Month: December 2018

The practical guide to keeping your New Year’s resolutions

On By MarishaIn Habits, Organization & Productivity1 Comment

Have you set some New Year’s resolutions but are unsure of how to follow through? Make them into habits by following the practical steps below.

Champagne glasses, fireworks, smiling faces everywhere. The evening of December 31st can be a magical time when anything seems possible. Perhaps we even set some resolutions for the new year. At this celebratory time, they seem perfectly realistic and within reach.

Low-angle Photo of Fireworks

In the celebratory spirit of New Year’s Eve, everything seems possible.

But in order to keep our New Year’s resolutions, we need to make them into habits.

Image credit: Pexels (License)

Turn your New Year’s resolutions into habits

How do you follow through with your New Year’s resolutions? Habit formation, a big topic in behavior science, comes to the rescue. The best way to ensure an activity is done consistently is to create a habit.

To start a habit, create implementation intentions, which are simple but highly effective if-then planning statements:

When I finish eating lunch, then I will go for a 15-minute walk.

When I am eating breakfast, then I will read a book for 30 minutes.

This also works for specific time-dependent planning:

If it is Tuesday or Thursday at 17:00, then I will go to the gym and exercise.

Focus on one habit at a time

Importantly, don’t try to change too many things at once. In order to create lasting change, work on one habit at a time. Thus, pick one of your New Year’s resolutions and work on that first.

The rule of thumb is that you need to give yourself two weeks to practice a habit. If you stick to the habit 75% of the time during those two weeks, you can then add another habit.

Track your habits

You need to measure how consistently you’re doing a habit. In this way, you will be aware of your progress and you will also know when you’re ready to add another habit.

Create a simple chart where you record how often you complete your habit:

Make the habit very specific in order to remove any doubt about when you should do it. Every time you complete the activity, put a check mark. If you don’t do it, put a cross.

A chart filled out over two weeks could look like this:

In order to determine your performance, add the number of check marks (in this case, 11) and divide them by the number of days in two weeks (14).

In this case, the performance over the two weeks is 11/14 = 79%. Since that is above 75%, this person is ready to add another habit. If it were below 75%, this person would need to continue working on this habit for another two weeks.

Review your New Year’s resolutions (or habits)

Once you’ve established a habit (i.e., passed the 75% threshold), move on to your next New Year’s resolution and make a habit out of that. If you notice that you’re struggling with a habit you had established earlier, feel free to spend another two weeks on it.

Make sure you revisit your New Year’s resolutions once a month or so. You can have a simple list of resolutions/habits you’d like to keep and post it on your fridge door or save it on your phone. Alternatively, you can use an app such as Habit Hub to help keep track of your habits and monitor your progress.

Good luck! I hope these tips help you steer your New Year in the desired direction, so you can confidently keep any New Year’s resolution you choose. Let me know how it goes by commenting below or on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

This blog post first appeared on Donders Wonders.

Set an intention for the holidays

On By MarishaIn Mindset & Well-beingLeave a comment

The holidays are an awesome time for fun and excitement, but they can also be stressful and frustrating. Think about what you want out of this holiday season and discuss it with the people you’re spending the holidays with to make it happen.

Many of us look forward to the winter holidays each year, while yet others detest the December period. Whatever your attitude towards the season, you can get the most out of it if you know what you want.

What do you want for Christmas?

At the beginning of the holiday season (which is right about now), think about what’s important to you at this time of the year. You can write about this in your journal, ponder it while going for a walk, or reluctantly think about it while being tortured by Christmas music in the supermarket.

Do you want to…

  • Spend time with family?
  • Avoid getting annoyed with your partner/mother/father/aunt/parents-in-law/insert random relative here?
  • Eat your favorite Christmas-themed food?
  • Eat food that is aligned with certain health goals?
  • Get some movement?
  • Get enough sleep and rest?
  • Give nice gifts to people?
  • Do voluntary work?
  • Be left alone to watch movies?
  • Complete a reading challenge before December 31?
  • Take time to reflect on the past year?

Once you have identified what is most important to you during this holiday season, you can condense it to a phrase. In this way, it’s easy to remember. When you start to get pulled by someone else’s idea for what you should be doing, you can remind yourself of your intention and decide how to act.

Clarify in your own mind what you’d like this holiday season.

Image credits: Pexels (License CC0)

Ask the people close to you about their intentions

If you’re spending the holidays with other people, it would also be useful if you know what their intentions are. By knowing what each of you would like for the holiday season, you make it much easier for everybody to get what they want and for people to be less grumpy. In the end, that means that everyone enjoys the holidays more!

For instance, my mother and my brother will be visiting my boyfriend and me for the holidays. My intentions for this time are: spend time with my close people, get some rest, do some fun things (but not too many), and read. I know that my mom shares these interests, but I don’t think my brother does. He probably wants to stay up late and sleep late, which doesn’t match our intentions. And my boyfriend doesn’t like Christmas and also has to work during the holidays, so I don’t think he wants to do lots of fun things. Mostly he’d just like to rest.

So the way I see to combine everyone’s preferences is to, primarily, have enough time for rest (which also gives me time to read). We can do some fun things, but I shouldn’t try to pack too many activities into a few days. And I should also accept it if my brother and/or my boyfriend don’t want to join and not take it personally.

It really helps when everyone is honest about what they want. For instance, a couple of weeks ago, I proposed that my mom, my brother, and I go to a Christmas concert during their stay. I didn’t really want to go but thought it might be nice and fun for my mom. My brother didn’t really want to go. And then my mom also said that she’s been going to plenty of concerts recently, so she’d rather go for walks in nature parks. Perfect! That’s what I prefer as well.

Then I realized I’d really like to watch the new Fantastic Beasts movie in the cinema, and I asked the others whether they wanted to go. It turned out that everyone was up for it, so now we’re doing a simple, easy, fun thing together. What a nice outcome.

It really helps to first clarify in your own mind what you’d like out of the holiday season and then discuss that with the people you’ll be spending that time with. If everybody is clear about what they’d like, it’s much easier to find a way to make people happy.

What is your intention for the holidays? Do those align with how your close people want to spend this time? Let me know by commenting below or on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

How to get yourself to do what you intended to do

On By MarishaIn Organization & ProductivityLeave a comment

When you make specific plans about when you’ll complete a desired activity, you’re much more likely to do it. But it’s one thing to plan it and another thing to actually complete it. How do you make sure you follow through with your plans?

Implementation intentions are examples of simple, explicit planning: “If situation X arises, then I will do Y.” I explained this in more detail here (point 1).

Specific plans are great, but how do you make sure you actually do them?

  • Put them on your calendar: Make an event on your calendar. When the time comes, do the activity. It doesn’t get much simpler than that, but it only works if you check your calendar and follow what it says.
  • Set reminders: You can add a reminder to your calendar event. Or you can add a separate reminder. Or you can create a note (e.g., in Google Keep) with a reminder. Alternatively, you can put post-it notes around the house or on your computer monitor. The problem with reminders is that they’re easy to ignore.
  • Set an alarm: An alarm is something you actually have to turn off. It requires an action from your side, or otherwise it will continue making noise. Alarms are more effective than reminders because even if you choose to ignore its message, you still have to physically do something such as press the ‘off’ button.
  • Name your intent clearly: When the alarm goes off to tell you to go to bed, for instance, you need to say out loud what you are going to do now:

“I am getting ready to go to bed. I will read for 15 minutes in bed.”

Or, alternatively, if you choose not to follow the intent of the alarm:

“I am staying here and continuing to look at social media.”

If you change your mind sometimes, that’s okay, but then state that clearly:

“I am staying here for 5 more minutes in order to finish my conversation with my brother. In five minutes, I will get up and get ready for bed.”

This may seem silly, but clearly naming what you are doing and what you are going to do incites action.

  • Track the time you spend on certain tasks: Monitor how long different activities take you. Once you have a realistic idea of how much time you spend on what, you can make purposeful, informed choices about what you do more of and what you do less of.
  • Set practical obstacles that prevent you from doing other (unwanted) things: For example, if you’re trying to limit your time on social media, install an app that limits the amount of time you can spend on those sites/apps.
  • Make it easy to follow through with your intentions: If you’d like to go to the gym, lay out your gym clothes from the day before. If you’re trying to have a healthy meal, make your food beforehand.

You can use one of these tips or combine several to make sure you follow through with your implementation intentions. For instance, now I’m reading before bed every night. I’m using several of these strategies: it’s on my calendar; I have an alarm on my phone to tell me to get into bed; I state my intent clearly; and I’ve put my kindle on my night stand, so it’s easy for me to read. Also, before I started this, I tracked the time I spent reading books for pleasure and was disappointed to see that I wasn’t making a lot of time for that. Now, I’m making some changes, and I’m quickly seeing the amount of time spent reading increase.

How do you make sure you complete the things you’d like to do? Or are there any activities you particularly struggle with? Let me know by commenting below or on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

Get up and move every hour

On By MarishaIn Health, Organization & Productivity1 Comment

An easy way to feel less stiff and more energetic during your workday.

I’ve been trying something new recently. When I’m at work, I set a timer for 45 minutes and begin working. Once the time is up, I get up and move for 5 minutes. I walk down the hallway, climb some stairs, do some bodyweight moves, and stretch. I’m sure I look silly, but it definitely lifts my energy levels.

Usually, when I sit for a long period of time, my back gets stiff, and I get restless or, alternatively, sleepy. I came up with the idea to do some movement in order to help my back not get stiff, but I didn’t expect it would also influence my energy levels so much. Now when I begin my next 45-minute work period, I am energized and more motivated to sit down and work.

So what do I actually do?

I often go up and down the stairs. I descend all the way to the basement, climb up the stairs all the way to the third floor (that’s 4 floors worth of stairs!), and then go back down to my office. Therefore, if you see me at the staircase at work, don’t be surprised: chances are pretty high you can find me there.

If I’m too lazy to climb stairs, I just walk down the hallway. That’s very easy, but the hallway is not that long, so I often end up doing a couple of rounds. It ends up feeling a bit repetitive, unfortunately.

Sometimes I do bodyweight exercises that are easy to perform with no equipment. I usually do two of the following: squats, push ups, lunges, lat “push downs”, good mornings, or a couple of other exercises. I’ve even been doing hand stands against the wall, which is a serious feat at work! The other day I also realized I could do crow pose, so I held that for a bit. Also fun to do at work 🙂 I also do some stretches – nothing fancy, just whatever I feel like.

I imagine I look weird doing exercises in my office, so I go to a small hallway that isn’t used much. I’ll probably give someone a fright one day when they walk by!

Moving a little bit every hour has several benefits:

  1. It interrupts the stiff sitting posture many of us maintain for hours on end, alleviating any back, neck, or shoulder problems we may be having or developing.
  2. It gets the blood flowing frequently, thus improving circulation.
  3. It raises energy levels simply because movement gets us to be active.
  4. It ensures that we take breaks once every 45 minutes or so, and regular breaks can help us stay concentrated and able to do focused work throughout the day.

Perhaps moving every hour seems like too much or a bit “out there.” But in fact, it’s unnatural to sit for 8 hours a day. Movement is natural to us, and we may feel better if we incorporate little bits of light movement throughout our day.

Let me know if you try moving every hour or just a couple of times during your work day! Do you notice a difference? Comment below or on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.