Hey,

I want to talk to you about something important.

Something most people miss when they try to build new habits or remove bad ones.

In November 2025, I started a new habit.

I told myself, the time I spend walking to the gym and back, which is about 2km total, let me listen to a podcast.

And it worked.

In the last two months of 2025, I listened to a podcast pretty much every single day. I missed maybe two or three days for some holiday reasons. But even 57 podcasts is still fantastic.

I was planning to keep this habit and take it with me into 2026. Because I believe it takes a year to build something like this and then forget you are even tracking it.

But life had other plans.

I started 2026 with sickness.

For almost four weeks I could not go out. Did not go to the gym. My leg hurt so much I could barely move.

So for the first three weeks, I did not listen to any podcast.

The issue was I was also busy. All my work depends on thinking. And I cannot think while listening to a podcast. I cannot do both. So I just stopped.

Then I made a switch.

At the last week, I said to myself, instead of listening to one full podcast a day that takes at least three hours, let me change this to 30 minutes of a podcast every single day.

And let me tell you mate.

From the day I made this switch, things changed.

I have not missed a single day.

Because 30 minutes looks like nothing.

I will probably listen to fewer podcasts than I did in the last months of 2025. But I am consistent. And consistency is everything.

This applies to so many habits.

When you start organising your life, and this happens to me a lot, you get so excited and you write things like "read 20 pages every single day."

And you end up forgetting this habit even exists. Or you barely read when you are bored.

But if you wrote "read for 15 minutes," 15 minutes looks like nothing.

If you said "I will write my daily journal," that could be overwhelming because you do not know what to write.

But if you said "I will spend 10 minutes writing what happened today," that looks more exciting. And easier to do.

The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ said:

"The most beloved deed to Allah is the most regular and constant, even if it were little."

He also said:

"Do not take upon yourselves except the deeds which are within your ability."

We get so excited sometimes.

We believe we can do hard stuff every single day.

But life takes us where it wants.

Sometimes we get sick. Sometimes we are unmotivated. Sometimes we are travelling. Anything can happen.

But keep this in your mind.

If you miss a habit three times in a row, trust me, you will miss it every single day after that.

That is not a broken streak.

That is the start of a new habit. A bad one.

Same goes for bad habits.

If you want to cut processed sugar, which is something I am currently doing right now, and you say "no sugar in my day," it is hard.

I drink tea with sugar. And I cannot see myself not doing that.

But I also eat other processed sugar during the day. A dessert or something.

So I will start by cutting those first.

No processed sugar except tea.

When I am finally okay with that, I will move to cut sugar from tea.

The point is this.

Make the steps easy to do.

Small.

And when you get better, when you get familiar, increase the bar.

Productivty Hack:

One of the best ways to build habits is streak challenges.

Because we hate starting over.

Once you reach 60 days without smoking, your mind hates breaking this streak. And you fight to protect it.

For that, my next Second Brain 7.0 System includes streak challenges. With a reward system. And automations that make it easy to track.

👉 Get Second Brain 6.0 🧠 today and receive the next update for free.

Thanks for reading.

Osama (OLS)

P.S. — Small and consistent beats big and broken. Every time.