New habits

It’s the right time of year to be talking about how difficult new habits can be to establish. Many people will be struggling this week to keep to the New Year’s Resolutions they set themselves at the weekend. Here’s a few thoughts and suggestions to get you through. 

Now, if I’m honest, I find myself inwardly sighing when people start talking and asking me about New Year’s Resolutions. There is a popular meme around them that no-one ever keeps to them, people who think they are above it all say they’re pointless and suggest its sort of an uncool thing to do “Ugh, self improvement”. 

Also, I’m the kind of person who loves creating new habits and changing, improving and progressing myself and my life. This isn’t a once a year thing for me, I try to do it all the time. My idea of a great bedtime read is Gretchen Rubin’s Better than Before - what I learned about making and breaking habits. So I feel a teensy bit like those Indie teenagers did in the 1990s when Indie suddenly became mainstream and they were like “but I’ve been following this stuff for years!”

When I’m struggling with motivation in the early of any new habit, I find it helpful to remember that the most difficult time for forming habits is the first three weeks (and in particular days 4-9, of more below). It takes about three weeks for something new to become a normal part of your routine. After that time your brain is familiar with it, its made those new connections which oil the wheels of habits, and it feels a fairly natural thing to do. It feels comforting and familiar to do whatever it is you’re trying to do - to drink a glass of water when you get up, to cook each evening meal from scratch, to be kinder to your spouse. 

But the first three weeks are tough, because you’re running against what feels normal, your brain hasn’t got used to things yet and it all feels confusing and unfamiliar. I remember when I first started running every day before work. The first time I did it my brain went haywire. “Why are you putting your running clothes on? We have to go to work.” “Why are you turning the opposite way at the end of the road, that isn’t the way to the train station!” “You’re wasting time, we’ve got work to be getting on with!” It felt a totally crazy thing to do. Now, I run every day before work and it feels like the most natural thing in the world (Ok, that’s a slight overstatement as I don’t particularly like running - I do it to give my dog and myself exercise - but its fully a part of my routine and I don’t think twice about it). 

I think days 4-9 are the most challenging. I’m currently on day 3 (my habit plans started on my first working day back after NY) and saying that feels a slight betrayal of my current slightly worn down state. Day 3 is hard as well. But (say it quietly) I feel pretty confident day 4 will be worse. Here’s why.

The first day is a shock to the system, but ultimately, its all still quite exciting. You’ve got these great new resolutions, new habits, they’re going to change your world. You can’t wait to get cracking on them, and to become the fabulous new person they’re bound to turn you in to. It’s a bit tough but hey, its worth it!

Day 2 and 3, reality starts to sink in a bit. It was quite tiring doing all that new stuff yesterday. You’ve got to motivate yourself to do it again today? “I guess this was never meant to be easy”, you tell yourself. You still feel sufficiently connected with the reasons you decided to do any of this anyway that you can get yourself through. 

Then day 4 hits. Man this is hard. You’ve been pulling yourself through for three days now, and over the next 5 days it doesn’t start to feel any easier - any more familiar - but you get gradually further and further away from the moment you made the commitment to do it. The reasons you thought this was such a great idea start to fade. Your brain hasn’t got used to it yet. You’ve not built up sufficient stocks of doing the habit to feel proud of your routine. It’s just tough. This is the time where you just have to keep going. 

Just. Keep. Going. 

Life gets easier around day 9, as you start to associate yourself as someone who does this stuff and feel good about the days you have under your belt. 

And the magic day 21 is just round the corner. 

Just a short post on this section on 12 week year for the time being, so it doesn't just confuse everyone.

The 12 week year is a book by Brian Moran and Michael Leamington about how to get more done. The basic principle is that we should break the year down in to 12 week (3 month) sprints, set clear goals for ourselves and then hold ourselves account weekly for progress.

I'm doing this - my first 'year' ends on 31st December so I'm mid way through. Getting this website up and running was an important part of what  I wanted to achieve.

I'll write more about how this works and my approach to it in a future post.

Travels

This section is going to be about places I have visited and places I am planning to visit.

Places I've been to recently:

Mousehole, Cornwall, UK - we were fortunate enough to spend three lovely weeks here over the summer, sleeping, eating, reading, writing.

Lille, France - a short weekend hop over with some friends in December. It's a lovely, European, pretty city and only an hour and a half from London on the train.

Places I'm travelling to soon:

I have such a busy month and a half coming up...

- I'm heading to Shanghai in China for work at the beginning of December, which will be good but tiring as I'm going there and back in 4 days

- My lovely husband is taking me on a surprise weekend the second weekend in December, straight on the heels of the China trip though so I may spend much of it sleeping.

- The weekend before Christmas we're heading back to Mousehole in Cornwall for their famous light switch on. We'll be staying in a motor home so hope the heating is working!

- For Christmas we're heading to Chester then Leeds to spend time with our respective families.  Excited to be taking Simba, our labrador, with us for the first time.

- In March I'm going to Lisbon with some friends

A little about me

I'm Karen, a 31-year-old planning her way through life.

I live with my ever-loving husband, Ben, and adorable labrador, Simba, in London.

I'm a do-er, organiser, lets get things done kind of woman and I'm interested in productivity, happiness, habits and how people spend their time.

This website is about my attempts to live, be, and get somewhere.

Life this week

I'm having a funny kind of Sunday really. I have a very busy December coming up so  I need to relax and rest so I go in to it rested. But I also need to get a load of stuff done in advance so I don't have to stress about doing it while I'm jetting all over the place. Tricky balance. Not sure I've got it right so far today but come 3pm, its relaxing time!

I spent this morning trying to find a desk for my office. More stressful than it sounds. My husband is very keen that we have somewhere safe to lock up our papers now we have people coming and going in the flat more (a cleaner, dog walkers, etc) so I have some pretty precise specifications. It seems there are very few desks with lockable filing cabinet drawers. So I am having to get a separate filing cabinet and then a simple desk it can go under. Cue lots of stress about measurements and such. Not resolved, but I've emailed about a couple of options.

Looks like we're only going to have one two drawer cabinet so we are going to need to cull some papers. This was one element of Marie Kondo's The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up which I really couldn't get on board with when I did it in January. She basically says get rid of all your papers. I come from the opposite school of thought; I'm a responsible, organised adult and I hate the idea I might run in to trouble resolving an issue in the future because I didn't keep a specific piece of paper. So I sort of skipped that bit of the book and did a bit of clearing out papers but not much.

Turns out she has won out. Necessity of keeping all our files locked up will mean I am going to have to start being the kind of person who turns all her bank statements to online only...

I'm also turning my mind to our Christmas cards for this year. This is one of the things I really need to get sorted before December so I don't have to worry about it while I'm busy. I always struggle with Christmas cards. I spend ages looking for the perfect ones and end up having to just get whatever I find in the end. We used to do photos of us with merry christmas written on and I am going to revive that tradition this year, especially fun since we now have a dog. So the Christmas decorations have been pulled out and we're preparing for some santa hat fun later on today.

Other things I've been up to this week include planning a trip to Lisbon in March with two of my old school friends, Julia and Kathy. This isn't something I do often but I'm looking forward to a weekend away. Lisbon is super cheap and we've got flights and accommodation for around £120 each, all-in.

That's all from me. How's your December looking? Busy or relaxed?

Sunday

Here goes for my first official Living, Being, Getting Somewhere post :)

I have that perfectionist putting-off-doing-something-because-it-has-to-be-exactly-right tendency, and obviously a first post has lots of potential for making a huge deal out of it, so to get this written I am just going to dive in and pretend its a bog standard old post.

Here's what I've done today.

My husband had a big job interview on Tuesday so my main focus has been making sure he's got everything he needs to help him prepare. This doesn't come naturally to me, he's the nurturer in our relationship, but I think I've executed it fairly well. He is currently making the dinner... but I made breakfast and lunch...

I sometimes have to work at weekends and yesterday was one of those days so today is my sole full day of relaxation before work starts full pelt again tomorrow. I'm a bit of a purpose junkie so I like to spend my spare time doing purposeful things in a relaxed way (this has been the subject of much angst in my life to date, I'm sure you'll hear more of that at some point in the future). We've been having our house painted recently so my big job today, which I was really looking forward to, was finally putting our front room (which is my office) back together. We've also had some building work done in there so it has been a proper state. After pootling round the rest of the flat (this is my favourite weekend activity) I finally got there and started putting my files and boxes out on our new shelves. I love organising and sorting, so this was a lot of fun for me.

I love going to the cinema but rarely go much these days so I have set myself the target of going at least one a fortnight. What this means is that it normally gets to the end of the fortnight and I haven't gone, so I often go on a Sunday to get my tick :) So off I went at 3pm to watch Nocturnal Animals. Now, I hadn't done very much research about it but I had heard it was very well produced so I was looking forward to it. I was running kind of late because of giving Ben (my husband) a practice interview so I rushed in and queued and bought my ticket then went to in to the right screen. I don't know if anyone has seen it but let's just say that IT IS SCARY. I don't like scary films. It got to the point where the characters were stranded in the dark on a deserted Texas road with some horrible men taunting them and I decided it was time to leave. I am not normally the sort of person to leave in the middle of the film. But our local cinema is a total bargain at £5 for a film, so I really had no compunction in getting out of there.

The upside of this turn of events is that I had a spare two hours in my day. I was planning to declare that I didn't possibly have enough time to write a first post today (because of all that husband-supporting I needed to do... a perfect excuse) but the two hours but pay to that excuse. So here I am.

You will learn that I'm a big of a habit junky and a target setter. One of my other targets is that each week I read something or watch something which is about exploring my interests and my purpose in life. I am working my way down this list of TED talks to help you find your purpose. Today I watched Emilie Wapnick talk about how some people have more than one calling, and that's ok. It reminded me that you just have to follow your passions, how ever diverse they may be, and it will all make sense at some point in the future.

The other thing I've been doing today is working out which treats my dog, Simba, finds really tasty. We're going to our first training class on Tuesday and my instructions are to take delicious treats. Here's a pic of her sitting at my feet as I type.

My plans for this evening are to continue sorting the front room out and give Ben another practice interview. On a Sunday night I then like to read the newspaper supplements in bed :)

How did you spend your Sunday?