Idea Pictogram, Author at ideapictogram

How to Make Happiness a Habit

by Idea Pictogram | Feb 7, 2026 | ideas for humans

Happiness is a habit, one that you can develop if you work hard enough at it. At first, happiness sometimes feels like it’s hard to reach, like a neverending goal that keeps moving farther away no matter how many steps you try to take towards it. Happiness takes discipline. It might sound counterintuitive that it takes discipline to be happy. It can be a revelation that you have to work hard at being happy, that you have to put in the time and energy to achieve happiness. In this way, you can’t be too passive about your own happiness.

To some, it doesn’t come naturally. Happiness requires regular maintenance and practice, like maintaining a fit body through regular exercise and a healthy diet. To maintain your happiness, follow the principles of a balanced lifestyle. Implement regular check-ins with family and friends, and do an audit of each part of your life to find out which areas need improvement and which needs eliminating. Below are some more tips on how to maintain your happiness.

Let go of toxic thinking
Make your health a priority
Make friends and family a priority
Unplug from social media
Choose carefully what you consume

1. Let go of toxic thinking

Let go of anger and frustration. Don’t let negative thoughts be the reason that your life feels unfulfilled. First, you have to be more aware of your thoughts. Just like habits form by strengthening certain neural connections, building the required muscle memory starts with recognizing you have a problem. You can unconsciously have bad habits, like persistent toxic thinking that is too focused on negativity. Letting go of anger and frustration is a great weight off your shoulders. It allows you to feel happier and less tied to cycles of negative thinking. Happiness is a habit, which you can develop by letting go of toxic thinking.

2. Make your health a priority

This means exercising, quitting smoking, and having a healthy diet. Physical wellness has a great influence on your mental wellbeing. It’s easy to neglect your health when you have bills to pay and work to do, so it’s worthwhile to remember that healthy bodies make healthy minds. Either eliminate or moderate the things that will shorten your life span like the ones I listed above. Cleanse and declutter. Your environment influences how you think, so create an environment that is more helpful to your goals. Ever look at a cluttered desk and automatically feel overwhelmed by a seemingly simple task such as tidying and cleaning up? Make it easy on yourself and start with the simple things such as organizing your desk and your personal space. Healthy habits help in creating happiness as a habit.

3. Make friends and family a priority

Studies have shown that age-related risks such as dementia and Alzheimer’s increase the more socially isolated you are. By improving relationships with the people around you, you can be more satisfied with your personal life. Those with a solid support system are more resilient because they have others they can lean on in times of difficulty. That’s why making time for friends, new and old, can be so important. Don’t work too hard. Humans need play as much as they need work. Everyone needs to realize that work is not the be all and end all to life. Work is such a large part of our lives that you must find something you enjoy doing. It’s true that we need meaningful work to find fulfillment in our lives. The number of people who work really hard will wonder why they have let life pass them by.

4. Unplug from social media

Social media is a massive distraction and overconsumption of it can lead to feelings of inadequacy about your own life and self-defeating comparison. Sure, social media can have its fleeting rewards, and momentary joy from likes and peer approval. But these are like empty calories that if added frequently to your diet, lead to harmful side effects. Studies have shown that this type of desire for peer approval can be harmful for your health. Limit screen time; it can help to install an app on your phone that limits the amount of time you spend on social media. Being mindful of your consumption of social media can help make happiness a habit.

5. Choose carefully what you consume

When passively scrolling through social media, it’s easy to intake harmful content unless you pay close attention to what you are consuming. Choosing carefully also applies to the kind of people you associate with and spend time with. Making a decision about what you consume leads you to live a life that is intentional. Living your life with intention means that you think about making smart decisions instead of letting others make these decisions for you. This takes a lot of discipline. If you say you will do something, you have to be disciplined enough to follow through on your intention and to do it.

Discipline is the hardest thing to master. There are too many excuses, too many distractions and obligations. But if you want to achieve something great, you have to make a promise to yourself that you will accomplish what you set out to achieve.

Happiness is hard work. Just as no one expects to be handed money and have everything taken care of for them, you have to be willing to put in the effort to reap the rewards. Your quality of life can either go up or down depending on how much time you put into maintaining the essential aspects of an enriched and fulfilling life. Setting aside time and schedule in things like exercise and family time is a great start. Living an intentional life where you are cognizant of the reasoning behind the decisions that you make will make you more aware of what needs to be improved and what needs to be eliminated. Happiness is a habit, and requires a mindful approach to maintain for the long term.

The Smart Way to Fail: How to Fail Often and Fail Fast

by Idea Pictogram | Oct 18, 2025 | ideas+business

Failing in business is common. But there’s a smart way to fail, and that’s to fail often and fail fast. There are so many stories about how entrepreneurs failed before they reached success that everyone should think of failing as the normal thing to do.

Failing often and failing fast is a necessity. Learning is the most important way to grow as an individual and as an entrepreneur. When you understand that you are not going to get it right the first time in any project you start, the possibilities open to you are endless. The principles of failing fast are useful in business, but can be applied to all things in life.

Look for safe ways to fail.
Don’t dwell on failure.
Learn your lessons and don’t forget them.
Exercise resiliency.
Try many new and different things.
Have a mentor or guide.
Refuse to give up and to think that failure is the end.
Have courage and don’t fear failure.

1. Look for safe ways to fail.

Think of ways to get started on your business while taking on minimal risk. Looking for safe ways to fail means that you don’t invest a ton of money into your new project. Minimize the risk by building your business with the least amount of startup capital. This will require some creativity, so look for ways to reduce the amount of money you need to start your business. What you don’t want to do is invest a ton of money in an idea that you later find out isn’t going to work. The smart way to fail is to fail with minimal risk. So start simple and start small. This allows you to fail often and fail fast.

2. Don’t dwell on past failure.

If you fail after your first, second, or hundredth attempt, move on. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and don’t dwell on failure. The sooner you get back up, the quicker you will reach success. You’re going to do this often, and you are going to do this fast. So don’t dwell on failure and move on quickly. Perfectionism is the enemy of forward progress. Your attempts are not meant to be perfect.

3. Learn your lessons and don’t forget them.

Keep a record of your attempts, especially what didn’t work, and what you can change. A failure ends up being only a failure if you don’t learn anything from it. Forget the failure itself, but remember the lessons. It’s called learning because you have to do something that you’ve never done before. You’re unfamiliar with what you’re doing, and not knowing how to do something can be uncomfortable. But once you’ve done something a couple of times, your muscle memory takes over, and it’s like doing something automatically without much thought. The smart way to fail teaches you many lessons, and as you get better at failing, you get better at learning.

4. Exercise resiliency.

If you are to succeed in business, you must toughen up and be resilient. I’ve heard stories of many people getting knocked down by what life deals them, but the most successful people are the most resilient ones who get back up and try again. You should be familiar with failing often and failing fast, because this builds resilience and lets you get back up faster. You become stronger and failure doesn’t break you.

5. Try many new and different things.

Business is all about experimenting. You have to try a whole bunch of different things before you can stumble on the one thing that works. Tweak each experiment and you’ll eventually find that momentum that leads you to your goal. That’s why with each reiteration, you’ll get closer to achieving your goal. Nothing works the first time. It’s by repeating these experiments with better knowledge of what works and what doesn’t work that leads you to success. Get as much experience as you can because experience is the best teacher.

6. Have a mentor or guide.

A good mentor or guide has a wealth of knowledge that they can share with you. Having a mentor on your side can save you time and energy, because they will tell you when you are taking the wrong step. They will show you the quickest path to success. Having a mentor is a part of learning. With their experience, they can show you the way to success, and the quickest way to get there.

7. Refuse to give up and to think that failure is the end.

Business is about experimenting. Think of these experiments as a maze. Are you going to get to your destination at the first attempt? No. You’ll take winding paths and meander. You’ll get led down the wrong path. But this eliminates the wrong turns and eventually you’ll learn and get to your destination.

The right thing to do is to keep trying. The wrong thing to do is to give up. Failure is not the end, it’s the beginning.

8. Have courage and don’t fear failure.

If you are afraid to try something new because you fear what people will think of you, or that they will laugh at you when you fail, just know that everyone’s memory is temporary. If there’s one thing good about short attention spans these days, it means that people will forget what you did and move on to the next thing to laugh at. The smart way to fail is to have the courage to fail often and fail fast.

The above tips are smart ways to fail. Like in life, nothing in business is certain, so fail often, and fail fast. That is the only way you will learn, become resilient, and find success. At first, it is painful to fall down and fail. You get scrapes and cuts. But the ones who succeed are the ones who will bandage their wounds and get back up.

Business books to read about failing often and failing fast:
Million Dollar Weekend by Noah Kagan
The Sweaty Startup: How to Get Rich by Doing Boring Things by Nick Huber

Time Management Tips: You Have More Time Than You Think

by Idea Pictogram | Sep 25, 2025 | ideas for humans

How to find time

I know you’re busy. Maybe you have a job, or multiple jobs, a family to take care of, and a mortgage to pay. When you prioritize what you should focus your attention on, the passion project or hobby that you’ve always wanted to spend time on is low on the list. How do you find time to do all of the things that you want to do? The first step is to learn effective time management. When you do this, you’ll find out that you have more time than you think.

The following is an interesting and eye-opening exercise. Record how you spend your time every hour for one week. You can log your time in a spreadsheet to keep it organized. I promise you, it reveals a lot about your habits, some of which you might not even be aware of.

After you do this, did you learn that you spend time mindlessly scrolling on social media on your phone or watching Netflix? Continue reading for more time management tips.

Sticking to an hourly calendar increases your productivity

Ironically, when I used a planner to time-block my calendar, I found that I had more free time than I thought. When you stick to a schedule, you’re being accountable for each hour of your day. This is a time management tip that makes you realize that you can check things off your to-do list and still have extra free time.

Do this exercise because if you don’t keep track of what you do with your time, you won’t know whether you’re spending it wisely. When you do this, you are more aware of how much time you spend being productive versus how much time you waste.

Using your time wisely and being productive makes you realize that you do in fact have more free time than you think. You just spend it doing wasteful things like scrolling on your phone.

To be more productive, eliminate any type of activity that wastes time. This eliminates distraction so you can focus on the important tasks.

If finding a spare hour or two here and there is tricky for you, it could mean getting up an hour early in the morning.

Make to-do lists and stick to them

People who are efficient with their time make to-do lists and stick to them. They have agendas and planners. They spend their Sunday nights planning out what they will do for the rest of the week.

They are extremely organized and have their schedules down to a T. Their time runs on a schedule, which they don’t deviate from. But life happens, and if they do deviate from their to-do list, they find ways to quickly catch up.

I’ve started to get back into the habit of planning my day ahead of time. I have a planner and write down what I’m going to accomplish every hour. I found that it helps me focus. It even helps me finish my tasks faster. The spare time that I have, I use to work on my personal projects.

What if you are tired by the end of the day and just want to watch TV?

It’s understandable if by the end of the work day you just want to relax and unwind. But why don’t you try taking a walk after dinner instead of spending your evening watching TV? Or read a book on a topic that will help you achieve your goal? Or watch a tutorial? There are so many other ways to be productive in your free time, while still enjoying what you are doing.

Deadlines are important

When you are trying to reach a goal, give yourself a deadline. This is a time management tip that works well. Put it in your calendar. It will motivate you to get it done. It’s true that if you’re given only an hour to get a task done, you’d use the whole hour. But if you gave yourself only half an hour, you’d manage to get it done in half the time. The remaining half hour is yours. You have more free time than you think.

Having a deadline is similar to giving yourself only a set amount of time to complete a task. At first it takes a lot of discipline not to get distracted and check your social media. But it takes practice. The more you shut out distractions and focus on your task, the easier it gets.

Time is valuable

Like money, treat it as a valuable resource. You don’t have all the money in the world, and you don’t have all the time in the world, either. So would you waste it? No, of course not! So don’t spend it doing things that don’t matter. Cut out activities that waste time. Focus instead on that hobby that brings you joy, like learning a new language or learning how to play the piano. Once you figure out your own time management practice using these time management tips, you’ll discover that you have more time than you think.

The Top Five Best Things in Life That Are For Free

by Idea Pictogram | Sep 8, 2025 | ideas for humans

One of the first blog posts that I published in my ideas+business page was aimed at educating you on how to sell what people want. It got me thinking on how to follow up on this important topic. Not everything is sell, sell, sell! There are in fact things in life that you can get for free. Not everything comes with a hefty price tag. So for this post I thought it would be useful to share the top five best things in life that you can get for free.

Everyone likes free stuff. Ever get frustrated by learning that something is not actually free? For example, signing up online for services requires you to give them your personal information like your birthdate. Definitely not for free.

While coming up with this list, I found myself leaning more towards the things we take for granted, the everyday things that we don’t appreciate enough.

These are mostly things that you would think about while trying to fill a gratitude journal, and are not tangible items we can own. They do not have monetary value in the usual sense. They don’t belong to anyone; they belong to everyone.

No one owns these, it’s free for people to enjoy. There’s no need to look for bargain prices, and there’s no haggling required to enjoy these things.

The Top Five Best Things in Life That Are For Free

1. Fresh Air
2. Water
3. A Walk Outside in the Park
4. Friendship
5. Freedom

1. Fresh Air

For those of you who are lucky enough to live in unpolluted cities, fresh air should top your list of the best things you can get for free.

To appreciate fresh air and feel gratitude for having limitless amounts of it, take a break from work or from studying and go outside. Breathe in deeply for a count of three, and exhale for a count of three.

Feel that? It’s fresh air, and you don’t even have to pay for it. No one can put a price tag on it, so have as much of it as you want.

I know what the next thing you’re thinking. How long will it be that fresh air is free and available to everyone? What if you live in areas where pollution is rampant, the air quality is low, and you can’t safely breathe it in unless it’s filtered?

My point is, this is a call to protect the environment. Take public transit or bike if you can, instead of driving your car. Protect the environment so that everyone can share and make use of it freely.

2. Water

Water is closely related to fresh air. It comes from the environment. Clean water is free, and I don’t mean the $4.50 one litre of bottled water at the grocery store, but the one from the tap. Okay, we have to pay our water bill, but you get the point.

Clean water is not available to everyone. In underdeveloped countries, clean water is scarce and hard to come by.

Everyone has turned on the tap for some water, and admit it, sometimes we’ve wasted that water. It’s something that we take for granted, so much so that we don’t realize when we waste it. It’s available instantaneously, like magic.

When something is freely available like it’s a normal, everyday part of our lives, it’s easy to overlook how lucky we are that we have clean water.

So next time you turn on the tap for a glass of cold, drinkable water, appreciate the fact that you can have it whenever you want it.

3. A Walk Outside in the Park

It’s free to take a walk outside in the park. Unlike having to pay for a fitness class, taking a walk in the park is free exercise. It doesn’t cost anything, and there are numerous health benefits.

During a busy work week, take some time during your lunch break to get outside, and bring a friend so that together, you can refresh your minds by breathing in all that free air.

Walking is a meditative exercise, and you only need fifteen minutes to reap the benefits. It makes you calmer and more focused. It gives you more energy to tackle all the things that are still in your to-do list.

You may have heard that sitting down is the new smoking. So do yourself a favor and increase your longevity by getting up, going outside, and talking a fifteen minute walk with a friend.

4. Friendship

This leads me to the next thing in the list of best things in life that you can get for free. Friendship should be given freely. Whether you meet in person or over the internet, being sociable can extend your lifespan and protect you from neurodegenerative diseases.

So call your friends or relatives that you haven’t kept in touch with over the years and invite them for a walk or for coffee. If you can’t see them face to face, have a FaceTime call. These people are important in your life, so cherish your friendships and keep them alive. It’s like watering a plant; your plant, or friendship, will die if you don’t take care of it everyday.

Cultivate the friendships that make you happy, and share your interests, hobbies, and everyday activities with them. Joining a social club or group is also a way to cultivate new friendships.

A good friend doesn’t have to be a rare commodity if you work hard at finding those who support you during bad times and share your joys during the good times.

5. Freedom

The last thing on the list of the top five best things in life that are for free is freedom. If you live in a free country, you probably don’t think of this everyday as something that we should appreciate. But you should realize that some people in the world don’t have freedom, or have ever tasted it, or have had it taken away from them.

Our gratitude for freedom needs to be something that we add to our gratitude journal everyday.

We can breathe in fresh air, drink clean water, step outside in the park without fear for our safety, and be friends with anyone that we want, without being punished for it.
So take care of the environment and take care of each other so we can prevent ourselves from putting a price tag on these things in the future.

You can see the point I’m trying to make with this list. The only way to keep these things free and available to everyone is prevent them from being threatened by our own carelessness.

The future is hopeful. Humanity doesn’t have to play a part in threatening these resources and making them scarce and enjoyable by only a privileged few.
There are actions that people are taking right now to protect the environment and each other.

By taking the time to appreciate what we can get for free, it will give us a reason to keep things free and accessible to all, because as soon as we put a value or price tag on them, they will no longer be free to everyone.

Putting an ownership on something that was once for free is an injustice. There doesn’t have to be a hidden cost to freedom.

How to Persuade People to Take Action in Six Easy Ways

by Idea Pictogram | Aug 5, 2025 | ideas+business

If you’re a business owner, getting your customer to make a purchase might be the hardest task you’ll ever have to do. Forget about hiring and coaching a team, being a great leader, setting up operations, and business strategies. If you haven’t got a fantastic sales strategy, then none of that would matter. Sales is a hurdle that discourages most entrepreneurs and makes them give up before they’ve even started. How do you make a potential customer part with their hard-earned dollars? How do you give them a good reason to want to do business with you? How do you overcome objections? In this blog post, I will review how to persuade people to take action in six easy ways. These six techniques will give you an idea of how to elevate your sales strategy to persuade your potential customer to do business with you.

Table of Contents:

1. Let your customer know the consequences of their inaction
2. Motivate your customer to take action
3. Give them a clear deadline
4. Guide your customer so that the decision is easy and obvious
5. Eliminate barriers that make their decision challenging
6. Warm up your customer

1. Let your customer know the consequences of their inaction

Many people don’t take action because of inertia. What do I mean by inertia? I mean that it’s easier, simpler, cheaper, and more convenient to stay still and not move. It’s easier to stay in their comfort zone than do something that makes them uncomfortable.

Exercise and physical activity is a great example of this. People find it challenging to stick to an exercise routine, even if they’ve paid for a gym membership and loaded up on that fancy gym gear. It’s easier to just relax in front of the T.V. after a grueling and exhausting day at work, or taking care of your kids when you’ve just spent time preparing them dinner and tucking them into bed at night.

People won’t take action unless you let them know the consequences of inaction.

To overcome that bit of inertia, show them the reasons why taking no action is actually the wrong decision for them to make. Your customer is comfortable where they are, so show them that their inaction causes even greater discomfort.

You must show them the discomfort of staying where they are.

Going back to the exercise example, haven’t you ever thought about working out more when you read a news article that explains the risk of having too much abdominal fat? Or drinking sugarless soda which instead spikes your sugar level?

Maybe you’re an advocate for climate action or a charity. For the climate action example, maybe you’ve shown them the dire consequences for the planet if the human population continues to cut down trees, drive SUVs that cause global warming, or dump their unrecyclable waste into landfills. All of these things would cause discomfort into any environmentally conscious citizen.

Once you’ve described the discomfort of not taking any action, your customer would be more persuaded to take that first step. I further describe how you can eliminate barriers for your customer that would encourage that initial step.

2. Motivate your customer to take action

There must be a motivating factor in order for a customer to act. If there’s no motivation for the customer to act, they would slip into indifference and apathy. When trying to make a sale, you must answer the question, what are people motivated by? If your product doesn’t answer that question, they are left wondering why they should buy from you at all. Give your customer the motivation by persuading them to take action.

You need to give them a reason that lights that fire in their soul. Dangle a carrot in front of them, and push them to act. This doesn’t just apply to sales. For example, maybe you’re a team leader at work, and you just can’t seem to get your reports to be motivated enough. Their productivity under your leadership suffers as a result.

This is when you really need to empower them to make their own decisions and take ownership of that project. If the momentum falls flat after that initial enthusiasm, pump up the energy and recharge that spark. Motivating people is all about lending them your infectious energy. It has to be so motivating that it’s contagious. Only then will your team or customer take action, and maintain that momentum.

3. Give your customer a clear deadline

This is one of the easier ways to persuade people to take action. Online stores love to use this technique to ramp up e-commerce. They put up a timer on their storefront counting down the days, hours, and minutes until the sale is over. This strategy works because of the “fear of missing out” and the creation of “scarcity”.

This is also something that you must use in the workplace if you’re a team leader. Your direct reports are less likely to procrastinate and get a task done if they have a goal to work towards. And as you know, every goal must have a deadline and be time-bound. When they have a deadline, it’s like turning that hourglass upside down and letting the sand run out until there’s no more time to waste.

To make a faster sale, use this technique. Envision how you can incorporate a countdown into your sales strategy. It could mean setting a deadline for them to take action before the sale is over. Some decisions, however, take time, especially if it’s a lengthy sales cycle. Sometimes your customer doesn’t like to feel rushed into making a decision, especially if the decision involves an expensive purchase. Use your judgement when trying to implement this technique. I go into more detail below about warming up your customer if this is the case.

4. Guide your customer so that the decision is easy and obvious

Most of the time, you have to make the outcome of their decision obvious. Don’t rely on confusing them into making a decision because it won’t work. If it’s too challenging to do something, they will not do it at all. The trick to overcome this is to make it easy. It must be effortless to take action. This is one of the easy ways to persuade your customer to take action.

For example, e-commerce and shopping online makes it easy to buy products. At first, the customer wavers between indecisive and decisive. What makes them finally enter in their credit card number and hitting the “buy” button? It’s because the online store is designed with the user’s experience in mind. There are many steps involved throughout the purchasing journey. Landing on the initial webpage that acts as their virtual storefront. Loading their shopping cart with products. Entering in their credit card number. Finally hitting the “buy” button. Making it easy means acting like a guide throughout their purchasing journey, or their decision tree. There are many steps involved, and you have to be there every step of the way or else your potential customer will just forget about it and go back to being inert.

From attractive graphics, colours, and fonts, your customer should have no choice but to continue through to the final step, because you’ve made the purchase or decision irresistible to them. Be available to answer any questions every step of the way.

From initiating that sales call to closing the sale, you should make the process so simple that it’s easy for the customer to agree to buy. Ever get lost because you didn’t have a map? It’s the same concept with sales. The customer needs a map that guides them in their decision.

5. Eliminate barriers that make their decision challenging

Your customer doesn’t have time to work out the kinks when making a purchase. If it’s too hard for them to decide, they will just move on to the next business that makes their purchase a no-brainer. With technology, it’s easier than ever to make the customer journey smooth, barrier-free, and effortless.

Once you’ve gotten rid of all the barriers, your customer will love you for it and come back for more. That one-time customer will soon turn into a repeat customer who’s loyal and brings in more referrals to your business.

Eliminating barriers means making the process easy. Think of ways to eliminate these barriers before they even pop up on your customer’s radar and even before they encounter them.

6. Warm-up your customer

There’s a reason why it’s called “cold-calling.” When you are cold-calling, your customer doesn’t know you and doesn’t have a good reason to buy from you. You haven’t yet built up the rapport that makes them familiar with your product. There are many books explaining how you can warm up your customer for better results. Some that I would recommend include Launch by Jeff Walker and Oversubscribed by Daniel Priestley. These two books both explain methods for warming up your customer before you ask them to make a purchase. To this end, you will have greater success in persuading your customer to take action.

Ever heard of the observation that it takes at least seven touch points for your customer to finally buy from you? These touch points can include social media posts, emails, and newsletters. It’s anything that makes your customer more familiar with you and your product. So every touch point should give them more information about your product, and should be persuasive enough that they pay more attention at the next touch point.

Getting your product in front of your customer only once will not persuade them to buy from you. That’s why lead nurturing and warming up your customer works. You must do this at least seven times.

The Final Word

Implementing even a few of these strategies will propel you forward to sales success. These techniques will guarantee that your customer’s journey is far more painless and quicker than your competition’s. Guiding them and showing them the right way at every step of the customer journey eases the potential pain points in your sales funnel.

When inertia is the default state of your customer, it takes leadership skills to motivate them into taking action. Show them two options: option A, the consequences of staying inactive, or option B, the benefits of making a definite decision. Then, make their decision process easy, clear, and obvious. It has to be obvious so that they won’t waver between these two states. Strategies I’ve just described include setting a deadline for them to make a decision, eliminating barriers in the customer journey, and making their decision obvious and clear.

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