Structuring the Day

So how have I been getting on with structuring the day which I blogged about last week?

Well, I made a fairly basic mistake - one indeed which I am always warning other people about - I tried to establish too many new things in my life at once. Result: I found it impossible to keep to the structure.

My idea was to introduce the following:

Write my journal immediately on getting up in the morning AND go for a walk at noon each day AND meditate for 20 minutes at 6pm AND not turn my computer on till 9am in the morning AND turn my computer off at 6pm in the evening AND not have my computer on between 9am and 6pm at weekends.

The problem with trying to introduce all these at once is that I can't expect to impose a structure like that suddenly on my existing workload without encountering major problems. There's nothing wrong with the structure as such, but I have to allow my workload time to adjust, and my mind time to adjust too. Introducing one thing at a time would allow that to happen.

So which of the above changes will I establish first? I think turning the computer off at six would be my choice. I will concentrate on that for a bit, and when I've got that established I will introduce another change.

Comments

[Andy]

Hi Mark,
I love the idea of improving your routine one step at a time, but when do you know that you're ready to add step two?

[Mark Forster]

Dear Andy,
I think the answer is basically when you feel that it has "taken", in other words it's becoming habitual. This may vary a lot from improvement to improvement.