From the author: An excerpt from the book “Time Management for Children and Teens” “Golden” Habit And in this chapter, dear friend, we will talk about habits. Unexpected for a book on time management ? Not at all. And soon you will understand why. Please write down your bad habits below. If you have them, of course. Maybe you're biting your nails or the tip of your pen? Or you throw clothes around - yes, yes, this is also a habit! Or do you like to have lunch in front of the TV? In general, a habit can be considered any action that we repeat constantly and which does not require our control. And bad habits are automatic actions that cause us or those around us some kind of inconvenience. For example, if you have the habit of picking your nose, you have probably repeatedly heard comments about this: oh, how not beautiful, oh, you can’t do this in public ... Basically, all the inconveniences here are related to someone’s aesthetic feelings. What if you have a habit of, say, squeezing pimples? It hurts, there are more and more of them, they heal slowly - but the person still follows the habit... And now, my friend, take a black pencil and cross out those habits that you want to get rid of. This doesn't mean they will disappear immediately. But this means that the magic of change will begin... We need a list of your personal habits for several things: Firstly, so that you look a little at your life from a critical point of view. And a critic is not just someone who scolds and destroys something. The critic points out what needs (and can) be changed. Therefore, if you recognize something as a bad habit, you automatically begin to change - so that the bad habit is replaced... with a good one (this is a secret and looking ahead). And secondly, so that you understand by “living example” that a habit, once it exists, is much easier to follow than not to follow. Therefore, our next thought: A well-organized life is a life full of “good” and “right” habits. Why in quotes? We understand that you hear the word “good” quite often, and usually the person who says it is completely confident that he is right. Moreover, he thinks that “good” and “bad” are an objective fact. But we know that the sooner you learn that the same action in different situations for different people can be “good”, “bad”, or “nothing at all”, the easier your life will be. Fighting with friends while walking is bad. Fighting a war with the enemy is good. If a boy protects a girl, this is generally good. What if it's a boy's girl? Well... it can be different. Therefore, let's return to our conversation and agree to consider as good habits those, and only those, and precisely those habits that will bring you pleasure and benefit personally. What good habits would you like to have? Think carefully and choose 3!3, no more and no less. This is enough to immediately change your life for the better. And this will require remarkable willpower from you. Therefore, for starters, 3 will be enough. Then, when they are fixed, you can add more - if necessary, one at a time. Draw yourself doing these useful things. What do you want? Maybe you need to get up fifteen minutes earlier to do something important before school? Or do gymnastics after school? Or read good books in the evening before bed, at least a little? It is no coincidence that we chose exactly these examples: one habit should enter your morning, another – in your day, a third – in the evening. Don’t assign everything to one time - this will complicate your task, and maybe even make it completely meaningless. Choose simple habits to begin with. The point is not to immediately overwhelm yourself with work, but to learn how to “make” yourself the necessary habits. And guess what? When new habits become just habits, your day will begin to flow in a magical way. Because habits are the backbone, the core of our pastime, which allows us to cope with both the simple and the most complex