The Life Half Full

In recent weeks I’ve been doing my level best to apply the wondrous lessons from the Yoda of self-improvement  - Leo from Zen Habits - if you’ve not already surfed on by, be sure to check him out if you have any interest in bettering yourself.

I’m currently trying to apply his theory about creating a morning routine, and alongside it an evening routine too. 

It’s a part of a wider game plan to work on only one habit a month, allowing myself to make that habit second nature before moving on to the next one.  Hey - if it works, I’ll have changed 12 things about myself by 2009 which will be a marked improvement over any previous years!

Part of the extra challenge for me is that I’ve always been a self-proclaimed ‘night-owl’, claiming insomnia (although I’m sure any real sufferers of that affliction would tell me I was nowhere near it).  However I am now determined to become an early riser, and having a morning routine to stick to gives me many reasons to do so.  The productivity benefits of this will be huge - one good example is that it’s giving me time to write this blog - something that’s been on my ’someday/maybe’ list for quite a while now.  Even if I never wrote another post, I’ve got further with setting this up than most of my other projects in life!

 So far I’ve had mixed success.  You can see my progress as shown on Joes Goals in the graph below.  By the way, Joe’s Goals is a great little service for tracking goals simply and effectively if you like that kind of technological thing.

As you can see, so far I’ve had mixed success (including today) - as per the title of my post it either happens or it doesn’t.  I’ve been very careful to not slip into the habit of claiming a slightly earlier wake up time as ‘almost’ success.  I know that’s a slippery slope to go down.  I either do it, or I don’t.  This kind of thinking is critical if I’m going to make this stick.

Another reflection of forming this habit is that (duh) getting up earlier is easier if I go to bed and go to sleep earlier!  I know, I know - Marley Mastermind (specialised subject - stating the flaming obvious!)  However I truly always thought that my problem was getting up early.  It’s really not.  Here’s some things I think have helped

• Telling myself to stop doing things in the day.  They’ll wait until tomorrow and I’ll be rested
• Don’t drink caffeine after Noon.
• Switch the laptop off at least an hour before bed
• Drink something soothing like Ovaltine at bedtime (how old am I?!?)
• Write a journal before bed - gets the thoughts whizzing round my head out.
• Plan to be in bed very early.  Then you can do some of the things above and get to sleep early.
• Prepare as much as possible (lunch, iron a shirt, pack bags etc) for the morning.  then you wont worry about it.

I’m sure there’s many, many more and I may add to these as the month goes through.

Until then, wish me luck and let me know if you’ve got any tips, or even if you’ve set yourself a challenge for January.

Filling life up, day by day….

Marley