New Year, New Habits

The year is 2020. We've reached the 8th day of the year, and I've spent these 8 days thinking about changes I can make that would help me to be more productive, live a healthier life, and optimize the time I spend investing in the things that will make me an overall better person. I've thought about the time wasters that are dragging me away from the things I should be doing, and of the good things I could do that would start to move the needle in the right direction away from unproductive to productive. So what are the changes I want to make this year? Sure, there are the standards that I think about every year. Lose weight. Run more. Eat better. Try to develop better sleep habits. Then those just seem to go by the wayside. I have years of journals I can look back on and see exactly how little progress I've made in these areas. No, this year is different. I want to make changes that will help me be a more productive person. Diet and exercise are tangential, and will help in the sense that they 'll make me an overall more optimally functioning individual. But they're not the be all, end all. I'm looking for more than that. This is the year I start to make progress on my to do lists. Yep, that's the big one for this year. I have to do lists. They are the bane of my existence. I compile lists, categorize them, try to make them work for me, and all they end up doing is stressing me out and working against me. The main problem is that they just continue to grow. I sit and stress about all the things on the various to do lists, and yet I don't ever seem to make any progress on cutting them down. The bigger they get, the more daunting they are and the more it feels like trying to drink the ocean with a spoon. To eat an elephant. And how do you do this? Well, one bite at a time, but you have to have the will to start. This year, I'm going to do my best to cut out the unproductive things in my life. I'm going to work on decluttering digitally. Will I also be doing this literally, in the physical spaces I occupy? Of course. That's something that I'll continue to chip away at as well. But in terms of the systems I've created and the lists I have amassed that need to be dealt with, that's truly my focus. That's where I want to put my energy. If I'm not spending time actively working on the items, I'll be practicing presence of mind and reflecting on the things so I keep them in the forefront of my daily routine. We all have a digital footprint, and when we consider decluttering we often only consider the things around us in our physical space. Yet if we look at what we do electronically, including the activities that we engage in online that consume time, our digital 'reach' can be overwhelming. I get up in the morning and read the news. Every morning. Is that a good way to start the day? Alas, no. There's never any good news. Everything is bad, all the time. And then I carry that around with me as I go about my morning routine, reflecting on the bad. Part of my digital 'reach' in this case is directly working against me. The routine I have embraced over the years is moving the needle in the wrong direction. I'm up on current events, but what does it really matter? I'd rather focus on reading content that will help to make me a more positive person and to try to keep me out of the negative thought patterns that can drag me down. I'm reading Zen Habits, an online blog I found via a Tim Ferriss book (Tribe of Mentors) that I'm really enjoying. I'm reading the Ferriss book still as well. I have a number of books that I'm going to be adding to my reading list that focus on productivity and personal optimization. I also have trashy crappy fiction about zombies. That's fine as well. I'm not saying I can't be recreational still. I'm not saying that I'm not going to sit at night and watch television with Jack if that's what he wants to do. I'm trying to get a feel for a new mindset, and at the same time I'm trying to be aware of potential burnout. But I think more than anything if I can just create new habits around being positive and productive, that will be a huge leap forward. Back to the to do lists. I have allowed them to grow. I've watered them, given them fertilizer. Cultivated them to the point that they've bloomed into complex gardens. Foliage mazes. Now it is time to prune them back. I'm going to try to say no to things, so they don't get any bigger. I'm going to assess what is on the lists that actually needs to be done, and cut away what I can that might not be worth spending time on. I'll look at the projects and try to prioritize them, but I won't continue to just sit and fiddle with the lists. I'll be deliberate about my daily actions and about looking at what I can do to decrease the volume of these to do items. We'll see how that works, and how productive 2020 actually turns out to be. For this year though, no resolutions specific to goals or aspirations. I just want to be a better person. I want to be more positive, so I'm continuing to reflect on all the negative things in my life that I could try to change. All the things that are causing me stress and keeping me from being productive. looking at the new habits I could create, the changes I could make in my routine, that would make a difference.