The Secret To Better Habits In 2025
Here we are…at the halfway point of the 2020s. The first half seems like it was both yesterday and forever ago, doesn’t it?
That’s what the ancients said. Time flies.
But as time passes, as the world changes, how many of us just stay the same? Incredible, unbelievable events have transpired, but I would not say I have transformed myself in any incredible or unbelievable way.
We go on just being the way we always were, not unlike, as Marcus Aurelius noted, those gladiators at the game “torn half to pieces, covered in blood and gore, and still pleading to be held over till tomorrow…to be bitten and clawed again.”
While there is nothing magical about the new year or nothing special about being halfway through a decade, there can be something powerful in these artificial constructs, in deciding to mark a turning point. There’s power in rituals, in moments that encourage us to pause, reflect, and reset. Even the Stoics embraced this. Seneca is said to have begun each year with a plunge into the icy Tiber River, a bracing ritual to wash away the old and prepare for the new.
These are some habits, some best practices, some things I am going to ask of myself in 2025 (many of which were inspired by The Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge, which starts on January 1st). It’s a big part of my year each year—kicking things off with something that challenges me—and I hope you’ll join us on January 1st. Sign up here, more info below.
Do The Essential Things First
This is where it all starts: with how you spend the best part of your day. The novelist Philipp Meyer (whose book The Son is an incredible read) told me on the Daily Stoic podcast, “You have to be very careful about to what (and to whom) you’re giving the best part of your day.” This wisdom echoes across the habits of many productive people. Camilla Cabello told me she starts her day by reading the Daily Stoic email (which you can sign up for here) and then one page from The Daily Stoic.
Personally, I fiercely protect my mornings—family first, then writing. My assistant knows not to schedule anything before mid-morning because early calls and meetings don’t just take time—they sap the energy needed for the essential work. I want to give my best self to my most important things. Everything else can come after.
Well-intentioned plans fall apart as the day progresses. Our willpower evaporates. The world makes its demands. So it’s key that we prioritize the important things and that we habitualize doing them early. It doesn’t have to be perfect or grand. It just has to come first.
Think Small
The writer James Clear talks about the idea of “atomic habits” (and has a really good book with the same title–it was actually the first book someone bought from The Painted Porch). An atomic habit is a small habit that makes an enormous difference in your life. He tells the story of how the British cycling team transformed themselves by focusing on 1% improvements in every area—tiny adjustments that, over time, added up to extraordinary results. It’s a simple but powerful concept: repetitive actions accumulate. “Well-being is realized by small steps,” Zeno would say looking back on his life, “but is truly no small thing.” The key is to start small. Thinking big might feel inspiring, but it’s also overwhelming. Thinking small, on the other hand, is easier—and easier is what gets you started.
Want to read more this year? Don’t aim to finish 50 books. Commit to reading one page per day. Struggling with fitness? Don’t promise yourself a marathon—start with a walk around the block. If your eating habits need work, don’t overhaul your diet overnight—just choose one healthier option today.
The point isn’t about how small the change is; it’s about the momentum it creates. Once you start, you can build. As George Washington’s favorite proverb goes, “Many mickles make a muckle.” Small steps add up to something significant.
Focus On Process, Not Goals
Most people start the year with goals—lose 20 pounds, write a book, learn a language. But goals are just finish lines—they’re about achieving something specific, often external, and usually out of your control. A better approach is to focus on the process: the daily work and the practices that will move you forward, regardless of the outcome. As I wrote about recently, I don’t have goals. When I write, I don’t focus on finishing books—that would be overwhelming. Instead, I focus on my notecard system and writing for a couple hours every day. The books emerge from that process naturally, over time. This year, instead of fixating on specific outcomes, focus on the process that will guide you. The results will take care of themselves.
Create or Remove Friction
Make bad habits more difficult to do. Want to spend less time on social media? Log out after each use, delete the apps, or set screen time limits. I don’t keep social media apps on my phone—they’re on my wife’s phone instead. If I really want to check Instagram or TikTok, I have to ask her first. That extra step is just enough to make me think twice, and because of it, I spend way less time scrolling.
For good habits, make them as easy as possible. In our home, mornings go smoother when the kids’ clothes are picked out the night before, sometimes for the whole week. Packing lunches the night before means we can get out the door with less stress. When I get to my desk in the morning, the three journals I write in are sitting right there. If I want to skip the habit, I have to pick them up and move them aside. So most mornings I don’t move them, and I write in them.
You can apply this to anything. Want to eat healthier? Don’t keep junk food in the house. Trying to shop online less? Remove saved credit card information from your browser—it adds just enough hassle to curb impulsive purchases. Want to drink more water? Keep a reusable water bottle with you at all times.
Make bad habits harder and good habits easier.
Do Something Good
With so much happening in the world—so much chaos, so much uncertainty—I’ve found myself trying to focus on one simple thing: doing good for others. It’s the old Boy Scout motto: “Do a Good Turn Daily.” Some good turns are big—saving a life, protecting the environment, helping someone in crisis. But good turns can also be small: a kind word, holding a door open, mowing a neighbor’s lawn, or calling 911 when something seems off. Scouts are taught that it’s these little acts, done bravely and consistently, that make the world worth living in. Marcus Aurelius spoke of moving from one unselfish action to another—”only there,” he said, can we find “delight and stillness.” At Daily Stoic, we try to live this out every year by teaming up with Feeding America. This year, we raised over $230,000 (donate here—we could use your help in getting to our goal of $300,000). The truth is, it doesn’t take much to make a difference. A small act, done consistently, compounds—just like a good habit. Whether it’s holding open a door or holding up a family, the impact is real. As you head into this year, get in the habit of asking yourself: What good turn can I do today?
Do Less, Better
Matthew McConaughey told me he shut down his production company and his music label because “I was making B’s in five things. I want to make A’s in three things.” Those three things: his family, his foundation, his acting career (you can listen to our conversation here). Along the same lines, Maya Smart told me she had to start saying “No” so she could say “Yes” to writing her first book (which you can pick up at the Painted Porch Bookshop). “I had to start setting boundaries,” she said “Steven Pressfield writes about this idea that you do this shadow work. For me, it was volunteering…So I started resigning from boards and telling people, ‘I’m no longer able to do this thing that I used to do because I’m focused on this book.’” Marcus Aurelius would say that doing less “brings a double satisfaction.” You get to do less and you get to do those things better. As we enter 2025, consider what you might need to say “no” to in order to say “yes” to what matters most.
Set Boundaries
In a world of social media, instant gratification, and oversharing, setting boundaries is a lost art. You know, minding your own business, keeping your private life private, not letting people drag you down into the muck, not getting entangled in other people’s dysfunctions (or entangling them in yours), being strong enough to communicate what you like and dislike. Boundaries are about drawing some lines around yourself–healthy borders between what you’ll accept and what you won’t, what you’ll do and what you won’t. Without them, we leave ourselves open to being drained by the demands, chaos, and drama of others. There’s a term for people who not only lack boundaries, but suck others dry with their neediness, their selfishness, their dysfunction, and their drama: energy vampires. This year, don’t be an energy vampire and don’t put up with energy vampires. Be strong enough to keep them at arm’s distance even if they’re beautiful, even if they’re talented, even if they’re family or old friends, even if their helplessness calls to the most empathetic part of yourself. Set boundaries this year. And stick to them.
Don’t Do It All Yourself
Whenever I speak to military groups, I like to share one of my favorite lines from Meditations:
“Don’t be ashamed to need help. Like a soldier storming a wall, you have a mission to accomplish. And if you’ve been wounded and you need a comrade to pull you up? So what?”
I love how Marcus Aurelius delivers that line—with a shrug. So what? There’s no shame in needing help. Whether it’s therapy, asking for advice, or hiring someone to support you, seeking help is often the key to breakthroughs, growth, and success.
Tim Ferriss has a great question that ties into this: What would this look like if it were easy? Often, the answer involves creating support systems or finding the right kind of help. Building habits, achieving goals, or even just making progress isn’t something you have to do alone.
In 2018, we ran the first Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge. It was packed with activities and exercises inspired by Stoic philosophy. Even I, the person who designed the challenge, found it transformative. Why? Because being part of a group, all working together, created a sense of accountability and momentum. Knowing others were pushing themselves alongside me made it easier to show up, stay committed, and go further than I might have on my own.
As we kick off 2025, we’re doing another Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge—a 21-day program to build momentum for the rest of the year. If you’re looking to improve your habits, consider finding a similar challenge. It doesn’t matter what it’s about or who’s doing it with you; what matters is having a structure and a community to support you.
If you need help, so what? Hire a coach or trainer. Lean on your team. Join a group. Ask someone who knows more than you. It’s not a weakness to seek help—it’s a strength. Marcus Aurelius reminded himself that we’re all comrades on this mission. Don’t let pride hold you back from getting the support you need to succeed.
Escape The Most Expensive Habit
I don’t gamble. I don’t spend recklessly. But I do have an expensive habit: anxiety. It’s cost me hours of sleep, moments with my family, and opportunities I let pass because I was too caught up in my fears. It’s the vacation I didn’t enjoy, the dinner I spoiled, the car ride I spent stressing instead of being present. Seneca said, “We suffer more in imagination than in reality.” Anxiety drags us into a future that doesn’t exist, forcing us to live out worst-case scenarios that rarely happen. And yet, the time and energy anxiety steals are gone forever. The good news? If anxiety comes from within us, we can choose to let it go. Marcus Aurelius put it simply: “Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me.” I carry a small reminder with me—a medallion engraved with Epictetus’ phrase, ta eph’hemin, ta ouk eph’hemin (“What is up to us, what is not up to us”). On the back is a quote from Seneca: “He who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than is necessary.” These phrases are anchors. They remind me that anxiety doesn’t change the outcome—it only punishes me before anything has even happened. It’s not easy to break free, but we can practice—by staying in the present moment, letting go of what we can’t control, and reminding ourselves that anxiety is an expensive habit. Don’t let it cost you anymore of your life.
Say No To Say Yes
It’s a pretty weird thing to collect. But they help me every single day.
It started a few years ago when Dr. Jonathan Fader, an elite sports psychologist, gave me a picture of Oliver Sacks, who is in his office speaking on the phone, and behind him is a large sign that just says, “NO!” I added to this motif with a small memo signed by Harry S. Truman, shortly after he became president. His secretary wrote an inner-office memo to ask if they should start saying no to these sorts of requests with all the demands he had on his schedule. “The proper answer underlined, HST”, he wrote back. Surrounded by physical reminders makes it impossible to avoid considering each opportunity and each ask carefully.
In tech, there’s a term called “feature creep”—when too many ideas or requests dilute the core of a product, leaving it ineffective and unremarkable. The same thing happens in life. Trying to please everyone makes sure you’ll achieve nothing. Borrow E. B. White’s elegant response when asked to join a prestigious commission: “I must decline, for secret reasons.” Or take inspiration from Sandra Day O’Connor—one of her clerks once said with reverence, “Sandra is the only woman I know who doesn’t say sorry. Women would say, ‘Sorry. I can’t do that.’ She would just say, ‘No.’” No, Sandra liked to point out, is a complete sentence. Say no. Own it. Be polite when you can, but own it. Don’t say maybe. Don’t give a bunch of reasons (which invite an argument). Don’t push it until later. Say NO. Understand: Everything you say “YES” to in this life means saying “NO” to something else.
Go The F*ck To Sleep
Earlier we talked about things sapping our energy and making it increasingly more difficult to make good choices throughout the day. Related to that: All the other habits and practices listed here become irrelevant if you don’t have the energy and clarity to do them. What you plan to do tomorrow is irrelevant…if you didn’t get enough sleep tonight. If you’re burned out, if you’re exhausted, if all you want to do is veg out on the couch.
We think we can get away with pulling an all-nighter here and there. We think we can substitute stimulants for sleep. Nonsense. We only have so much energy for our work, for our relationships, for ourselves. A smart person understands this and guards their sleep carefully. The greats—they protect their sleep because their best work depends on it. The clearer they can think and the better their mental and physical state—the better they perform. In other words, the more sleep, the better. Follow the advice of a book I love to read to my kids: Go the F*ck to Sleep! Morning routines are great but a bedtime routine is important, too. Being disciplined about wrapping up and winding down is essential.
Don’t Lose The Rhythm More Than You Can Help
The path to self-improvement is slippery, and falling is inevitable. You’ll sleep in and not be able to read that page, you’ll cheat on your diet, you’ll say “yes” and take on too much, or you’ll get sucked into the rabbit hole of social media. That’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. You’re only a bad person if you give up.
I told Dr. Edith Eger I felt guilty about how I had lost touch with someone and only recently reconnected with them. She cut me off and told me she could give me a gift that would solve that guilt right now. “I give you a sentence,” she said, “One sentence—if I knew then what I know now, I would have done things differently.” That’s the end of that, she said. “Guilt is in the past, and the one thing you cannot change is the past.”
No one is perfect. We all have bad days. We can’t change that. When we mess up, we can’t go back and fix it. But we can move forward. We can be better here and now. We have to. “Disgraceful,” Marcus Aurelius would say, “for the soul to give up when the body is still going strong.”
All of us have fallen short in the last year…and the years before that. We broke our resolutions. We lost touch with people we care about. We made the same mistakes again and again. We were “jarred, unavoidably, by circumstances,” as Marcus said. But now it’s time to pick ourselves up and try again. It’s time, Marcus continues, to “revert at once to yourself, and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help. You’ll have a better group of harmony if you keep on going back to it.”
In other words, when you mess up, come back to the habits you’ve been working on. Come back to the ideas here in this post. Don’t quit just because you’re not perfect. No one is saying you have to magically transform yourself in 2025, but if you’re not making progress toward the person you want to be, what are you doing? And, more importantly, when are you planning to do it?
I’ll leave you with Epictetus, who spoke so eloquently about feeding the right habit bonfire. It’s the perfect passage to recite as we set out to begin a new year, hopefully, as better people.
“From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable, or highly or lowly regarded, remember…The true man is revealed in difficult times. So when trouble comes, think of yourself as a wrestler whom God, like a trainer, has paired with a tough young buck. For what purpose? To turn you into Olympic-class material.”For more life-changing habits to implement in 2025, check out this video on The Daily Stoic Youtube channel: How To Reinvent Your Life In 2025 (8 Stoic Practices You’ll Actually Use).
As I said above, I’m starting 2025 with The Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge. It’s 21 days of challenges—presented one per day, built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy—designed to turn you into Olympic-class material. Sign up here before it starts on January 1st.
Each day you’ll get an email from us with instructions for the day’s challenge. These will all be exercises and routines you can begin right away to spark personal reinvention. We’ll tell you what to do, how to do it, and why it works. We’ll give you strategies for maintaining this way of living, not just for this challenge or for this coming year, but for your whole life.
This challenge is my favorite way to start the New Year. Head over to dailystoic.com/challenge and sign up NOW!
