Monday, January 25, 2010

Change means work

Without being too dramatic I can't say my life is a tremendous success right now. I'm sure we all feel like this every now and then, but these last few months have been extreme. My apartment looks like a mess, my sleeping pattern is a Rorschach test, and it was months since I baked my own bread. Not all is wrong of course, but things can't continue like this and it takes some dedication to get out of all these bad habits. I've had "good intentions" to do so for months, if not years, but merely intentions haven't lead anywhere. The times I've actually tried to do something about it I've tried to change everything in one moment, and, of course, fell back into the old habits soon again.

Now I've found a way that I hope will get me some real results: to make the change One Rule A Day. I'll explain in more detail over the coming days, but in short I intend to take the areas I want to change and improve one small step each day. (To make this more likely to work and to have some buffer I only intend to introduce a new "rule" on weekdays, though the on-going rules will of course be true on weekends as well.) Some things will just get one day, and some will get more days. As an example I'll take my first goal of attack: my sleeping patterns. Since it's an important part, and crucial to the others it's what I'll start with, and I'll give it two weeks. I start this week with getting to bed in a good time and next week I'll move on to getting up. There might be other ways to do it, but this is what I have in mind: Today I'll go to bed at 24:00 hours (I'll have to add that I don't intend my goals to be too precise, I want to succeed and not waste energy worrying about minutes or seconds. If nothing else I'd have to call this first day a loss since it's already some minutes past 24:00.) and then I'll go to bed 30 minutes earlier until I get to my aim of 22:00 on Friday.

The reason I'm posting this blog is to get myself more motivated. To have others read about my process, my success and my failures, will help me going the days it feels like I'd better just give up.

Good night, and welcome back tomorrow for more info on my plans. As well as the scoop on whether or not I managed to resist the lures of the Internet and other temptations and got to bed. Plus you'll get the story on why baking my own bread is such a big issue...

2 comments:

  1. Me like! If you are getting to exercise later and decide to go for long walks on evenings and weekendsand want some company. Just say the word and i will be there :)

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  2. Sounds wonderful. And yep, exercise is later on my list. More details to come when I make today's post, but in short I'll say that I start with sleep as it's most important and move on to other areas...

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