Weekly inspiration #36: Why habits are good for you
It’s great to try out a lot of new things in your life. It’s great to switch places, careers, perspectives. If you’re stuck in the same routine every day, chances are you become dissatisfied very quickly.
Yet routines, or habits, are not just bad. A couple of weeks ago, my life changed significantly: I started working full time (I had been working part time while going to school / studying for a long time) for a very small company in a position that didn’t really exist before. Now one could – or wanted to – tell me what I’m supposed to do, what my day should look like. So I tried to figure it out myself. I wrote a job description for myself, and as a part of it, I made a list of habits I’d like to stick to:
- Friday afternoon reading: I come across interesting articles, blog posts, studies and books all the time. But when I do, I usually don’t have time to read them. So I put them on a stack or bookmark them – and then never look at them again. This is why I’ve decided to spend every Friday afternoon reading. After lunch, I go to a café and try to read through everything that’s accumulated during the week.
- Work in a café on Saturday morning: Saturday mornings are a great time to work – no phone calls and almost no e-mails or other interruptions. Yet I don’t want to go to the office on Saturdays, and I found it difficult to concentrate at home. The solution: Go to a café that has good breakfast and free wifi.
- Prepare the week and set big goals on Sunday evening: When you’re working, it is often difficult to distinguish between what’s urgent and what’s important. Preparing your week on Sunday evening, looking at what’s ahead and setting yourself some clear and measurable goals helps to stay focused on the things that really matter during the week.
- Invite some people over for dinner at least every other week: Cooking for good friends and other great people and have dinner together is one of the best ways to have inspiring and enjoyable conversations. But it requires a lot of planning and coordination. By doing it on a regular basis, I hope to make it easier for both me and my guests to keep this up.
- Invest 2-3 hours into learning something new every week: I have started to learn Russian today, and I plan to invest time into continuing so every week. It’s not so much about how fast I progress; the feeling of acquiring new skills itself is rewarding enough.
- Stay off the internet on Sundays: As you can judge from this post that I’m writing on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, this one isn’t really working yet. I hope to get there because I think that especially people like me who have the urge to be connected all the time should force themselves to de-connect every once in a while.
What habits do you have? How are they working out for you? I’m curious to hear back!
Nico is Sandbox’ Head of Business Development. He swears to turn off his computer after having finished this post and go back to his rooftop terrace overlooking Zurich to continue studying Russian.
On the 7. June 2010 at 09:52 o'Clock
If you want we could consider making it a common habit to work in a cafe on staturday mornings.
I know all too well what you’re talking about when you say that “you need to define your own job.” I really like your idea of creating your own job description. Thanks for the food for thought.
On the 7. June 2010 at 09:55 o'Clock
@Andi: You’re welcome to join me on Saturday mornings – I’m usually here: http://www.zumgutenglueck.ch/
On the 7. June 2010 at 10:41 o'Clock
That’s a very nice issue of your weekly inspirations! I will come back to it in my semester break because the breaks are the most difficult thing if they are not well structured (and they don’t seem too productive).
On the 7. June 2010 at 13:56 o'Clock
Thanks for sharing your habits, Nico! I especially like the idea of Friday afternoon reading.
One thing I tried to do over the past few weeks are No-Interruption-Hours: I force myself to stay away from mail, phone, facebook, twitter and so on from 10am-12pm and 2pm-4/5pm. It worked out pretty well – As you can imagine, this hours are the most productive and I get the most important stuff done.
On the 8. June 2010 at 21:46 o'Clock
Thanks Nico! It’s fascinating to hear how people work. This post reminds me of a great blog about writers habits: http://dailyroutines.typepad.com/daily_routines/
On the 9. June 2010 at 03:50 o'Clock
I love this stuff. Here’s another interesting article on writing:
http://filmschooldatabase.com//news/?p=187
On the 9. June 2010 at 08:50 o'Clock
Thanks for the great links Cameron & Joshua!
On the 21. June 2010 at 09:13 o'Clock
[...] Nothing feels worse than ending a day feeling that, while you have worked a lot, you haven’t really done anything. To avoid this, it helps to structure your day. Don’t answer e-mail when it arrives – set aside dedicated times (e.g. in the morning, after lunch, at the end of the day) to get back to people. Ignore your Inbox for the rest of the day. If you need to really focus on something, shut down your internet connection entirely (for hardcore addicts like me, there’s a great little program called Freedom that does a nice job keeping you offline). And if you feel stuck, re-energize yourself by changing places. Creative work rarely happens looking at a computer screen. Finally, it helps to not only structure your days, but your weeks and indeed entire work life by introducing (and trying to stick to) a range of habits. [...]
On the 27. July 2010 at 10:58 o'Clock
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On the 1. August 2010 at 12:37 o'Clock
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On the 12. August 2010 at 11:31 o'Clock
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On the 26. August 2010 at 08:08 o'Clock
[...] habe im Sandbox-Blog einen interessanten Gedanken gelesen: der Freitag-Lese-Nachmittag. Hintergrund: dauernd kommt man an spannenden Informationen, Artikeln oder Büchern vorbei, hat [...]