8 Game-Changing Habits of Top 1% Women

We've all had that one friend whose life

is just so put together, achieving all

her goals, energized, in control,

thriving, and seemingly succeeding at

every part of life. That lifestyle can

seem completely unattainable. But what

if I told you that with the right

systems and evidence-based habits, you

also have the potential to create the

life that you want? And no, you don't

have to wake up at 5:00 a.m. drinking

pured kale on the way to Pilates to

achieve it. The truth is, the most

successful women I know operate from a

completely different playbook when it

comes to how they invest their time,

energy, and attention. And today, I'm

sharing eight transformative, proven

habits that will make all the

difference. Going from doctor to content

creator to tech founder, and spending

time with high achieving women, crushing

it in all of these fields made me

realize how I'd been approaching success

all wrong. I'd analyze what really

worked, writing down their habits, and

learning about the psychology behind why

they work. And honestly, implementing

these habits has literally changed my

life. and I hope it's about to change

yours, too. These aren't your typical

productivity tips. Some of these habits

will challenge everything that you think

you know about success. Habit number six

particularly changed the game for me. If

you're new here, my name is Izzy. I'm a

doctor and tech founder. And on this

channel, we explore the strategies and

mindsets to help you fulfill your

potential in life. As a companion to

this video, I've also created a

completely free guided journaling pack

for making this shift from your current

life to creating your dream reality. So,

if you're interested in that, you can

check it out down below completely for

free. And without further ado, let's

dive in. The first habit is designing

systems wherever possible, not just

goals. So, while goals are really good

for setting a direction, and I think

they're really important for that,

systems are actually what you need to

make progress towards that. One key

realization for me was that people who

are succeeding versus not succeeding in

life often have the very same goals. And

when I reflected on my own life through

this lens, I realized that the areas of

my life where I was succeeding versus

the areas of life where I was not

succeeding, I had goals for both of

them. The main difference between

whether I succeeded or not was whether I

had built a strong system to get towards

that goal. One of the goals I've had for

a long time is to generally live a

healthy life, which includes both

nutrition, exercise, sleep, etc. For the

longest time, I felt like I was always

falling short on the nutrition goal. I

would often open up the fridge and

realize, oh, there's nothing really to

eat, so I guess maybe we just go out to

eat or like we get takeaway or I just

eat cereal. And so even though I had

this goal of eating healthily, having

like high protein, like more vegetables,

whole minimally processed foods, low

sugar, I wasn't actually able to do that

because I hadn't built a system in

place. It was only until I'd actually

built in a system for okay, when I order

groceries, how I do meal planning, and

what kinds of meals we are eating each

day that then actually I really unlocked

the whole nutrition piece at home. A

classic quote from James Clear that

really really resonates in this area is,

"You do not rise to the level of your

goals, you fall to the level of your

systems." Another way of viewing this

whole systems versus goals thing is

viewing them as two separate types of

goals. There are outcome goals and there

are process goals. Outcome goals are

essentially the big huzzah at the end of

achieving a goal. A process goal can

almost be viewed as the system that's

helping to get you towards your outcome

goal. So in this example with the meal

planning, the process goal is every week

I have planned what meals that we want.

I've ordered the necessary groceries

online and saved any to a list which I

can really quickly reorder from it as

needed. and then we actually execute on

those meals and eat healthily. Whereas

the outcome goal is a longer term thing

of oh, we want to eat well so that we're

healthy and we work towards longevity

and fueling our energy and productivity

for the day and feeling good. And

research has shown that these process

focused goals with smaller, more

regularly occurring and controllable

goals or systems provide a regular

recognizable feedback loop which helps

to drive motivation and also actually

make stuff happen. And speaking of

building systems that actually work,

this is something I've been thinking

about a lot lately as I've been scaling

my content and also my business. I've

been using Notion for literally years

now. I think around like five or 6

years. And I have my entire content

ecosystem living in Notion. But what

used to take me literally hours and

hours of manual work creating databases

that autolink in to organize all of this

information has completely changed since

I started using Notion's new AI agent.

So, I'm very excited to share that

today's video is sponsored by Notion.

And honestly, this feels like the

perfect video to talk about it. Here's

what's interesting about Notion's AI

agent. It doesn't just chat or give

suggestions like other AI tools or LLMs,

it actually completes entire workflows

for you and builds things for you in

Notion. So, for example, instead of me

spending hours manually creating a meal

planning system database and updating

it, my agent can do that all end to end.

All I have to do is ask it to create a

meal planning database for my healthy

meals and include a couple of the key

parameters that I want to track. And the

cool thing here is that because it has

access to all of my notion and

everything about my business and life is

in notion, my agent knows exactly how I

like to work. And I've set up a profile

page that tells my agent exactly how I

like to organize my content, my

workflow, and any SOPs for anything

across the business and my life. So, if

you're like me and are serious about

building systems that can help to get us

to our goals, which, let's be honest, is

really essential for any ambitious woman

trying to level up, Notion's AI agent

could be a complete game-changing tool

for how you manage your work and plan

out your life. You can check it out

through the link in my description and

see if it can help you build those

systems we just talked about. Now, let's

talk about habit number two.

The second habit is decide once and then

scale from there. Did you know that

there is a neurological cost to making a

decision? This is a psychological

principle known as decision fatigue. And

you might have experienced this yourself

if, let's say, at the end of a busy day,

you open your fridge, you look at all

the food in your fridge, and you just

can't decide what to eat. Or maybe

you've looked in your wardrobe and it's

overflowing with clothes, and yet you

think you have nothing to wear. In each

of these examples, you are quite

possibly experiencing decision fatigue,

which is a mental exhaustion that we get

after making decisions again and again

and again. This leads us to favor

immediate gratification, oversimplifying

decisions, or defaulting to familiar

even though they're less optimal

options. One example of this is at the

end of a busy day, you could choose to

either go for a walk, go to the gym,

learn some Chinese, or scroll on your

phone. And the one of these options

which gives you immediate gratification

and is a default familiar option, even

though it's less optimal, is often doom

scrolling on your phone, which is

especially interesting because by

choosing to scroll on your phone rather

than take any of these other actions,

even though it takes less mental energy

to make that choice, ultimately it

doesn't serve us. An example of this is

they did a study on judges where they

looked at their decision quality of

their judgments throughout the day and

they found that consistently decision

quality actually deteriorates. One

example for me is the decision of what

to wear in the morning. This dress right

here, I have about three or four copies

of almost exactly the same dress. And in

the morning, I often just default to

wearing the same dress over and over

again because I like the way it looks.

It's comfortable. And that means that I

can eliminate one extra decision from my

morning. Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg,

Barack Obama, and so many other examples

famously restrict their selection of

outfits and clothes that they wear

because this is a daily decision that we

really just don't need to make again and

again and again.

The third habit is detachment from

outcomes. One consistent habit I've

noticed among highly achieving women who

are also happy and content and feeling

in control of their lives is that they

measure success by effort, alignment,

and input, not by things outside their

control. A good way of thinking about

this is separating out goals into input

goals versus output goals. One way that

I've developed to think about this over

time is separating goals into almost

three stages, three categories. There's

input goals, there's output goals, and

there's outcome goals. An example with

my YouTube channel is an input goal is I

want to spend 15 hours on my YouTube

channel every week. An output goal is I

want to post one video per week. An

outcome goal is I want to gain X number

of subscribers every month. And as you

can see, as we go from input to output

to outcome, I have much more control

over the input versus the outcome. It's

essentially 100% within my control

whether I actually spend 15 hours of

work on my YouTube channel. Then for the

output, there's a little bit less

control there because I don't

necessarily know how much research a

video will need until I really start.

I'm not sure how long the editing

process is going to take. So the output

is slightly less predictable than the

input, but it's still broadly under my

control. And finally, the outcome goals

such as I want to hit 1 million

subscribers in X amount of time. That is

the least in my control because there's

so much beyond my control that I cannot

account for. And so whether or not I

actually get there is partly to do with

my inputs and the output, but then it's

also partly due to external conditions.

So for me, while for my YouTube channel,

I do have an outcome goal for where I

want to go with the channel. And I think

that's very helpful for setting a north

star on the day-to-day, I actually focus

more on my input and output. Once I've

set the outcome goal and I've used it to

generate a northstar and a strategy, I

then let go of it. I detach from it. I

take a step back. And actually that

level of detachment allows me to work

from a place of joy and progress rather

than a place of stress and pressure.

This habit actually draws directly from

principles of non-attachment and

equinimity which are core concepts in

eastern philosophy. Psychological

suffering arises when we cling to

specific outcomes and identify our

success or worth with these external

results. The top 1% understand that

attaching your happiness to these

outcomes that you cannot fully control

creates this opportunity for unnecessary

suffering. And so instead, by focusing

on what we can control, our effort, our

intention, our process, rather than

external validation or specific results,

you cultivate what Eastern philosophers

call wise effort. And this mindset

shift, while it sounds like taking a

step back from making goals, actually

paradoxically improves performance by

reducing the anxiety and pressure that

often sabotage success. The practice

involves training yourself to find

satisfaction in the quality of your

actions and inputs rather than the

results or outcomes that they produce.

So, for example, instead of defining

success as getting a 100,000 views on a

YouTube video, maybe I could reframe it

as creating content that genuinely

serves my audience and that I'm proud

of. This detachment doesn't mean that I

care any less. It actually just means

that I'm directing my energy more

effectively. And research in sports

psychology actually confirms this

approach. Athletes who focus on process

over outcomes consistently outperform

those who are fixated on winning.

Because counterintuitively, the mental

freedom created by letting go of outcome

attachment allows for more presence,

creativity, and flow, which are all

qualities that ultimately improve

performance and are so important for

leaders to embody. The fourth habit is

practicing implementation intentions.

Implementation intentions are proven by

studies to actually increase the

likelihood that your goal will actually

turn into action. Simply by making an

implementation intention, you increase

your chance of actually succeeding at a

goal that you've made by about 74%. An

example of this is for my red LED face

mask. I am super into my skincare. And

one of the things that's part of my

skincare essentials is using this red

LED face mask. I use it for about 10

minutes every day. And the way that I

make sure that I don't forget to do it

is that I habit stack it and create an

implementation intention that when I do

my morning meditation, I also put on my

face mask. And this means that as soon

as I get out my meditation cushion and I

start meditating, I know that if I

meditate, then I put on my face mask and

turn on the red LED mask. And so Ali, my

husband, often walks into our room in

the morning with me on my little

meditation cushion, meditating away with

my legs crossed and wearing this spooky

red glowing mask. This simple shift of

setting the intention that when I

meditate, I use my red LED mask has

meant that I almost never miss this new

habit. When I first tried to build in

the habit of using this red LED mask

every day, I actually really struggled

because I was like, when do I do this

thing? I kind of need to like it's hard

to see while using the mask cuz there's

like red lights glowing in your eyes.

And so like when do I actually do this?

Like I need 10 minutes every day to do

this. And it was only when I actually

decided I set the intention to implement

this while I was meditating that

actually I became really consistent with

use of my red LED mask. The way that you

can bring this into your own life is

think of if then plans which link

situational cues or existing habits and

stack those with a new habit that you

want to build in. A few examples of

these could be if let's say you want to

build in a morning walk into your

routine. You think okay after I brush my

teeth and put on my sunscreen then I'm

going for a morning walk. So try to

think of your own routine and habits

that you might be struggling to build in

and think of ways that you can actually

set an intention for how you're going to

actually make this happen.

The fifth habit is strategic

undercheduling. Published research shows

that after 8 to n hours of consecutive

work, cognitive performance begins to

significantly decline and shifts that

are more than 12 hours long are

associated with 2 to three times more

errors. Another study at Stanford

University found that productivity per

hour declines sharply when a work week

exceeds 50 hours and total output

actually decreases beyond 55 hours

despite more time worked. So that means

that if you're working for more than 55

hours, there's a reasonable chance that

actually that is shooting yourself in

the foot where you working so long is

actually decreasing your total output

because you're becoming less efficient

and you're probably enjoying your work

less. Obviously, this is not going to be

true for every single individual person

because these are studies which look at

averages. All of this is to say that

working for too long each week and

pushing yourself and scheduling in work

basically all waking hours of the week

is probably actually counterproductive

for producing the results that you want.

A huge amount of high achievers success

is based on their ability to show up as

their best self with the most creative,

inspired and productive selves that they

can be. And so part of this is actually

blocking off time to really have

downtime, work hard, and also rest hard.

And this energy management is actually

an art because it's actually an active

part of being a high achiever is

protecting your capacity to execute

consistently. I really like to think of

this concept of refilling the well

because initially I was much more in the

camp of like oh well let's go go let's

just keep working pushing work late wake

up early and keep working. But at some

point actually I realized especially for

creative work which requires you to

think in new ways and feel inspired that

way of working is really not effective.

And I realized at some point that

actually my well had become empty

because I hadn't given myself any time

to rest, to learn new things, to focus

on my physical health. And so what I did

instead was instead ofuling work for the

whole day and forgetting to schedule in

the other things is I actually block out

time every single evening just for me.

And an example of this in action is

almost every single evening I schedule

in a yoga class which is in person in

the studio to create that space for rest

and recovery. And this functions as a

really good hard stop on my day where

it's like okay as soon as it gets to

that time of my yoga class I got to go

and then after that I have set the

intention for myself that I don't

actually get back into work after that.

That is my unwinding time. Resisting

this urge to fill every available time

slot with meetings actually gives you

more opportunities to explore new ideas

which especially for high achievers or

leaders in a business. It's actually

critical to your role and to your

development and to how effective you are

as a team for you to be able to think

high level and have that space to

breathe and do that. This links on

really nicely to the sixth habit which

is keeping a notto-do list. Top 1% women

know that their time, attention, and

energy is the most precious finite

resource that they have. And this is the

one habit that really changed things the

most for me. For years, I was used to

leaving my time and energy open to

anybody who wanted to access it. Any

tasks or to-dos or hangouts with people,

I would automatically default to saying

yes to. But at some point, you realize

that your life is almost overflowing

with things to do. And it's only by

saying no to some things that we can

make the space for truly needlemoving

activities that help to unblock a

bottleneck. This can range all the way

from small things such as in the morning

on my notto-do list is not to pick up

the phone first thing in the morning.

This is one that I sometimes struggle

with because it's so easy to immediately

as soon as you wake up have your brain

chatter start and you're like, "Oh, I

wonder what's happening in all the

various different fronts of the business

in the email inbox in the messages. It's

so easy to think that." And so one of my

implementation intentions is actually

not to pick up my phone first thing

after I wake up. This can also range to

the big things such as saying no to a

trip or a holiday which you know won't

actually take you towards your goals and

you don't really want to go on. Another

example of this is when let's say

meetings overrun regularly and actually

stopping allowing this to continually

happen and instead being like okay

actually like we want to stop having

meetings overrun. How can we do this? We

can set a clear agenda. We can time

manage better throughout the meeting and

then we can actually say you know what

at the end of the meeting that's it like

that's the hard stop. If we don't manage

to talk about everything, then we'd have

to just talk about it next time. And

this practice actually trains us to work

better with the time that we have. And

this point on the not to-do list, not

overrunning meetings all the time, is

actually so crucial because then it

allows you to trust yourself more, frees

up your time, gives you more clarity on

when your meetings are starting and

ending, makes you more efficient in the

meetings itself, and also helps you and

your team with time management. And one

thing to mention here is that if you

stop doing things or decide things on

your not to-do list, it's quite common

to have feelings of guilt or wondering

like, oh, maybe like I shouldn't

actually say no to this. But it's an

important question to ask yourself

whether the current thing that you're

doing and accepting in your life is

going to take you towards living your

dream life. And if you ask that question

about each moment in your day, what

answers come up for you?

Habit number seven is outsource before

you're overwhelmed. Top 1% women treat

their attention and energy as their most

valuable resource. Buying back their

time then becomes their highest ROI

investment. What this often demands of

us is delegating earlier than feels

comfortable for us. There may be things

in your life which you already know how

to do. You don't particularly enjoy. It

doesn't have to be you. This could

actually be done by somebody else. And

yet you're still doing it yourself. If

you're the only person working on your

life or business, then you will always

be limited by how many hours of time and

how much energy and attention you have

in a day. If you want to be able to

scale beyond that, you need to learn how

to delegate. Some examples of this might

be hiring a virtual assistant or a video

editor if you're making videos, or a

generalist who can help you across lots

of different parts of your business, or

even hiring a nanny to help you at home

and buy back some of your time there.

Hiring a cleaner. One way to think about

this is to think of your ideal hourly

rate. How much would it cost for

somebody to buy an hour of your time?

Let's take the example of hiring a

cleaner to come in once a week or

something like that to help you with the

usual tasks that you would do at home.

If you think about the hours that you

spend cleaning your home on a weekly

basis, and you also imagine the cost of

hiring a cleaner to complete the same

job for you, is it worth paying that

amount of money to buy back those hours

of your life? So, let's say your usual

basic clean of your house would usually

take you about 3 hours per week. This is

assuming you don't have kids or like

high volume of mess coming through your

home. Assuming there's just basic stuff

to clean, maybe it would cost $50, $60,

$70 to hire somebody to actually do that

for you. Is your time worth that amount

of money to buy back? In most cases, if

you're watching this video, probably

yes. One common objection to this is

like, oh, but what if I'm not really

making much money yet or like I can't

don't feel like I can justify it. And I

had this exact same experience when I

was starting out making YouTube videos.

I realized that editing a YouTube video

for me was taking me maybe like 12 hours

to edit a video. And this would have to

go across multiple days because I would

get mentally fatigued after editing for

a while. I also realized that because I

was just learning how to video edit, my

video edits were not fantastic. It was a

bit basic, bit janky, and I wasn't

enjoying it either. And so I was like,

okay, what would it take for me to be

able to outsource this? And so then what

I did is I went onto one of these

freelance websites, Fiverr, Upwork,

People per Hour, and I put out job

postings for a video editor. And

obviously professional video editors are

much faster, more efficient at video

editing and just better at it as well.

And so then I made a deal with myself. I

said, "Okay, you know what? If I'm doing

this video editing for 12 hours, it's

taking me 12 hours to edit a video. I

can pay somebody $100 to do this video

edit for me because they're faster at

it. They're more efficient. They're also

better at it. And then what I could do

is I could offer tutoring on Eyealkie or

for like science and math subjects for

around like maybe 20 to30 an hour which

means that in a couple of hours of

tutoring work maybe 3 or 4 hours I can

then earn back the money that it would

cost to pay somebody to edit my video.

And so editing the video myself would

take 12 hours. Me tutoring on these

websites takes about 4 hours of my time.

And so clearly then just by doing this

and setting up this system I have bought

back 8 hours of my time. That's a whole

working day without actually losing any

money. And so there are almost always

ways to think about clever systems that

you can set up to be able to buy back

your time in these ways. And the key

here is to think about outsourcing

before you feel ready, before you're

already overwhelmed. Because once you're

overwhelmed, actually hiring somebody

takes effort. It takes an investment of

time, of mental energy, attention to do

it well. And so if you're already

overwhelmed and flooded with stuff, it's

even more difficult to find the space to

actually do that. And so then you're

almost in this kind of catch22 position

where you're like too busy to actually

do the hiring but you need to hire in

order to become less busy and this is a

really difficult place to be in. So by

running a prediction model of like okay

where could I actually delegate or

outsource this helps you to see these

opportunities ahead of time and actually

be prepared.

The eighth and final habit is training

non-attachment to identity. For me on my

journey I initially started as a medical

student. I was a doctor content creator

and now a tech founder. And through each

of these stages of my life, I've had to

almost be very fluid with my identity

and be able to release old versions of

myself in order to create the space to

grow. This isn't just in identity in

terms of what work I'm doing, but also

identity in terms of how I show up in

the world, how I communicate, whether I

meditate or not, what kind of activities

I do. It's very natural for us to feel a

sense of attachment to our identities.

For example, for a long time, I purely

viewed myself as a doctor who sometimes

makes YouTube videos and sometimes does

the kind of business stuff. But I

realized this was actually holding me

back from owning that new identity. And

me clinging to this previous identity of

like, oh, I'm just a doctor was actually

limiting me because the limitation of

our achievement in life is actually

often the limits of our psychology. And

so if we can unlock our psychology, how

we view ourselves, and open that up to

being able to take on new identities and

shift towards who we want to become,

this allows us to break through these

limiting beliefs about who we are and

what we're capable of. An example here

is when I was actually shifting into

content creation and entrepreneurship, I

refused to view myself as a YouTuber or

an entrepreneur for the longest time.

And looking back, I see how that delayed

me by potentially months to years on my

progression. Stepping into a new version

of yourself can feel scary and painful

because you're actively choosing to

leave behind the familiar and the

comfortable in exchange for this new

potential reality. And this is

fundamentally the work of creating your

dream life. Nothing worth having comes

easy. And this includes creating the

life that you want. It's going to take

getting out of your comfort zone. It's

going to take changing your identity and

how you show up and how you view

yourself, how you introduce yourself.

And at the end of the day, it's up to us

ourselves to decide if that's a worthy

trade for us or not. But what I would

love for you watching this video is for

you to be able to make that choice with

eyes fully wide open and to decide what

kind of life that you want to create and

then step into it. So those are all the

eight habits. One thing I would ask is

if you can come up with two action

points from today's video that you're

actually going to implement in your own

life and either send me an email with

them or write a comment down below or

just note it down somewhere in your

notebook so you're not going to forget

and actually make it happen. The most

important thing when watching YouTube

videos about personal development, about

how to change your life, is actually

doing the work of changing your life.

And so, I hope this video has been

helpful or interesting or useful in some

kind of way. And if you enjoyed this

video, I think you might like this video

over here where I dive deep into how

exactly to create a vision board to

actually change your life drawing on

neurosciencebacked tips and evidence.

Thank you so much for watching. Take

care of yourself and remember that the

journey is the destination. I'll see you

in the next video. Bye.