There are a couple of specific initiatives I have embarked upon in recent days.
One has been my well publicized daily walks and exercises. Yeah, I am now close to a month into it, without a single day’s break. The original target was to do a minimum 21 days at a stretch, the idea being that, 21 consecutive days or doing a thing, are necessary, to form a success habit.
The other thing I am doing these days, is to have a blog post, daily. Noticing the badge of “WordPress post a day 2011” on my friend, Makrand’s blog, I investigated into the concept, at WordPress. And I liked what I saw. That it was a commitment to do a blog post each day. There was also the other option of a post a week, in 2011. But I opted for the post a day. And here I am, posting daily, since that point in time!
So this time, both of these resolves are going fine. So far. And I hope that these will continue.
What is one of the differences that I have made, this time?
Most of my previous attempts at resolves of this kind, had a ‘loophole in the system’ for me! It would perhaps be a resolve of walking at least 4-5 times a week. Or it would be doing 5 days a week, but no weekends. Or writing a blog post at least once a week. Or something of that kind.
Those did not work.
When it is “once a week”, it could be any one day a week. And ‘any day’ is often ‘no day’. And that’s what would end up happening.
Likewise, if its 4-5 days a week, you might end up missing the first 1 or 2 or 3 days of the week, putting pressure on the rest of the week, and often not happening, again.
So what I found working this time was the precise and unambiguous (read “one that did not give loopholes”) target. Go for a walk DAILY. Period.
There are no clauses in addition, like “at least 4-5 times a week” or “all days, except weekends”. Or things of those kind.
A definition that is anything less than absolutely clear, leaves room for escape. We should not give ourselves that kind of room. Especially if we WANT to make something happen.
No sleepy Sundays or manic Mondays. If we have to do it, we have to do it. All days of the week, every week.
At the most, if we wanted to reduce the frequency, and say, do something on a weekly basis, STILL it is important to plan for the one day of the week, e.g. Tuesday or Thursday etc. That way, ON THAT DAY, there would be no room to escape.
This post is happening just a little before midnight, just so that it makes it to today’s post. Which is the commitment.
Yes, I am quite sure that its working for me, only because I kept it to a simple daily routine, without ambiguity.
It would have not worked any other way..
What do you think??
Random Musings 