Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Habit Hiccup

Last night after the Court of Honor I helped Mike Stahl remotely with his computer. We started working at 9:30 p.m., my recent usual bedtime. We finished up just after 10:15 p.m. I didn't even think of blogging.

Fittingly, when I awoke this morning, one of the first things I read was this article:

The One Deadly Sin of Changing Habits
http://zenhabits.net/2010/02/deadly-sin/

Here's a snippet:

Some tips for avoiding the One Deadly Sin:
Just start. Not feeling like doing the habit today? Tell yourself all you have to do is take the 1st step. Usually the 2nd step will follow, but if not, at the very least you got started. And that’s what matters most.
Do it, no matter how small. Need to exercise but don’t have much energy? Do it for a few minutes at least. Need to meditate? Three minutes will do.
Do it, no matter how badly. Want to form the habit of blogging? Write a quick and dirty post that takes five minutes of writing, no proofreading or formatting. Quality doesn’t matter when you’re forming habits — doing it matters.
If you fail, don’t beat yourself up – do it the next day. Let’s be clear: missing one day won’t kill your habit. Feeling discouraged about missing one day, and then missing the next and the next, is what will kill the habit. So let go of the guilt and just get back on your horse. Start again, immediately.
If you don’t do it the next day, do it the day after. If you miss two days, don’t let yourself miss a third.
Figure out what’s stopping you. If you find yourself struggling and missing a day or two, think about why. What’s getting in the way? How can you adjust for that?
Plan ahead. Life gets in the way, but if you know something’s coming up, think ahead and be sure to get your habit in.
Engineer success. Knock down the barriers and set it up so it’s harder to fail than to actually do the habit. Public accountability is a good way to do that.