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One Week of Strict Self Discipline
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about self discipline and healthy habits. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about the amount of time it would take every day to everything that a good, responsible person is supposed to do. It is no secret that my life could benefit from a stricter schedule, better time management, and better habits….I think that’s probably true for most of us. My personal hurdle to developing better habits is time management. In my free time outside of work I enjoy developing my creative skills, playing music, hanging out with my wife, watching movies, and playing the occasional video game. It is hard to sacrifice some of those things in favor of better habits.
When it comes to time management, different people tell you to spend your time in different ways. Your trainer will tell you to set aside an hour every day for exercise. Your music instructor will tell you to set an hour aside every day to practice your craft. Your pastor will tell you that you should set aside at least an hour every day for activities such as prayer and devotionals. The list goes on and on. In truth, these are all things that should be done every day. At some point in my life I have done these things with some sort of regularity…but never all at once. The question I have is how much time would be left in my day if I devoted myself to doing everything that I SHOULD be doing on a daily basis. What will I have to sacrifice?
Now to the point. For one week I am going to strictly follow a list of healthy habits and self disciplines. Just because an item is on the list, doesn’t mean isn’t already a part of my daily/weekly routine.
Health:
- Work out every day
- Eat a full and healthy breakfast every day
- Eat healthy meals
- Eat 3-5 servings of fruit and vegetables every day.
- Drink 8 glasses of water every day.
Habits:
- Sleeping for 8 hours every night
- Going to bed early, and waking up early.
- Read a little bit every day.
- Eating dinner at the table with my wife, with the TV off.
Spiritual
- Daily prayer
- Daily bible reading
Hygiene:
- Shower every day (I do this already people
) - Brush 3 times a day (I do this as well, just adding it to the list)
- Floss every day (I floss…just not EVERY day)
- Shave…um…with some sort of consistency (my skin could never handle a clean shave every day)
It really isn’t that crazy of a list. To be honest if I clean my sleeping schedule most of this should be quite simple to maintain. The question is not whether or not it can be done. Of COURSE it can be done. Plenty of people probably do all of that with some sort of regularity every day. My question is what can be done on top of all of this. For the next week there are no rules on what I can’t do. As long as I finish everything on that list every day, I can feel free to do any number of things that I enjoy doing. These activities include: playing guitar, watching TV shows, playing video games with my friends, working on websites, working on creative projects, and more.
I am at a point in my life in which I need to take a serious look at my schedule and my future. I have always been a jack-of-all-trades sort of person, but that always results in me spending a lot of time on a lot of different activities and I have never really devoted myself to anything in particular. I want to truly devote myself to something, but I know that will mean cutting other things out of my life.
I hope that through this personal experiment I can learn just how much time I can have in a day to focus on other things in life that I enjoy or want to improve on.
This experiment will start tomorrow and will continue for one week (ending on Sunday). When the 7 days are up, I will write a follow-up post on this blog (www.slightlyoffbeat.com for anyone reading this on facebook). I will also write smaller daily posts at my posterous account: http://slightlyoffbeat.posterous.com
If you have any suggestions for things to add to my list of self disciplines and healthy habits, let me know by posting in the comments or on twitter (@slightlyoffbeat).
Here goes nothing.
[dan]
Sounds like a good plan to me. Good luck!!