Done for the Week: Still Climbing, Ala Winnie (Churchill, not Pooh)

The quote I put up for this week is from Winston Churchill, who said:

Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.

This, from a man who was famously hounded by "the black dog" of depression--which, in my book, lends some weight to this "sunny side" aphorism. 


Last week, as ever in the midst of my never-ending ascent, I was occupied with the following:

Done for the Week:  Feb. 20-Feb. 26, 2012

1. Biked once; swam once with my workout partner
   
2. Began physical therapy for foot injury
3. Got my husband to the gym with me
4. Continued reading Elizabeth George's A Place of Hiding aloud with my husband
5. Read Willpower:  Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by Roy Baumeister & John Tierney
6. Continued reading Proust's Remembrance of Things Past
7. Continued to work my two part-time jobs
8. Continued participating in BlogHer's NaBloPoMo
9. Published 7 blog posts
10. Continued work on current clients' projects
11. Met with communication team
12. Attended two yoga classes
13. Participated in phone call about my husband's retirement plans
14. Did laundry 
15. Babysat for my grandchildren, for their parents' first "night out" since new baby's arrival
16. Continued college conversations with youngest son
17. Meditated 2 times
18. Straightened my work room
19. Took my dog to the dog park
20. Gave my husband minor assistance with taxes
21. Scheduled my Leap Day anniversary celebration
22. Scheduled potluck with friends

Last week's most important accomplishment was successfully completing 26 days of BlogHer's February NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month), which required posting a blog entry each day.  I am still relearning how much joy I glean from maintaining my blog.  And how much time I can make for writing when I make up my mind to do it.  

The week ahead will bring the end of this NaBloPoMo challenge.  I see from the BlogHer community that a lot of bloggers "re-up" at the conclusion of a NaBloPoMo month.  I am trying to decide whether to take on another month, in order to "set" my new work energy and orientation, or to move to re-focusing these assets on other writing projects.   I'll keep you "posted." [I know.  Groan.]

My focus goal for last week was intended to play to one of my strengths--reading.  I planned to finish reading Willpower:  Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by Baumeister & Tierney.  This goal represented a kind of backing up with respect to my recently failed attempts to meet a focus goal of meditating regularly.  The idea was to retreat to an achievable rung on this apparently too challenging ladder, to experience meeting the goal.  I was anticipating some take-away from the book that would make it easier to re-establish and keep up with a meditation practice.

The good news is, I did read the book.  Though I didn't find it as "sinfully delicious" as its hype portended, and some of what the authors unveiled I had seen before, I did learn a thing or two.  I am still digesting what I read, and culling through the findings and suggestions.  I know I will write about at least one of the book's lessons in the near future.

As to meditation?  My baby-step focus goal for this week is to strategize; to figure out how to apply what I know and am learning to the problem of wanting and needing to meditate, but not making time for it.

Procrastinating 101: Getting Ourselves in Line

Diana DeLonzor's seventh chapter in Never Be Late Again:  7 Cures for the Punctually Challenged--"Cure Four:  Develop Your Discipline Muscle"--is our Procrastinating 101 focus for this week.  I can't say I'm all that thrilled at the prospect of yet another admonishment on self-discipline, especially two days before Thanksgiving.  But I'm committed to slogging through, and learning what I can.

Is the notion of lagging self-discipline more palatable because the chapter begins with a quote about a nun with this trait?  Are we in good company if it can be said of Maria, in The Sound of Music, that "She's always late for everything, except for every meal"? 

In her introductory paragraphs, DeLonzor reminds us of studies indicating that we late-niks as a group have more issues with self-control than do those who generally arrive, and complete things, on time.  Dr. Piers Steel has written most comprehensively about impulsivity as a contributor to procrastination in The Procrastination Equation.  

DeLonzor also points out that self-discipline is not necessarily an across-the-board issue.  We might do quite well at quitting smoking, or exercising, or cleaning the kitchen nightly, but play waayyyy too much solitaire on the computer, or play chicken with the snooze button, or read just one more chapter when we know we don't have time. . . .  (Hmm.  Sounds familiar. . .)  Reading this made me think of something I learned from reading Switch:  How to Change Things When Change is Hard, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, and blogged about earlier this year:  self-control is exhaustible.  That is to say, those of us who are fighting our natures or battling stress on many fronts may simply run out of the capacity to behave optimally. 

What is this capacity whose supply can be outstripped by the demands of our everyday lives?  In DeLonzor's nutshell, self-discipline is 

all about. . . the ability to make sacrifices and accept limitations.  It's the strength to choose what's best in the long run instead of what feels good right now, even if it means having to give something up.

And for each of us, our difficulty (or facility) with self-discipline is largely determined by

• Our experience with effort and discomfort
• Genetics
• Family influences

So, are you one of those challenged by impulsiveness?  Three or more yeses in response to the following questions qualify you as an "Indulger," plagued by a "weak discipline muscle."

• Do I have several bad habits that I've tried repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, to conquer?
• Do I tend to play things by ear, rather than sticking to a schedule?
• Do I frequently say or do things I regret?
• Do I have difficulty starting projects?
• Am I usually impatient when I have to wait?
• Do I lack long-range goals and daily plans?

My answers?  Well, maybe a few.  Yup.  Not really.  Nope; finishing projects is my bugaboo.  Depends on what I'm waiting for--dentist appointment and flight boarding?  yes; Christmas and check-out lines (unless I'm late for something), not so much.  And yes. 

I guess that makes me sort of a borderline Indulger.  Yeeks!  I'm already an official Rationalizer, a Producer and a Deadliner.  Is is possible that I commit all 7 deadly sins of lateness?  Or are these quizzes like a lot of zodiac signs and fortune cookies, general enough to apply universally given a liberal enough reading?  But I digress--another character flaw.  Back to self-discipline, and the cure.

Interestingly, DeLonzor relies on different research findings than those invoked by the Heath brothers to maintain that habits of self-discipline carry over from one realm to another--that we can build brain structure that assists us in resisting impulses in new situations. 

For the Indulgers, and yes, the borderline Indulgers among us, DeLonzor recommends this three-pronged approach to developing our self-discipline "muscles:"  

• Learn to increase your tolerance for discomfort
• Practice making transitions
• Become a planner and goal setter

For each strategy, she again provides a group of exercises--ten pages in all--designed to boost self-control.  Clearly, I don't have the requisite self-control, or the time, to engage in all of them.  I definitely plan to skip the first, which basically involves self-deprivation--and thus flies in the face of the self-care I've been advised to grow in my life.  I'm actually already pretty good at sacrifice and discomfort, having been a mother for 34 years now, and a Catholic for some 20 years before that.

I would probably benefit, however, from these two:

Practice stopping midstream.  Whether you're in the middle of an engrossing novel or watching a good TV program, practice stopping before you're ready, if even for five minutes.  Doing so will give you practice in making transitions so that when it really matters, you'll be up to the task;

and

Practice making and adhering to a set schedule that includes time-estimates and priorities.

And the key with this last exercise is to base the list of tasks and priorities on long- and short-term goals, instead of randomly adding items to a to-do list, with an unmoored goal of getting "as much done as possible."

 

It seems, after all this time, and all the procrastination gurus I've consulted, it so often comes down to this.  Maybe there's a reason my post on Neil Fiore's "unschedule" is by far my most popular.  So far, I have not had/developed the necessary self-discipline to use it myself!  Perhaps it's time. . .

Done for the Week: Narrowing My Sights

I have reached the part of this summer that will involve focusing intensely on preparing for the triathlon in less than three weeks.  My training partner and I spent all day yesterday traveling to, participating in, and returning from the Danskin Triathlon Prep Camp held at the location of the upcoming race.  Tomorrow we will begin the Open Water Swim class, which will have us traveling to and training in the Lake we will be swimming across.  It is time to take my bike in for its pre-race tuneup, and to finalize additional equipment and technique tweaks.  The training schedule for the next three weeks will be hectic.  And it is time to start working on my nerves.


Even though this is my second tri, and I am no longer considered a newbie, I still approach the event with a bit of trepidation; although I have to say that getting into the lake yesterday was much less intimidating than it was last year at this time.  But, at least for me, an undertaking of this magnitude requires the kind of organization, persistence, faith, self-discipline, and FOCUS that do not come naturally to me.  Which is why this sport has been so good for me.  And so challenging.


To further complicate things this year, August brings me new staff to deal with at one job; my grandson's birthday (which I am struggling to remember is in 3 days!); a new web client, with his September launch date; a major website overhaul for another client, due at the end of the month; my continuing efforts to keep this blog up and running; support needed to get one son ready for college, and another to finish high school; and the rush to complete the long list of summer projects we came up with, what seems a few short weeks ago.  Oh, and then there's the recall election that Wisconsin believes the world is watching.  Eight crazy days, and lots of volunteer hours to go.


I am still managing to put one foot in front of the other, and still searching for equanimity.


Done for the Week:  July 25-31, 2011

1. Completed Week 12 of 15-week triathlon training program; ran three times; swam three times; biked three times
2. Worked out several times with my training partner
3. Attended Triathlon Prep Camp
4. Ordered & received new triathlon shorts; found old ones
5. Got new contacts, and began wearing them 
6. Finished If Sons, Then Heirs, by Lorene Cary
7. Continued to work my two part-time jobs 
8. Published 1 blog post 
9. Shared Happy Hour dinner with my husband
10. Continued reading Elizabeth George's In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner aloud with my husband
11. Took my dog to dog wash/coffee bar, with my husband
12. Set up lunch meeting with new web client
13. Met with current web client; worked on project
14. Participated in driving my not-quite-licensed-to-drive son to and from work
15. Took last child to driver's license road test in the rain (He passed!)
16. Worked for recall candidate
17. Worked at two Get Out the Vote events, in the blazing heat of mid-day
18. Attended stepson's fiance's graduate school graduation party
19. Celebrated my husband's birthday
20. Visited "Summer of China" Forbidden City exhibit at Art Museum
21. Bought "new" sofa and sofa table at consignment shop
22. Picked up sofa and sofa table, and moved out old sofa
23. Made significant progress in cleaning/straightening/decluttering living room, family room & kitchen  
24. Did laundry

Last week's most important accomplishment was all the effort I put into getting ready for the triathlon.   And in the process, I determined that my approach to training and preparations for this much-anticipated event has been neglecting its importance.  I have been trying to wedge this significant campaign into an already crazy-making agenda, and experiencing the necessary activity as more of a nuisance than the joy it was last year.  

Some of what has been missing is training with my daughter, which gave us some time and a shared interest outside of family.  She is four months pregnant, and not a triathlon candidate this season.  But I am enjoying training with a friend, and supporting her first effort.

The real culprit is the rest of my jam-packed life.  I haven't yet figured out what to do about that, though I have certainly spent a lot of time contemplating solutions, and writing about that contemplation.  But I have decided to enter more fully into the experience of triathlon, which is not just about race day.  I am going to try to give it the attention and the energy it deserves, and to relish its gifts and take in its lessons.  That is next week's focus goal.

Last week's focus goal, creating a realistic schedule that reflects my many current commitments, got short shrift, I'm afraid.   Given the crunch-time nature of these last weeks of summer, it was probably unrealistic to have expected otherwise.  As I said last week, "When I can be more strategic about my use of time, it should be easier to defend against additional incursions of responsibility (by using that two-letter word I have so much trouble with), and to prioritize projects in a way that will allow me to feel that I'm making progress."  Emphasis on when.  That time is not now.  

Later, for the realistic schedule.

Procrastinating 101: The Long and the Short of It

If Dr. Piers Steel is to be believed, we procrastinators may be about to run out of excuses.  (And God knows, we love our excuses!)  It's his persuasive argument, and his damned (good) practical advice that may prove their undoing.

Procrastinating 101 has been focusing these last nine weeks on Dr. Steel's book, The Procrastination Equation:  How to Stop Putting Things Off and Start Getting Stuff Done.  If you have been following its exposition, you may remember Dr. Steel's assertion that poor impulse control is at the heart of most procrastination.  In Chapter Nine, "In Good Time:  Managing Short-term Impulses and Long-term Goals," he lays out the problem more fully, details some creative solutions, and throws in a little ancient Greek literature.  As we have come to expect, Dr. Steel is once again an eminently companionable and unassailably (I looked it up--it's really a word.) knowledgeable tour guide through these regions of Planet Procrastination.

"Impulsiveness," says Steel, "multiplies the effect of delay, making it a major determinant of the Procrastination Equation's outcome."  For those who have not yet seen Steel's formulation, and those who have but have not committed it to memory, the mathematical expression he has devised to represent his theory of procrastination looks like this:

Here low Motivation predicts the big P, Procrastination.  The other elements have been teased out in previous posts (see, particularly, Procrastinating 101: 12-year-olds Get It, So Can We ).

Impulsiveness contributes to the divisor in the equation, so that the more impulsive among us will experience lower motivation, and thus be more inclined to procrastinate.  And, as Dr. Steel warns, "you can't escape your fate.  Impulsiveness is not something you have, but something you are."  Yikes!

But there is hope, and it begins with Odysseus.  Dr. Steel recounts the preparations urged upon Odysseus by the goddess Circe, who knew that he would face, on his return trip from Troy, the temptress Sirens.  Circe advised him to plug his men's ears with wax, and to lash himself to the mast of his ship, so that he would be able to pass through the district of these irresistible creatures and continue his journey.  Thus, Odysseus employed the technique of precommitment.

Dr. Steel recommends we face the fact that temptations too often get the better of us, leading us off task and into putting off what we need to get done.  We would do well to identify our Sirens, and to invest in precommitment.

He offers three contemporary strategies (no ear wax or ship masts required) for precommitting, intriguingly categorized under the heading "Bonding, Satiation and Poison."  For the sake of brevity, and my sanity (it has been a looonnnnnngggggggg week!), I will just hit the highlights here:  

• Throw Away the Key--The idea here is to devise a way, technological or analog, to block off the exits while focusing on work.  Steel mentions, e.g., a program for Apple users called Freedom, which blocks internet access; Clocky, an alarm clock on wheels that goes berserk when you hit Snooze; and Google's "Take a break" button, which gives the user fifteen minutes of email-free work time.
• Satiation--This approach addresses our urges and impulses by having us "tank up," scheduling in a modicum of pleasure and relaxation, and then slotting in work around these "appointments."  Dr. Neil Fiore popularized this Unschedule in his book The Now Habit:  A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play.
• Try Poison--This strategy features penalties & scare tactics.  One example was employed by my ex-husband in his dissertation research on behavior change.  Participants put up $100, which was forfeited to their least favorite cause or charity if they resumed smoking during the study period.  Alternatively, Dr. Steel recommends visualizing in horrifying detail the dire consequences that could result from putting off a dreaded task.

Then there's "Making Attention Pay," Steel's two-pronged advice for diminishing the pull of distractions/temptations.

• Inside Out:  Pay Attention Please!--We can minimize the appeal of those objects and activities that would keep us from work by altering our perceptions, and thus the level of attention these things command.  Using abstraction and symbolic representation--e.g., focusing on attributes of a desired food, and thus recruiting the prefrontal cortex to compete with the limbic system response of "yum," "gimme"--is one way of doing this.  Another is to run a "smear campaign" on the desired object, attending to its negative qualities and consequences--e.g., weight gain and high cholesterol from junk food; STDs, unwanted pregnancy and a ruined marriage from infidelity; or public disgrace and firing from failure to complete work.
• Outside In:  Now You See It, Now You Don't (stimulus control)--This approach attempts to limit the environmental cues which distract us.  For example, a dieter might stock the fridge with only healthy food choices.  Those of us who struggle to stay on task might limit the number of windows open on our computer desktops; remove troublesome bookmarks; arrange our work spaces to cue work and not entertainment; incorporate work triggers; and--addressing two of my personal pet peeves--declutter our work space, and maintain "pristine" boundaries between "clashing life domains, typically family and work."  Hard to do for the increasing number of us who work from home, and whose laptops accompany us from one messy and distracting space and location to another.

And finally, Scoring Goals.

Dr. Steel has this to say about goals:

We have already touched on some of what makes a goal good.  In chapter 7, we mentioned that making goals challenging is more inspiring than making them attainable.  Easy goals are attainable. . . .In chapter 8, we focused on making goals meaningful by linking them to personally relevant aspirations.  If you see how present tasks lead to future rewards, you will value them more highly.  In this chapter, we will put the finishing touches on goal setting by putting time back on your side.

• The Finish Line is Just Ahead--Dr. Steel's suggestion in this section is to proceed toward "concrete, exact" goals by stages, using subgoals.  In this way, we can take advantage of our tendency to work more intensely closer to deadline; a series of intermediate "deadlines" will result in spreading out effort, and a better quality product.  He discusses the issue of "motivational surface tension," and using a technique I first learned from Alan Lakein (in How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life)--setting a mini-goal that gets us started, and more often than not, ultimately engaged in the work we're avoiding.
• Full Auto--This advice builds on the predictability that flows from build routines and habits of work.  He also urges us to plan for distraction, as in "'If I lose focus, then I will move my attention back to the task.'"

But again, Dr. Steel says all this better than I.  You might want to just read the book yourself.

Next Week:  Chapter Ten--Making it Work.  We're in the home stretch now!

Done for the Week: Slip Sliding Away

A busy day today, finishing up yesterday's overly ambitious to-do list.  And a too-busy week last week, with too little to show for my efforts.

As with my efforts to remodel my swim stroke, my struggle to bring order to my life is proving strenuous.  The results of both campaigns to date urge refining my approach.

In any case, last week was not without its achievements.

Done for the Week:  July 11-17, 2011

1. Completed Week 10 of 15-week triathlon training program; ran twice; swam three times; biked twice
2. Swam twice, ran twice, biked once with my training partner 
3. Got bike computer installed, new water cage mounted
4. Watched series of YouTube videos on Total Immersion swimming
5. Finished Hamlet's Blackberry, by William Powers
6. Continued to work my two part-time jobs 
7. Published 2 blog posts 
8. Shared Happy Hour dinner with my husband
9. Began watching new anime series with my son
10. Designed and printed new business cards
11. Went out driving with learning teenager several times 
12. Participated in driving my not-quite-licensed-to-drive son to his job
13. Continued to work on cracking the code for road test appointment; succeeded in moving appointment up 2 weeks
14. Worked on getting out the vote for recall primary
15. Made major progress on backyard reclamation
16. Picked up mower in for repair
17. Planted more flowers, two tomato plants
18. Went to jobs rally
19. Meditated once 
20. Saw my therapist
21. Bought new tent
22. Had first backyard campout with my grandson
23. Attended board meeting
24. Continued progress in cleaning/straightening/decluttering work room, bedroom & kitchen  

Finishing Hamlet's Blackberry:  A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age, by William Powers, was last week's most important accomplishment.  The book made me rethink how much time I'm spending online these days.  Powers argues, and I am beginning to believe, that much of the anxiety and confusion many of us are experiencing in our lives, as well as a great deal of our difficulty with focusing and getting things done, represent side effects of our absorption in screens.  I plan to continue reflecting on how I can use the technology that surrounds me to accomplish more of what I care about, while avoiding more of its distractions.

Last week, for the fourth week running, my focus goal was to declutter our house, involving my housemates in the excavation, and starting with the kitchen, my work room, and our bedroom.  Unfortunately, my virus returned for an encore performance; my pregnant daughter spent a night in the emergency room, requiring me to give a day to watching my overtired grandson; the recall primary election demanded more volunteer hours; and "life happened" in other ways too numerous and dreary to mention.  I made a bit more progress, but I'm not "there" yet.  I'm giving it at least another week.

Yoga and meditation were among the things that didn't happen last week.  Symptomatic, I suppose, of my general difficulty with self-discipline in this period.  I intend to do better this week.

When All Else Fails, Baby Steps . . .

My first husband was a clinical psychologist.  Still is, actually.  (A clinical psychologist, not my husband.)  One of the movies I remember particularly enjoying with him was What About Bob? with Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss.  In the movie, Drefuss's character, Dr. Leo Marvin, is promoting his new book, Baby Steps.  Murray's Bob is in desperate need of its guidance.

While Bob's multiphobic state is beyond anything I have experienced to date in my history of anxieties and mild mood swings, I find the advice--to break the overwhelming down into small, doable steps, and to take those steps one at a time--useful.  In fact, I believe it can be helpful to all of us, from time to time.

And now is one of those times for me. 

I predictably approach life challenges from the library side of things.  When in doubt, I read about the thing that's troubling me.  Thus, this blog and the study that has fueled it. 

My family members frequently chide me to "quit reading about it, and just do it."  Just get on the plane, cry out my grief, clean up the kitchen . . . . And in this case, STOP PROCRASTINATING and DO STUFF.

When I reach the state, as now, where I am floundering, no wind fills my sails, and the task of life looms large, I try to remember baby steps--an antidote to over-delving. 

Today, this translates into:

1) making a to-do list.  I have a love/hate relationship with to-do lists.  I make them too big.  I spend too much time crafting them.  I lose them.  They send me into labor.  But they help anchor me.  And when I have been to-do-less for too long, it helps to go back to the practice of making the list, and referring to it. 

2) employing something I think of as down and up.  This practice consists of making room for frittering and malaise, but interspersing such moments with practical activity.  So I sit down on my backyard swing, reading, dreaming, playing solitaire, for a specified period--a chapter, or 15 minutes, or 5 digital "hands"--and then I get up and load the dishwasher, or fold laundry, or pay the bills, weed the garden, walk the dog, run an errand. . . .  And then repeat as necessary, until the small achievements snag my will and pull me forward.

The challenge with this method is that much of my "productive" stuff happens sitting down, like writing, work-related reading, web design, communicating with clients, working on campaigns, etc.  But when I reach the mental and physical state that harbingers hibernation, physical activity--actual movement, however brief--is required to prevent rusting. 

These are the days for restoring "outer order"--the thing that Gretchen Rubin's maxim promises "contributes to inner calm."

"Baby step, make a to-do list."

"Baby step, sit down and play."

"Baby step, get up and do something."

"Baby step, keep going. . . "

The Procrastination Police You Can Download

"Step away from the solitaire."

It's late, and I'm tired.  But I'm making an effort to keep up with Monday through Friday posting.

So tonight, I'm going to pass on this little nugget from my procrastination news reader.

Among the nifty tools available to thwart our inner procrastinators is an app for Mac called Obtract.  According to the review I read, Obtract detects your unproductive computer use, relying on your own definition of what's unproductive (Maybe you really need to be constantly checking Facebook for work?).  When Obtract catches you digitally "procrastinating," it covers your screen with a maze you must solve in order to "buy" the time necessary to engage in said unproductive activity.  

The app can also be used by a team, allowing team members to monitor each other's unproductive time, and to buy unproductive time from each other.

Since I got sucked into the solitaire vortex earlier this evening, while intending to relax from a strenuous day, I decided this would be a perfect time to try out this new app.  I downloaded it for free, but encountered some difficulty setting it up.  I have not yet figured out how to tell it what I consider unproductive.  

Not waiting for instruction, the application determined that blogging was unproductive.  It told me that I had become "too distracted to continue this activity. . ." and should "complete the maze for 5 more minutes of distraction."  So I guess we know what it thinks about the value of this blog!  I had to kill the darn thing, temporarily, in order to complete this apparently unfruitful post.

I'm going to take another stab at bringing Obtract to heel.  When I've got it up and running, I will post an update about its efforts to keep me in line.

The Liquid Carrot: A Motivational Investigation

A couple of weeks ago, I bumped into this little sliver of wisdom buried in a guest post on Procrastinating Writers: 

In a break down of the procrastination equation, which was "Greek to me" on my first pass through last March, I found this advice for dealing with the impulsivity that makes toast of so many of our good intentions.  

[M]ake it feel really, really bad to do something else. 

And one way of doing that is to

[f]ind something you can’t live without, and take it away if you don’t do the work.

The author, David Kassin Fried, gave this example from his own life. 

This past summer, my wife and I started a 60-day workout program, the sort of thing that, if past performance was any indicator, we had about a negative three percent chance of actually finishing.

But this time, we said that if we missed even one day, then we couldn’t watch the season premier of Grey’s Anatomy … ever! Turns out, that was the thing that got us out of bed in the morning. . . .

In thinking about how I might apply this strategy, I realized that I am not currently having much difficulty getting work done.  But my personal goals related to self-care--the maintenance piece that's going to keep the whole machine running--are getting shoved further and further down the list these days, and some aren't being addressed at all.  Even this blog--part work, part labor of love--has been pushed from its early morning spot, and is too often getting published long after the sun has gone down.

So I thought it would make sense to test the approach on my week's focus goal.  Last week, I decided that I would not allow myself the one glass of wine at day's end that is my ritual reward for making it through, unless I had made time to meditate. 

The result?  Three wineless evenings. 

I'm not sure if Buddhists would approve of this seemingly contradictory pairing.  But I do know that I am more determined this week to meditate each day. 

It remains to be seen whether this little trick will really work.  And I should say that regardless of the outcome of my motivational experiment, I don't plan to use alcohol to induce all desired behaviors.  

Now, if you'll excuse me, my cushion is calling. . .

Out of Steam

I have somehow contracted a serious case of the I-don't-wannas.  All week, I've been refusing to get up early, to get dressed, to get down to work, to attend class, to answer the phone, to deal with emails, to exercise--in short, to tend to much of what usually makes up my life.  And now, I-don't-wanna blog, and I-don't-wanna cook dinner.  And it's my turn.  I know, because I made up the schedule.

I have all sorts of excuses.  I still haven't shaken the dreary cold my grandson gave me a couple of weeks ago.  I attended an exhausting out-of-town training the end of last week, and am still dealing with a free time deficit.  We've been snowed-in the last couple of days.  My grandson is sick again--a new illness--and is disrupting his mother's, and thus my, schedule.  But mostly, if I'm honest, I-just-don't-wanna.

I suspect I have run out of self-control; just like the Heath brothers warned, in Switch.  I'm tired of the grown-up me bossing the profligate me around, judging my time-wasting and focus-lacking self.  It seems I've gone to the "suck-it-up" well once too often lately. 


And if that's my diagnosis, my treatment plan for this acute malady is to go to my minimalist gear.  So for the next few days, I'm going to lay off me, to do the things I pretty much have to, and not much else.  I need to stop ruling myself, before I go on strike for real. 

Decisions on Queue

Last week, I finished reading the book Switch:  How to Change Things When Change is Hard, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.  I found it engaging, and laced with nuggets of change strategy rooted in research findings and narratives of changes big and small.  I imagine I will be mining this resource for some time to come.


One particularly intriguing approach the Heaths explore is the use of "action triggers."  Peter Gollwitzer, New York University psychologist, has been investigating the use of action triggers, or more academically, "implementation intentions," to improve "self-regulation."  Self-regulation is what procrastinators, diet abandoners, and those falling off various other wagons have difficulty with.


The idea is this, as Dr. Gollwitzer lays it out on his website:

People can delegate the initiation of goal-directed behavior to environmental stimuli by forming so-called implementation intentions (if-then plans of the format: If situation x is encountered, then I will perform behavior y!). We observed that forming implementation intentions facilitates detecting, attending to, and recalling the critical situation. Moreover, in the presence of the critical situation the initiation of the specified goal-directed behavior is immediate, efficient, and does not need a conscious intent.

Dr. Gollwitzer and his team are also looking at

. . .whether action control via implementation intentions saves a person’s self-regulatory resources. . . . [and] whether implementation intentions protect a person’s thoughts and actions from unwanted influences of disruptive self-states (such as a good or bad mood, self-definitional incompleteness, feelings of anger or sadness).

What this amounts to, as Chip and Dan Heath tell us, is preloading decisions by deciding to perform the desired action in the presence of a predetermined prompt.  Quoting Gollwitzer, they observe that this kind of predeciding allows people to"pass the control of their behavior on to the environment."  In one study, the use of action triggers roughly tripled the chance of success in achieving difficult goals--from 22% to 62%.


DietDetective.com gives an example of how this might work in practice:

Creating an “implementation intention” provides a framework for how and when you will use the new behavior. For instance, “Whenever I go to my favorite restaurant and order the chicken, I will ask to have it grilled, without butter.” The idea is as follows: Whenever “X” happens, I will do “Y.” If you're conscious of what you want and why you want it, you'll have a better chance of moving in that direction. Another example: “When I get up at 6:30 a.m., I will get ready for work, and at 7 a.m. I will put on my shoes, [putting your shoes on and/or 7 a.m. on the clock could be the trigger – the behavior you already do] and head to the kitchen to make breakfast. I will have cereal or egg whites. I will not skip meals this week.”

Applying what I have learned, I decide to use the daily opportunity of eating breakfast to prompt meditating, which I am having difficulty fitting in to my schedule.  But here's where the theory breaks down, because it seems that there is really no predictable daily routine in my life these days.  I too frequently rush out the door to a meeting, an appointment, or scheduled work, immediately after--and sometimes even before--eating breakfast.  And since driving while meditating strikes me as at least unwise if not prosecutable (DWM?), I am going to need a contingency trigger, for when the first trigger isn't practicable.  So, on the days when I can't meditate after breakfast, I will use lunch to trigger meditating.  And the backup to my backup?  Dinner, naturally.  And if all else fails, bedtime.


Hmmm. . . . No wonder I am having a hard time getting around to meditation.  And no wonder I feel the need.  

Over the Line and Back

Sometimes, you just gotta break the rules.  But only sometimes.  

My husband and I are not on the same page on this one.  Him, he never met a rule he had much use for.  Me, having now spent 33+ years as the mother of minor children, I'm too often making the rules to be comfortable habitually coloring outside the lines.

Most of the rules that govern my present-day life are ones I've developed to try to create a structure that supports the work, the play and the relaxation I want to get done.  Self-discipline.  So presuming this foundation to be well-constructed, it just doesn't make a lot of sense to undermine it. 

One of my cardinal rules is "Never work on web sites after 9 at night."  But last night I did just that.  And I didn't just violate this stricture.  I totally obliterated it.  

When I went to bed, I had just figured out that the addition I planned to make to one of the websites I designed and maintain was beyond my ken.  I had promised my organizational colleagues that it would be up ASAP.  But it was going to require some tricks I had not yet mastered. 

The reason for my "no web work after 9" rule is the vortex of absorption that experience has taught me to respect.  Something about the kinds of technical challenges that computer-usage and citizenship in the world wide web have brought us, can rob the most sensible among us (which I am not, by a long shot!) of perspective.  Tackle some little cyber situation after dark, and you are in peril of losing a night's sleep, your good humor, and the equanimity required to problem solve successfully.  As the hours slide by, becoming wee-er and wee-er, we become less and less capable of, and more and more committed to making some blasted program or hardware do our bidding.  And we condemn ourselves to a day-after state that will continue to hamper our productivity in all other areas, as well.

Knowing all this, still I stepped over the line when I inserted the DVD that led to my discovery of the roadblocks ahead.  It was already past 9 when I transgressed.  But I managed to avoid the snares at that point.  I closed the computer, drank a small glass of wine, unwound with some reading, and went to sleep.  So far so good.

But then it was time for Round 2.  And I succumbed.  Something (probably wakeful teenagers) woke me at around 2 a.m.  I followed my usual soothing routines for middle of the night wakefulness.  But the DVD was calling to me.  At 2:30, still up, I strayed further.  I started googling solutions to the problem.  I found a software fix.  And then I got out of bed to get my credit card.  From there on, return to sleep was a lost cause.  I wouldn't lie down again until I had waited through the purchase snafus; marked time until the download was complete; stuck around through the install; used the new software to convert the DVD to the format I needed; sucked the converted material through another processing software; loaded the result onto the organization's YouTube channel; created the necessary links on the web page; and put the page up and checked it.  

Despite the trepidation which shadowed my pre-dawn efforts, my little sortie into the land of taboo turned out well.  Unlike some previous late-night digital battles, this one ended in success.  And with that success came the thrill of triumph, and pride in what my bleary brain had wrought.

I was back to sleep by 4:45, until the alarm summoned me at 6.  I was tired, with some of that scraped-out feeling that I associate with college all-nighters and their aftermath.  But I woke up having already achieved something significant for the day.  What a rush!  I suppose it could be some demon causing me to consider my night well spent, contravention notwithstanding.  But I don't think so.  Maybe I'm supposed to be learning to loosen up.  Just a little.

For now, though, the rule is back in place.  It's certainly courting disaster to imagine that I could escape with any frequency being sucked under by the fiends of cyber hell.  I don't plan to test my luck again any time soon.

Belief Control--My Take

While I was fishing around for something to write about today, I came across an article entitled "Sometimes Self-Control is Belief-Control," written by cognitivie scientist Art Markman, Ph.D., for his Psychology Today blog Ulterior Motives.  I arrived at this piece by that circuitous route so familiar to all of us these days.  I followed a link to another article, which failed to hold my attention.  That article's sidebar directed me to another, which ultimately led me to Markman's observations.

In addition to this kind of serendipitous learning, more pronounced on the internet than in the stacks of my undergraduate school's famed library, I am also interested in the "packaging and promotion" phenomenon, which guides these little intellectual journeys, and in the surprises and disappointments that greet us at the end.  Because so often, as in the case of Markman's belief control article, what we see is not what we expected to get.

Markman didn't write what I imagined would go with his title.  His post dealt with research demonstrating that 

when people are trying to pursue an important long-term goal, they change the way they think about temptations in ways that make the temptations seem more damaging to the long-term goal. 

Fascinating enough, addressing as it did the reactions of dieters faced with cookies and serious students tempted to party.  But as we often do, I saw what I was interested in seeing in the words of his title.  And I was intrigued enough with what I thought his premise was going to be to perform the requisite clicking ritual that would take me to its exposition.  And so I was disconcerted by what I read.  Because I wanted Markman to agree with me.

Because of the lens through which I see the word "belief" at this point in my life, I expected him to make the case that believing in the possibility, or likelihood, of a desired outcome can keep us on track.  For example, I am presently living through the dog days of late life parenting.  Some days, I have a hard time imagining my nearly grown children's futures.  I remind myself to "believe," and I am calmed and able to mother them less frantically.  And to continue offering what support and wisdom I can.  When my confidence faltered last summer as I neared the date for the triathlon I had been training for, I purchased and wore a small sterling pendant engraved with the word "believe."  I continued training and completed the triathlon more comfortably because of "belief control."

Even the behavior of the dieters and the students Markman discusses can be seen in this light--if, instead of looking at their "beliefs" about the size of the consequences attached to the temptations they are trying to resist, we concern ourselves with their beliefs in the attainability of their goals.  If a dieter believes that he or she can reach a healthy weight, such an individual is probably more likely to stay with the program, no matter how many calories are "believed" to be in a particular cookie, or in an entire meal.  If a student believes that she or he can do well on a project, it will be easier to refrain from partying and put in the necessary effort, whatever the assessment of the length of time to be spent socializing. 

If I am turning on its ear the relationship between belief and discipline that Markman reports, maybe it's because some of my undertakings just now have me standing on my head.  Be that as it may, it is time to finish this post and go to bed, because I believe that tomorrow can be a good and productive day, and that a decent night's sleep can make a difference.