Habit 1: General Orderliness

Again, this is not a high-level view. It's a practical recipe, an intelligent system to blindly obey.

An orderly daily routine. Goals:

• A morning routine 

•  A before-work routine 

•  An after-work routine 

•  An evening routine

1. A morning routine. Goals:

• 7 1/4 hours of sleep, ideally.
• Drink a glass of water
• Meditation for 5 minutes.

• Wash face, brush teeth, fix hair.
• Hang clothes to dry.
• If Ady's already up and in the bathroom -> fix bed, sweep floor, water plants.

• Breakfast. Aim for an egg-and-butter shake. If you have time, try something else.
• If trash hasn't been taken out in 2 or 3 days, do it.
• Out the door.

2. A before-work routine. Goals:

• Go to cat. 
• Give her food.
• Clean her toilet.

• Hang out.
• Play - pieces of paper, long, dangly stuff.
• Out. If you have time before the bus, go to store, buy stuff, consulting your list.

3. An after-work routine.

• If you haven't gone to the cat - go.
• If you haven't gone to the store, do.
• If you go to the cat and you haven't been to the bar in a couple of days, go.
• When you're at the bar, pay special attention to Ady, don't talk to other people too much, see if you can get her to leave early.

• If there haven't been flowers at home for a couple of days, buy some.
• If it's salary day, pay bills, pay phone, pay Internet.

4. An evening routine:

• If you haven't fixed the bed or swept, do. If there are clothes in the living room more than a couple of days old, wash them.
• Take care of kitchen - clean up plates, wash them.
• Clean up fridge, take out old food if any, soak accumulated water.

• If you haven't cooked in the last two days, do. Cook vegetables, cook meat, make nut bread, make tahini, make a salad, make coconut milk.
• Prepare stuff for breakfast tomorrow.
• Dinner - a calm meal, not doing anything while you eat.

• Hang clothes to dry, load another washer.
• Fold clothes, put them in their place.
• Fix the corridor - shoes out of the way, clothes on the floor, etc.

• If you haven't buffed the table in a couple of days, do.
• Summarize in writing what you've read today. A page of summary for each twenty-five read, or whatever you remember of it.

• Evening shower.
• Fix the bed back.
• Wash any newly stacked dishes.
• Read or talk to Ady.
• If clothes are done before you go to bed, hang them out to dry, load another washer to be taken care of on the morning.

• Talk to Ady, massage.
• Sleep.

Now read through all of these, going through them imaginatively in your mind as you do. 

Imagine a home free of hassle, of clothes lying around everywhere, a flower in a vase on the table, which is empty, the kitchen clean and uncluttered, bed neat, you refreshed after a shower,all utilities paid, soaps, shampoos, toilet paper, etc., all stocked, floor clean, your mind clean, purposeful, streamlined.

Imagine what it's like now. Clothes everywhere, leftover packets of rahmen all over the kitchen, crusted, ugly plates, flooded fridge, overflowing disgusting trash bin, Stephan rolling around an unmade bed, cigarette-filled ashtray on the fucking floor, the table dirty, pieces of paper and plates on it, dust devils on the floor, shoes kicked off every which way, the terrace in a horrible mess, clean clothes down on the floor with the dirty ones,  clothes moldy in the washer.

Imagine a morning and an evening when you're all actually in a decent mood, talking, not freaking out about what to wear or not having soap or toothpaste or a shampoo or a clean towel, where you pay attention to one another instead of looking at various screens.

Now imagine what it's like now. Rummaging through dirty, crumpled clothes to find on that doesn't look too terrible, squeezing out the last drops of toothpaste if any, everyone in a different room, everyone eating at the last possible moment, scrambling for whatever they can find in the fridge.

If I never get this done, I'll remain an adolescent in my head forever. The noise to song ration in my relationship will continue to worsen. I will never be able to think of myself as a responsible adult capable of doing things for others. 

Rewards: After each subcomplex of tasks is done, you can reward yourself with some reading. It should be fiction or something game design or writing-related, to prime yourself for the habits down the line. Or you can start contemplating further tasks and get them off your head, to prime yourself for GTD later on.

Self-Improvement: Ground Zero

Before I start writing on my first habit, a few strategic "ground zero" statements:

I am a procrastinator. I am an impulsive, want-it-now, escape-obligations-any-way-you-can, daydream-yourself-out-of-your-dreams kind of person. My problem is rather more serious than that of most other people. This is a statement grounded in fact. I have been rendered powerless, in my personal and professional life, by my shortcomings. I let my relationships with with myself and the people close to me degrade and fail because of my inability to control myself in accordance with the principles of my humanity. The promises I make with myself fail. The promises I make to others fail. I'm shortchanging the quality of my life and the life of those close to me because of my inability to act out of my humanity and reason, to put a leash on my baser mind.

I am putting my trust in the system entirely. It's a system of my own devising, but it rests on the solid foundation of shared human virtues and failings, on principles that don't work only because people don't follow them, not because they're ineffective. I have a serious history of second-guessing myself, sabotaging myself with tangential thoughts, speculations, doubts that what I've thought up isn't as good as it can be, resolutions included. No more. Blindly following an intelligent and effective course of action is a million times better than criticizing and second-guessing half-formed resolutions, leaving them unfinished and unraveling, raggedy shapes in the mist. My course of action cannot fail provided that I follow it.

My imperfections are many. I am self-centered and slothful. I don't have a great capacity for feeling. I talk too much and do too little. I think useless thoughts. I am immature, and have a tendency to regress and daydream of might-have-beens. I understand people share these imperfections of mine, but I can no longer abide them. No more.

I am giving up on "as good as possible" and taking up "good enough". I recognize that "good enough" is better than most people even attempt. Most people aren't even aware of the necessity to improve themselves systematically, especially in an age of constant distraction, when systematic, focused thought is so hard. Those that are, procrastinate and put off their betterment indefinitely, most of them forever. So with this, with the simple, unassuming "good enough" I'm already part of a minority.

The minority I'm part of is one of more responsibilities and a duty to be, first and foremost, a better person for the others I meet in my life. It is not a minority of smug sainthood. If anything, I humbly ask of my reason, which is the gift of my humanity, something I've received for free and without having deserved it, to guide me - not to perfection, but simply a little further down the path I've laid out for myself, whenever I may falter. To give me the perspective to realize that ideals are delusions. To give me the certainty that my path is good enough, so I may take my first steps upon it. To provide me with the confidence and clear-mindedness that will allow me to go on, even if I have to make changes further down the path. To strengthen my humanity in the face of my animal nature, impulsive, grasping and miserly.

I promise to often seek community with my human and humane mind, to improve myself further down this path of mastering the animal. I promise to improve the life of others as humans, as I myself gain in confidence and walk further down the path of my humanity, and be generous with it.

Now a more practical promise to myself:

Whatever my path is at any given time, whatever the habit to cultivate at any given moment, at that given moment for me there exists no other routine than that habit and my non-negotiable work obligations that put food on the table and my mind at ease. The latter is a non-negotiable constant in my life from here on out.

Four 3-week Habits to Start Me on My Way to Better Life

This time I'll keep it simple, less self-talk, more practical steps.

1. Why four habits?

• Because I've precommitted to start working on my game design goals in 3 months, and I hope these 4 habits will give me momentum.

2. What four habits?

• First, general orderliness. 

• I already have some established routines in that respect (dishwashing, sweeping the floor occasionally).

• I like orderliness and I think it will provide momentum for the rest of the habits. 

•  It gives me a structured way to spend time at home and in between mental tasks, so I don't otherwise waste that time. 

•  I keeps me active and in a state of higher energy.

•  It will keep the situation at home emotionally more pleasant. 

•  Second, focused, quality reading. 

• I need to be much less scattershot about my reading. "Voracious reader" has come to mean something good, but not in my case. I'm more panicky, prone to waste time with casual reading. 

•  I need to implement the quality learning principles I've read about, and that's possible only in a well-developed, rigorously followed reading programme.
• This will start me on my way to contributing more to ShadowDance and finishing my degree.

• Third, implementing GTD.

• The preceding two habits will have given me the confidence to start implementing a more rigorous sort of self-monitoring. 

•  I will have started on GTD partway with the preceding two habits themselves, since they involve some ad hoc list-making, so I will transition into full-blown GTD more easily.
• As I will be getting closer to the 3-month deadline, I will need to get more serious about self-organizing. (This would be a good time to start thinking up more habits to form in the future.)

•  Fourth, cultivating a fiction writing habit.

• One of the most important things I could do for myself, and one that will give me an incredible sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.
• It will be indispensable after the 3-month deadline expires, both for my game design projects and for my general fiction writing.
• It will have been primed by the writing I need to do in order to cultivate and maintain the previous three habits.  

3. How to go about it?

• Establish clear goals, subgoals and deadlines.
• Imagine it done, positively.
• Take stock of how things are now, negatively.
• Imagine it never done, negatively.
• Start out small.
• Precommit: cut out any other options for the duration of the work.
• Establish if/then trigger conditions and routines.
• Track your progress.
• Make yourself accountable.
• Compare yourself to the average.
• Think of and implement rewards that are both stimulating and potentially contribute to further positive habits or strengthen current ones.