Habit stacking, continued
So I've been doing more work trying to find triggers to add habit stacks to. In case that sentence doesn't make sense, it's basically the lingo from Charles Duhigg's "The Power of Habit". The idea is that you can change a routine that comes after a trigger and make it a new habit, something you do whenever that trigger happens. It takes a bit of tinkering, because the habit has to make sense in context: it has to just naturally flow from that trigger. The ones that are clicking are so obvious that you think, "well, duh".
The goal here is to get some excellent processes. High achievement isn't necessarily about being a genius or working a lot of hours: it can be about having really successful procedures, too. That's what I'm focusing on right now, anyway. I've been reading SJ Scott's "Habit Stacking" book and taking notes for things I'd like to add to triggers where they naturally fit. It's actually pretty easy to make incremental improvements. No one thing is fixing my life, but all of them combined are having some dramatic effects.
Here are some I've added.
I now brush my teeth right after peeing when I first climb out of bed, before I wash my face in the morning, right before I have a drink of water. I used to brush my teeth after breakfast, if I remembered. I find that brushing it very first thing makes that first glass of water in the morning taste better. Plus now I'm actually getting a first glass of water in the morning, too. I got that one from "Miracle Morning." (This leads straight into meditation, which leads to yoga, which leads to a bit of straightening up, which leads to exercise, which leads to breakfast, where I do some timed reading for business, then plan and log meals/exercise, then go shower and change for work, because, voila, a habit stack means each thing leads to the other.)
I've been practicing using my MindBell app. Every time it goes off I stop and ask, "what is the next right thing I could be doing." If I'm on Twitter or Facebook, the next right thing I could be doing is NEVER to stay on Twitter or Facebook. so yesterday I set my MindBell app to go off every minute and practiced ten times in a row getting on and off FB or Twitter. Each time the bell rang, I got off. It felt like I was practicing a difficult piece of music on the piano, just hitting that resistence and pushing through it. I also then turned to my weekly plan to tackle some mini-task. Over and over again I practiced this, it took a few hours: get on Twitter, bell rings, reach for useful work. (Which would take more than a minute or so, during which I basically noted I was on task when the bell rang.) So I didnt just practice getting off Twitter, I also practiced jumping into my work.
I've discovered that I cannot look at my "to do" list for the next thing for me to do. It's overwhelming and my eyes skitter off it. Instead, I look at my weekly plan of the projects and goals I'm going to work on. This week, for example, I have a list of 12 clients I'm going to delight and relieve with my work. Looking at "Do account opening forms for a Roth and then choose which securities to convert from J's IRA and print the forms and prepare them for signatures and put them in envelopes and address the envelopes and log the outgoing mail" isn't very inspiring. But having J's name show up on a list of clients who I'm going to delight and relieve this week makes me a bit more interested in opening J's binder so I remember that I'm supposed to be doing a Roth conversion. I have to get there because of my affection for J, not my burning desire to do account-opening forms.
I'm still working on some of my opening the day routines and my closing the day routines at work. But right now I'm feeling like they're works in progress: attainable, just not done yet. I've got the morning-before-work routine fairly locked in, and I'm getting the bedtime routine somewhat in shape, and a bunch of little ones in progress. Mindfulness (meditation training) is helping with nearly all of these.
I'm using mindfulness with regard to playing solitaire: I sometimes get stuck at my desk thinking I'll get one more thing done, but I'll just play a game of solitaire, first. Nope, never a good plan. If I reach for solitaire I need to write down why I opened it. Is it the next right thing I could be doing? Sometimes I'm in limbo, on hold, and I abandon it as soon as the hold is over. That's fine.
I've been trying to do routines to slide me into getting my best work done without procrastinating as much. I find if I can just slide into an easy task and have it chain into harder parts is okay, as long as I give myself permission to just stop after the easy step. (Otherwise I might not actually even start the easy step.) One of the things I've noticed is that I need to listen to myself when I'm exhausted and give myself a break.
So I'm building a habit stack around lunch: when the morning client leaves I get up and go pee, drink another glass of water, and then take the dog out for a walk. Then I come back and make lunch and tackle the afternoon the same way I tackle the routine I do when I get to work. So far this routine is a work in process, but the part that's a big win is to take the dog for a walk. I've been stuck at my desk all day for the past three years. In the dozen years BEFORE that I used to walk my dog to the bank most days at lunch-time, but I fell away from that when River was a puppy and the post office didn't allow her in there. (The PO Box was on the way to the bank.) I rarely use that PO Box anymore (and River is well-behaved enough to slip in alongside me) so that's not a reason anymore. Time to get back to walking at lunch-time.
Another idea was to add socializing after dinner. I usually either go to my desk, go read a book OR stay watching TV after dinner. Sometimes I have seconds and stay eating because I actually want to socialize and feel like when the food stops being eaten the socializing time is over. Sigh. Instead, I can use that time to call a loved one. I've done this two days in a row and that's a pretty big win. I hate making phone calls, but love talking to loved ones on the phone. Warm personal relationships is a huge value of mine, as is being a good daughter and parent. Reaching out to loved ones once in a while is a solid win. (I have six brothers, a sister, a mother, father & step-mother, ex-step-father & his wife, as well as an assortment of aunts and uncles, cousins, and friends. Also three kids. I'm in no danger of calling any one person too often even if I do manage to make a phone call every evening. I'm practicing getting myself over the hurdle keeping me from picking up a phone and dialing. (What a weird thing that is. I didn't USE to have it as a teenager, when did that start, anyway?)
Another habit is to put the "Win Streaks" app into my night-time ritual. It's time to go to bed, I need to stop and notice what I accomplished during the day.
Another habit is to stop and notice what I'm grateful for right before dinner, essentially saying "grace".
I'm adding "change the sheets" to the days when the cleaning people are here. I didn't have a set day for that, and now I do.
I'm adding "put in a weekly Amazon order" to the trash day. I am trying to condense down the number of random orders that get made.
I'm adding "pay bills" to our regular week-end family meeting, and moving it from Sunday to Saturday for a variety of (good) reasons. Bill-paying had been designated for the 1st and the 15th of the month, but got skipped too often. Putting it in the weekly family meeting makes a lot of sense. There may not be bills to pay each week, but each week we can look, right? (I suspect I have more bills than most people, as I run two businesses and two households. I have four active credit cards (for various reasons) and four active bank accounts... it can be quite overwhelming sometimes.
Each thing that I want to start doing is getting bundled up with a trigger that reminds me to do it. I practice it a few times, I make it a habit, and, voila, I have good habits. Not by accident, but because I want those habits so I put them there. I think this stuff is really obvious when I write it out, but also note that I hadn't been doing it before. I feel like I'm in one of those memes where I say, "I was this many years old when I realized I should call my mother after dinner." I mean, duh. But better late than never, right?
The goal here is to get some excellent processes. High achievement isn't necessarily about being a genius or working a lot of hours: it can be about having really successful procedures, too. That's what I'm focusing on right now, anyway. I've been reading SJ Scott's "Habit Stacking" book and taking notes for things I'd like to add to triggers where they naturally fit. It's actually pretty easy to make incremental improvements. No one thing is fixing my life, but all of them combined are having some dramatic effects.
Here are some I've added.
I now brush my teeth right after peeing when I first climb out of bed, before I wash my face in the morning, right before I have a drink of water. I used to brush my teeth after breakfast, if I remembered. I find that brushing it very first thing makes that first glass of water in the morning taste better. Plus now I'm actually getting a first glass of water in the morning, too. I got that one from "Miracle Morning." (This leads straight into meditation, which leads to yoga, which leads to a bit of straightening up, which leads to exercise, which leads to breakfast, where I do some timed reading for business, then plan and log meals/exercise, then go shower and change for work, because, voila, a habit stack means each thing leads to the other.)
I've been practicing using my MindBell app. Every time it goes off I stop and ask, "what is the next right thing I could be doing." If I'm on Twitter or Facebook, the next right thing I could be doing is NEVER to stay on Twitter or Facebook. so yesterday I set my MindBell app to go off every minute and practiced ten times in a row getting on and off FB or Twitter. Each time the bell rang, I got off. It felt like I was practicing a difficult piece of music on the piano, just hitting that resistence and pushing through it. I also then turned to my weekly plan to tackle some mini-task. Over and over again I practiced this, it took a few hours: get on Twitter, bell rings, reach for useful work. (Which would take more than a minute or so, during which I basically noted I was on task when the bell rang.) So I didnt just practice getting off Twitter, I also practiced jumping into my work.
I've discovered that I cannot look at my "to do" list for the next thing for me to do. It's overwhelming and my eyes skitter off it. Instead, I look at my weekly plan of the projects and goals I'm going to work on. This week, for example, I have a list of 12 clients I'm going to delight and relieve with my work. Looking at "Do account opening forms for a Roth and then choose which securities to convert from J's IRA and print the forms and prepare them for signatures and put them in envelopes and address the envelopes and log the outgoing mail" isn't very inspiring. But having J's name show up on a list of clients who I'm going to delight and relieve this week makes me a bit more interested in opening J's binder so I remember that I'm supposed to be doing a Roth conversion. I have to get there because of my affection for J, not my burning desire to do account-opening forms.
I'm still working on some of my opening the day routines and my closing the day routines at work. But right now I'm feeling like they're works in progress: attainable, just not done yet. I've got the morning-before-work routine fairly locked in, and I'm getting the bedtime routine somewhat in shape, and a bunch of little ones in progress. Mindfulness (meditation training) is helping with nearly all of these.
I'm using mindfulness with regard to playing solitaire: I sometimes get stuck at my desk thinking I'll get one more thing done, but I'll just play a game of solitaire, first. Nope, never a good plan. If I reach for solitaire I need to write down why I opened it. Is it the next right thing I could be doing? Sometimes I'm in limbo, on hold, and I abandon it as soon as the hold is over. That's fine.
I've been trying to do routines to slide me into getting my best work done without procrastinating as much. I find if I can just slide into an easy task and have it chain into harder parts is okay, as long as I give myself permission to just stop after the easy step. (Otherwise I might not actually even start the easy step.) One of the things I've noticed is that I need to listen to myself when I'm exhausted and give myself a break.
So I'm building a habit stack around lunch: when the morning client leaves I get up and go pee, drink another glass of water, and then take the dog out for a walk. Then I come back and make lunch and tackle the afternoon the same way I tackle the routine I do when I get to work. So far this routine is a work in process, but the part that's a big win is to take the dog for a walk. I've been stuck at my desk all day for the past three years. In the dozen years BEFORE that I used to walk my dog to the bank most days at lunch-time, but I fell away from that when River was a puppy and the post office didn't allow her in there. (The PO Box was on the way to the bank.) I rarely use that PO Box anymore (and River is well-behaved enough to slip in alongside me) so that's not a reason anymore. Time to get back to walking at lunch-time.
Another idea was to add socializing after dinner. I usually either go to my desk, go read a book OR stay watching TV after dinner. Sometimes I have seconds and stay eating because I actually want to socialize and feel like when the food stops being eaten the socializing time is over. Sigh. Instead, I can use that time to call a loved one. I've done this two days in a row and that's a pretty big win. I hate making phone calls, but love talking to loved ones on the phone. Warm personal relationships is a huge value of mine, as is being a good daughter and parent. Reaching out to loved ones once in a while is a solid win. (I have six brothers, a sister, a mother, father & step-mother, ex-step-father & his wife, as well as an assortment of aunts and uncles, cousins, and friends. Also three kids. I'm in no danger of calling any one person too often even if I do manage to make a phone call every evening. I'm practicing getting myself over the hurdle keeping me from picking up a phone and dialing. (What a weird thing that is. I didn't USE to have it as a teenager, when did that start, anyway?)
Another habit is to put the "Win Streaks" app into my night-time ritual. It's time to go to bed, I need to stop and notice what I accomplished during the day.
Another habit is to stop and notice what I'm grateful for right before dinner, essentially saying "grace".
I'm adding "change the sheets" to the days when the cleaning people are here. I didn't have a set day for that, and now I do.
I'm adding "put in a weekly Amazon order" to the trash day. I am trying to condense down the number of random orders that get made.
I'm adding "pay bills" to our regular week-end family meeting, and moving it from Sunday to Saturday for a variety of (good) reasons. Bill-paying had been designated for the 1st and the 15th of the month, but got skipped too often. Putting it in the weekly family meeting makes a lot of sense. There may not be bills to pay each week, but each week we can look, right? (I suspect I have more bills than most people, as I run two businesses and two households. I have four active credit cards (for various reasons) and four active bank accounts... it can be quite overwhelming sometimes.
Each thing that I want to start doing is getting bundled up with a trigger that reminds me to do it. I practice it a few times, I make it a habit, and, voila, I have good habits. Not by accident, but because I want those habits so I put them there. I think this stuff is really obvious when I write it out, but also note that I hadn't been doing it before. I feel like I'm in one of those memes where I say, "I was this many years old when I realized I should call my mother after dinner." I mean, duh. But better late than never, right?