Good Habits

Photo by Oksana Taran on Unsplash

There is no doubt that forming constructive habits is one of the most important hacks in your toolbox for excellent maintenance and success. With good time-management, good sleep hygiene, practice, commitment, and small wins it is amazing how you can turn your life around and get more done. 

Timetable 

First, we are going to look at time-management. You will need to make a timetable. You can draw columns for the week on a sheet of paper, or you can design it in a word-processor, or you can use an app. I personally use the daily schedule app for android. I'm sure there are plenty of apps out there for you to try. Daily schedule is functional, free and the advertisements are helpful and discreet. You will need to schedule in a Morning Routine, Housework, Work, Exercise, Meals and you can be a bit flexible about social events, errands and down-time. I try to do my walk in order to run errands. 

My morning routine includes  a shower first thing; ten minutes of meditation; ten minutes of morning pages; Green tea; Supplements; breakfast smoothie; 15 minutes of blogging; 15 minutes of puzzles and, 10 minutes of French language practice in Duolingo. Then I try to spend an hour on the housework. 

I try to start work at 9 am on the dot because inspiration strikes then. (Sommerset Maugham) After lunch I do yoga and go for a walk. In the evening I have a shower (because I'm sweaty from my walk), read a bit, clean the sink and write in my gratitude journal. Then I go to bed around seven or eight o'clock. I don't set alarms if I can help it, but that's entirely up to you. 

Early to bed, Early to rise.

So, I can't tell you how nice it is to wake up early. I have hypersomnolence so if I want to get up early I have to go to bed extremely early. But it's rewarding because I can get so much done. If in fact you only need the 8 hours you could try going to bed around 9 o'clock and get up at five or six o'clock. I think basically that everyone is a morning person and those who struggle need to reset their body clock with sleep hygiene and eat that frog when they get up. Early to bed, early to rise makes a person healthy, wealthy and wise. 

So starting with your timetable do what you can in the same time and place preferably. At first having a timetable will be really exciting. But if you're generally a procrastinator you probably won't be able to achieve it all at first. But if you keep trying from 6 months to a year you should be able to form the habits you have planned in your timetable. Your timetable is like your guardian angel, and you can improve on sticking to it everyday. Getting used to a thing decreases mental workload, as habits are formed they take less effort. 

Time it takes to form a habit.

A study from the European Journal of Social Psychology found an average of 66 days to form a habit which is about 2 months. and up to 254 days which is about 8 months. 

Try, try, try again! 

Don't be dismayed if you can't achieve every-thing at once. You could just start with one habit at a time if you like. Even if you spend one hour a day on your project it's amazing how much you can get done in a week, a month or a year.

Errands

Doctors appointments, pathology, legal matters, the pharmacy, groceries, parcel collections and, shopping all have a way of eating into your time. Perhaps choose one day a week for when you schedule your appointments and try to kill it in an afternoon or so. If you must do it on another day see if you can walk to your destination. Think about it, you'll at least be getting your steps in. 

Bad Habits

Smoking, drinking, binging on processed food, eating too much sugar, and lazing around are all bad habits. I am assuming it takes at least 66 days to begin to successfully break the habit, as it takes that long to create a habit. . You might be able to replace the old habit with a new habit. I'd recommend a counselor to help you to break bad habits. Sometimes you can't get past the instant gratification of a bad habit, you need a vision, plenty of motivation and, grit to break a habit that you want to break. 

Small Wins 

Taking care of the small things and the big things will take care of themselves. Even a daily twenty minute habit over five days will add up to to 1 hour and forty minutes over a five day week. Six hours in a month and a whopping 80 hours in a year. That's enough to create a masterpiece!

Micro-Activities

Getting straight into the shower first thing is a micro-activity that will set you up in a better mood for facing the day. Starting is also a micro-activity, it really only takes two seconds so you can kill those cold feet by making a quick, small decision to act! 

Virya

Virya is Sanskrit for energy, diligence, enthusiasm, effort, persistence, vigor or exertion. It is the antidote to sloth! So if you apply virya you will combat sloth. It takes time to make a change so just do it part by part. 

So as you can see you can train yourself by creating good habits and practicing things on a daily basis. You build on things regularly to use the small to achieve the great. You have a plan so you are not up in the air about what you need to do. Schedule something into down-time as well, if you're really down just put some music on and relax until you have the energy to get going again. Don't forget sleep hygiene either, try to go to bed at the same time every night and wake up at the same time every morning and practice your morning and evening routines. And remember, you will be all-right once you get going, and, also that practice makes perfect!