate, Like professional relationships, like, Oh, my, you know, there's a buddy of mine, I haven't talked to him in in months, like, one of those things could just be like, send so and so a message, Because you know, life gets busy, and just stuff like that you know i would love to develop and improve that system or what i should do is i should take that long-term kind of habits like Things that only happen several times a year and just put that in my habit tracker app just put it in that so that way i don't have two surfaces i'm already looking at the habit tracker app Every day. Oh, here's one. I would like to ship more things. I have a real big problem of starting a lot of things and not finishing them. Wes Bos I think we all do. Scott Tolinski Yeah. Yes. I would love to ship some things. I have a video recording app that hopefully by the time you're listening to this has been shipped. I actually have it signed by my Apple developers account, and I would like to get in the hands of people like Wes to test it. So that way I can actually ship it because I'm using it right now. And you know what, it does me no good to just write this thing and have myself use it. I could put it up online and have other people use it as well. So I got a ship. ([Time 0:30:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5ce38a27-17a8-4baf-a14e-9b019ec70d62))