Week 1 — Starting the day off ‘write’…

After nearly a week of holiday, champagne, cups of tea with my sister and the odd gin and tonic, today is the first ‘working’ day of my (purposefully unemployed) life. Please see this previous post if you are already confused!

Right now, my new life looks something like this!

Total chaos!

I’m just dying to squeeze all the things I want (and have) to do through a Suzi-mangle, and have them come out in a nice straight, orderly routine with colour-coded check boxes alongside all awaiting for me to power through them with my new sense of purpose and maybe an Allen Key.

But that’s not how it works.

I COULD create a lovely five-year plan on pretty paper with graphs and pie charts finely shoe-horning all my grand ambitions between the tick lists for my eight glasses of water and batches of kale chips each day — but as we all know, planning it on paper isn’t exactly ‘job done’, no matter how satisfying it feels when you hold it up to the light and admire it. It’s a bit like those people who think watching a half hour cooking show makes them a gourmet chef, despite never laying hands on a sharp knife, let alone a pestle and mortar or a spiralizer. Look — I love a list, and I desperately want to make one — but we all know writing a list is a hell of a lot easier than working through it.

Habits and routines are HARD. Show me the person who wakes up one day, puts a week’s routines into place and actually DOES IT ALL, every single day, and you’ll have me believing in the Loch Ness Monster. I can’t explain it, but sometimes writing a long list is just an invitation to procrastination and self sabotage. That list starts taunting you the minute it’s written, defying you to ignore it! You really need to have built up some muscle before attacking it.

In my experience, there’s only one way to build habits and routines and that is to do it sloooowwly — one thing at a time. You get one locked in place, and then you build on it. Otherwise it’s like Jenga. You start with everything all neatly on top of each other, but bit by bit, the pieces are pulled out and one day they all come tumbling down and you say to yourself ‘Me — I don’t like routines, they are not for me, I’m a free-spirited butterfly…’ and then you are back where you started and are too scared to try again.

I really and truly want to do all those things in the picture. And I want to do them all today. But it’s not going to happen like that. I know, I’ve tried it before.

This time, I’m going to be a grown up, and I’m going to gradually build up my days, with just one habit, one baby-step, one Jenga piece a week. I’m going to assemble this Jenga from the ground up, with superglue on every piece, so nobody can knock it down, especially me. There are something like 49 weeks left of this year, and assuming I’ll lose the odd few to holidays or rebellion, I reckon I’ve got the opportunity to put 45 habits/rituals/routines in place before the end of the year. That’s a pretty decent sized Jenga tower for one year’s work.

Week one habit — Paying attention to your day and writing it down (Daily Intentions)

So this week it is simply this…

Wake up at 5.00 each morning, stumble out of bed, make a cup of tea and write down what my day is going to look like. It is about setting my intention for the day, checking in with myself, DECIDING what kind of a day I’m going to have.

So, this is how things are going to look on Suzi’s Grand Master List of Daily Routines (GMLODR) this week.

Don’t you love new beginnings? I will obviously be adding to this over the coming weeks. We will gradually be creating order from said chaos.

I truly believe setting your intention for the day in writing is the most important piece of the Jenga tower. It puts you in control of your day, right from the beginning. Make it short, just a few paragraphs — that’s all you need. Here are the things to cover…

Acknowledge how you are feeling — grumpy? sleep-deprived? excited? (If you are a morning person it IS actually possible to be excited about being up at 5.00 in the morning, no matter how crazy that sounds, and I know it sounds crazy, because my fella tells me so quite regularly!)
PEACE MISSION — Try to identify the one thing that would most bring you some peace if you got it done today. You probably already know what it is because it has been sitting in the pit of your stomach for days now, weighing you down or gently filling your veins with dread; that holiday you know you have to book before the airfares double, that birthday present you should have ordered last week, maybe it is cleaning out the organics recycling bin because the smell could bring down a small country and it has been haunting your dreams for weeks. This is probably going to be something you really, really don’t want to do — BUT, it’s time to put your big girl’s pants on and decide to do it because you will feel like a rock star once it’s done. Peace baby!
Anything else you’d really LIKE to get done.
Decide which of your many personalities you are going to embrace today. Are you putting on your start-up tiara and conquering the internet? Are you summoning your brave warrior because you have a meeting which scares the hell out of you? Is today all about getting out the hippy sandals and enjoying the moment because you are on a retreat in the mountains and all you need to do is breath in the air and be grateful? Or are you going to a job you don’t really like, but today, you are going to suck it up and be the very best soldier they have, because you are there and you might as well make the most of it? Whoever you decide to be is valid. But just make sure YOU are deciding what it is, and not leaving it to Circumstance. That Circumstance chick doesn’t always make the best decisions!
Once you have decided, stop writing and really feel that you are that person, even if it’s just for a moment. Imagine putting that tiara on and feel yourself grow in stature, allow yourself to smile inside as you step into those sandals and hold onto the moment for as long as you can before letting it go and getting on with the rest of the day. (If you actually HAVE a tiara, then you could put it on for real of course!)

I know this might all sound a little hippy dippy, but there’s plenty of evidence out there that we have more control over our thoughts and feelings than we think we do, and that it can influence the outcomes of our day. And where’s the harm in giving it a go? I credit Christine Kane for this process, and when I do it, I see the results. It therefore deserves first place on the master list. If you’d like an example, here is one I prepared a little earlier…

Monday January 25th, 2016

It’s 5.06am. I haven’t been up at this early for quite some time, and when I last did it, it was because I had an early shift at work and needed to get out the door quickly. Today I am up at this time because I want to be. I actually love this time of the morning. They feel like precious, stolen hours before anyone else gets up. I am lucky to be able to get up at this time and not have to go anywhere.

Today, I have to do my tax! It’s January 25th and tax has to be submitted and paid by the 31st. I’m not sure I’ve ever left it this late before and it’s starting to make me nervous. It won’t be too bad. I know what to do, and will probably only take me a couple of hours. And there is a reward at the end of it. Not only will I feel much better knowing I have done it, I may actually get some money back. But most of all, I’ll feel good because it’s done. Thankfully, this year, it should be easier than previous years, because I know I have kept better records. I think it’s funny I’m starting my new life with what most people would think is one of the worst jobs they will have to do all year. When do I get to the fun stuff?

And for the rest of the day? Well, if I get through a few other admin jobs I’ll be pretty happy. They’e been piling up over the last week while I’ve just been relaxing and ignoring them. And there’s some housework to be done after the weekend dinner party. And then I’d like to start making plans for Color Shopper.

Today, I’m switching modes into ‘get on and get stuff done’ Suzi. No more ‘lady of leisure Suzi’. I’m putting on my determination crown and whipping through that tax return with style and aplomb. Come on tax office, bring it on!

That’s it. Like I said, it’s not long, and it’s certainly not beautifully written. It’s stream of consciousness type stuff, and not (usually) for public consumption. But if you lose your way along the day, you can go back and check it and remind yourself that the day belongs to you — not Facebook, or YouTube or whatever other social media addiction infiltrates itself onto your laptop. Write it in a journal, on the computer, in Evernote — wherever you like. It only takes five minutes. You are not supposed to think too hard about it, and it’s not full on Morning Pages (I’ll be introducing that to my day further down the track), this is just to get us started, and it’s an easy habit to do EVERY DAY.

Of course, it doesn’t HAVE to be at 5.00am. I hear some people think that’s a ridiculous time of the morning to get up! Just decide what time it is and make it one of the first things you do.

So — that’s it. Daily Intentions done, that’s my one real checkbox ticked for the day… Doesn’t it look pretty…?

Now I can go back to bed right…?

Oh yeah, there’s that tax return to do…

Sigh…

See you in a week, I’ll let you know how I got on.

Suzi