It is the 1st of May and a beautiful spring day in London.
I just returned home after having tea at the House of Lords with one of my former school teachers who is now a Dame 🙂
I happened to be near Big Ben when it stuck mid-day. Rarely have I seen both hands pointing to twelve at the same time and on such a sunny day too.
On the way back, during my tube journey home, I reflected on what it would be like to revisit Big Ben in a months time on 1st June at midday. How will my life be different then? How will the world have changed in 30 days?
One of the keys to changing your life for the better is to establish new habits – and I wondered what it would be like to adopt a new, empowering habit for the next 30 days i.e. one new habit every day.
So that is what I have taken on – I will adopt a new habit everyday from today till the end of May. It normally takes a few weeks for new habits to become the norm so come the end of June these new habits will be a part of me.
I invite you to join me during May to become a new you. Get a journal or use a diary to note the new habits as you take them up.
As for habits to take up, here are a few that come to mind:-
• Get up earlier every day and at a set time – say 7am
• Get to bed earlier
• Check emails only once or twice a day
• No weekend working
• Batch your phone calls
• No chocolate
• No grazing
• Only 30 mins of television a day or less
• Restrict web surfing to 15 mins a day
• Early morning walks
• Call my parents at least 3 times a week.
And so on.
Find the new habits that will make the most difference to YOU in making your life more joyous, effective and efficient.
To take up my 30 day challenge, answer these questions for yourself:-
What will you now do different?
What will you start doing?
What will you stop doing?
Think about these questions as you watch Big Ben striking mid-day below. And then go and do it over the next 30 days.
Share your habits and successes below 🙂
Hi Arvind
I love the habits you’re setting. Especially batching email and phone calls.
But… web surfing? Wow! What about for research or educational purposes when you need to look for something? Is that part of what you call “web surfing”? Or is web surfing just wasting time on the net surfing for nothing in particular?
Kavit
Dear Kavit,
Thank you for the positive feedback.
YES – by limiting “web surfing”, I do mean surfing and wasting time on the net surfing for nothing in particular.
It is so easy to get distracted by various links, headlines etc whilst looking at a webpage – and before you know it, you could have been surfing for an hour or two!
So I suggest restricting your work time surfing to just research or educational purposes – perhaps even use an alarm clock to let you know when your allocated time is up.
Of course, you can always allocate leisure time for surfing purely for entertainment or linking with friends via one of the many social networks on the net.
Good luck!
Arvind