5 Weeks of Habit Building: Week 2
Two weeks ago I started five weeks of habit building. I am spending these five weeks to try to build a foundation of good habits. To read more about my process, read my recent post: Five Weeks of Habit Building.
The habits that I am building:
Read 30 minutes every day
Workout 5x a week
Take 3 tangible steps towards personal/career development each week
The Good
Like last week, I will start with the good. I definitely made progress this past week, particularly relative to my fitness goal. I began lengthening my workouts, and I am starting to get into a routine. They are becoming an outlet that I look forward to every day. I think this is one of the cool things about habits. Often times, things that are difficult to begin with become enjoyable as time goes on.
This week, I focused the majority of my reading on The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I have been reading this book on and off for a couple of years (it is over 750 pages long), but I am on the home stretch and am hoping to finish it this week. If I can finish that, it will be a mini-reward within these five weeks of habit building.
The Bad
The bad news is that I again did not spend thirty minutes every day reading. I read every day, but there were a couple of nights that I did not hit my goal. It is frustrating to me that I missed the target in week two, but I wanted to be honest about it and hit that target this week.
I think one of the reasons that I am having more trouble with the thirty minutes of reading is that it seems of little importance, especially at the end of the day. How is reading for an extra fifteen minutes before I go to bed going to improve my life?
This is precisely why I am taking on this project. Any random fifteen minutes of reading is unlikely to drastically affect my life, but the compounding effect of habitual reading surely will. Although I am disappointed that I have not had more success reaching my target these first two weeks, I am happy that I am beginning to establish a foundation that I can build upon.
Lessons Learned and Adjustments for This Week
As I suspected last week, spreading out my personal/career development across a few different activities was not beneficial for me. I am not convinced, however, that it would never be beneficial for me or that other people might enjoy that method. I just found it to be too scattered for me this past week.
In the coming week, I will be returning to my week one personal/career development (real estate and investment analysis) project for the majority of the time, and only if I finish that project will I move on to something new.
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