Thursday, February 25, 2010

Back in the loop

Following a cold last week, which made me postpone this project, it's taken some days to get back on track. I have started some new rules, but it's not really until today I've started to get back to all the old ones. And while that's sad, and a testament to my lacking self discipline, it also points towards one of the good things with this system: it's supposed to be a help rather than something that's supposed to let me down.

The new rules so far:
  • On Monday I turned my eyes to the spiritual realm and started reading a bit in the Bible and pray a bit every day.
  • On Tuesday it was house-keeping that got my attention as I mopped the floor.
  • And today it was writing that got upgraded to at least 200 words per day as the goal.
And I do still have a quarter of an hour left before I'm supposed to sleep =)

EDIT: Obviously I was a bit tired or something last night since I originally posted this to my experiments blog :P Now it's here in its right place though.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Long time no see

For the first time in many months I baked my own bread today.

That's all I need to say :-) While it's but a small step, and but a part, and definitely doesn't mean that I'll be baking next week without being determined to do so, it's definitely something good. And good things should be acknowledged as such. Even small steps forward are more important than a bigger setback as they show it's possible.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

A quick post before going to work

A good day today. Got up at eight, and have studied a bit and cooked food so that I'll have something to eat when I go to work soon. I've also written 468 words, so I think I've passed that rule as well :-) (Some of them old, some new, but the main thing is that I continue writing so I'll get it finished some day.) As I knew that I'd be working today I chose a fairly simple rule for today: to not eat in front of the computer. So far so good =) And I hope it won't be too hard to continue with either, it will be nice not to have to worry about my keyboard getting all messed up or something.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

One small step for a man

Moving forward seems to work ok so far. Took a 30 minutes walk yesterday and today, so that part works fine so far, and I got to bed some minutes past midnight last night and up at eight this morning so that's good as well. That brings us to the "rule of the day", which today is: Write at least a hundred words per day. On it's own that doesn't seem like much, but I intend to increase it later on, and it's not just any writing. You see, I happen to be writing what I hope will be a book (or actually several, but that's a later story if I manage to get this one finished). And while it's starting to come together there's still a lot of work to do. Sometimes I've been writing relatively much for a while, but then there's been weeks, and even months, without any writing at all. Thus, some regularity can only be good. And since it's mostly editing (which at the moment consists of taking the text I have and change a few things, but keep quite a lot) getting those 100+ words a day shouldn't be too hard, though it's still important. And it can be a bit boring to edit at times, so some extra motivation to get moving can't be bad ;-)

(If anyone's interested one of the changes I do is actually quite major: changing from telling it in first person to third person. I like the result so far, but there are a whole bunch of chapters to rewrite so I have some work left to do. And I have some thoughts about adding a chapter here or there. Usually editing consists of cutting a lot, but I guess I'm kinda conservative in adding content in the first place so I can afford to add a bit. I do keep an eye out for things to remove though, don't want to leave anything boring.)

Monday, February 8, 2010

Reconsidering...

Again, not whether or not to do this at all ;-) I have however reconsidered the times. And decided to let 24:00 and 8:00 be the times for now. It's far better than the weeks leading up to this experiment, and since I don't have to be up at a certain time to get to work or so (the classes I take are done over the internet so I can do them anytime) why waste a lot of time now to try and get up earlier than I feel like? I do believe it's worth a lot to get some routines though (why would I try to do something like this in the first place otherwise?), so I will not want to let the hours slip more than that.

Now I'll have to stop writing or today's rule will be a failure... Today I've decided to take on exercise and go for a walk for about 30 mins. Which means I need to leave now if I want to be back at 24:00.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Short, but sweet

To clarify the title means that today's post is short and sweet, not that yesterdays success wasn't followed by one today =) I've vacuumed today and got to bed at a decent hour yesterday (though not as early as I'd hoped for at least not too late) and got up at my desired time this morning. I do have some longer thoughts about cleaning and limiting what I do or not, but those will have to wait for tomorrow as I'm going to work now. And I won't be home until 21:50, and then I really shouldn't do much else than brush my teeth and go to bed :)

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Moving on with confidence

Unless I start some unnecessary project or something it seems like I'll be going to bed at the time I'm wishing for today, and I did get up at roughly the time I wanted this morning. So all in all it's been a good day. I'm starting to wonder whether I should continue on until I reach my goal of getting up at 6:30 or if I should add in something else in-between. Everything at once has the downside of being more difficult, but doing something else and then continue can prove hard as well. After all, getting a good nights sleep is a good basis for many other things. I should decide now though, because tomorrow when trying to get up it'll be highly unlikely that I'll choose to get up earlier than I need =) When thinking a bit more about it I think I'll try to get up at 8:00 tomorrow as well, and have vacuuming as my goal tomorrow. (I do vacuum every now and then, but needless to say it's not as often as I would like, or need for that matter as I'm allergic to dust. Due to the latter fact my end goal is to clean my apartment twice a week. I have yet to decide whether that's vacuuming once and mop the floors once or if it's vacuuming twice and mop the floors one of those times, but two in any case =) )

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

How two wrongs can make one right

I failed both yesterday and the day before yesterday, and I'm still calling it a success? Well, maybe not a success. Or even ok, but all-in-all things are moving forward. I got up at roughly 8:30 this morning and that's got to account for something, right :-) Many days the last few weeks/months I haven't been up until 11:00-12:00 some time, so compared to that it's great. According to my original plan I ought to "redo" a rule until I've succeeded, but since getting up in the morning and going to bed in the evening are so closely related I thought it would be better to let the failure of 22:00 remain until I've gotten my mornings sorted. Seeing as I'm still up and it's 22:30 it looks like I'll have to fight this battle a while longer :-P Getting up in a decent time in the mornings should get me tired enough to actually get to bed that early eventually though, so I hope it will work out automatically. Otherwise it's a rule I'll see again.