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Build a disciplined lifestyle, one small habit at a time.

Welcome to Nela’s blog!

I am a growth mindset hacker, writer, and entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. My blog is a collection of ideas on how to implement small habits to help you build a self-disciplined lifestyle so that you can maximize each day. I write on a variety of topics including building self-discipline, developing a growth mindset, strengthening motivation and willpower, goal setting, changing bad habits, overcoming procrastination and increasing focus, doing deep work, maximizing productivity, and more.

Where can you find my published work?

You’ll find me on Medium.
And, you can follow my work on Quora, where I’ve been writing for six years and have earned Top Writer status. With answers that have reached 80+ million views, I contribute to a community of 300 million monthly users, where I have 69K+ followers. My articles have been published on Inc., Time, Forbes, Business Insider, Huffington Post, Slate, and Apple News, and translated into over a dozen languages including French, Swedish, German, Spanish, Italian, Slovak, Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Brazilian-Portuguese, Finnish, and Greek.

📚I am the author of 11 books that are part of a growth mindset e-book series. The e-books are:

🤓 New to the blog? Subscribe with your email and get a free sample of My Self-Discipline Journal.
☕️ Already a follower? Support my work by buying me a virtual cup of coffee.

The Brain That Won’t Quiet Down: On Decluttering the Mind

There’s a version of waking up that isn’t restful.

You open your eyes and the brain is already running. Before you’ve said a word to anyone, before you’ve made coffee, the list is going. Meetings. Deliverables. Handoffs. The errand you forgot yesterday. The personal project that’s been sitting untouched for two weeks. The commute ahead, which won’t be quiet either, because when you put on music instead of a podcast, your thoughts have room to run.

I know this experience from the inside. For years, my mornings started with mental noise before they started with anything else.

What I eventually figured out, and what I wrote Declutter Your Mind to help with, wasn’t how to think less. It was how to think more efficiently. How to take everything that was running in parallel and give it somewhere to land.

The step that changed something for me was Step 2: Start Organizing.

Not because organization is a new idea. But because this step asked me to sort my thoughts into categories. Not treating them all the same. Daily tasks in one column. Catastrophizing thoughts in another. Procrastination in a third. Big life goals in a fourth. Color-coded.

That sorting changes everything.

A catastrophizing thought — the doomsday kind, the ones where you’re already imagining failure — is completely different from a task you’ve been putting off. They’re not the same size. They don’t need the same response. But when they land on the same page, they feel equal. They feel urgent. They feel like they all need to be solved today.

The moment you separate them, everything shifts. What felt endless becomes four smaller lists. And four smaller lists are manageable.

I used to do a version of this out loud in the car on my commute. I’d start the conversation with myself: OK, what’s on the agenda today? Let’s come up with a priority list. I’d force myself to name three to five things, not fifty. By the time I got to work, I had an order of operations. Everything had somewhere to go.

If any of this sounds familiar, if your mornings start with noise before they start with anything else, Declutter Your Mind is probably the right place to begin.

Here’s where to find it: https://payhip.com/b/35yd2

Still here, if you’ve been waiting

Don’t Begin at the Beginning

There’s a specific kind of paralysis that comes from wanting to start something and having too many options for how.

You know it when you feel it. You click into a folder, a course, a bundle of things you genuinely wanted. And instead of beginning, you close it. Not because you’ve lost interest — because you don’t know which door to walk through first. You tell yourself you’ll figure it out later. Later keeps not coming.

This happens with Redesign Your World too. Nine workbooks covering five different areas of your life — that’s a lot of doors. I structured the bundle so each piece works on its own, but I also know that standing in front of nine things with no clear direction is its own kind of stuck.

So here’s what I’d tell someone who just downloaded it.

Don’t begin at the beginning.

The bundle includes a Start Here guide — a navigation document I made for exactly this moment. Its whole job is to match where you are right now to the right workbook. Not where you think you should be. Not where the table of contents starts. Where you actually are.

If you feel scattered, like your brain has too many tabs open and none of them are loading — begin with Declutter Your Mind. Before you can set goals or build habits, you need to clear the noise.

If the vision is clear but the follow-through keeps slipping — reach for Your Roadmap to Success, then let the Action Planner and Progress Tracker do what they’re designed to do: turn intention into weekly moves.

If you already know what isn’t working — a habit you can’t seem to break, a pattern you keep repeating — go straight to The Habit Disruptor.

The Start Here guide maps all of this and more. It’s the tenth file in the bundle, and it’s the one I’d reach for first.

For everyone else: before you begin anything, ask yourself one question. The thing you can’t stop thinking about lately — that’s where to begin. Not the most urgent, not the most overdue. The one that keeps coming back on your commute, in the quiet before Monday starts, in the in-between moments when your brain has a second to breathe.

Go there first. Answer the first question. That’s the whole move.

———

This week’s Small Move:
Open the Start Here guide. Find your entry point. Write it down. You don’t have to do anything with it yet — just name it.

Redesign Your World is available here: https://payhip.com/b/35yd2

This Is What I Built

Ten years ago, I didn’t set out to build a system. I sat down with a blank document and started writing — for myself, about something I was trying to figure out. Habits that weren’t sticking. A mind that wouldn’t quiet down. Goals I kept rewriting without ever reaching. I wrote the way I always have: by thinking out loud on the page, and by building something I could actually use.

One workbook became two. Two became five. I kept going, not because I had a plan, but because each one filled a gap I hadn’t been able to close. The frameworks accumulated quietly, one at a time, over a decade.

This summer, I looked at everything I’d made and saw it for the first time as a whole.

I started editing: keeping what held up, setting aside what didn’t fit, and shaping what remained into something with a beginning and a progression.

I’m calling it Redesign Your World.

Nine workbooks, structured across five areas:

Foundation
Redesign Your OS: the starting point. What you believe about yourself, and how you think. Everything else builds from here.

Clarity + Mindset
Declutter Your Mind: clearing what’s in the way before you try to build anything new.
7 Ways to Practice Stoicism: practical philosophy for the moments when you’re in your own head.

Habits + Discipline
The Habit Disruptor: for breaking what isn’t working.
Unlock Your Potential: for building what you actually want in its place.

Goals + Action
Your Roadmap to Success: the long view. Goals at distance.
Your Step-by-Step Action Planner: the short view. This week, this month.
Your Monthly Progress Tracker: the check-in that keeps you honest.

Daily Practice
My Self-Discipline Journal: the thread that runs through everything. A daily practice that reinforces all of it.

There’s also a Start Here guide, a tenth file, that acts as a navigation document. Because the nine workbooks can be approached in different ways depending on where you are, and the Start Here guide helps you find your entry point. You don’t have to begin at the beginning if the beginning isn’t what you need right now.

I wrote every word in this bundle myself. That felt important to say clearly, because there are AI prompts embedded inside, and I want you to understand what they’re doing there.

The prompts aren’t there to generate the content for you. They’re not a shortcut around the thinking. They’re placed at specific moments in each workbook where I’ve noticed people tend to get stuck, go surface-level, or stop too soon. I designed each prompt to encourage you to go deeper at exactly those moments: to ask the question you weren’t asking yourself, or to help you say the thing you’re circling around but haven’t quite landed on.

The workbooks aren’t comprehensive, and they’re not everything I’ve made. They’re the pieces that actually worked. The shortcuts I wished someone had handed me when I was in the middle of figuring out how to stop running in place.

I curated this carefully. If something didn’t belong, I left it out.

If you’ve been reading this newsletter, you know I only share what I’ve actually created and used. This is exactly that.

Here’s where you can find it: https://payhip.com/b/35yd2

It’s available now at an introductory price for the first 30 days.

———

Small Move:

Before you do anything else, write down the one area you’ve been putting off the longest. One or two words. There’s a workbook for that.

Exciting update: I’m moving my newsletter — here’s where to find me now

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you found me years ago through an answer on Quora, followed the link here, and stuck around. That means more to me than a subscriber count ever could.

I’m consolidating my writing into one place: a weekly newsletter called My AI Experiment, now hosted on Substack. It’s where new essays, experiments, and ideas will live going forward — and this WordPress blog won’t be updated the same way anymore.

If you’d like to keep reading, I would love to have you there. It takes one click to resubscribe:

https://nelacanovic.substack.com

Thank you for being here from the beginning. I mean that. 
And I look forward to your feedback, as always!

— Nela

(Currently rereading Brave New World — feels apt, some weeks more than others.)

It’s been a while. Here’s what I’ve been building.

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know I’ve spent years writing about productivity, mindset, and the habits that make work feel meaningful.

This past year I went somewhere new.

I’ve been running an experiment — using AI, specifically Claude, as a genuine thought partner for my work and life. Not for shortcuts. For clarity.

What I discovered surprised me. The most powerful thing you can do with AI isn’t asking it questions. It’s giving it context: who you are, what you want, how you think and work best. When Claude has that, it stops responding like a stranger. It starts responding like someone who actually knows you.

I turned what I learned into a workbook.

Redesign Your OS walks you through three focused sessions with Claude that produce three documents: a Personal Constitution, a Goals Document, and a Work Strategy Document. Together they become a brief — one you share with Claude at the start of any conversation to get responses that are calibrated to you, not generic.

The workbook stands on its own — you don’t need any prior AI experience or background. Just a free Claude account and a willingness to answer honestly.

If any of this sounds like something you’ve been needing, it’s here:

Redesign Your OS

More soon. Good to be back!

Choose from 3 Free Mini-Courses to Help You Break Bad Habits, Set Goals, and Build Self-Discipline

We all have habits we wish we could break, goals we struggle to stick to, and moments where self-discipline feels impossible. Change isn’t easy — but it’s absolutely possible with the right approach. That’s why I’ve put together three free mini-courses in PDF format to help you take action, break negative cycles, and build habits that last. Each course is designed to be simple, practical, and easy to apply right away.

🎯 From Dream to Done: 10 Game-Changing Ideas to Achieve Your Goals

If you set goals but never seem to follow through, this course will help you:
✔️ Set clear, achievable goals that actually work
✔️ Stay on track even when motivation fades
✔️ Use a printable goal tracker to measure progress

📩 Download here

🔄 The Habit Disruptor: Cut the Cycle, Build Momentum, and Redesign Your Life

Struggling with bad habits you can’t seem to leave behind? Learn how to:
✔️ Identify the root cause and triggers behind them
✔️ Replace bad habits with positive ones that stick
✔️ Use simple strategies to stay on track long-term

📩 Download here

🔥 3 Self-Discipline Habits to Build Unshakable Focus

If distractions and procrastination keep getting in your way, this course covers:
✔️ How to stay consistent, even when motivation is low
✔️ Why willpower alone doesn’t work (and what does)
✔️ Simple habits to build lasting self-discipline

📩 Download here

Each mini-course includes practical exercises, reflection questions, and real-life examples — so you can apply what you learn immediately.

Which one do you need most right now? Let me know in the comments!

🚀 New Ebook Release — Unlock Your Potential: 10 Self-Discipline Strategies to Transform Your Life 🚀

I’m excited to announce a new e-book dedicated to one of my favorite topics — self-discipline.

Over the course of my career (teaching, coaching, and writing) I’ve had some of the most interesting and thought-provoking conversations about it. In a nutshell, we’ve all had challenges about maintaining self-discipline, whether that’s in our academic, professional, or personal life. It’s not easy to stay focused: wake up early enough for a workout, tackle the biggest cognitive tasks early in the day, go to bed on time, say no to that extra slice of apple pie.. The list goes on and on.

These past few years I have made it my mission to go more in depth on what self-discipline really means. Is it a habit? A mindset? A choice? Maybe even a lifestyle? I’ve read and drawn inspiration from Stoic philosophers like Marcus Aurelius and Seneca, and picked up quite a few excellent tips and ideas from contemporary thought leaders on the subject — a big shoutout goes to Jocko Willink and David Goggins, both of whom keep me in awe of what is possible to achieve as a human being, a public servant, and a leader.

I wanted to create a resource for those of you who, like me, are passionate about this topic or who simply want to find out how to incorporate self-discipline into their daily lives in small ways. Over the past year I’ve collected ideas, wrote and rewrote lists, come up with real-life examples that are relatable to us all, and added motivational tips to keep us all going.

This e-book is packed with 10 powerful, practical strategies to help you take control of your habits, eliminate distractions, and develop the mindset needed to stay consistent and push through challenges. In each chapter you’ll find:

✔ An explanation of a key self-discipline strategy — why it works and how it can impact your life.

✔ Step-by-step guidance on how to implement the strategy.

✔ Real-world examples to help you apply these lessons in your daily routine.

✔ Self-discipline challenge to focus on that day and a checklist to mark when the challenge is complete.

✔ Motivational tip — a nugget of wisdom to inspire you to keep going.

If this sounds like a resource you’d find helpful, you can learn more about it here.

Drop me a comment here on how you tackle self-discipline in your life!

Wishing you a good week and month,

2025 is approaching fast — what will YOU do with it?

I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling both excited and reflective as 2025 approaches. 😅

With a new year on the horizon, it’s the perfect time to think about what we want to achieve — and how we can set goals that actually stick. I’ve been there in the past: big dreams (write a new collection of e-books), no clear plan (how many? which topics? when to write them?). That’s why this year, I’ve created something new to help all of us navigate goal-setting with focus and intention.

Introducing Your 2025 Roadmap to Success Complete E-book Kit! This is a personal project I’ve been working on for the past 6 months. This kit is designed to help you not only plan your goals but also take action and stay on track.

The kit includes:

Your Roadmap to Success: 10 Ideas for Setting Powerful Goals in 2025: An e-book that dives deep into ten transformative ideas for goal-setting, helping you create goals that align with your values and keep you motivated throughout the year.
Your Step-by-Step Action Planner: A practical guide for breaking down goals into achievable steps.
Reflect, Reset, Recharge: Your Monthly Progress Tracker: A tool to review progress, celebrate wins, and adjust course when needed.

Together, these resources are here to help you create big, exciting goals and turn them into reality. ✨

If (like me) you’ve been struggling to stay consistent with your goals or simply want a fresh approach for the new year, this kit might be exactly what you need. I’m already using it to plan my own beginning to 2025, and I have to say — it’s been a game-changer.

You can check it out here!

Here’s to making 2025 your most focused and fulfilling year yet. 🎉

I wish you and your families a healthy and happy New Year! ❤️

On those January blues, New Year’s resolutions, and how to avoid overwhelm

It’s the third week of January and the year is already in full swing. How are you doing?

A few things on my mind these past few weeks are:

January blahs (or blues?)

I’m noticing fewer and fewer holiday decorations that made homes look more magical in November and December. Shouldn’t the beginning of the year be celebrated, too? Since the days are still short and nighttime feels longer, it helps to make things look cozy indoors. I am a big fan of lighting candles, having some small lamps brighten up dark corners, and adding a colorful blanket to the couch.

New Year’s resolutions

How are they working out so far for you? For many years, I would have a ritual at the end of December of writing a list of New Year’s resolutions in my journal. On the upside, I find it interesting to re-read these lists and notice how the same items pop up year after year. On the other hand, I’ve probably written list after list of goals and resolutions that were too much, too soon. This year, I’m ditching this habit and replacing it with NO LISTS. Instead, I’m using the time to think of 1-2 goals that are important to me, and coming up with some ways to break them down into small steps. And speaking of steps…

Do you feel overwhelmed with the amount of things you have to do?

It’s normal to keep track of tasks, schedules, bullet journal entries. But watch out for writing down too many things you need to do every single day. Real life goes something like this: For each day, we write a list of “to-do’s” and often we manage to do some of them. But life gets busy and we don’t always finish everything on a given day, so on the next day we have whatever we initially planned PLUS the leftover tasks. Next thing you know, it’s the snowball effect: tasks get carried over, they don’t get all done, and by the end of the week we feel overwhelmed with what’s left. I’m trying to minimize my lists this year by writing down only the top-priority items for each day, and I treat the rest as “nice to finish” but not as “must finish” tasks. The effect? It feels like a relief to see a shorter list in my notebook. When evening comes, I can go out for a walk and find a little pocket of time to think. Or relax. Or just enjoy the fresh air. It’s a much calmer way to end the day.

What has your January experience been like? Share in the comments when you find a minute.

And as always, thank you for reading!

Subscribe to continue reading

🎯 From Dream to Done: 10 Game-Changing Ideas to Achieve Your Goals

🔄 The Habit Disruptor: Cut the Cycle, Build Momentum, and Redesign Your Life

🔥 3 Self-Discipline Habits to Build Unshakable Focus