So the next thing was 'drink a glass of water after you've made the bed'. I read somewhere that lethargy after waking up was to do with dehydration overnight, so I drank the glass of water. I don't know if it made me less lethargic or not, but it did make me wander out of my room and into the kitchen to get the glass, and made me feel like I'd started my day.
So then it was 'ten pushups'. Then after a little while it was 'another ten pushups before bed'. Then it was 'run 5k every 3rd day' then every 2nd, then 10k if it was a weekend day. At some point I'd also added in going to the gym, because I noticed I'd been jogging past one on my route, so now I just ran to the gym. Routines to build on routines. I never set myself a goal like 'lose 10kg' or 'Squat 100kg' but in the end I did. It was hard to get over not really wanting to run, but when I kind of internalized that it didn't matter whether I wanted to or not, I just got to doing stuff. And of course it's kind of hard to feel bad about going running after you've done it, so it made sense to just keep doing it.
For work stuff, the first thing I did was 'before going to bed, write on an index card every task you need to get done tomorrow'. So I did that. Small thing, big improvements - first thing was that now I had an index card on my desk first thing that I had to deal with, so I had to read it before opening up my PC and just surfing around. Next thing was because I had the card there on my desk, I glanced at it every now and then and asked myself 'well did I do any of that in the last hour?'. And finally when I wrote the next index card, I had a little list of the tiny wins I'd made that day. Plus the index cards stack up over time so there's this physical reminder on the corner of my desk that I've done all this stuff, and the next day is just a tiny part of that. Now as a bonus I'm mindful about my work. I didn't set out to 'have 8 productive hours a day', I just made the little index cards over and over. But I get a productive 8 hour day most days.
Well I had the index cards now, so I have a record of what I've been up to, so I might as well do summaries - and that's how I started journaling regularly. When the stack gets x high, review the stack, write down what your thoughts are, repeat.
Now I look at stuff in terms of the systems I'd have to adopt to do it, and figure out how I can fit them in. I'd love to learn the guitar and work on a bunch of personal projects, and by figuring out the daily stuff I have to do I can see whether it makes sense to do it now or some other time, because it kind of naturally squares with priorities.
I've lost some of those habits since I moved for grad school, but I'm working on reestablishing them in the same methodical way. I'm still working on making my systems a little more resilient to that kind of disruption. One thing I did add to my system though is 'Saturday is a personal day, always, no email, no phone, unless it's a hair-on-fire thing in which case Sunday is a personal day'.
YMMV but the point to evolve this stuff organically.
It seems like good lives are built the same way as good companies: one small task at a time compounded over years.
So this year, I've started swimming. There's a pool near me, proper 50m size.
Week 1: do 1 lap, 2-3 times that week. My girlfriend laughed at me. "1 lap?!". Yeah, 1 lap. It's just about going there and doing it.
Week 2: 2 laps.
You get the idea. By easing myself in to this, by making it a steady little habit, I'm hoping to be doing 52 laps by the end of the year. That's 2.5kms. That's not bad.
This is a fantastic approach.
* Work on my book[1] every day.
* Exercise twice a week.
* Run every weekend.
* Then a few ones around what I eat.
I allow myself to tune those rules over time to better optimize what I'm going for, however I don't let myself change a rule right when it's in play. If it's Sunday afternoon and I haven't run yet, I don't get to decide if I'm going to change my running schedule. Past me set that rule, and present me must follow it.
After I run, I can consider tweaking it. But, then, of course, I find that after I've run, I feel pretty good about it and end up sticking with the rule.
I started using Insight Timer and am now meditating every single day for the first time.
That's something I could really use.
Turns out pretty much everything works the same. Maybe the trick is that I didn't really do anything that wasn't incremental, just a day at a time, but you just kind of keep going with the momentum.
Now I tend to just do that reflexively because it's just worked so many times in so many different areas.
If you choose to do the "right" thing or the "wrong" thing in any given moment, that will reinforce your tendency to either persevere or to give up, in the future.
So while some moments of decision may seem more important than others (with obvious / immediate consequences), these moments are in fact all supremely important.
Over time these decisions solidify into habits and character traits. Ultimately, they will determine your fate in life.