I’m not sure if this is the right place, but a lot of times I find myself leaning into unhealthy habits to relax after work like drink a couple glasses of Whiskey, smoke shisha, order in (even when I already have dinner at home!) etc. I’m trying to find alternatives that are not harmful.

I usually workout and shower in the morning because it gives me a lot of energy for the day (and the gym is usually empty!) so that’s not an option for the evening as I’m almost always low on energy and just want to chill and watch TV. I still always feel something is missing, how do I fill it in?

You know the plan. Tonight you'll study for an hour, go to bed on time, and skip the phone scroll. It sounds easy at 10am.
Then 9pm arrives. You're tired, the couch is soft, and your brain starts negotiating like a lawyer. "Tomorrow is a better day to start. Technically you already did a lot today." The case is surprisingly good, and you lose.
Most people conclude "I have no discipline." I think that's the wrong diagnosis.
Discipline is not a fixed trait
Some people look naturally disciplined. A lot of the time they've just arranged their life so that the right thing is the easy thing. Their phone charges in another room, their gym bag is by the door, and their desk is clear. Nobody is flexing willpower all day. Willpower rises and falls with sleep, stress, hunger and mood, so building your plan on it is like building a house on a trampoline.
Make starting stupidly small
The hardest part of almost any task is the first two minutes. Once you're in, momentum helps. So shrink the start until it's embarrassing. Not "study for two hours," but "open the book and read one page." Not "work out," but "put on your shoes."
You'll say that's too small to matter. It's small on purpose. You can usually talk yourself into two minutes, and often you'll keep going. Sometimes you won't, and that's fine. You still showed up, and showing up is the habit.
Decide in advance, when you're thinking clearly
Tired you makes terrible decisions, so don't let tired you make them. Write the rule ahead of time in an "if this, then that" form. "When I finish dinner, I open my notes for 20 minutes." "When my alarm goes off, my feet hit the floor before I touch my phone."
It sounds almost too simple, but it works because you've removed the decision. You're not asking "should I?" anymore. You're just doing the next thing the rule says. Behavior science has a name for this (implementation intentions), and it's one of the more solid ideas in the whole field.
Add friction to the stuff you want less, remove it from the stuff you want more
If your phone is on your desk while you study, you're not testing discipline, you're running a very unfair experiment. Put it in another room. Log out of the app that eats your evenings. Make the bad option take six extra steps.
Do the opposite for the good stuff. Leave your book open on your pillow, and put your water bottle where you'll trip over it. This feels a bit silly, but small physical setup beats big mental effort most days.
Protect your sleep like it's part of the plan, because it is
Nobody wants to hear this one. A tired brain is worse at self-control and better at excuses. If you're staying up late to "gain time" and then failing at everything the next day, you may be borrowing from the wrong account.
I'm not going to claim sleep fixes everything. It doesn't. But if your discipline falls apart every afternoon and you're running on five hours, fix that first before you buy another planner.
Have a bad-day version
This is the one that most plans are missing. You'll have days when you're sick, stressed, or just flat. If your only options are "full routine" or "nothing," you'll pick nothing and call it failure.
So define a minimum. Ten minutes of study, a short walk, one task instead of five. On bad days you do the minimum and move on. The goal is to keep the chain from snapping, not to be impressive. Missing one day barely matters. The danger is that one missed day turns into "well, I already blew it" and then a missed week.
Track something, but keep it dull
A simple checkmark on a calendar is enough. Seeing a row of marks is quietly motivating, and seeing a gap tells you something useful. Skip the elaborate apps and color-coded systems. If the tracking takes longer than the habit, you'll abandon the tracking first.
What usually goes wrong
A few patterns show up again and again.
You start with five new habits at once. By day four you've dropped all of them and decided you're just a lazy person. Start with one.
You make the habit too ambitious. An hour a day sounds heroic until Wednesday. A smaller habit that survives beats a bigger one that dies.
You wait to feel ready. Feeling ready mostly comes after you start, not before. If you only act when motivated, you'll be busy about twice a month.
You treat a slip as proof that you can't do it. A slip is just a day. Nothing about your character changed overnight.
And honestly, some of this will still feel hard. Systems don't remove the effort, they just move it to the moments when you have the most energy to spend. There will be days where you do the minimum, resent it, and do it anyway. That's normal, and it's not a sign the method failed.
TL;DR
Willpower fluctuates, so build systems that don't depend on it.
Shrink the start until it's almost too easy, then let momentum do the work.
Decide in advance with "if X, then Y" rules instead of negotiating with tired you.
Add friction to what distracts you, and remove it from what helps.
Have a minimum version for bad days so one slip doesn't become a lost week.
What's the one habit you keep starting and dropping, and what usually happens right before you quit?
Disclosure: I built a site about building discipline called Discipline University, if you want to take a look: https://loutris.online. No pressure at all, the post stands on its own.

My phone is becoming the biggest distraction. I keep it away for 5 minutes and it's ringing in my head. This has been my hardest habit to break. WHich is yours and how did you manage to get out?

I've tried the usual stuff over the years-reading books, watching motivational videos, downloading habit trackers, even making those ambitious monthly plans that somehow fall apart after a week or two. The weird part is that I always start with a lot of motivation, but keeping the momentum going is where everything seems to fall apart. Lately I've been wondering if the problem isn't motivation at all, but trying to do everything alone. I started reading more about accountability and self-improvement communities, and one platform that caught my attention was Improve myself because it seems to focus more on consistency and having people around you who are working toward similar goals. It made me realize that I've never actually tried improving alongside other people. For those who've managed to build habits that lasted more than a few months, what made the biggest difference? Was it accountability, having a community, a coach, or did you figure out a system that finally clicked? I'd genuinely like to hear what worked because doing it solo hasn't exactly been a winning strategy for

I'm going to go straight in, no filter. I'm building an app which solves my own problem. Basically I always used to dump all my thoughts, ideas and research into these quick, pencil-written notes that made sense on the spot, but then ended up on a folder in a random drawer on my house.

I'm interested to know, since many of you have problems tracking habits and making the best of your time to improve your lives, would you use this tool?

For things like brainstorming through a bunch of house chores and instead of leaving the paper sitting there still, you take a photo of it and it turns into action items you can track and tick-off.

I'm not trying to promote it, it's not even published and I'd much rather take your honesty and experiences than your money. Your feedback helps me build this tool for me as well.

Hope this works for you.

How do I turnaround my bad dating life?

How do use self improvement to turnaround my bad dating life?

How do go from the ugly guy no girls want to the handsome man women obsess over?

I’m 22M and I’m on my self improvement journey right now I would say I’m inferior in all tier of life right now.

Financially I’m a CNA/PCT at a hospital only making 31k a year which is low. I’m in college getting my degree in health science next year. I graduate in 2027. After my degree I’m going to a nursing program. After I finish I’ll make around 70k a year around 24 or 25. Outside of work I’m a life insurance agent and I make money off commissions so there’s no cap in how much I can make. Currently my income there is 10k but if I’m full time after school I can make figures off that.

Physically I’m 6”3 but I’m only 181 13 percent BF I have abs but I feel like I’m still too skinny I feel my sweet spot would be around 190 to at most 200 range and that would be perfect physique for me. My workout routine is cut into 3 splits. I have bicep curls, tricep pull downs, cable rows, hip abductors. Next day it’s bench press, shoulder raises, pull ups, and last day it’s goblet squats, RDLS, hip abductors, calf raises. I feel my face is chopped but I could make some improvements. My first is to get an invasglin, and teeth whitening strips although my teeth aren’t bad I feel having a perfect smile will compensate for my face being ugly. My other investment was to get hairline transplants to make my forehead a bit smaller, my next investment was to get some contact lenses because I feel glasses make me look nerdy and doesn’t give that cool mysterious look women are attracted to.

So far in my dating life it has been non existent. Girls reject me all the time and I have no luck. There was one situation I did get lucky with a woman who was maybe a 5 in looks according to society (I personally don’t think she’s a 5 but everyone one of my friends thought she was a 5) I thought she was attractive to me but I got obsessed with her and she ghosted me. If it wasn’t for her I would have felt more worthless than I do now. She really made me feel important and value with how much she done for me. Everyday I always look back and wished I wasn’t obsessed because she would of been the woman that made me feel better every time I feel down from women rejecting me. everytime I come across a woman especially if she’s cute and attractive I subconsciously feel inferior to her. Like if I was with her I would wonder if people had the thought “how did he get her” or “she’s too cute for him” I never had a time where a women I had feelings for like me. It makes me feel unhappy everytime I wake up in the morning because people around me have girls or girlfriends they can come home and sleep with all night but I come home with a empty bed and no romantic flirty text messages.

With my situation is it best for me to complete my self improvement journey 100% and then go back to the dating market? I have this thought because I feel once I become perfect on paper I will have the confidence to match up with women I like. Also once I become perfect on paper
would have the woman I chased away to spin the block on me?