Behind The Make Up

The Habit Project: Week One

“A goal is a dream with a deadline”.
 -Keith Ferrazzi, "Never Eat Alone" (A surprisingly motivating book...)

Today is my first check in for the habit project; the habit I am developing is writing a rough draft every morning. Though I officially started Monday and have only been tracking myself for a few days, I’ve learned three lessons when it comes to developing good habits.

1.    Clearly define your goals. Good habits take us closer to our larger goals. In a sense they ground our dreams, forcing us to practice, honor and shape them into ourselves every single day. Identify your goal, write it down, put it in a place you can see it everyday.

2.    Boundaries are tremendously important. Think of your habit as your job, you will be fired if you don’t show up and/or don’t do it.

3 Blogs I Read Everyday... & why the blogosphere is like bad, blind dates

 

The blogosphere sometimes feels like a really popular but kinda cheesy happy hour spot (in San Francisco: think Americano or Circa). Everybody talks and talks about it like it's the best thing since sliced bread, but you often leave wishing you TVO-d last night's The L Word while thinking, yes, people really are that stupid.

Finding useful, well written content in the blogosphere is like shopping for the perfect outfit an hour before the party. When you know what you want and you've got a deadline, you're never going to find it. The blog and shopping Gods just don't work like that.

For example, this past Sunday, I decided I wanted to cook dinner. Cooking dinner means I am not eating cottage cheese while standing in my fridge door or licking big spoonfulls of peanut butter while at my desk. Cooking dinner is a commitment, an activity that requires mental and physical exertion and some serious multitasking. One must study the recipe, turn on ovens and stoves, pull ingredients from cupboards and fridge compartments, use knives, mix things together in different bowels, different pans, under different heats, while setting timers like a mad clock lady, and negotiating verbs like "brown", "broil", and "dice".

3 Surefire Ways To Create and Keep Good Habits

    

Word on the street is that the most successful people are the most habitual people. Habits force you to set boundaries and make choices that honor your goals on a daily basis. Good habits, like eating healthily, practicing your craft, keeping your living space clean, are a form of self-respect.

Forming good habits are hard and require constant self-discipline. Here are three tips that I am using to help me:

1.     Identifying the positive value you gain from the task. This can help remind you why you’re having a turkey sandwich instead of pizza or making the bed even though you really don’t feel like it. A task is much easier to repeat each day when you clearly understand it's benefit. So, make a list of why you’re doing it.

For example, I want to a write a rough draft every morning because it:

• Stimulates my mind and boosts my sense of self.
• Makes for a happier day.
• Sets the tone for a productive day.
• Absolutely ensures that I will practice writing that day. (My goal is to become a better writer).
• Usually means I will write again in the afternoon.

I’ve posted my benefit list over my desk. This reminds me why I am sacrificing sleeping past six, a morning work out, or diving into other projects.

2.    Identify What You Will Sacrifice. Life is filled with enticing options and committing to a habit means we must sacrifice. And sacrificing can be a big downer.  Here’s a few things one must consistently sacrifice to build daily habits:

• Spontaneity. It’s a gorgeous morning but I am not headed to the beach with the pooch or wandering down Fillmore for a coffee. Nope. I am at my desk writing my rough draft.
• Laziness and Procrastination.  Sorry snooze button and Facebook, I will not be checking in this morning.

Why Habits Are Important

 

I find habitual individuals wildly interesting- "really?? So, every morning you get up, return emails and then go to the gym? Every morning??"... yet have a great deal of trouble sticking to my own.

Habits reflect discipline and commitment to ones goals, growth and, well, self. One of the reasons for my odd, okay, weird infatuation is because the most habitual people I know are some of the most compelling and successful (see my review of The Creative Habit). When I say successful I am referring to individuals who are grounded, satisfied, and committed to growing towards some larger goal that fulfills them each day.

We pick and choose our experiences. The beauty of habits is that they reflect intentional choices that add value to our greater self and take us closer to our goals. Now of course life gets in the away, the dog must go to the vet, the car needs an oil change, your best friend breaks up with her boyfriend and needs support. Still, all of these are not ‘musts’ but conscious choices that reflect your character. 

Creating A Schedule

The schedule vs. reality debate

 (I wrote the following earlier this week as part of a comedy writing workshop I am taking. We were asked to write a piece on a neurosis we had---- please leave thoughts or advise!!).

Nothing excites me more than a spanking new planner. It’s sections and graphs of thirty or thirty-one or twenty-eight days are like bright lights at the annual fair, booming with prospect and excitement.

Of course I am a reasonable, sensible, rational individual. I understand that creating a perfectly color coded spreadsheet of next weeks schedule, down to, well the minute, does not mean that it will necessarily happen. But it endows me with certain high, an extraordinary sense of ambition and purpose. Control.

Staring back at a well scheduled week, I loose myself as the blocks of colored hours marked “coffee”, “walk the dog”, “write in café”, “drinks with Nicole”, “grocery shopping”, “return emails”, “therapy” begin take life in my head and blend into some beautiful movie that I imagine myself as the fascinating leading lady of.  I feel satisfied and excited. I sense that I have met my destiny head on, he gave me a wink, I gave him a smile, we shook hands and decided to work together. Magic. I know. I think so too.

So, I have developed what some may term a scheduling/planning/list making substance abuse problem.

5 Unexpected Benefits of Being Neat

 I am what you would call subconsciously sloppy. It’s not that dishes in the sink, last weeks Sunday Times spread sloppily cross the coffee table, or a weeks worth of outfits laid over the bedroom chair, doesn’t bother me, it’s that it just doesn’t occur to me. I can walk past a discarded stiletto in the hallway for weeks; that the shoe is out of place in the middle of the floor instead of happily home with it’s mate and fellow stilleto-y friends simply does not register in my brain. Somewhere along my windy road, I developed neatness blinders that efficiently blocked from view what most would consider, quite simply, a mess.

While for many people, the act of hanging your clothes up after changing, moving the coffee cup from the desk to the sink, rinsing, drying and re-shelving it would be pretty much subconscious, for me they are quite intense exertions of conscious effort. So, as I am rinsing and shelving, I am thinking quite hard about benefit I am reaping. Neatness for many, after all, equals peace of mind, the ability to be productive and, general sanity.

After practicing neatness long enough that I now find myself picking up and putting away as I chat on the phone, a subconscious pattern that when noticed by my conscious self subconsciously brought my jaw to the floor, I’ve come to realize the importance of being neat.

1. The Calmness Effect.
   
   1. True story. Cleaning calms. Just like your mom always told you, or maybe it was just mine, doing the dishes, sweeping the floor, cleaning out the cluttered drawer, shuts up an ever loud mouthed mind for like ten minutes and gives you an almost Zen like experience. Like the dish, floor or drawer, your mind comes away feeling cleansed.
2. The Control Effect.
   1.  Walking away from an ordered room will most likely provide one with a Napoleonic sense of control. You know where your stuff is located; have a better sense of what you do and don’t need (cleaning out the dresser/closet is bound to remind you of how many really great outfits you do have) and a clean room leaves one with a sense of empowerment. 

Learning to Practice Creativity

After reading a great review on Trent's The Simple Dollar of the Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp, I found myself yearning to sink into it's pages and quickly ordered a used copy from half.com. I found the book fantastic, quite inspiring and yet it has sent my every day activities into a whirlwind. In a nutshell, (and I really urge you to check out Trent's review for more info, it's beautifully written) the book heralds forming habits and routines about one's creative practices.

Habits, routines, rituals. Such a lovely idea. The order organizational systems can offer to an otherwise chaotic mis mash of activities, people and events that compose a day, has always been quite alluring to me. Let me explain.

I was one of those kids that loved the two or three weeks before school started. I kicked them off by detailed review of my favorite self-improvement books, "How to Get Straight A's" and "How to Do Better in School", two proud finds from Scholastic's "Book Orders" (anyone remember these??).