How well I remember the morning that the tree crew arrived to do some work on our 75-foot oak tree at our house back in Virginia. Gideon was little, and I was home with him. I hadn’t planned on going anywhere that day, so I had on my grungy “at-home” outfit, an old t-shirt dress that was frayed around the edges. It was easy to pop on. I think I had taken a shower but hadn’t done anything to my hair, a sure recipe for the Wild Woman of Borneo look. (No disrespect intended to the real women of Borneo!)
consistency
Lessons from the Dentist’s Chair
I know, I know: this small-things-every-day idea comes up over and over again in this blog because I struggle with it so much. I devoted a whole chapter in my book to the idea of “the power of small things.” (Read that chapter here.) Becoming more aware of how counterproductive it is to let things pile up has helped me to improve my consistency even as I experience the boredom of putting things away, making the bed, wiping down the bathroom counter, etc., etc. It’s a total drag,
15 Minutes a Day . . .
. . . can change your life.
I use the above quotation in the opening to chapter 8 of my book, “The Big Effect of Small Actions” (read this sample chapter here.) The whole idea of doing a small action over and over again, building up cumulative benefits, is so simple and yet so hard, at least for me. As I’ve said many times before, I don’t want to do small things consistently; I want to do big things inconsistently. I want drama and stress and adrenaline. But living my life that way is extremely counterproductive. I need to take a few minutes and re-read the chapter in my own book!
From the Sublime to the Mundane
Yesterday I took on the Big Question of free will vs. fate. Today I’m talking about cleaning out my Sonicare toothbrush. No one can accuse me of being in a rut!
Here’s the thing: The inside of the head of this appliance gets gunked up with this black stuff, toothpaste residue, and it drives me crazy. ( Yes, I do rinse out the bristles. It still happens.) So I periodically spend 10 minutes or so cleaning it out with q-tips, but at some point it’s just hopeless. Recently I replaced the head, as you’re supposed to do every three months (but who does that, really?) and I determined that I was going to keep it clean. So now, every time I use it, twice a day. I unscrew the top from the base, rinse it out inside, and shake out the water before screwing it back on. Takes about 30 seconds, tops. So far it seems to be staying clean. No more black gunk. A good illustration, once again, of the principle that it’s easier to keep up than it is to catch up. (I will spare you the description of how awful my sink stopper gets because I let hairs go down the drain instead of cleaning them out. You don’t want to know about that, believe me.)
The Importance of the Human Connection
What on earth is the significance of a mountain of mulch to human relationships? Just this: We drive over 16 miles, all the way to Franktown, to buy mulch and other landscaping supplies, passing two others, one less than four miles away and one about seven and a half. It’s a good half hour’s drive. But we refuse to patronize the other two, all because of the interactions (or lack thereof) we’ve had. As our former next-door neighbor and business consultant extraordinaire Walt Hogan used to say, it all comes down to relationships.
Life Lessons from a Chef
Are you a fan of the PBS TV show “A Chef’s Life“? Lots of people are. The star of the series is Vivian Howard, a young woman who is immensely talented in the kitchen but who is also immensely talented in front of the camera. (That’s not actually a picture of her. I’m very wary of posting pictures of celebrities without permission.) I’m sure that part of her popularity comes from her willingness to be filmed in the midst of various crises, where she often does not maintain her cool. She also often says something that I say: “What was I thinking?” She’ll come up with a menu for some big event and then realize that she has put herself and her long-suffering staff on the spot, trying to make and plate some menu item that is completely impractical given the situation. It all seems completely genuine and unstaged, and I believe that it is. I am typically very sympathetic to the fixes she lands herself in, and she doesn’t have the option that I have of deciding at some point to cut an item or two. If it’s on the menu or the program, she has to do it, no matter what.
GR’s Great New Book
Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives by Gretchen Rubin, Crown Publishers, 2015.
This book has generated so much buzz that I almost felt anything I could possibly say would be superfluous, but this has truly been the book of the week for me, so here goes.
The most original insight of the book is that not everyone is the same in their abilities to form and stick to habits. As I’ve mentioned in several recent posts, I am what Gretchen calls an “obliger,” a huge category that is made up of people who have a hard time motivating themselves but are driven by others’ expectations. It’s probably also fair to say that obligers are eager to impress others, to collect what Gretchen calls “gold stars.” As I recognize more and more the truth about my basic nature I am driven more and more to work with it instead of against it. There is no way I can change myself into an “upholder,” someone who responds as readily to inner as to outer expectations, or a “questioner,” who will do the work as long as good reasons are given for it. Being an “upholder/questioner” seems ideal to me, but that’s not what I am.
What do you need to form a habit?
A time, a place, and a plan.
This principle is courtesy, once again, of Josh Waltz, the pastor of my church. The study of habits is really big right now, with the trend bookended by, of course, two books. Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit was a great hit three years ago; I quote from it fairly extensively in the chapter on habits in my own book. And tomorrow Gretchen Rubin’s new book Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives comes out. I can hardly wait to read it!
One of Duhigg’s best insights is the idea of so-called “keystone habits.” In my book I said that for me a keystone is getting up in the morning when I wake up instead of just lying there. This morning I did indeed get up at 5:00, and, while I wouldn’t say that the day has gone perfectly, I’ve certainly been more productive than usual.
No habit exists in isolation. My habit of a weekday 45-minute walk can’t take place unless there’s time for me to take it, which feeds right back into my getting-up-when-I-wake-up habit. And since I’ve strengthened the habit of cutting out most of the added sugar from my diet I’ve felt much more alert and willing to get up in the mornings. That difference makes me wonder if I’ve been going around with blood-sugar levels that have been just a bit high most of the time, which can’t have been good. Since my higher-than-expected A1C levels at the end of 2014 I’ve been very, very motivated to keep things under control. It wasn’t enough for me to just say, “Sugar isn’t good for anyone, so I need to just cut most of it out.” No, I needed a scare.
Just because it’s mid-March instead of New Year’s Day doesn’t mean you can’t start a new good habit. (It helps most of us to think in terms of doing something good rather than not doing something bad.) What can you do today to build a positive structure into your life?
How two small medical scares . . .
. . . are helping me keep some of my New Year’s resolutions. We “obligers” need lots of outside prods. (Don’t know what an “obliger” is? Read about the “Four Rubin Tendencies” here. I think she’s really onto something.)
I write about my efforts to quit my small-but-annoying habit of picking at my fingers and chewing on hangnails in the chapter on habits in my book. I’ve been doing pretty well, but there have been some slips. A couple of weeks ago I had to get a filling redone at the gumline, third bottom tooth over from the center on the right. I hate getting fillings! Hate it, hate it, hate it. It takes forever. And those needles!
“The Small Things that You Do Every Day . . .
. . . matter more than the big things that you do once in awhile.” I write about this principle in the chapter on, surprisingly, “The Big Effect of Small Actions.” Read that sample chapter here in my book Intentional Happiness. The picture is a good illustration of this principle. It’s a shot of a plant called a “four o’clock,” something that gives you big return on a small investment, namely a seed. My mother used to grow these plants because she didn’t have much money. I’ve grown them several times but never liked the colors much. Last year I found a new variety, “Sunset Salmon,” from Park Seed, and they were just spectacular. We came home from our vacation to find them loaded with blossoms.