January 16th 2023 - Back In The Habit

I restarted a habit this morning, something I tried to establish last year. To show up at my desk every morning.

I did well with a record of 85 days in a row last year. And it did eventually lead to me writing more.

My thinking is that in order to write successfully (for me anyway) I need to be in a good habit of doing it. If I don't make a habit out of it, instead I'll make a habit out of logging onto the PlayStation or binging Downton Abbey on Netflix.

Once I'm at my desk, I have a little sand timer which I flip over - I like using that as I've never taken the time to figure out how long the sand timer actually is - I think it's somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes.

Whilst I'm at the desk I follow Neil Gaiman's advice of either 1. doing nothing or 2. writing. Being given the ok to do nothing feels better as it takes the pressure off having to write.

Once the timer is up I mark the habit complete on my Streaks habit tracker on my watch. And I'm good to go.

Looking back over these posts I have mentioned some other habits such as staying at my desk for longer. Those have gone out the window in recent weeks so this will be the start of building them back up. And I do have my Goldsmiths course starting next week which should help get me writing again so it will be good to be back in the habit for that.