I’m not one for resolutions, but Jim and I used to have a ritual that on New Year’s Eve, we would go to some place for fancy food and talk about the year just lived and consider the year to come. This is the first time that I can remember in 35 years that we didn’t, we couldn’t. In place of that ritual, I came across this article about the science of building good habits. I love some of the ideas in this, especially the one about just giving 30 minutes per day to something. Who can’t do that? I used to have an assistant who was often overwhelmed. About every two weeks or so, I’d sit with her to show her how many hours there were in a workday. I’d program in “screw off time” to demonstrate that she could do routine tasks and still handle things that happen. We did this methodically, filling in the hours of the workday and leaving a couple of hours blank. I thought about her and that process while reading this article. I keep myself programmed with exercise and yoga and work but I could do more and I suspect that if I did, I’d feel like my more disciplined self before life took an uncontrollable turn in September. At least I’m going to try.
https://nicenews.com/health-and-wellness/wendy-wood-science-behind-building-good-habits