1. Make it daily anyway.

The first solution is to turn almost-daily habits into daily habits. Sometimes it’s no big deal to continue the habit even when it isn’t necessary, and the upside is that you’ll have a stronger habit with less risk of losing ground.

For example, I like to get up early 7 days a week. I find this much easier to maintain than getting up early 5-6 days per week. If I get up at 5am every single morning, it’s really no big deal. But if I stay out late one night and sleep in until 7am, it’s always harder to get up at 5am the following morning. Every once in a while I’ll stay out past midnight and sleep in late, but my default is to get up with the alarm at the same time every morning.

Even though I don’t need to get up early every day, the habit is beneficial for me every day, so there’s no reason to limit it to weekdays. Although it might seem harder to do it 7 days instead of 5-6 days, it’s actually easier to be consistent.

With close to 100% daily consistency, a habit will typically maintain itself on autopilot, so you don’t even have to think about it anymore. But with 80-90% consistency, the contrast between your on and off days is always in the back of your mind. Do I have to get up early tomorrow, or can I sleep in late? Do I need to exercise tomorrow, or can I skip it? If you have a lot of almost-daily habits, this can be a big cognitive burden and quite a distraction. Maintaining good habits becomes much more difficult than necessary.

Finished a couple of books and added a few now.

No More Mondays – Dan Miller

You, Staying Young – Dr Oz

How Life Imitates Chess – Garrry Kasparov

Writing Down the Bones – Natalie Goldberg

Wherever You Go There You Are – Jon Kabat-Zinn

Listening to:

The Power of Now – Eckhart Tolle

———-

Do you read a book at a time or have several going at once like me?

No More Mondays

A New Earth

And many more, but I’ll add them later.

In a reading cycle, not much of a writing cycle at the moment.  Big stack of books and audiobooks on CD to go through.

1. Go to sleep earlier. This one usually means I lie in bed for a couple hours trying to sleep, sometimes tossing an turning all night. Or,
2. Bite the bullet, and set the alarm for early and face a day or two of tiredness. Also, if you are like me, you can easily hit snooze or just turn off the alarm and sleep in.

Since I realized this situation a few days before having to go back to work, and since New Years Eve was my last night of freedom, I chose to start getting up earlier gradually. It worked for me.

What would you choose? Any other ideas?

It is almost time for the mornings to get chilly, and we’re about to go back to standard time, so I wonder what that will do to the early rising routine. No matter what, we’re planning to keep the early morning runs a part of the daily routine. There are just too many good reasons to get out there first thing and run.

We have a winnah!

Whew! That was a lot of work. I will have more to say about this project later, but for now, I’ll just relax and enjoy the feeling of having accomplished a worthwhile goal slightly ahead of schedule.

Now I’m on the hook to do the NaNoWriMo in November, where you write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. Check out NaNoWriMo.org

Ok, I’ll be less available the month of June because I’m writing a 20,000 word screenplay in less than 30 days.

This will of course require daily action, writing at least 667 words per day.

I’m up to over 3400, so I’m almost a day ahead of schedule so far.

Wish me luck.

I would say that to make a daily habit stick, you really have to work to make it a mindless routine. For me, too many options can make skipping too easy.

Harvard Medical School professor Herbert Benson, author of the landmark bestseller The Relaxation Response, has been doing research in this area for more than three decades. His latest book, The Breakout Principle (Scribner, 2003), written with William Proctor, explains how relaxation or backing off can trigger a powerful biological switch that increases mental function, enhances creativity and productivity—and maximizes athletic performance.

Four Stages

“The process begins with a hard mental or physical struggle,” Benson and Proctor write. For the businessperson or student, this may be a concentrated period of study and research. For the athlete, it may be planning and executing a demanding training cycle.

“Pulling the Breakout trigger” is the second stage, directly following the struggle. Benson calls this event “letting go,” or “backing off,” or “releasing” your mind from the work mode. As we’ll see momentarily, Benson has demonstrated measurable changes in the body that occur when the trigger is pulled.

The third stage is the “Breakout proper, coupled with a peak experience.” The Breakout, which is always accompanied by a “greater sense is well-being and relaxation,” may be a creative insight or a personal best by an athlete. “Inevitably,” the authors write, “the peak will involve something unexpected—a surprise that produces unanticipated new ideas or higher levels of performance.”

The fourth and final stage involves a “new-normal state—including ongoing improved performance and mind-body patterns.” This stage, of course, provides the platform for the next big idea or performance.

So, if you have been working hard at something, it may be time to relax and allow the Breakout Principle kick in. I could also apply this to running, where after several hard runs, you may have a “Breakout” after taking a nice, slow recovery run. Give this a try and see if you don’t go to the next level with whatever you are working on.

I would also bet that you could use this music at work to really crank out some widgets when necessary. I’ll try and report on this in the future.