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If you’re planning to hit up a movie over the long weekend, you’re in luck. Going to the theater will be a bit cheaper for two days, as long as you believe popcorn is a must-have movie accessory. That’s because Cinemark, in partnership with Lowes, is celebrating National Popcorn Day, which falls on Mon. Jan. 19, with a reprise of last year’s Bring Your Own Bucket (BYOB) event. To celebrate, select Cinemark theaters will let you bring a bucket (any bucket) to fill to the brim on the 18th and 19th for just five bucks. And yes, they really mean any bucket. Per the announcement, Cinemark says, “Get creative with itany container can be a bucket, including a Lowes 5-gallon blue bucket. And just for bringing in your Lowes bucket, youll get a FREE medium popcorn when you buy any medium fountain drink.” That’s up to 400 ounces of delicious buttery popcorn for a total steal. According to some social media users, they were able to snag the deal last year without even seeing a movie. One TikTok user, @BanesaSilva, posted a video last year for National Popcorn Day. In it, she brings a massive pot and the theater fills it with popcorn without question. “Let’s go home! Movie night!” she says, joyfully, at the end of the clip. Other users on TikTok proved that, when you’re asking Cinemark, “bucket” is a highly flexible term. One user showed up with a rolling cooler, which the theater happily filled. Others showed up with large shopping backs and storage containers to hold mounds of the salty snack. Needless to say, when Cinemark says “get creative” with your bucket, they really seem to mean it. So, don’t hold back. Anything can be a bucket with a little imagination (and a big appetite). Still, bringing a Lowe’s blue 5-gallon might be the ticket to the ultimate reward. Those who do will be exempt from the 400-ounce limit. So, if your appetite (or your family’s) is endless when it comes to popcorn, that may be the most desirable route to go. Plus, customers who bring in the Lowe’s buckets will be gifted popcorn coupons (valid from Feb. 1 to Feb. 26). Of course, the event wouldn’t be complete without movie-goers sharing their wild and wonderful buckets online for all to see. Therefore, the theater chain is asking everyone to tag @Cinemark in their BYOB posts.
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I told myself I wont check emails until I check off my one thing to do for the day. I couldnt do it. I always reach for the phone in the morning. Willpower wasnt enough. The brain is wired to take the path of least resistance. Fighting it every day with willpower wont work. These days I use systems. I work with rituals. I get my most important tasks (MIT) done between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m. I schedule my MITs the night before. And get straight to work at the scheduled time. Ninety percent of the time at the same place. Ive done it for so long, I do it on autopilot now. My three-hour block means no motivation required. Im not relying on willpower to stay productive. Im depending on a system that nudges me in the right direction. Goals are about the results you want; systems are the processes you actually follow. Your goal might be to write a book. The system is open the laptop at 7 a.m. and write 200 words before you start your other tasks. Systems make good habits stick. They take away unnecessary mental decisions. So you can focus on your meaningful tasks. If your schedule or environment is designed to support your habits, you are likely to follow through. For example, you dont wake up and give yourself a motivational speech before you brush your teeth. You dont look for hacks to make it stick. You just do it. Same bathroom. Same sink. Same routine. The system runs you. No willpower or motivation required. Your brain hates decisions Now apply that to the things you struggle with. Writing. Exercising. Saving money. Eating well. Notice the pattern? Those areas usually have no clear or intentional default. They rely on you feeling like it. Thats where things fall apart. Your brain loves defaults. It hates decisions. Every decision costs energy. By noon, youve already burned through most of it deciding what to wear, what to reply, what to ignore, what to worry about. So when you say, Ill think about it later, youre just waiting to borrow energy you wont have. Designing systems or rituals can be applied to almost anything. From batching similar tasks, blocking distractions on purpose to arranging your workspace in a specific way. Systems dont just help productivity. Want to sleep better? Define your ideal bedtime. Dim the lights, hide the blue light devices. The same principle applied to investing. Automate the transfer the minute it gets to your savings. Want quality connection with the people you love? Pre-schedule time with them. Dont hope youll feel like it. Systems are the invisible things we put in place to take back control of the direction of our lives. Willpower can only nudge you so far. If you want lasting change, real work, better life experiences, you need systems. Set them up, tweak or upgrade them, and let them do what they do best: make your life efficient and meaningful. Your future self will thank you. The minute you notice systems at work, you will wonder why you havent been applying them all those years. Its like realizing most of your day isnt driven by motivation at all. Its driven by defaults. Starting is everything Systems dont make you better. They make starting easier. And starting is everything. The people who seem disciplined usually have just engineered fewer points of failure. They dont rely so much on motivation. They depend on structure. Even creativity works with systems. The myth is that structure kills freedom. In reality, structure creates it. When you remove distractions and decisions, your mind has space to play. Thats why so many artists swear by boring routines. Same walk. Same workspace design. Same start time. They are protecting their creative space. If you keep failing at something, the problem probably isnt you. Its the setup. Dont blame yourself for not thriving in environments designed to distract, stress, and fragment you. Design better systems to support the habits you want to start. Put the phone away from sight to do deep work. If your phone sits next to your laptop while you work, you will check it. You cant willpower your way out of a notification. Put it in a drawer. Or disable the notifications. Put the book on the pillow to start a reading habit before bed. Your future self will find it there, a clear next action. Automate the bill. Get the running gear ready the night before. Every time you have to ask yourself, Should I work out now? you give yourself an out. When you have a system, the answer is already Yes. And your environment is designed to support the new habit. If my system fails, I dont get mad at myself. I get curious. What needs adjusting? Are there too many steps? I tweak my structure and try again. We all respond to cues daily. Systems put them to work for you. You are more likely to be disciplined if you design better structures for your week, both at work and at home. Design beats willpower. Every time. You dont need more motivation. You need fewer decisions. Want a challenge? Pick one area in your life. Now, design a new system for it so your brain does the hard work automatically. Start tiny. Start ridiculously small. But start.
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How can you keep your brain agile and young throughout your life, even as you get older? By spending time on creative pursuits as often as you can. Thats the fascinating finding of a study by researchers from Universidad Adolfo Ibáez in Chile and Trinity College in Ireland, among others. As the studys authors note, earlier studies have shown a connection between creative activities such as playing a musical instrument and improved brain health. They wanted to know just how creativity affects brain health. So they first recruited more than 1,200 healthy people as controls, and then compared them with 1,467 research participants who spent at least some of their time in creative pursuits. This included dancers, musicians, visual artists, and strategy-based gamers. (Real-time strategy-based games are complex and involve creativity.) Using EEG readings, they determined each participants brain age gap, the difference between their chronological age and the apparent age of the participants brain. What they found was that creative people across all disciplines had younger brains than their noncreative peers. Dancers had some of the youngest brains compared with their actual ages. This isnt surprising since previous research has consistently shown that strenuous physical activity also slows brain aging. This means that dancing, which is physically strenuous as well as creative, packs a double dose of brain health. Strategic gamers had the smallest brain age gap, though they still saw benefits. The researchers also discovered that those who were most expert in their respective creative areas saw the greatest brain benefit. And they found that connections within the brain that typically deteriorate with aging were stronger in these creative types. We tend to treat creativity as a luxury What does all this mean to you? If your current work involves a lot of creativity, thats good news. Chances are its benefiting your brain and helping you stay mentally young. But whether your work is creative in itself or not, it also means that you should make time in your week for your own creative activities. We tend to treat creativity as a luxury after the real work is done, writes Karen E. Todd, a registered dietitian who writes the Feed Your Brain blog for Psychology Today. Instead, she writes, we should prioritize our creative practices the same way we prioritize sleep, because both are essential for keeping our brains young. Even 10 minutes of creative activity can make a difference if you do it every day, she writes. And, as the study shows, the more time you spend on it, and the more expert you become, the greater that benefit will be. So pick up a paintbrush, guitar, camera, or notebook. Dive into a complex creativity-boosting game either online or in real life. Or put on your dancing shoes and sign up for tango lessons. Whatever you choose, make sure its something you enjoy, so that you are happy to make time for it and stick with it. Your brain will be happy you did. Theres a growing audience of Inc.com readers who receive a daily text from me with a self-care or motivational micro-challenge or tip. Often, they text me back and we wind up in a conversation. (Want to know more? Heres some information about the texts and a special invitation to a two-month free trial.) Many of my subscribers are entrepreneurs or business leaders. They know how important it is for all of us to keep our brains as young as possible throughout our lives. Getting creative can be a fun way to do that. Should you give it a try?
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