Somewhere, I heard it takes 21 days to develop a habit. So, I started giving myself 21-day commitments to help create change in my life.
I believe true change comes naturally when your beliefs change, and the way to change your beliefs is through awareness. The experience of being committed and doing something non-negotiable for 21 days provides awareness of what commitment means. And, it is much easier for me to say, I must do this today, for the next 3 weeks, then I must do this today, for the rest of my life.
Lifehack.org had a piece yesterday on How to Create a Non-Optional Mindset which examined the problem of seeing items we want to accomplish in our life as optional:
Because we haven’t made the relevant body-changing habits non-negotiables in our life. On some level we still consider optimal eating and consistent exercise to be optional. Of course we do, otherwise we’d never have the start-stop problem.
Tool: 21 Day Commitment
I have just started my third 21-day commitment, the objectives of first two were:
- Round 1: Minimum 15 minutes of meditation + 15 minutes of exercise per day.
- Round 2: In addition to above, taking the time to recall my dreams in the morning, and posting to the creativity project each day.
Learnings: 21 Day Commitment
Round 1 Results: Success. Making sure I had time each day for meditation and exercise, even if it was only for 15 minutes, was not as hard as I thought. I find even these 30 minutes are giving me more energy and clarity during the day.
Round 2 Results: Failed. Trying to commit to 4 things in a day, was too much. I started doing the minimum exercise and meditation each day, and cutting out my sleep to get things done, which made my energy and clarity worse.
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Round 3 Objective: 9 pm rule
I have just started round 3 with the 9 pm rule. The rule is no laptop after 9pm. No e-mail, no writing, no nothing, except if I choose to watch a movie. (Although, I never watch movies, so I don’t expect this to occur).
This was a suggestion by my friend Olivia Fox Cabane as a way to improve my lack-of-sleep and walking around in a daze. If I can eliminate the word “sleepyhead” from my girlfriend’s vocabulary, I will consider it a victory.