Help me decide what bad habits to work on.

I have a technique for Writer's block that makes you want to do a number of things. In fact, there's a whole process that you go through, but essentially its BICHOK (Bum in chair hands on keyboard). Here's the thing. Set aside 30 minutes (I like 30 minute chunks of time, but use whatever works for you. It has to be long enough for you to get completely bored out of your skull though). Then that 30 minutes is specifically for writing. You are not allowed to do anything else. No web-surfing, no twitter, no email, no housework, nothing. You're also not allowed to leave the chair. If you're not writing the only other thing you can do is stare around, and this gets old very quickly. The other thing is you don't edit what you write, so it's 30 minutes of solid writing, or in my case 25 minutes of staring at the walls and 5 minutes of writing. But, once you start writing, it's amazingly easy to continue.

For most of the other manky things (my two pet peeves are Quality management systems at work and report writing) just set 15 minutes a day for each thing. (I do them as soon as I get to work otherwise the rest of the day is wasted on avoidance) At the end of 15 minutes, you're done with that item. you don't have to think about quality or decluttering and can instead do the fun things.

For the healthy eating, generally the most difficult part is deciding what you're going to eat/cook. If this is easy for you excellent, if not, this may help. I have a couple of standby recipes that I always have the ingredients for, nothing exciting, but they're quick and easy to make. Other than these (which are really a last minute resort because the shops didn't have what I wanted when I went shopping) my wife and I sit down once a week and decide on the menu for the next week. This also makes the shopping easier, and quicker.

Hope some of that helps with the decision.

“do it all at once” overload syndrome (DIAAOOS)

I love that, thank you. It really fits exactly the way I feel right
now. So, I will follow your advice and start walking every day –
which I've been MEANING to do forever. Oh, and could send a little of
your opposite issue over in this direction? I never did understand how
people can have that problem with writing too much!

I think you need to break your list down to even smaller tasks. Decluttering is a huge task, if you take on your whole house, so start with your desk, or a favourite area around a chair, or the kitchen table. Once that area is clear you try not to clutter it up again, and tackle a new area.

Do the same with housekeeping: washing dishes and patting yourself on the back is great, and you've managed to keep up with it. Now add something like wiping down kitchen surfaces daily, or wiping around the cooker, or getting otu the vacuum for five minutes in the kitchen.

One good way of keeping clutter down I learned over at The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin – she has a one minute rule. If something can be done in one minute, like open a letter, or put a book away she does it. I do it when I'm in a room and something needs to go to another room, I pick it up and take it with me. Once in it's own room I don't immediately put it away, because that's another one minute job for later. It's amazing how well it works. :o)

You're doing really well, and I'm sure you'll do even better if you break down your habits into tiny steps that you know you can manage every day.

I like the menu plan because it means I don't have to make a decision about what to cook, I just look on the plan and – there it is. (The fewer inconsequential decisions I have to make on a daily basis, the happier I end up being) Just to clarify, we don't use the same plan every week.

Gluten Free might be a problem (no pasta/bread, I'd be screwed). The only thing I've found that is a suitable wheat substitute is chick pea wraps (tortillas I think would be the american equivalent). Otherwise, quinoa is a decent starch (and it's a complete protein, perfect for vegebletarians)

Hi LaVonne, I found you through Catherine's Be Awesome Online blog and I like what you're doing here!

I have problems with pretty much all of those things you listed. With housekeeping though, I found it much easier to have the cleaning stuff in plain sight. I keep a bottle of Jif and a sponge on a shelf in the bathroom, for instance, and if I see a particularly dirty bit of porcelain I squirt and swipe on the spot. Same with washing dishes – one of those little sponges with the handle that holds the liquid, kept right on the sink. So much easier than having to get cleaning products out, clean, then put them away again! The fewer steps between “problem” and “solved”, the more likely I am to do it (and less chance to get distracted). If I could figure out a way to disguise my vacuum cleaner as a coffee table, instead of keeping it away in a cupboard, my floor would be much cleaner…

Also with dishes, I reframed my thinking about meals to include cleaning up as part of the meal, before the relaxing/satisfied part. Previously I'd cook, have dinner, then settle down to relax in the afterglow for a while, leaving the dishes on the sink, on the table, in my room… I decided that meals included washing up, so now until the dishes are done, the meal doesn't feel finished and I don't relax.

For decluttering, a common piece of advice is to hit a room at a time, or never handle a piece of clutter more than once. Didn't work for me. Boxes helped: if something didn't have a place to go straight away, I put it in a box for later sorting, or in the bin if I was sure I didn't want it. There were little caches of semi-sorted stuff all over the place. When the mood struck, or I'd finally decided where to put something, I'd grab a little pile and sort it. The only real rule was to avoid adding more new mess than what I was taking away. (Turns out mess is like debt.)

It wasn't hard at all; any new stuff went either straight to a shelf, in one of the cache boxes, or in the bin. The whole process was actually quite fun. I reacquainted myself with a lot of my old stuff and found new uses for it, and got frequent small hits of completion happiness.

I still have a few boxes to sort, and I stay on top of chaos by keeping a couple of little caches around to dump stuff in. Sorting a week's crap in one 5-minute job is way easier for me than spending a minute a day.

Keep up the good work, and keep writing!

Hi LaVonne, I found you through Catherine's Be Awesome Online blog and I like what you're doing here!

I have problems with pretty much all of those things you listed. With housekeeping though, I found it much easier to have the cleaning stuff in plain sight. I keep a bottle of Jif and a sponge on a shelf in the bathroom, for instance, and if I see a particularly dirty bit of porcelain I squirt and swipe on the spot. Same with washing dishes – one of those little sponges with the handle that holds the liquid, kept right on the sink. So much easier than having to get cleaning products out, clean, then put them away again! The fewer steps between “problem” and “solved”, the more likely I am to do it (and less chance to get distracted). If I could figure out a way to disguise my vacuum cleaner as a coffee table, instead of keeping it away in a cupboard, my floor would be much cleaner…

Also with dishes, I reframed my thinking about meals to include cleaning up as part of the meal, before the relaxing/satisfied part. Previously I'd cook, have dinner, then settle down to relax in the afterglow for a while, leaving the dishes on the sink, on the table, in my room… I decided that meals included washing up, so now until the dishes are done, the meal doesn't feel finished and I don't relax.

For decluttering, a common piece of advice is to hit a room at a time, or never handle a piece of clutter more than once. Didn't work for me. Boxes helped: if something didn't have a place to go straight away, I put it in a box for later sorting, or in the bin if I was sure I didn't want it. There were little caches of semi-sorted stuff all over the place. When the mood struck, or I'd finally decided where to put something, I'd grab a little pile and sort it. The only real rule was to avoid adding more new mess than what I was taking away. (Turns out mess is like debt.)

It wasn't hard at all; any new stuff went either straight to a shelf, in one of the cache boxes, or in the bin. The whole process was actually quite fun. I reacquainted myself with a lot of my old stuff and found new uses for it, and got frequent small hits of completion happiness.

I still have a few boxes to sort, and I stay on top of chaos by keeping a couple of little caches around to dump stuff in. Sorting a week's crap in one 5-minute job is way easier for me than spending a minute a day.

Keep up the good work, and keep writing!