Chunks of Happiness

I jog; quite often these days. Like any other things, it’s a slow and tedious process. Some people enjoy the run because of the runner’s high it gets them. I enjoy it because it gets me out in nature, away from all the tech that surrounds me the entire day.

Earlier, when I used to run regularly, I could cover longer distances in one run. I had practiced for a half marathon and had reached a point where I could run miles without stopping. Then I took a break for a couple of months because of an injury (which turned into years) and when I started again, I wanted to be the runner that I was earlier.

And that’s how I started off. The first run out, I wanted to make sure I run all those miles in one go. Needless to say, that wasn’t a good idea. I broke down every few steps and forced myself to go one more.

That was it. I hated that run. The next day when I tried to run again, I remembered the last run and was already hating it …. before I even started.

And this repeated for a few days. I read articles about how people “force” themselves to do something over and over again till it becomes a habit. I didn’t like that. Maybe there was a better way to do this.

I started thinking — “Maybe I should just walk instead of running.” And that’s what I did. And it was amazing! I truly enjoyed just walking , enjoying the greens around me, playing with the street dogs on the way, getting mosquito bites…stuff like that.

Because I was happy doing what I was, my next thought was “Ok, lets take a quick jog. What’s the worst that’ll happen — I’ll get tired and start walking, which isn’t bad at all ‘cos Im liking the walk anyway.”

So I took a jog. But this time, when I got tired, I started walking again. Then when I was ok, I jogged a bit. I repeated this for the entire time and I managed to run quite a bit.

I repeated this the next time. And the next one. And the one after that. Over time, the walks reduced. The jogs went up. But all I was doing was moving from one thing I liked to another — one step at a time. I didn’t have any targets. I wasn’t aiming to run the marathon. I just wanted to make sure I enjoy my time outside while I was walk-jogging.

This allowed me to come back and do the same small walk-jogs the next time, ‘cos I wasn’t unhappy anymore. I was then able to extend this for weeks. While I’m not back to where I was few years back, I’m way better than I was weeks back.

I’v started applying this formula to other stuff as well. For eg: If I’m writing a blog, lets say this blog, I’ll write a few bits that I enjoy. As soon as I get tired or see myself forcing words just for the sake of finishing it, I switch context and pick something else up.

This way I break my work down into “Chunks of happiness”.

If I can break large work into smaller chunks which make me happy, I won’t get everything done quickly, but I’ll be happy the whole while that I do it.

That way, I can do more things, more number of times, and not get exhausted. When I do get exhausted, I can take a break and switch context.
And then, I can repeat it all over again. And again.

Find me on twitter. Happy to chat. Always working on some project or the other.