Burning Ones

A Short History: Waking Early and Routine.

I was reading this article over on Zen Habits the other day and made the decision to attempt to become an early riser again. I have always struggled mightily with the ability to wake up. Probably due to my propensity to go to sleep late (because I, for some reason, associate late nights with freedom and adulthood, more on this in some other post), I have always woken up in the morning feeling like a ton of bricks had been repeatedly dropped on my head all night. I don’t know what a hangover really feels like (having never had an occasion to get one), but if it’s anything like what I wake up feeling like, it must be terrible.

Months ago, I decided that I wanted to change this. I have always wanted to be an early riser, but I never have been able to truly follow through. I actually believe that God had told me that he wanted me to start waking up early (4:00 AM to be exact). I said, “Great!” assuming that since it was a command from God, he would magically make me wake up every morning and I’d feel great after a night’s sleep for the first time in my life. Well, that didn’t happen. After about a month, I gave up. I simply refused to consistently make decisions to get me in bed on time, and while I still believe God wanted me to wake up at that time, he will not interfere with our free-will in that manner.

So, all of that to say that I’m back at it. Leo’s article inspired me and I decided to go for it. The key tip for me was waking up earlier by slowly making incremental steps backward, rather than attempting to make one huge leap backward. The last time I tried to do this, I literally went from waking up at around 10 and going to sleep around 1 or 2 every night to trying to wake up at 4 and going to sleep at 9 or 10… In One Night! Obviously, this didn’t work (well, it worked for about a week, until going to sleep at midnight and waking up at 4 took it’s toll). Some other tips from that article also up for honorable mention are putting the alarm clock far from your bed, leaving the room as soon as you turn the alarm clock off, allow yourself to sleep earlier, and last but no where near the least, Do Not Let Yourself Rationalize!

Coupling The Desire To Wake Up Early With A New Lack Of Fear For Routine.

Now I’m faced with a decision. How do I get myself to wake up early and still get things that I want to do done. After all, I’ve come to the conclusion that I need no small amount of sleep (curse all of you 5 or 6 hours a night people! ;) ); I’ve got to get a solid 7 or 8 hours every night or I start loosing it. Even at that rate, I still seem to benefit from more sleep in the day. My current answer? Routine. The only way I can see at the moment to guarantee that day after day I’m doing what I want to do is to establish habits in my life that allow me to naturally and effortlessly attain my goals.

For those of you who know me, this is a pretty big deal. I have always been a vocal opponent of habit and routine because I associate it strongly with thoughtless living. I hate thoughtless living. I don’t like what it does to people. Thoughtlessness is what allows people to be in this magnificent journey called life and yet be totally unaware in the moment. Always thinking about the next period of life, never satisfied in the now, never able to appreciate life or situation. I don’t want to live like that.

However, I have decided now that there are two types of habit. For the sake of simplicity we will refer to them as bad and good habits. A bad habit is what I would associate with the above. Generally, they are formed unintentionally by simply doing the same things over and over again. Also, they have a tendency to be things that we would rather not do but have extreme trouble breaking away from specifically because they are formed naturally by what we do without thinking. A good habit, to contrast, is a habit that one forms intentionally to help accomplish a goal in there life. We all have many bad habits; God formed us to be creatures of habit so it’s only natural. However, I find that many people (myself very much included) do not take this and realize that this same facet that can produce so much entrenched evil in their life can be harnessed purposefully for good.

This realization has made me loose my fear of habit. There are still clear dangers (I’ll discuss the ones I know about later), but I believe that they are outweighed by the benefits. And, more pointedly, the very practice of forming a habit in your life gives you practice for how to break habits you don’t like.

How Am I Actually Implementing This Principle Right Now?

Briefly, the main problem I have encountered to date with attempting to create routine in my life is what I term “Variable Days”. Simple concept: My days do not look the same. There is a certain amount of built-in, non-voluntary routine (school Tuesdays and Thursdays. Work Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Prayer meeting Monday Night. etc.) however this is very hard to build a routine around simply because of the length of time the cycle takes to repeat itself. Getting your brain to fall into a routine over the space of a week is much harder to do than creating routine over the space of a day that repeats. So, what I have done is attempt to identify constants over the space of every day that revolve around behavioral triggers. These are events that happen every day that I see as useful hook points for a routine execution. There are three that I’ve identified so far: Waking Up, Getting Home, Going to Sleep. I’ve started with Waking up and Going to Sleep.

I was originally planning on actually telling you all about my routine, but since I suddenly realized that that would qualify easily for TMI and a 10 on the boring scale, I’ve decided to simply describe the structure of the routines. I actually wrote out my routine in NeoOffice Writer and printed a bunch of copies. The actually format is pictured here (along with the actual routine). I then posted those all over the house, especially along my routine route. It was important in the development of the routine that each event naturally flow into the next, i.e. I shouldn’t go to the kitchen, start something there, go back to the room, get something that I could have brought with me in the beginning, and then turn around and go back to the kitchen. I should leave each area ready for the next.

Then, when each trigger event happens (Waking up, 8:00 p.m. hitting), I simply glance at the first item on the list and the next and attempt to go through the motions. As much as possible, I attempt to wean myself from the routine sheet as the brain eventually has to learn how to do this on instinct rather than just because the paper says so.

Conclusion.

I’d have to say that the biggest deterrent I have encountered so far is when I mess up and don’t follow my routine. It’s really easy to get really down on yourself when you don’t follow through, especially because so much of your desired activities are wrapped up in your routine. I don’t know how to get over this at this point, but rest assured I’m being encouraged by my friends and family. Any encouraging comments would be helpful, as well as any thoughts you have about routine in your own life. Is it good, is it bad? Do you have any routines that you wish you could break out of?

Anyway, can’t wait to hear about it!

So, I have recently come up against the brutal realization that I do not have any natural focussing ability. I am naturally a scatter-brained and dilluted individual. This really hampers my ability to get anything done. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that as I go about doing anything my brain is constantly flitting around to other things. I don’t think this is necessarily all bad. I appreciate the way God has made me and I believe that it does have some purpose. But when I need to get something done, I have to have a strategy. Over a few articles I’m going to attempt to document the strategy that I have taken up in the name of accomplishing the tasks I have set before me. You’re reading part 1: Haiku Productivity.

Haiku Productivity

What is Haiku Productivity? It’s first and foremost a fantastic little idea that I read about over on Zen Habits (via Life Hacker). A Haiku, of course, is a poem that forces extreme brevity upon the author and can produce some of the most charged words possible because, quite literally, every syllable counts. The basic idea, applied to productivity, is to “intentionally bind ourselves” to doing only a small number of things.

If we’re honest with ourselves, we can only focus on a small number of things at a time before our activity degrades to mindlessness. It’s probably less than you think it is, too. The strategy, then, is to deliberately reduce the number of things that we are doing at any given time in order to do the things we are doing better and with greater effect. I’m taking this idea and running with it in the following ways.

Divide My Life Into Areas

First, I have divided my life into rough areas. It’s kind of funny because when I was a bit younger and even now I fiercely opposed compartmentalization. Here I am doing just that. However, I’m not compartmentalizing the important things so much as I am attempting to figure out what exactly it is that is important to me.

I have divided my life into areas such as God, Friends, Family, Games, Computers, Reading, etc. Within each area I have listed subjects that I want to be focussing on. For instance, in Family I have maintaining relationships as one of my goals. In God I have being discipled and personal prayer. In games I have lists of all of the games I would like to play on each system I have access to that I already have (coincidentally, this has stopped my impulse to buy new games because I have about 100 games that I want to play that I already own!).

2 Focus Subjects per Area

Second, I have structured things so that I cannot divide my focus amongst too many subjects within a given area of my life. The rule is: Focus on no more than 2 subjects in any one area at a time. This is because I don’t believe I can adequately address anything if I’m focusing on any more than one other subject within that particular area. What that translates into in the Computer area is that I am only focussing on Web Application Architecture and Design Patterns. Other areas are the same.

2 Areas a Day

Third, I allow myself to focus on no more than 2 areas a day. For instance, on Wednesday my focus is Computers and Reading. I attempt to focus my free time for that whole day on just those subjects. The rule from above still applies to this; what that means is that in any given day I am at most focussed on 4 total subjects, with the most at a single time of 2.

See Subjects through to completion

And last, for each area of focus I must complete the subject before I am allowed to move on to the next. In other words, unless something drastic has come up that forces me to change one of my subjects, I see that subject through to it’s completion. This forces me to allow a given subject to take as long as it’s going to take. In the past, I have been plagued with the feeling that I can’t ever complete something because I believe that I should be able to get it done faster than I am. It always perplexed me when people talked in terms of months and years. For me, I always expect myself to finish something in a week or two. No more! I will let each subject draw out as long as is needed for me to complete it.

Well, there it is… That’s how Haiku Productivity looks for me. It might seem a little complicated, but when you want to do as much as I want to do, I don’t know how else to structure it.

Have any suggestions? Leave ‘em in the comments.

Hey everyone,

Finals week is really finally almost over and then I’m home free for the Christmas break! That means that maybe I’ll get around to updating this site and writing a few blogs here or there. Wouldn’t that be novel?

Anyway, I was just taking a small break from work and browsing through my RSS feeds. I’ve noticed that there has been a slew of news items about global warming lately. This probably corresponds to Gore’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize. This article, in particular, caught my attention.

So, acknowledging that there is probably a good deal of fear-mongering going on here as well as other humanist agendas, but also acknowledging that there has to be some truth here (unlike what the conservative groups tends to preach), I feel as though I really have to start taking this serious and doing some research on it. Unfortunately, I don’t really know where to start. I’m looking for just a basic introductory book on the subject, somewhat like this book is for IDvEvo, only about climate change. After that, I would like to read a book or a white paper or something that is pro human-caused climate change, and a book that is against. Unfortunately, after some very cursory searching on google I couldn’t find any obvious books like Evolution vs. Creationism.

Has anyone heard of anything that they could recommend to me?

Love ya’ll! Wish me luck on my last final tomorrow!