Habit: Skipping weekends

I should just exclude weekends from this "post every day!" plan. My weekends are too full; it is impossible.  So... that's settled.

For daily tasks, I'm finding igoogle (which I keep wanting to call igiggle) very helpful. I have a standard list of to-do items for every day, and just add on stuff that's unique to that day. 

I like the flexibility of planning each day in the morning, which is what I do. Previously I tried to plan daily tasks ahead of time, designating certain days as The Day I would, say, vacuum. It doesn't work for me. I see a long, never-ending to-do list when I do that, which causes mild hyperventilation. A shorter list, made that morning and responsive to the immediate needs of that specific day? That I can do.

This is not to say that I do no long-term planning. I do.  I want to make a comfortable home (we're finishing up remodeling that we did ourselves) so every day I have a task to further that goal.  I want to make better habits and use this space as a way to facilitate that, so a constant item on my to-do list is "blog". Etc.

I put out some goals last week, such as taking vitamins and finishing projects. I made progress on the projects, I'm happy to say, and today I've chosen one more to finish up; it would also meet the goal of making a comfortable home, so ... yay. Vitamins? Not been good. But new week, new chance to make a habit, right?

This is also the last week of my twenties. It's put me in a reflective mood, which I normally find insufferably boring but which fits this week. I used to think I needed to push myself all the time, and I did, and it worked in that I accomplished a lot but didn't work in that I was miserable and constantly felt like I was running just to keep up. I've learned (and am still learning) to go easy on myself, to give myself a break sometimes. And funnily enough, it's this attitude that has resulted in more progress. And you know, I feel pretty good.

Forming, not breaking

Already I've skipped a day in posting something, but you see, yesterday I was a wee bit hungover. I don't go out much anymore, so sometimes when I do, I succumb to the bad habit of thinking that next drink is a great idea. It wasn't.

Anyway, this is another "house-keeping" post.  The reason I've called this "Habit Forming" rather than "Habit Breaking" is that someone suggested to me that forming a habit is easier than breaking one. I've very suggestible, so I took this to the (logical (to me)) conclusion that I should not think of myself as breaking any habit, but rather as replacing them with newly formed habits.

This also appeals to me in a reward-vs-punishment way. When I fall down on breaking a bad habit, I can feel pretty guilty and discouraged. Plus, the result of breaking a habit is the absence of something; that doesn't score well in the "tangible rewards" department.  

But forming a new habit is easier on the optimism: the results of my hard work in building a new habit are generally visible. Flossing, for example: My teeth look and feel great. It's good encouragement to continue. Or this blog: Sure I missed a day, but now I can make up for it and feel good about my ability to fulfill this commitment, plus I can see my posts. Neat.

It's certainly hard either way, and I don't know how much I truly believe one method is harder than the other in reality, but given a choice between pessimism and optimism - even false optimism - I'll take gamble on the positive any day.

Which, as I'm thinking about it, is why I had that vodka tonic. Well... onward!

Organization, another poorly-formed habit

When I toyed with  the idea for this blog, I initially wondered if I should just tackle one habit at a time, for 21 days each. It would certainly make the blog organized and easy to follow.

The problem arose when I realized that not all the habits I need to form are daily habits. And on top of that, what would posts look like? "Day 17 of Forming a Face-Washing Habit: I did it!"  Even I wouldn't want to read that and I'm pretty obsessed with myself. Might as well make myself a checklist and keep it to myself, right?

So I think that I will blog once per day - habit of blogging - and write about that day's efforts at habits. And then let the tags/labels/whatever they're called sort it all out by subject.