Category: Habits

Status Report for Creating a Writing Habit

S R Janssen

Its All About Measurement

“I have been struck again and again about how important measurement is to improving the human condition.”~ Bill Gates

“Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.” ~  H. James Harrington

Measurements inform me about my progress to creating a writing habit.
  1. Step one: Set a baseline  for future measurements. Three hundred words every two days. I have accomplished this by establishing a new habit. When I sit down to write, I replace the internal image of a black rectangle with the image of a yellow rectangle.
  2. Step two: Set a new goal for the next ten days: writing 300 words per day for five days a week.

What if All We Have Left is Our Habits?

S R Janssen

Merriam-Webster’s Learner’s Dictionary defines obsession as thinking about something or someone too much or in a way that is not normal : having an obsession : showing or relating to an obsession.

Habit of Thinking the Same Thoughts At the Same Time: Should I Stop Brushing My Teeth?

I am having an obsession-again. Obviously, I am obsessed about habit. I’m spending a lot of time thinking about the way habits shape our daily lives. Observing myself, I notice a habit of recurring patterns of thought.  Brushing my teeth this morning, I noticed a sequence of thoughts drifting through my mind.  It was a jolt to realize the exact same sequence of thoughts drifted through my mind yesterday, and the day before, and the day before. What’s worse it was a sequence of  unhappy thoughts about my parents’ divorce- both of whom died years ago.  If brushing my teeth triggers a string of threadbare unhappy thoughts, maybe I should stop brushing my teeth. Maybe I should change my brand of toothpaste, and swap in a bright new line of thinking.

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