It's getting well past my Sunday deadline, so I must post something, even if it's just something short I write in a few minutes early this morning, as I'm doing now.
When I say "must" I mean it less in a "something bad will happen if I don't" and more in a "I really have to brush my teeth" way. It's a habit, and it feels a bit weird not to do it, at this point, as all good habits should. That's the magic (and frustration, if it's a non-desirable one) of habits. As I've said before, getting good at installing habits is one of the great superpowers you can develop. Do all the cool things you want, without having to use a bunch of braincells or willpower to do it. It takes a lot of persistence and consistency, and the first while can be challenging, but if your choosing meaningful habits for yourself, it's overwhelmingly worth it. But you have to go about it the right way. I don't know how many people I've talked too, who bemoan how they've tried to get started doing something, over and over, but keep failing, and when I asked them what they were doing, they pretty much always were violating one of the cardinal rules of habit creation.
I don't remember all those rules off the top of my head, but the salient one's for me are very simple:
-most important: make your habit so easy you never have a good excuse not to do it.
meaning make it 2 minutes or less. You can always do more if you're feeling it, but you just have to do the 2 minutes to satisfy your "did it today" requirement. why is this so important? because of rule number two:
-never skip a day.
also very simple, and when your habit is only 2 minutes, there's no excuse not to do it (except perhaps within point #3, but we'll get there.) But it's another thing people forget. skipping a day doesn't just put you back a day in habit development, it can put you back several days, and since setting a habit can take anywhere from around 21 days, to 3 months, to a year or more, it's absolutely essential that you not make it take longer than it needs to.
an addendum to this that's also important is: if you do miss a day, don't beat yourself up, just make extra super sure you don't miss two days in a row. It's an exponential thing, two days is even worse than one day, and not additively worse, or even multiplicative-ly worse, but probably exponentially worse. random examples to give the feel but not in any way scientific: miss one day: get set back 5 days. miss 2 days: get set back 18 days.
It's only two minutes, so there's really no excuse, again, if you miss one day, to miss a second. just set it as your #1 priority for the day. simple, unless you violate rule #3:
-choose a habit that's intrinsically rewarding
sounds simple, but often people 'want' to install habits because they were told it's good, or they 'think it would be cool' or some long distant goal like, 'getting fit so they'll look good at the beach.' You need some activity that provides a reward at the end of it. This doesn't mean certain things are off limits, but it may mean you have to re-jigger your habits a little bit, or perhaps even just rejigger your thinking about it.
here's a popular one a an example: someone wants to establish a habit of exercising, say, in the morning, or after work, or something. (that's a whole other branch of habit engineering that's super useful as well, about having consistent cues for your habit, but I don't have time to get into that now) their goal is, "get fit so I'll look good" or even "get fit so I'll be healthy when I'm old" these goals sound good, but then the person picks some kind of exercise that they hate, like, say, repeatedly smacking themselves in the face until they're exhausted. Or weightlifting, or sprinting, or whatever exercise someone told them was what they should do, but they actually really don't like it.
as soon as speedo season is over, if they're doing it for the bod, or as soon as they have a girlfriend, or whatever, they're not going to keep it up. Which is sad, because being healthy when you're old or looking good are fine things to be.
But there are simple fixes:
-just choose a version of the thing that you enjoy:
if you don't like jogging normally, do it in nature, or with a friend (though that's dangerous because you're reliant on someone else. you want other elements as well, in case you don't have another person available.) or walk instead, if that's what you like.
or do something else entirely. maybe you enjoy hula hooping, or dancing, or climbing tree's. whatever, just do some exercises that you find enjoyable.
or maybe you don't like jogging because of how you feel afterwords. exercise an amount that leaves you feeling good at the end of it. exercising until you feel bad is shooting yourself in the foot. Some people enjoy the sore but endorphin laden feeling after a hard workout, but some people don't. And nobody likes feeling like they're gonna throw up. (though crossfit has somehow turned that into an ok thing via the power of peer pressure or something.)
to establish a habit, you need a little reward pellet at the end of the action, like a mouse pressing a lever and getting a bit of food. If you feel bad at the end of exercise, your like a mouse pressing a lever and getting an electric shock, your training yourself not to do that thing.
I used to lift weights till I felt light throwing up, or felt like jello and couldn't walk up stairs for days. after a few weeks I'd stop. I was giving myself negative reinforcement. it may have been good for getting swol, but it was real bad for me developing a habit with staying power, and so I never got swol anyways, (which isn't a good goal for habit setting and keeping (more on keeping in a little bit) because it's too far in the future, and too extrinsic, in most cases.) I didn't really want to get swol, I just wanted girls to think I was attractive, so once I stopped feeling bad about my body, I wouldn't keep exercising. It would just see-saw back and forth, me doing it when I felt ugly or inspired, and then stop when I was no longer inspired or ugly-feeling.
This leads to the final point: maintenance: habits pretty much run themselves once they are installed, but it's always possible to let them run down. There is often a small amount of thought you have to put into maintaining them, when life gets hectic. the equivalent of a butler coming to you every day at a certain point and saying, "well sir, would you like to keep your 2 minutes of jumping jacks?" and all you have to say is "yes" but if you consistently say 'no' for a while, the habit will mostly undo itself. though if it's really established, it will be much easier to re-start. still it's something to be aware of. don't take them for granted, once they're established. if things are crazy, you can cut them back to the original 2 minutes, but it's a good idea to keep the habits your happy with going with those 2 minutes, when life is crazy. It's easier than re-setting the habit once the crazy period is over.
Hum, I spent all my time on habits. I don't know why, I guess it was on my mind?
a few more update-y things: I'm in San Diego now. It's actually kinda cold.
Class started yesterday, deceptively gently. I'm still waiting for it to get overwhelmingly intense and trying to brace myself so I'm ready for the onslaught, trying to figure out a good daily and weekly routine that let's me get all my work done with minimal burnout. And at the same time trying to plan my preparation for the final AMI certification exams. there is, I believe, a 3 hour written exam portion (which I'm hoping I don't fail solely on the basis of my handwriting and spelling, but also need to make sure I'm good with all the theory and can write on a subject for 3 hours well.)
and the oral/practical portion, where an examiner will ask me to perform presentations, I think several, and I will have to recall and present them to a person acting as the kid, while they look on and judge, and afterwords grill me on what presentations come before or after, what extensions I might do, what the purpose of the presentation is, etc.
when I say "presentation" that's... like a lesson with a specific material, usually. I might give a lesson on geometric multiplication, using graph paper and colored pencils, or one on multi-digit multiplication using a bead frame. But there area also stories that I might present, that I have to have memorized, that usually include some props that have to be used as well.
The thing is, you never know which things you'll have to present so you have to memorize a huge number. Some from each physical material, and all the main stories, and some other stuff that doesn't use just the normal materials, like some botany stuff where you'd be using a live plant to demonstrate something.
I recently read Moonwalking with Einstein which talks about memory devices like memory palaces and how memory athletes can train to perform extraordinary feats, like memorizing the order of a deck of cards in a minute, and I'm trying to use some of the simpler memorization techniques to help me with all the stuff I'll be needing to memorize. I think it will be really helpful, but it requires a lot more thinking and planning and analyzing than the simple drill and kill method. But after the initial high time investment, it should end up being a little quicker, and a bit more reliable. (or a fair bit quicker, but less so when you take into account the up front time investment)
I've already been using it to replace my phone for to-do lists, and it's fairly effective, and very useful when you don't have your hands free, like when driving. The more you use it, the easier and more effective it gets, so I'm trying to practice. I'm trying to learn all my classmates names using some of the simpler methods, but that means I have to surreptitiously ask the names of the one's I've forgotten, and it's been a year so I'm supposed to know them all, already, in terms of social etiquette.
anyhoo, that's some updates. By for now! I think I spent a bit to long on this. What's the name of that rule? Parkinson's Law, that's it. work expands to fill the time allotted to it. I keep forgetting about that.
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