I’ve heard the key to forming effective habits is to spend fifteen to twenty minutes every day concentrating on the task for at least twenty-one days.

While I see the validity in that point, the problem lies in the word “concentration”.  At least for me.

I find that when I actually concentrate on something, I overthink it.  I analyze, I schedule, I plot and then it turns into a chore.  And I don’t want to do it.  So I abandon it and it never effectively becomes a part of my daily routine.

So to use the words popular but perhaps overused catchphrase coined by that sneaker company years ago:

“Just Do It!”

I know, it sounds horribly cliched and lame.  But it’s what’s worked for me.  And it basically entails just deciding one day to do what you want to do different and then waking up the next day and deciding to do it again.

If you don’t want to do it, then don’t agonize or feel bad because you’ve “failed”.  Because you haven’t actually failed since you never set out to do something for twenty-one or thirty or eighteen days.  You merely did something different from the norm for that one day and you just might do it again, be it the next day or the next week.

This technique has proved to be most effective for me in three aspects of my life in the past six months or so.

• Quitting Smoking. I had quite smoking much the same way in March of 2007 and stayed smoke free until February of 2008 when I made the mistake of picking up a cigarette one night after a few drinks and then it was all downhill from there.  But when I got sick this past December and knew that the smoking could have possibly been a factor in what happened, I just decided, then and there, that it had to stop.  And  I didn’t have another one that day.  And I woke up the next day and decided again that it had to stop.  And the next day.  And I haven’t had one since.  There have been a few days here and there where I have kind of really craved one but it was then that I forced myself to stop, move past the craving, realize that I didn’t need it and after awhile, it just got easy to not do it, to not smoke and to not even crave it.
• Getting Up Earlier. I’ve been working on this for years.  I am not a morning person, have never been.  I would purposely schedule late classes in school so I could sleep in.  But that started not looking good and I started feeling like such a sloth and slacker, both at work and at home.  And for years, I would say, “I’m going to get to work before 9am for a whole month” or “I’m going to jump out of bed early tomorrow and get out of the house on time!”  But a few weeks ago I just thought, “I HAVE to get in early because I’m really far behind” and I asked Steve if I could commute in with him because I knew if he was waiting on me, I wouldn’t drag my feet.  And I did this for a few days and then it just started happening without us needing to commute.  And now, I am at work on time.  I used to leave my house at nine and be like “No big deal” but now, if I’m not out the door by 8:10, I feel late.  Like really, really late.  And that kind of feels awesome because I am so much more productive and I’m even waking up earlier on the weekends.  Yay for early birds!
• Blogging Every Day. Like I said earlier, I didn’t set out to do it this month.  I just wrote a post on March 1st, then wrote another on March 2nd and so on and so forth.  It’s been nineteen days, the longest I’ve ever blogged consecutively, probably in the entire eight years of this site.  And I think I’m not at the point where it’s such a habit that I really enjoy doing it every day and miss it if I don’t try.  I don’t know if I’m going to stick with every day but I will at least feel the need to just post regularly again because I realize how much I missed it.  It does help work through things and is nice to have a regular history of things to look back on and remember the month of March 2009 (because it was so very exciting!).

So that’s my tip for making some life changes: Just Do It!  Don’t obsess over it or force yourself.  If you can’t find any interest in doing it day in and day out then it’s probably not time to make the change.  And definitely don’t try to force so many changes in such a short period of time.  The three above happened with a few weeks, if not months, in between.  If I had tried to do all three at once, I wouldn’t have followed through.

(Though, when I got sick, I did manage to quit drinking, smoking and birth control all at once.  Successfully!  If you could call uber-PMSing with no vices to substitute a success!)

Of course, I need to apply that same principle to the whole eating healthy, losing weight, and exercising philosophy.  Baby steps!  Baby steps!

Since I still can’t drink or smoke, I have to find some way to channel my stress.  Right now it’s food.  I’d love to convert it into exercise.

And with that, it’s off to bed, since 6am comes early.  I’m gonna lay there with Steve and the dog, enjoying the cool spring breeze and watching Obama on Jay.

Tomorrow is Friday and the first day of Spring – the perfect combinfation in my choice.

Happy day!