Transformation happens a day at a time. How we structure our days can dramatically help, or hinder, our efforts. In this lesson, you’ll consider how to schedule your day for success!
1. Ritualize
Tal Ben-Shahar, author of Happier, suggests that we ritualize the important things we want to transform. He writes,
“If we do not ritualize activities – whether working out in the gym, spending time with our family, or reading for pleasure – we often don’t get to them, and rather than being spontaneous, we become reactive (to others’ demands on our time and energy.) In an overall structured, ritualized life, we certainly don’t need to have each hour of the day accounted for and can thus leave time for spontaneous behavior… The most creative individuals – whether artists, businesspeople, or parents – have rituals that they follow. Paradoxically, the routine frees them up to be creative and spontaneous.”
Once you’ve identified the critical steps to accomplishing your goal, find a way to make them a special part of your daily routine. For example, if you want to establish a meditation practice (which I recommend!), you could light a candle, do a short reading from scriptures or poems or other works that are meaningful to you, or rub some essential oils on your hands or feet each time. Generally, rituals are made into rituals through scripted actions, meaningful language, and special sights, smells, or sounds. And these become the things that pull us to continue them.
2. Eat frogs
Mark Twain once said,
You probably know this all too well – there are a few things on your to-do list that you DO NOT want to do. So you do the easier things, then take a break… and then your willpower is depleted and you don’t get around to them. Meanwhile, your conscience nags at you for not doing it and you have a vaguely frustrated feeling as you go through your day.
I love Mark Twain’s advice – do the most undesirable, hardest thing on your to-do list FIRST. You’ll feel amazing when you do… and it will likely give you a boost of energy to accomplish the other things you need to do. You’ll probably also realize that it wasn’t so bad, after all.
3. Make a list, check it twice
I know not everyone likes to-do lists, but they work. And even though we have so many devices that can track our lists, I think there is something really valuable about putting pen to paper. When we think of something that needs to be done (“I need to remember to schedule the vet appointment”), it creates an “open loop” in the brain – a nagging sense that something is incomplete. Our unconscious mind starts demanding that the conscious mind make a plan!
When we write it down AND make a plan for its completion, the brain can close the loop. (In fact, this is how “earworms” work – we tend to mainly get a song “stuck in our head” when we hear just a part of it, and not the full song. The repetition of the song in the brain is the brain’s desire to close the loop on this particular input. In case you’ve ever wondered why you can’t get Taylor Swift out of your head!)
Productivity expert David Allen says when we make our to-do lists, we need to ensure that we are writing down actionable items. Sometimes the things we put on to-do lists are way too vague (e.g., “finish Davidson project.”) That one item may actually involve 15 steps — and if so, write them all down! The thing that goes on your to-do list for the day is the “next actionable item” – e.g., “call Shelly to discuss Davidson case” (and if you don’t have Shelly’s number, your next actionable item would be “get Shelly’s phone number).
Allen also recommends that if something will take two minutes or less we should just do it – no need to clog your list with something that can be done in almost as much time as writing it down takes.
4. Automate certain parts of the day
This strategy also helps conserve willpower. The more we can automate certain parts of our day, the more easily the tasks are done. In our final week, we’ll work on creating our mindful morning routines, in which we practice mindfulness AND do some of our routine tasks. By making these automatic, we prevent “ego depletion” (the psychological term for a lack of self-control) and we prevent decision fatigue. Studies show that when we are overwhelmed by choices, we usually opt for the status quo (which isn’t always a bad thing, but if we want to change…)
(And by “automating” part of our day, it doesn’t mean we are on autopilot. We can still be mindful and aware throughout our day, even during routine activities.)
5. Shape the environment
People who want to commit to an exercise routine often do things like putting their workout shoes right next to the bed – some have even slept in their workout clothes so there’s no excuse to skip their morning jog!
What can you do to tweak your environment to literally create the path of least resistance for yourself?
I can share a small, but very helpful, example from my own experience. During a cold spell a while ago, my meditation habit got interrupted because the first thing I would do in the morning was wrap myself in my favorite fuzzy blanket on my big comfy chair. The chair isn’t very conducive to meditation, but it IS very effective at promoting early morning web-surfing and blanket-snuggling. Soon I would realize that even though I had told myself I would move over to the meditation cushion once I warmed up, I sometimes wasted my morning “me-time” scrolling through Facebook or Amazon. Ugh. But the blanket was on the chair! And I needed to be warm! What to do?!
It’s a bit embarrassing to admit how long it took me to realize that if I JUST PUT THE DAMN BLANKET ON MY MEDITATION CUSHION, I would sit there, wrap myself in the blanket, get warm, and start meditating (with no Facebook stress to start the day). This simple change – where I keep my blanket – helped me restart my practice.
So think hard about the simple little tweaks you can make to your environment that will help you do what you need to do. Does your desk need to be reorganized? Studies show we work better in decluttered and organized environments. (I work much better if post-its, highlighters, paper clips, my planner, and my resource binders are within arms’ reach).
6. Just Do It
Do you ever procrastinate because you’re “waiting for inspiration”? You’re just “not in the mood” to do the work?
Well, I’m here to mindfully and lovingly tell you to JUST DO IT ANYWAY! The best writers, the best artists, the best musicians will all tell you that they are amazing at what they do because they JUST DO IT!
There’s a legend that the elderly Picasso wandered into a coffee shop, and while he drank his coffee, he doodled for a few minutes on his napkin. A nearby patron was watching him, and as he prepared to leave and throw the napkin away, she asked if she could have it. He said, “Sure, for $20,000.” The woman, horrified, replied, “But it only took you 20 minutes to draw it!”
Picasso supposedly informed her, “No, ma’am, it took me 60 years to learn to draw like that.”
Before it’s effortless, it’s often effort-full.
Author Oliver Burkeman claims that the problem with motivational speakers is that they’re all about “how to feel in the mood for getting things done.” But feeling like doing something, and actually doing it, are two different things. If, instead of waiting for inspiration, we take “a non-attached stance towards procrastination,” we’ll discover that our “reluctance about working isn’t something that needs to be eradicated or transformed into positivity…. [We] can note the procrastinatory feelings and act anyway.” I LOVE THAT LINE!
Another form of procrastination that we engage in is different from simple avoidance, in part because it LOOKS LIKE actual work. We may decide that more research, planning, and analyzing is what is needed (and sometimes, that very well may be the case). But as the Heath brothers argue in Switch, this is often because, initially, analyzing is more satisfying to the brain than doing. But at some point we have to do it, because “we can’t simply think our way into new behavior.” We must ACT our way into new behavior.
The Heath brothers share the example of Jerry Sternin, who was working for Save the Children to combat malnutrition in Vietnam. He spent time educating mothers about proper diet and nutrition, and how it important it was to their children’s health. But nothing changed, because “knowledge does not change behavior… He knew that telling the mothers about nutrition wouldn’t change their behavior. They’d have to practice it.”
So instead, he scheduled cooking classes, and the mothers came together, learned how to cook nutritious meals, and the behaviors ultimately changed. The women “act[ed] their way into a new way of thinking.”
And so must we.