It took me until almost age 50 to learn that there is enormous power in establishing a routine.
Long story short, I was in some leadership training at Red Hat and as part of that I started writing a journal every morning. Doing anything every morning beyond getting a cup of coffee had not been part of my life until that point. Basically, I had no morning routine beyond get up, have coffee, eventually make my way to work. So I didn’t really expect my journal habit to last too long, either.
But here I am, over two years later, still doing it (I’ve got about 400 pages of journal entries now). Why? I got into a habit of doing it first thing every morning, and the routine stuck.
What was really cool was I found I could stick other things onto that routine too. So, write a note to Mom every morning, study whatever language I’m working on, work out on the erg… once I got in the habit of doing these things every day it was much easier to keep doing them.
If only I had learned this about practicing 40 years ago!
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