Freedom through Discipline

Have you ever had days where you wanted to do something on the spare of the moment, but you couldn’t because you were stuck at work?

This happens a lot during the summer. Your friends invite you to the beach, but you’re so far behind with work that you have to decline. Else, you accept and spend the whole time worrying about not working.

Many of us want to live spontaneously, but that kind of attitude normally leads to the complete opposite. When you abandon your responsibilites, you soon run out of important things such as money. If you enjoy life now and worry about it later, you will pay for it down the line. Short term rewards lead to long term punishments.

Being rigid is the opposite approach. But while this can lead to success in some aspects of life (usually lots of money), you loose so much freedom that money is hardly worth it. You may have a plasma screen, but who cares if you don’t ever have time to watch it?

The solution is found somewhere in the middle. You need to work hard now in order to reap the benefits later. This calls for lots of discipline because you have to know when you can afford to take time off and when you can’t. If you want to have guilt free spontanity, you must be rigid and disciplined most of the time.

One of the things I’m currently working on is getting ahead enough on my work so that I can decide, at a moment’s notice, to stop and take a week off. So while other people have to plan their holidays week’s in advance, I want to be able to take a break on a whim.

No Excuse Meditation

One of the biggest reasons a new habit fails to stick is all the excuses. These can actually be legitimate, but even legitimate excuses can be combated. The trick is to predict them and work out solutions in advance.

I’ve found that since creating my early rising challenge, other new challenges are a lot easier. So far I’ve carried out my meditation twice a day without fail. I’ve been a bit off with timing a couple of times, so I need to work on that, but I’m still doing pretty well.

However, it’s only been eight days, and after the first week habit forming tends to get more difficult. It’s easy to slack off at this point, so the next week will probably be the biggest challenge. Keeping the focus for a month is the key, and to do so we have to make sure we are ready for the excuses.

This is why I predicted the following likely excuses, and have prepared solutions to combat them:

Stress

Many take up meditation to help calm them during stressful times. Yet it is precisely during these times that we often lack time, and so let meditation slip. It is important to realise that meditation will help you see your stresses with a clearer head and allow you to deal with them more effectively. Trying to rush around when we have a lot to think about, can actually slow us down. Breaks are always important, and meditation is probably the best break there is. In stressful times you will actually cost yourself time by not meditating.

Appointments

Time also interferes when we have lots of appointments that we must meet. Ideally you would make appointments for times when you don’t meditate, but this may not always be possible. I take pride in being on time for appointments so I would not turn up late in order to meditate.

One possible solution would be to fit in a shortened meditation. Maybe just a minute or so. While this perhaps won’t be that beneficial it will make sure I keep the habit ingrained.

A better solution would be to look for places where you can get some kind of meditation in – even if it isn’t ideal. For example, if I have a dentist appointment I can meditate in the waiting room, if I’m on a flight I can meditate in the plane, if I’m on a long car journey I can pull over and take a few minutes to meditate in the car.

One I’m particularly looking forward to doing is if I’m with a friend, I may ask if they mind me finding an empty room and taking a few minutes to meditate. I’m sure some people will think this strange, but who cares? You will be revealing something about your personality that a lot of people will admire and start to identify you with.If you’re confident enough, you can even encourage others to join in.

Forgetting

The other major excuse is that I simply forget. This has actually happened and so I ended up meditating a bit late. I didn’t foresee this one, but I can stop it happening in the future. One step I’ve taken is to run through a guided visualisation of the moment where I should be meditating (right after I finish revising). This should be enough, but I’ve also added a safeguard and written a note inside my revision book. There’s no way I can forget now.

I’m bound to come up with more excuses, but I think I’ve got a handle on the major ones.

Breaking the Internet Addiction

Thankfully I’ve never become addicted to anything serious like drugs, alcohol or street racing. But I have been addicted to more boring things like television, radio, email… and now RSS feeds have rekindled my Internet addiction.

So as I’m interesting in where my addiction will be displaced to next, I’ve decided to deal with my Internet addiction.

So how does one do that?

Usually with an addiction I would just give it up cold turkey. By completely giving something up for a month, you break the habits and false yourself to find other ways of behaving.

But I need the Internet. I don’t mean that in some kind of addicts I ‘need’ one last hit, kinda way. I actually do need it for work. Eventually I’d like to try giving it up for a month, to force me to communicate in other ways, but it’s really not a good idea at the moment.

So instead I’m giving it up in the mornings.

Except on very odd occasions where I have something urgent to complete, the Internet is not needed in the mornings. I can do research, check email, publish what I’ve written and so on, all in the afternoon. That leaves me to concentrate on writing in the morning.

So I’ve been experimenting with this. I’m still sitting at the computer, with the connection to the Internet still live, and only a click away from opening up the Firefox browser. But I’m being really good and resisting the urge to go hit the Internet waves.

And there certainly is an urge. In fact I’m getting withdrawal symptoms. There are moments lasting 10/15 minutes where I’m not getting any work done because I’m convincing myself not to surf the Internet!

In these early days I’m full of excuses for why I ‘need’ to use the Internet (and now I do mean an addict’s need). A couple of situations are legitimate, but I have to be really careful about what I convince myself is important enough to bend the ‘no morning’ rule and what is not. Therefore if I decide that I need to use the Internet, I make sure I spend ten minutes trying to convince myself otherwise.

For the few hours this probably slowed me down quite considerably, but it’s already starting to pay back in productivity. I’m getting much more work done in the morning. In fact I’m generally finishing more in the morning than I used to in a whole day!

So far a big success then!

No ‘Lost’ tonight

The biggest challenge to my sleeping schedule since I completed my sleep challenge is upon me. The second series of ‘Lost’ is about to hit UK televisions everywhere and usually I would be hooked. But instead of watching it, I’m heading off to bed.

Thanks to the old video recorder I can avoid disrupting my sleep schedule, watch it at my convenience and skip over the adverts.

The only sacrifice is I have to wait an extra day to find out what happens next. But you know what, the knowledge that tomorrow I can get up early, be wide awake, and get lots of productive things done, really makes it a no brainer.

Just nobody tell me what happens, okay?

Batman is My Personal Motivator

I absolutely love the 2005 film Batman Begins. When I watch it, I feel like taking on the world and making a difference. It’s not just the desire of dressing up as a bat and driving around in the coolest car ever, I actually feel like doing the hard graft as well.

Honestly, when I watch that film, I feel willing to work hard and suffer in order to do something good. I just feel incredibly motivated.

So what do I do with that motivation?

I let it burn up inside me while I sit on my comfy sofa and enjoy the rest of the film. Luckily the motivation is still there when the film ends… but then what am I going to do with it at at 9 or 10pm. When the film ends, I’m usually pumped enough to have trouble getting to sleep and that’s about it. By time morning comes that motivation has sizzled away.

If only I could bottle it…

I considered for a while watching motivating films in the morning to get my day off to a good start (ala yesterdays post), but it’s a bit time consuming to do that, and I’d probably end up watching movies all day while I tried to find something really inspiring. I’m willing to use that strategy in emergency situations, but really I want to be able to motivate myself. No outside cues should be needed. I should be able to tell myself to be motivated and I would be.

And actually I’m getting pretty good at doing just that.

Earlier today I was proof-reading some work, and I was getting a bit fed up. I was considering taking a break, not because I needed one, but because I wanted one. I’d been working really hard all day, so this wouldn’t really have been a problem. But I wanted to see if I could push myself.

One trick I use is to tell myself to work for 5 more minutes, or get to the end of a section, but it always feels like I’m forcing myself to do something when I do that. When I force myself, I generally don’t stay disciplined for long.

So instead I imagined I was Batman!

I’m good enough at acting to at least fool myself into believing I am a character, and so I just pretended I was Batman as I continued my work. This really doesn’t take much in the way of acting skills, but it may take a bit of practice if you really want to suspend your disbelief.

As Batman I easily had enough discipline to continue my work until completion. After all, proof reading some of my writing was a holiday compared to cleaning up the crime of Gotham City.

Start as you mean to go on

Only a short while ago I trained myself to get up at 6:30am every day (yes even Sundays). While doing so, I didn’t want to give myself any reason to not get up when I asked myself to, so I made sure I started the day doing something I really enjoyed. In my case this was checking my RSS feeds for fascinating new posts and articles.

While there is a lot of good reading in those RSS feeds, I tend to read more than necessary if I start at the beginning of the day. They’re a tad addictive

Now that I’ve got the habit of getting up early down, I’ve now forming the habit of starting the day in a more productive manner. So within ten minutes of my alarm going off, I’m now revising.

The absolutely wonderful benefit of this is that once I’m in work mode I tend to stay there. Sure, it’s pretty easy to slack off, but not as hard as starting something in the first place. So just making a small improvement in the morning has actually improved my entire day. It used to be that I repeatedly slacked off from my work in order to surf the net. I’m not doing that anymore; or at least not nearly as much. Consequently I’m finishing work early and having completly free evenings. (I used to work until bedtime.)

Try it for yourself. Form the habit of starting the day perfectly by making a plan and starting every day in the same way for 30 days in a row.

Start the day as you mean to go on.

Self Discipline Hour by Hour

Without doubt, self discipline is still the biggest thing holding me back. I’m constantly making improvements and I’m a lot better than I was, but there are still major weaknesses present.

Previously I’ve made solid improvements by taking something such as email or television and restricting my use of it for a period of time such as a week or a month. This has worked very well.

That method has some weaknesses, however, which is that I tend to replace that activity with something else. I may not be watching television anymore, but I’m aimlessly surfing the web instead. I’m displacing my lack of discipline; rather than solving it. It’s an improvement, but it’s still far from perfect.

So I’m now trying a different strategy. I’m focusing on improving my day hour by hour. It’s too much to just tell myself I’m going to be more disciplined throughout the day. That would make a dramatic shift in my life, and I wouldn’t deal with the change efficiently. But if I just focus on part of my day, and make it a priority to improve, I know I can happily go back to my old habits for the rest of the day.

This seems to be working well. So far I’ve managed to reguarly wake up at 6:30am every morning, get breakfast and then revise. The revision bit is what I’m really focusing on at the moment. I’ve been doing it without fail for about a week now, and the rewards are so amazing that I would hardly want to break the habit.

It won’t be a true habit for a couple more weeks yet, so I need to make sure I stay focused on that. However, I’m going to add a couple more things on top of that to speed up the process.

So…

1. After revision I immediately begin my work (this will be some time between 7am and 8am).
2. I eat breakfast while I’m working, and I want to be finished eating by 10:00am.
3. At 10:30am I’m going to hop in the shower.
4. When I’m showered I’m going to go outside and do some work in the garden
5. At 12pm I’m coming back inside and making lunch

I’ll leave it there for now. I don’t think this is perfect; but I want to get things going. I can always improve it later.

Turn off your TV week

Apparently it’s turn off your TV week. I shall not be partaking as I already have TV watching under control. I used to be an addict like the majority of the populous. I used to watch several hours every single day. Not any more. I have a simple strategy that took a surprisingly long period of time to learn.

Step 1. Check the TV guide at the beginning of the day and decide in advance if there is anything worth watching.

Step 2. If there is something watching, watch it. If there’s not anything worth watching (here’s the secret), don’t watch! That’s where most people go wrong.

Step 3. At the end of any worthwhile programmes, turn off the TV.

Of course the difficulty is not in the strategy, but in breaking an addiction. And that’s why ‘turn off your TV week’ is such a good idea. I spent a week without television many years ago, and it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It was also one of the most beneficial.

I’ve had times since, when I’ve spent long periods of time glued to the box, but they were usually when I was either with friends that couldn’t stop watching or when I was feeling lonely because my friends weren’t around! But most of the time I just have no desire to turn on the TV. I only watch it when there is something worth watching.

At the moment I spend about 1.5 hours watching television a week. I watch Derren Brown and Grand Designs. That’s it.

Compared to my previous tele-addicted period of life, I probably now have an extra day every week to do productive things. That’s 52 wasted days per year. Or for every 7 years I live, I wasted one year watching television. To reach the same figures all you need to do is average just under 2.5 hours of TV per day. Do the maths and see how much time you are losing.

Not that all television is bad or a waste of your time. I just think it is important to make educated, intelligent choices. This is why I’m particularly fond of the idea of Killing the Television but keeping the shows.