Habits (janathon day 5)
Written Jan 5, 2023, tagged under post
As I continue along the process of getting the shape of my life in order, I find myself thinking about habits and how they work. So it was rather timely that Tim Ferriss released his most recent podcast with guest James Clear - the author of the top-selling book Atomic Habits. The episode is long, but interesting.
It was with his ideas in mind that I have been approaching forming new habits, and I've had a fair amount of success along the way. One of my first recent attempts was to get into the habit of doing daily sit-ups. James' advice is to not set the bar too high, and I followed this approach by aiming to do just twenty sit-ups every day. I do them last thing before bed, typically, and it takes less than a minute. I started near the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, and have only missed a handful of days since then. The exercise itself has gone from impossible - I felt like my body proportions just didn't work as my legs were too short - to actually pretty easy. Result!
Other habits have also kicked in nicely, such as inter-dental brushing, which now happens every evening after brushing. This very blog is definitely moving into habit territory - I've missed a couple of days, but both have been through illness. The distinctive feature with both is that missing the habit activity now feels pretty weird - the idea of missing it bothers me in such a way that I just get it done.
{:class="img-responsive" : width="250" : style="float: right; margin: 10px;"} After a long work day sat at a desk, I felt like I really needed to get out and do some exercise this evening, however small. So I managed to sneak off to the gym, and get today's Janathon activities ticked off. I had another 2km row, followed by other assorted weights. Also, I remembered to take a sneak photo at closing time - here's the weights side of the gym, largely devoid of people as we'd all been booted out.
Janathon entry: 2km row (7:59) plus some swift bench presses, chin-ups and leg extensions