Getting Back on Track

It’s official.  I have dish gremlins.  It’s the only rational explanation left!  *sigh*  Despite my best efforts at reconditioning, I do still come home, or wake up, to this:

The gremlins latest visit left me with a new load of dishes.

The gremlins latest visit left me with a new load of dishes.

 

I deal with the full sink, full dish drainer scenario several times a day in my house.  Even though both always seem to be full, it’s almost never to capacity.  In that respect, part of my strategy has been to do small amounts frequently rather than waiting for pile ups.  However, when the strategy starts to fall apart and the pile up begins, I have to devise new ways to trick myself into staying on top of my chores, and other mundane tasks.  *sigh*  They can feel awfully tedious.

Over the years I have developed a number of techniques to trick myself and get back on track.  Whenever I notice myself slipping back into my old ways, I try to correct the behavior as soon as possible.  My first corrective action is to accept that I’m human and remind myself that the changes are not permanent.  I’m kind to myself.  After all, it’s an ongoing process.

Then I re-assess why I think it isn’t working. The flow of the new habit may need to be adjusted.  There could also be emotional or psychological reasons causing resistance. Getting to the root of deeply ingrained habits to re-route them takes time.  Or maybe it’s just because my schedule was super crazy and a few less critical things were neglected.

After the first two steps, being nice to myself and re-assessing, I get back on track by going through the same steps I originally used to modify the habit.  Usually I start by setting the timer for 5 minutes, or by making compromises with myself.  For example, the other night I was super tired and once again facing a full sink, full dish drainer scenario.  This was because I hadn’t washed the dishes in the morning, starting the whole cycle over.  As a compromise, I forced myself to empty the dish drainer so at least I could wash the dishes straight away in the morning.

If these tactics, and the ones from last week’s post aren’t working, then I start bribing myself and using a reward system.  Feel free to share your best strategies in the comments section.

Modifying Bad Habits

Last year I read a book called The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.  One of the many things I learned is habits save us time and energy.  Doing something habitually spares our brains from constantly making decisions.  For example, when getting dressed in the morning, I don’t decide which leg goes in the pants first.  It’s automatic.  When I get home I automatically put my keys in the same place. I don’t have to think about where to put them, or where to find them, later.

If I wanted to wake up to a clean kitchen, I was going to have to make emptying the dish drainer a habit.  As I mentioned previously, several things were working against me:

  • Bad stacker
  • Prolific creator of dirty dishes
  • Extreme annoyance and dislike for the task

How was I going to recondition myself?

I started small by working on the emotional aspect.  I stopped expending energy on chastising myself for not doing the dreaded task, which only succeeded in decreasing what little motivation I had.  Instead, I focused my energies on thinking of ways to trick myself into the emptying habit.  Here are a few of my more successful tactics:

  • 5-minute sprints – In the beginning when I felt tired and annoyed, I would challenge myself to empty dishes for 5 minutes and then quit.  I quickly noticed it only took 2 minutes.  I found this oddly motivating, even though it did make me feel a bit silly for being sooo resistant.
  • 2-minute rule – The Getting Things Done method by David Allen has a simple rule, if you can do something in 2 minutes or less, do it right away.  It was harder to make excuses now that I knew it only took 2 minutes, max!
  • Positive reinforcement – I liked the results.  Sink and dishes remained clean. Doing small amounts frequently made it easy to maintain.  This gave me encouragement.
  • Finding time – I found ways to reallocate my time.  For example when waiting for bread to toast, I trained myself to empty the dish drainer before checking my phone.

It’s slowly becoming a habit to empty the dish drainer asap and keep it that way.  Despite my best efforts, old habits are hard to change.  Stay tuned for the final part in the series when I share strategies for getting back on track.

 

 

 

 

Diagnosing Bad Habits

When I lived in NYC I developed a terrific habit of keeping my kitchen immaculate. The constant threat of vermin motivated me to make sure every dish was washed and every surface cleaned before going to bed.

I haven’t lived in NYC for over 10 years, but I maintained my standards for years after moving to other cities. Over time, without the vermin threat, I started to let things slide. I routinely went to bed leaving the sink piled high with dishes to greet me in the morning. In fact, I seemed to always have dirty dishes in the kitchen. It really started to bother me. I knew I was capable of keeping a clean kitchen, so what was causing the slippage?

Over the next several weeks I observed my dishwashing habits and how I felt about it. In time I realized the problem was not the dirty dishes. The real problem was not emptying the dish drainer regularly. Consequently when I wanted to wash dishes, the dish drainer would be full making a simple task into an onerous two-step process. And since I was usually tired, it was easy for me to convince myself to do it when I had more energy. Inevitably, I always woke up to a sink full of dirty dishes to be washed before going to work, which was unpleasant and costing me valuable time in the morning.

Other factors that were working against me:

  1. I create an obscene amount of dirty dishes.
  2. I stack things terribly in the dish drainer. I can’t be bothered to wash things a certain way for stacking purposes.
  3. I hate emptying the dish drainer. Totally irrational, but it’s one of my least favorite tasks.

Armed with this information, I created a strategy to achieve my goal: waking up to a clean sink. Now I wake up to a clean sink about 80-90% of the time. The trick for me was diagnosing the right habit to change. The bottleneck was not from the large volume of dirty dishes. It was a direct result of not emptying the dish drainer routinely. Once I figured out how to keep the dish drainer empty, everything else fell into place.

Stay tuned for next week’s installment when I share my habit transformation methods.

Fernandina – Love on the Islands

Love was in the air when we disembarked that afternoon at Punta Espinoza on Fernandina Island. Earlier in the day we had seen several pairs of sea turtles mating at different times. One fellow traveller remarked it was no wonder the sea turtles were endangered because we kept disturbing them.

Within minutes on the new island I saw a Lava Heron fishing near the shore, a sea turtle missing a flipper, and a pair of Sally Lightfoot crabs mating in the rocks.

Lava Heron

Lava heron on Fernandina.

 

I lifted my head up from all the action on the shoreline and was amazed to see hundreds of marine iguanas lazing in the sun draped haphazardly across the hardened lava.

Lizard City - even though these are all technically iguanas.

Lizard City – even though these are all technically iguanas.

Along the trail a female Lava Lizard raced by with her tail held high, signaling to the males she was ready for action.  A short time later we saw marine iguanas mating. It seemed pretty violent.  The marine iguanas might look harmless because they don’t move much and have a vegetarian diet, but their mating rituals left me with a different impression.

I missed seeing the flightless cormorants mating, but turned around in time to see them building a seaweed nest together in preparation of the eggs.

We continued our walk across the expanse of lava into a mangrove complete with red, white, and black varieties.  A Galapagos Snake lay motionless in the sun, blending seamlessly into the rocks. Looking across the terrain, composed of tumbled, swirled lava budding with fresh, green mangrove shoots, was again like travelling back in time. This was the beginning.

Fernandina Lava field expanse

Expanse of lava on Fernandina. Sprouting in the cracks we saw three different species of mangrove and cacti.

 

We took a few moments to relax at the edge of a brackish lagoon, watching sea turtles swim around lazily and tiny fishes slurping algae off the rocks near our feet.  A few feet away a small sea lion snoozed peacefully on the rocks.   Scattered on the rocks were more marine iguanas, barely moving and sometimes difficult to avoid stepping on since the muted tones of their skin often matched the stones.

Trekking back across the lava field to leave I could see time racing forward. The mangroves thickened and became denser, forming a canopy protecting me from the late afternoon sun. I spied a Galapagos Mockingbird, one of the first species that got Darwin thinking, before boarding the panga back to the boat.

Galapagos Mockingbird

Galapagos Mockingbird

 

Artful Procrastination

A friend of mine, after reading my previous posting on procrastination, commented that I was almost the complete opposite of her in how I managed to get tasks done. She was of the opinion that sometimes it was better to put a task aside until she felt energized to do it. That way the task seemed to flow. She felt good about the process and the end result.

My friend is a wise woman and offered yet another perspective on procrastination. Sometimes I actually prevent myself from getting things done because I let the priorities guide me instead of energy levels. This is especially the case with some dreaded deadlines (e.g. tax filing) or boring, routine administrative tasks (e.g. entering in expenses). When I have something mandatory to do, sometimes I will spend the whole day working up the energy and motivation to get started rather than just doing what I feel like.

A few weeks ago I was slogging through some work so I could go out and walk around the park. It was a beautiful day. Sunshine beamed into my office and the breeze felt just right. *sigh* Instead of going outside when the weather was great and I was energized, I forced myself to finish the task. By then it was too late to go out because it took me so dang long to get into it. In hindsight I should’ve just gone for the walk for motivation, rather than pretending to be focused, which wasted more hours than the walk would have.

I often forget that energy levels matter when it comes to getting things done. The process of how we accomplish our tasks counts too. Naturally I almost always feel energized to do the more creative parts of my business (i.e. writing Deletist blog postings!), but will often push those aside to tackle more urgent, or obligatory, items. I’d like to always match tasks with energy levels. Then reality shows up in the form of bills, deadlines, meetings, etc.

So again, I come back to wondering about the question in my previous posting. If I decide to “wait” on doing certain tasks until I feel the right energy level, am I procrastinating? Or am I expending time and energy more efficiently?

Getting Fit with Technology

A friend of mine sent me a video clip on Leaf by Bellabeat, advertised as “The World’s Smartest Piece of Jewelry”.  Clip on Leaf to track your heart rate, monitor caloric output, and receive alerts to breathe when the device senses you’re stressed.

Spire, another wearable device, monitors respiration.  Spire senses tension based on breathing patterns and sends a vibrating alert, reminding the wearer to take deep breaths.  A company called Athos makes smart clothes, designed to measure and track movements to prevent injuries while optimizing performance.

Fitbit is one of the more popular wearable fitness devices, allowing users to track/monitor activity levels, sleep quality, and count calories, among other features.  David Sedaris wrote a piece last year about his Fitbit experiences in “Stepping Out: Living the Fitbit Life.”

I can see the benefit of using wearable devices to track/monitor activities.  Every time I go to the doctor’s with some kind of problem the first question is “how long have you been experiencing X?”  I almost always reply, “I don’t know, a while.”  I can admit this is not useful, but I wonder if presenting the doctor with tons of stats and graphs would be.  I’m sure the results would be great for diagnosing some health concerns, but would likely complicate others by providing too much information that wasn’t relevant.

I read that some health insurance companies started offering financial incentives to people who elect to wear fitness devices.  However, the collected information could be used by the insurance companies to refute claims, or maybe even raise premiums in the future.  What if an insurance company requires you to wear a device for 24/7 monitoring to substantiate a claim, or a treatment?  For example, what if you followed a special diet, but only managed to follow it 80% of the time?  What if you turned off your monitoring for 20% of the time to avoid tracking the “off” times?  It would likely raise suspicions and throw doubt into the process.  And will 24/7 monitoring become a requirement to qualify for health insurance?

My body already has a voice, pain, one I can track easily.  I don’t need a wearable device to measure the effects eating too much sugar or missing a good night’s sleep.  I feel them instantly.  Aside from the privacy implications, I’m also concerned that wearable devices will result in relationships with the device instead of the machine (aka the human body) which should be the real objective.