6 changes

[vaneramos]

One of my favourite blogs is Zen Habits. Leo Babauta presents a lot of good ideas for improving and simplifying the shape of your life. Actually, for a guy preaching the benefits of simplicity, maybe he has too many ideas, for example: 29 ways to successfully ingrain a behaviour. I try to glean some occasional wisdom and not get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of advice.

I'm still thinking about resolutions and how I don't like making them. On the other hand, change is good, necessary even. Zen Habits has plenty to say on this issue.

So I would like to try The Six Changes Method. You pick six habits to establish in the coming year and devote two months to each of them, one at a time. For successful change, he recommends public accountability. Talk about it. Tell everyone. So here would be a good place for me to do that.

For starters here is the list of habits I'm considering:

1. Get up earlier.
   
2. Exercise daily.
   
3. Establish a healthier diet.
   
4. Reduce debt.
   
5. Stop impulse buying.
   
6. Focus on creative writing.
   
7. Read more.
   
8. Keep the apartment tidier.
   
9. Correct self-destructive thought habits.

So I just need to narrow it down a little, which is hard. They're all equally important.

Comments

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Foggy indeed. It's hard to get back in the swing, but I wish you good luck. I hate when January drifts by like one long hangover.

[apel.livejournal.com]

I like Leo's ideas but you're right, there's just too much of it. I guess it's because he has to make a living that he keeps cranking out the blog posts. But his Power of Less is great.

Of the goals you're listing, two aren't really habits the way they're phrased now: Reduce Debt and Stop Impulse Buying. You could make Reduce Debt into a habit if you established a payment plan for yourself, though. Ideally payment plans should be automated, though. So then it's not a habit again. :-)

For impulse buying, there's a system of lists that delays the purchases that could be useful. People put the thing they want on a list and leave it there for at least 30 days. If they still want it at the end of that time and have the money, they allow themselves to buy the item. So putting things on a delayed wait list could be a habit to be established. Unless you want stuff more or less on a weekly basis, it may still be hard to establish as a habit in 2 months.

For most of the habits on your list I think you're going to need to define the success criteria once you commit to them. E.g. for getting up earlier, what time is early enough?

Also, what is the purpose with getting up earlier? In some goal setting that I see at this time of year, people get very self-critical. In fact, for some people telling themselves that they should get up earlier in the morning is a self-destructive thought habit (item 9 on your list). They don't allow themselves enough sleep to actually feel rested. I don't know if that's you but perhaps it bears thinking about?

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

You're right about the wording. These are just rough notes, general areas of behaviour I want to work on.

Reducing debt would involve a few activities including going to counseling, keeping all receipts, establishing and following a budget, and stopping impulse buying. And that last point falls under stopping a bad habit, which Zen Habits treats approximately the same way as establishing a new one.

Getting up earlier is short form for establishing a morning routine that is enjoyable, productive and helps me approach the day with optimism, et cetera. In other words, I won't have time for at least two of the other habits unless I get up earlier. And yes, I also need to go to bed earlier and get enough sleep.

[bellakara.livejournal.com]

I used to follow you on the friends page of my old blog Butterflyminds. I've started a new one for the new year and came across this post. Though I've never had debt problems, I did use to go in for impulse buying. It stopped years ago, and it was a while before I realised one of the reasons. Like you I write, and I'd started to keep a daily wordcount, which had a shocking effect on my writing. I was one of those undisciplined people who didn't write as often as I should, but by the end of the first year of word counting - and I started the project in late January - I had 120,000 words. I had to accept that three hundred words in a day was as good as a thousand. Also, a few hundred words of blah was better than nothing, and still kept the writing habit going, even if I had a temporary writer's block creatively speaking.

There were three stages I went through - first the initial sense of satisfaction of getting things done, then the 'I don't want to do this today' except I had to. That's the dangerous point where it's all too easy to bail out. But the daily wordcount reminded me of what I was capable of, so I carried on through that annoying period. Phase three was when I could no longer not write. It was a psychological necessity. But also, the habit had truly been established. I had daily, monthly, quarterly and annual wordcounts. It was sometime after then that my impulse buying fell off radically. I think shopping had been a displacement activity of some sort. I hate shopping now.

Anyway, apologies for this long post. Especially from a stranger. I don't know if what I've said is remotely useful, but good luck with your plans.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

That is interesting because I have also noticed in the past that certain "bad habits" disappeared when I established a productive daily ritual. Lately I've been playing computer games a lot. I don't like to treat that as a bad habit, but I am aware it is just a substitute for other things I'm avoiding.

Three months ago I started sitting in front of a light box first thing in the morning (to combat seasonal depression) and knitting for 20 minutes. I've stuck with it consistently, without going through the three stages you described. It is simply enjoyable, I look forward to it, and there's a very good reason for doing it, so there is rarely any temptation to skip it. I wish writing could always be like that!

This month I have started contributing to 100 words again, so we'll see where that leads. It isn't the writing I really want to do, but at least I'm writing every day.

Unfortunately my my impulse buying is not connected with unnecessary shopping. It usually happens when I go shopping for groceries or something I need, and end up spending twice as much as planned. A simple solution would be to take only as much cash as I can afford and leave all the cards at home.

It also happens with things I want but don't necessarily need and can't afford. I'll defer the purchase for weeks, then one day I'll be driving by the store and impulsively turn in and spend the money. I did find an antidote to that behaviour early last year. Each day I would put a dollar in a jar (as a reward for writing in my journal!), and at the end of the month I would have $30 to spend on a treat, like a book, a DVD or CD, a board game, or a bottle of good wine. It made me think about what I really wanted, it gave me incentive, and since I had something to look forward to I stopped making impulsive purchases. I'm not sure why I stopped doing that.

[bellakara.livejournal.com]

The dollar in the jar sounds like a good idea. I think writing a hundred words a day keeps the writing habit going, even during a block. When people don't write at all, it's easy then to feel guilty or demoralised, which then possibly reinforces the block or makes writing seem more difficult than it should be.

I buy more food if I haven't eaten before going to the supermarket! I've not used my light box this year. Books are taking up so many surfaces, that I literally have nowhere to put it.

You Tube is my distraction. It's terrible, or wonderful, depending on how you look at it. Distracting - very. But also very informative at times. Saw a video lecture yesterday by Elizabeth Gilbert, called A New Way To Think About Creativity. It's been around for a while so you've probably heard of it, but I could relate to a lot of what she was saying.