The 3x5 Life Hack

Posted on May 18, 2025

You don’t have to wake up at 5 a.m., grind for 3 hrs in the gym, or write a 2-pages essay in your journal to become a better version of yourself. You only need 0.01% of your day - just 15 min - to energize your body, gain mental clarity and achieve your goals.

3 habits, 5 minutes each

I’m a vibe-driven productivity guy. Which just means I am ambitious, but lazy, inconsistent and have low discipline. Some days I’m in flow, giving my all, but on others, I’m just floating through. I’ve been searching a system that I can stick to, something simple, doable, and actually effective. Then I came up with this idea of 3x5 Life Hack.

It’s a micro-habit routine: 3 daily habits, each done in just 5 min. They’re flexible, easy to start and surprisingly powerful in shifting your day, almost instantly.

You don’t need to do them all at once. You can spread them across your day. The only rule is you do each one for 5 min. Daily.

The Big Three

  1. Exercise
  2. Meditation
  3. Journal

I know these habits are not revolutionary. They’re the go-to habits in every productivity book or video. But that’s the point.

We all know these 3 habits can transform our life. But most of us still don’t do them. Mainly because they feel too big, time-consuming and hard to start.

That’s why I try to minimize the effort. I make the task seem so small that my brain thinks it’s easier to do the task rather than come up with any excuse.

Here is how I do these habits daily, for maximum productivity with minimum effort.

1. Set your heart ablaze

🔥 Habit 1: Do 5 min cardio right after getting out of bed

This is the first thing I do in the morning everyday. The moment my feet hit the floor, I start doing these exercises push ups, jumping jacks, mountain climbers. Sometimes I go for one exercise untill failure. Other days, I do each one of these for 30-50 reps. I don’t target any muscle groups or aim for strength. My goal is to get my heart rate up and keep moving for a solid 5 min with no rest.

I used to think of workouts as energy-draining activities. On days when I had a big task, I’d skip them because I thought I coundn’t afford to spend huge portion of my energy. But that was just another excuse my lazy brain told me.

In fact, physical exercises do not drain your energy, but actaully boost it for the day. Moderate-intensity movement increases blood flow to your brain and muscles which effectively makes you feel more alive, energetic and healthy. You can notice these effects instantly on days you workout.

2. Clear mental cache

🧠 Habit 2: Pause, relax and breathe for 5 min

I like to meditate during the day, usually after an intense focus work like a long coding session. You just sit in relax, close your eye, and watch your natural breathing rhythm. Feel the air as it flows through your nose, fills your belly, and then leaves gently.

Note that after a while, your mind will start to wander. You will suddenly remember a bunch of other things to do, be in different places, or even forget you’re meditating. That’s totally normal. The key is: the moment you notice this, you gently bring your attention back to breathing. You don’t label any feeling to your thoughts. You simply listen and observe your mind.

Our brains are constantly overloaded, with urgent tasks, future plans and endless feed of digital content we consume every day. We’re always trying to move forward, often too fast to pause. But we need time to zoom out, relax and reset our mental capacity.

I’m not going to list every benefit of meditation here, but the most noticeable one for me is how new ideas and creative solutions tend to pop up when my brain is in relaxed state.

3. Wind down with purpose

 ✏️ Habit 3: Reflect on today and pick priority for tomorrow

This is not about writing an essay or time-blocking every hour of your day. The idea is to reflect events and actions for today and set a clear intention for the next day. I think of this like a GitHub commit, logging my daily progress before moving on to the next version.

I like to answer the following 3 prompts.

  1. ⭐ What is the best thing happened today?
    • anything I feel good about today, no matter how small
  2. 💡 What did I learn today?
    • this makes me want to learn something new daily
  3. 🎯 What is the ONE THING you’ll do tommorrow to win the day?
    • to prioritize my energy on one high-impact task

The third prompt is the most important one for me. It sets a single, clear goal for the next day. Just one. If I complete that task tomorrow, I win the day. This forces me to think: what’s the one task that actually matters?

Since journaling is the last thing I do before bed, this one task becomes the first thing on my mind when I wake up. And ususally, I start working on it right away and completing it feels amazing and creates a small but powerful winner effect for the day.

3 x 5 = 1.01 x You

The real magic of the 3x5 Life Hack is that it builds momentum. Five minutes might feel small, but it gets you moving. It makes you 1% better everyday. And once you start, you often want to go further. A quick cardio turns into a full workout session. Five minutes of meditation becomes ten. These tiny habits don’t just help you stay consistent, they build desire to achieve more.