Cobwebs and Cables
15/05/2015 11:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaThere was a wonderful event a few months ago run by a marvellous mob called Earthcarers. They are a greenie sort of group with the inspiring and quirky motto “Empty Bins, Full Lives”.
They seek to make looking after the planet a source of joy, fulfilment and fun rather than endlessly spouting despair inducing gloom and doom.
It turned out that Izzie was in a totally tizzy for that time. Not helped by the troppo hot, humid and horrid weather that week. However was still able to appreciate what a good show they put on in spite of being unable to enjoy it.
One of their speakers called Caroline did a presentation on the subject of “Breaking Bad Habits”
Now that was a must see.
Caroline runs a business helping people to organize their lives and declutter their stuff. She definitely knows her stuff too.
Her first slide contained the quote “Habits start as cobwebs and end as cables” which she claimed to be an ancient Chinese proverbs. When in doubt invoke Confucius. But who cares who it was. This simple idea was the perfect summary of the whole talk.
She had at hand some of the very fresh research that also featured in Coursera’s excellent online course “Learning how to learn”
Also came across the same sorts of ideas in a book of productivity porn called “The One Thing” which dismissed the so called fact that a habit takes 21 days to form. Some habits take less than a week to become second nature while others need nearly a year.
They were all saying pretty much the same thing. Folks who get stuff done are not necessarily more disciplined or have vast stores of willpower. They just simply work smarter rather than harder.
Since even the most complicated of actions such as writing or driving can eventually achieve autopilot status, then the smart people put most of the mundane stuff on autopilot leaving their minds with more time to concentrate on what really matters.
This automatic nature of habits also makes them hard to break. Since that was what everyone came to learn, she basically explained that it is little more than tweaking the art of creating one in the first place. She used the example of coming home feeling too exhausted, plonking in front of the television and tossing the car keys, paperwork and stuff onto the pile of junk on the coffee table. Then next morning spending ages searching the house in search of the missing stuff.
She says that instead of beating yourself up for not putting all those things in their proper places in the drawers in the hallway, a better approach is to simply place a bright shiny bowl on the offending coffee table and toss the keys in there. Who knows, maybe some time in the future you could even put that bowl out in the hallway on top of those unused drawers.
She is also a great fan of writing stuff down to sneak it into one’s subconscious.
There’s something about a “To do” list even if you end up not doing the half of it. She asked if any of us have ever had the experience of putting something on their wish list or to do list, promptly forgetting about it and then finding that the item gets inadvertently ticked off some many moons later.
It seems quite common. She said that a lot of folks use magical thinking such as the so called "law of attraction" to explain such coincidences but she prefers to think that it’s the power of the mind at work once the inner critic just gets out of the way.
But the biggie for Izzie is the sneakiness of using habits to get stuff done. The 7pm ritual of balancing the books and writing the next day’s “to do” list is well and truly entrenched and one of the reasons I am able to live on the smell of an oily rag and pay bills on time. But cleaning, decluttering and other domestic necessities were sadly neglected.
So I created the rituals of Sweeping Sunday, Mopping Monday and (laundry and) Loo Tuesday. It was quite surprising to discover that 30 to 40 minutes on each of these 3 days was all that was needed to have most of the house looking and feeling tidy and clean. Even the Dursleys have noticed.
By now they are almost on autopilot so feeling too tired has not yet turned up as an excuse. And of course the more often I keep to this schedule the easier it gets as it would be a shame to break a good run. It also means that the territories of bathroom, loo, laundry and lounge no longer get a chance to get so seriously messy that it is depressing just thinking about sorting them out.
Pity the same cannot be said about Snooze Central which to this day defies all efforts to impose order.
They seek to make looking after the planet a source of joy, fulfilment and fun rather than endlessly spouting despair inducing gloom and doom.
It turned out that Izzie was in a totally tizzy for that time. Not helped by the troppo hot, humid and horrid weather that week. However was still able to appreciate what a good show they put on in spite of being unable to enjoy it.
One of their speakers called Caroline did a presentation on the subject of “Breaking Bad Habits”
Now that was a must see.
Caroline runs a business helping people to organize their lives and declutter their stuff. She definitely knows her stuff too.
Her first slide contained the quote “Habits start as cobwebs and end as cables” which she claimed to be an ancient Chinese proverbs. When in doubt invoke Confucius. But who cares who it was. This simple idea was the perfect summary of the whole talk.
She had at hand some of the very fresh research that also featured in Coursera’s excellent online course “Learning how to learn”
Also came across the same sorts of ideas in a book of productivity porn called “The One Thing” which dismissed the so called fact that a habit takes 21 days to form. Some habits take less than a week to become second nature while others need nearly a year.
They were all saying pretty much the same thing. Folks who get stuff done are not necessarily more disciplined or have vast stores of willpower. They just simply work smarter rather than harder.
Since even the most complicated of actions such as writing or driving can eventually achieve autopilot status, then the smart people put most of the mundane stuff on autopilot leaving their minds with more time to concentrate on what really matters.
This automatic nature of habits also makes them hard to break. Since that was what everyone came to learn, she basically explained that it is little more than tweaking the art of creating one in the first place. She used the example of coming home feeling too exhausted, plonking in front of the television and tossing the car keys, paperwork and stuff onto the pile of junk on the coffee table. Then next morning spending ages searching the house in search of the missing stuff.
She says that instead of beating yourself up for not putting all those things in their proper places in the drawers in the hallway, a better approach is to simply place a bright shiny bowl on the offending coffee table and toss the keys in there. Who knows, maybe some time in the future you could even put that bowl out in the hallway on top of those unused drawers.
She is also a great fan of writing stuff down to sneak it into one’s subconscious.
There’s something about a “To do” list even if you end up not doing the half of it. She asked if any of us have ever had the experience of putting something on their wish list or to do list, promptly forgetting about it and then finding that the item gets inadvertently ticked off some many moons later.
It seems quite common. She said that a lot of folks use magical thinking such as the so called "law of attraction" to explain such coincidences but she prefers to think that it’s the power of the mind at work once the inner critic just gets out of the way.
But the biggie for Izzie is the sneakiness of using habits to get stuff done. The 7pm ritual of balancing the books and writing the next day’s “to do” list is well and truly entrenched and one of the reasons I am able to live on the smell of an oily rag and pay bills on time. But cleaning, decluttering and other domestic necessities were sadly neglected.
So I created the rituals of Sweeping Sunday, Mopping Monday and (laundry and) Loo Tuesday. It was quite surprising to discover that 30 to 40 minutes on each of these 3 days was all that was needed to have most of the house looking and feeling tidy and clean. Even the Dursleys have noticed.
By now they are almost on autopilot so feeling too tired has not yet turned up as an excuse. And of course the more often I keep to this schedule the easier it gets as it would be a shame to break a good run. It also means that the territories of bathroom, loo, laundry and lounge no longer get a chance to get so seriously messy that it is depressing just thinking about sorting them out.
Pity the same cannot be said about Snooze Central which to this day defies all efforts to impose order.
