A few months ago I started with some new habits.
You can read about them here: Good Habits
The routines
- Go to bed in reasonable time (before 11pm)
- No social media before 8am or after 10pm
- No snoozing
- Write daily
- No second screen when watching TV
- Meditate for 2 minutes every day
Routines would become daily habits
As you can see there’s a quite long list with new routines. When I wrote the post I had managed to make the most of them for 10-20 days, at a time, not simultaneously. It turned out to be too short time to successfully make all of them into daily habits, among other things, which I will return to.
Honest with myself
Let me be honest. There are only two routines that I succeeded to make into habits:
go to bed at a reasonable time and to write daily. The latter is largely thanks to my blog challenge, 100 posts in 100 days. The others I failed. And it’s no wonder, in hindsight it was pretty naive to think that I would manage to get so many new routines into habits simultaneously.
“My normal” was changed
There was simply too much that was changed at once, too many new habits, and some external positive things I didn’t see coming.
In late November last year we won 100 000 SEK for the hottest startup on IDD, “RevRise wins 100 000 SEK for the hottest startup on Internet Discovery Day”. Which meant that my focus was changed, I shifted direction and became more focused on my work. I failed my new habits due to “my normal” was changed too much. And it’s common and not a personal failure. I think it’s important to see it that way.
I failed my habits, and that’s OK as long as I know why. Failure is learning.
Pressed pause
So I pressed pause. I don’t do all these routines daily, I can’t, it’s not possible. There is too much that’s adjusted in “my normal”.
I do two, for me new habits right know. I go to bed at a sensible time and write daily. Besides that, I’ve also chosen a month without alcohol this February. That’s enough, it’s perfectly adequate and a challenge for me.
I failed to get all the new routines into habits, but that’s OK, I know why and I’ll learn from it. Failure is a learning tool.