Filed under #observations, #risingearly and #lifehacks

Another work day where I wake up early. But I've made a change to my early morning habits:

The plan is now:

1. Get out of bed as soon as the alarm goes clock off
2. Press snooze
3. Get dressed
4. Go downstairs
5. Turn off the alarm
6. Make coffe
7. Press play on the podcast I am listening to
8. Start browsing Instagram
9. Stop browsing when podcast episode finishes

The second last item on that list might sound weird to almost everyone else but I can forget looking at or even thinking about Instagram for days or weeks.

That might sound great for someone who struggles with addiction to social media, and I guess it is less annoying and dangerous,but also means I miss out on a lot of what is happening.

So for now I'll try this to see if I can include a healthy dose of updates from friends and family.

Observations:

• it helps a lot that I have decided well in advance what the first 30 minutes of the day will look like
• it works reasonably well, my brain turns on (possibly related to an interesting podcast)
• generally my brain seems to respond well to spoken words while I'm doing something else
• Instagram ads generally have a lot better targeting for me (it took 12 long years for Google to realize I was not looking for scammy-looking dating sites)
• writing blog posts takes more than 5 minutes, I guess this took 30 minutes
• it is now 0522

I've been trying this for less than a week, so add a pinch of salt, but I feel I'm into an habit that can work well for a few weeks.

Filed under #productivity, #lifehacks and #habitstacking

Sometimes I find myself mindlessly pressing ctrl – t, <name of news site>.

And sometimes it doesn't matter: waiting for someone to reply, for a compile or upload to finish. But often it is a waste of time.

I recently realized that while it is hard to break the first part of the habit, and removing all the triggers is impractical, I can easily stack another habit on top:

I have now trained myself so that whenever my fingers type that pattern they also automatically type ctrl – w to close the tab before even loading it.

I did that by intentionally repeating the first part of the pattern, then closing the tabs and rewarding myself by smiling.

Found this reply to a comment about devastating disease striking from nowhere:

Waterluvian 13 days ago

As a parent I've come up with a mechanism to help when things like this worry me.

I have basically no power to protect against things like this. But I have tremendous power to protect against far more likely causes of harm like diabetes and heart disease and obesity.

So any time I'm having a moment of worry about their well being I find an extra hour to carve out of my day and take them to the park. It's therapeutic and makes me feel less helpless and feels like I'm gradually equipping them with the life trait of being an active person.

Filed under #lifehacks #worry and #parenting