My newest experiment: Locking myself into a routine

(I think that most of the rest of your Qs were probably answered by the screenshot, but let me know if I left anything unanswered that it didn’t or if others come up.)

Thanks :slight_smile: I’m just trying to get myself used to that “after this, do that” sequence for a new routine. It changes a lot from my old routine, which is why I’m being so specific and including even the very tiny things, some of which I don’t actually really need help with. If I didn’t have a way of having this 90% of the way to completely automated, I don’t think I would dare be so over-planned. The friction of that would be too much for me.

This is still just an experiment! It might fail!
I just want to reiterate that this is still just a crazy experiment that I’m trying and it might crash and burn, so I would be very reluctant to actually recommend it to anyone! It goes against basically all good behaviour-change advice and if I hadn’t been using Beeminder for nearly 20% of the time I’ve, you know, been alive, I expect it would be harder than however hard it’s going to turn out to be. Not sure!

That said, I’ve been sort of practicing an easygoing implementation of the routine for a few days to see if there are any last-minute changes I want to make before starting the 30 days (turns out there are, but they’re minor, like pushing my workout back by an hour or so). So far, I have to admit that I’m actually kind of loving it. I’m a creature that likes structure. I find that from the position of a solid structure, I can afford to add a lot of variety and spontenaity, but without a base structure, it’s sort of just chaos for me and I lose the freedom to do extra things because so much time is spent navigating the chaos. I’d let my structures fall away (Thanks 2020… and 2019…) and am reminded of how great it is to have one. I also love that I’m no longer spending time wondering if I should be doing something else, if some This is really the right thing to be doing right now, if I’ll have time later to do some That, and that I have scheduled in time to keep in touch with people again as well as dedicated time to relax, guilt free. It’s still VERY early, though. Let’s see how it handles bumps and detours and days where I feel like doing precisely no things!

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