So back in January, I read Leo Babauta’s book, The Power of Less. I started on January 26th, trying to acquire a new habit. I wanted to write down my three most important tasks in the morning. I dropped a day or two, but I made it through the thirty days without missing two days in a row. By the end, I had a nice row of dots on my calendar, with one dot for each day I did this habit. I congratulated myself on a new habit in my notebook.

More than a month later, I am still writing down my three most important tasks in the morning. I forget sometimes, but I manage to write them down later in the day if I’m in a rush. If I don’t write them down, I feel bad, like when I go to bed without brushing my teeth.

I initially failed at starting a second habit. The idea was to focus on a task for 10 minutes at a time. I thought this sufficiently small. The problem was measuring this. Each time I did a task, I had to note the time, write the task down, and then measure whether I did it for 10 minutes or not. Constantly doing this throughout the day was a chore, and I quit.

I think I bit off more than I could chew. If I were to choose a similar habit, I just might make it something like: When you sit down to read, make sure you read at least 10 pages before getting up. I’ll make it task-specific.

After that failure, I decided to try something simpler. I cleaned up my desk, and made it my goal to clean my desk every night before I went to bed. I continued with the dot system. It went pretty well, until I went on vacation for a week. I didn’t clean my desk because I didn’t have a desk.

Once I got back from vacation, I went back to work. Since April 1st, I’ve dropped only one day. It hasn’t been 30 days since vacation, but I’m going to declare today the ending day and congratulate myself on a new habit.

Cleaning my desk at night has actually changed my behavior during the day as well. I will spontaneously clean my desk when it looks messy. I will put everything in its place. I will take notebooks and books off the desk and put them in their proper spot. I’m very happy about this.

I’m looking for the next habit to undertake. There are two things I want to do: Keep my inbox at zero, and only check my e-mail twice a day. Hm, and goodness, there are other sites that I obsessively check that I should limit.

I’ve decided I’m going to focus on checking my e-mail only once a day. I will do this for two weeks. In the meantime, I will try to delete my e-mails, but I will not focus on keeping the inbox empty. After the two weeks, I will move on to processing that inbox to zero.

Let’s see what happens.

For years, I’ve been prattling on about how habits are important. Only now has that theoretical knowledge become practical knowledge. Time to work on habit #3.