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April 22 - April 26, 2023
Self-control allows us to keep our commitments to ourselves.
Habits make change possible by freeing us from decision making and from using self-control.
As novelist John Updike observed, “Surprisingly few clues are ever offered us as to what kind of people we are.”
Obligers respond readily to outer expectations but struggle to meet inner expectations (my friend on the track team).
If we want something to count in our lives, we should figure out a way to count it.
I should monitor whatever is essential to me. In that way, I ensure that my life reflects my values.
1. sleep 2. move 3. eat and drink right 4. unclutter
Secret of Adulthood: Keeping up is easier than catching up.
“Use counters for activities, not for storage.”
I’m a full-time believer in writing habits … You may be able to do without them if you have genius but most of us only have talent and this is simply something that has to be assisted all the time by physical and mental habits or it dries up and blows away.… Of course you have to make your habits in this conform to what you can do. I write only about two hours every day because that’s all the energy I have, but I don’t let anything interfere with those two hours, at the same time and the same place. —FLANNERY O’CONNOR, letter, September 22, 1957
Thich Nhat Hanh’s The Miracle of Mindfulness and Sharon Salzberg’s Real Happiness
The desire to start something at the “right” time is usually just a justification for delay. In almost every case, the best time to start is now.
One of my most helpful Secrets of Adulthood is “What I do every day matters more than what I do once in a while.”
the habit of the habit is more important than the habit itself.
Seeing “Choice Time” was a reminder that for people like me, leisure must be entered on the schedule as its own activity; it’s not something I get only when I have nothing else to do. Because I always have something else to do.
“Power Hour.”
The goal is to develop habits that allow us to have time for everything we value—work, fun, exercise, friends, errands, study—in a way that’s sustainable, forever.
Scheduling helps us make time for the things that are most important to us. How we schedule our days is how we spend our lives.
What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it. —ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY, Wind, Sand and Stars
“How many shrinks does it take to change a lightbulb?” “Only one, but the lightbulb has to want to change.”
to trudge along with a good habit, forever, can feel too demanding. It requires a surrender—an acceptance of the way we must live to abide by our own values.
Secret of Adulthood: What we assume will be temporary often becomes permanent; what we assume is permanent often proves temporary.
Secret of Adulthood: By giving something up, I gain.
Secret of Adulthood: The biggest waste of time is to do well something that we need not do at all.
Secret of Adulthood: Make it easy to do right, and hard to go wrong.
People who use if-then planning are much more likely to stick to their good habits than people who don’t.
Secret of Adulthood: Make sure the things we do to make ourselves feel better don’t make us feel worse.
I’ve long been obsessed by author J. M. Barrie’s strange, brilliant skeleton of a book, The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island, about three boys who set sail to seek the adventure of being capsized. I’m particularly haunted by its first line, “We set out to be wrecked”; to fail was the very purpose of their undertaking.
The habit of the habit is more important than the habit itself. For this reason, it can be helpful to keep a habit symbolically, even if we can’t keep it literally, to keep a habit in place.
Secret of Adulthood: To keep going, I sometimes need to allow myself to stop.
As explored by writers such as Alfie Kohn in Punished by Rewards and Daniel Pink in Drive, rewards have very complex consequences.
a Secret of Adulthood: If I give more to myself, I can ask more from myself. Self-regard isn’t selfish.
Obligers, by contrast, may have trouble giving themselves treats if they feel that the time, energy, or money is more properly owed to someone else. But it’s important for Obligers to have treats. They’re susceptible to burnout, and too many moments of self-deprivation, or too much work for the benefit of others, may lead them to feel resentful, neglected, or deprived.
Scheduling lectio divina is a way to make sure that the spiritual gets attention—whether a person decides to read holy books and attend religious services, as a monk would do, or adapts this habit to make regular time to leaf through art books, read biographies of great figures, spend time in nature, go to concerts, volunteer, or meditate.
Clarity is one reason that the Strategy of Scheduling is so helpful. It’s important to have time to write; to have time with my family; to read. Instead of spending my day in a chaos of warring priorities, and feeling as though whatever I do I’m leaving important things undone, I can use the clarity of Scheduling to guarantee that I have time and energy to devote to each activity that matters.
People who use language that emphasizes that they’re acting by their own choice and exercising control (“I don’t,” “I choose to,” “I’m going to,” or “I don’t want to”) stick to their habits better than people who use language that undermines their self-efficacy (“I can’t,” “I’m not allowed to,” or “I’m supposed to”).
A bright-line rule is a clearly defined rule or standard that eliminates any need for interpretation or decision making;
Secret of Adulthood: I can’t make people change, but when I change, others may change; and when others change, I may change.
The First 20 Minutes, Gretchen Reynolds
“If I do something only occasionally, people don’t adjust. If I make a habit of something, they adapt.”
We can build our habits only on the foundation of our own nature.
