21 days: Focus on one habit at a time

Welcome back to day 4 of the 21 Days to a More Disciplined Life challenge. (See what the big deal is here, and buy the book to follow along here.)

It’s hard to choose just one habit to adjust, isn’t it? I could think of several without trying!

But it’s important to focus on just one habit at a time. Master that, and then move on to something else to make actual, long-lasting change. So although I am planning to map out our daily routines during this challenge – certainly more than one habit at a time! – I will introduce it to my household a little at a time.  It’s easy to get into a flurry of short-lived change, but my goal is longer lasting change. That means baby steps!

Baby Steps

Baby Steps (Photo credit: San Diego Shooter)

Assignment 1: Make a list of good habits you want to introduce and bad habits you want to change. This isn’t all to do now, but it is a road map for you. As each change becomes a habit, you can choose another from your list.

The e-book has a worksheet for this, but if you’re following along without the e-book, or maybe want to type it up instead (I do! Less paper clutter!), you can simply make a list with two columns to work with.

Assignment 2: Keep working on your mega project

Since I had a date last night, I didn’t get to do anything on my mega-project. But today, I did two things:

  1. Start getting up a little earlier, and with a better attitude. I truly have a hard time in the mornings, whether I’ve slept 2 hours or 10. But after some reading and consideration, I’ve decided to give getting up before I have to a try. I hope to enjoy a little extra quiet time to work, and to be ready to start the day with my kids when they are ready, instead of sometimes needing prep time – I don’t want to miss the window of time where they are eager and ready to work! And I am mindful of my attitude. I am trying to be especially mindful of my attitude in the morning, especially since I am not a natural morning person: I choose to be happy and pleasant, not angry and grumpy.
  2. Type out a weekly cleaning list. I have a list of chores and also a day by day guide to get it all done. (Want to see it? OJH Weekly checklist. It’s in Word, so you can change it to suit your own house and situation.) I;m going to work with this one for a few weeks, and then laminate it and use dry-erase markers to mark it off as I go.
Baby steps, but I’m excited to see my project taking shape!

How is it going? What habit(s) would you change – or will you change?

Permanent link to this article: https://organizedjewishhome.com/2012/11/04/21-days-focus-on-one-habit-at-a-time/

3 comments

    • Shuli on November 4, 2012 at 8:27 pm

    Please elaborate: How do you make yourself get up earlier??? LOL!

      • Amital on November 5, 2012 at 2:09 am
        Author

      Ugh. It’s a work in progress and deserves its own post, but I’ve basically committed to waking up at a certain time, whether kids are up or not. I’d love to be a morning person who flits up at 5 AM for an hour long run, making a hot breakfast, etc…but I’ll take a little improvement at a time!

      Amital

    • Shuli on November 5, 2012 at 10:00 pm

    Ha ha! Totally hear that! Isn’t the idea of doing all this early-morning stuff so invigorating? I always envy morning people. Anyway it took me all this time to accept the fact that I am NOT one of them and to love myself anyway:) I try to minimize what I do in the morning— I have bottles ready the night before in the fridge (I have twin toddlers B”H) and I just tried making breakfast oatmeal overnight in the crockpot– came out AWESOME, such a great idea. Capitalizing on my nightowl tendencies, so not a big deal to throw oatmeal, water, butter, cinnamon, etc into a crockpot at night whereas doing the slightest prep in the morning is so not my thing!! Now I just have to get myself to keep up with this new habit…

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