There was no plural for the word “priority” in the beginning of the previous century.
Now, I’ve heard this from a friend and the claim doesn’t actually check out to be true, but he has a point.
When everything is important, nothing is important.
Multitasking is a myth: when we think we are good at it, we really are just good at switching between tasks very quickly.
Focusing on multiple things at the same time is therefore simply inefficient. You can memorise two poems easier if you learn the one first and then the other one. Any other method — like memorising the first verse from each poem and then do the rest –, would take you longer.
This year I’m trying to pick up a few new habits. Probably too many of those in fact, but the top three were: do sports regularly, eat healthier and write more often. Building new habits requires a lot of attention, and it’s even more difficult to keep track of many at the same time.
I attribute the so-far high success rate to be able to focus on one habit at the time. For example, it was easy to start with a new sports routine: I only needed to make sure the time slots are set and blocked out, and everyone involved in setting my schedule knew about it. It was a drag at first, but a couple of weeks in I woke up on a Wednesday and couldn’t wait to swim — that’s when I knew the habit is set.
Swimming organically brought changing my diet habits too, because you need to eat something before jumping in the water, and you can’t just eat burgers after a good workout.
It’s actually quite fun how much technology didn’t help with these habits: if anything, all the apps I’ve tried were just distracting. In the aftermath it’s not a surprise, just look at the two most popular habit apps: Balance and Coach.me. How many features are there!
Tracking progress is fun though, and I’ve followed a simple method that I’ve learned from my girlfriend. She would put tiny checks in her calendar for the dates she went to the gym.
Without having a physical calendar, I just drew the days of the month on my blackboard and crossed them out whenever I’ve done sports. Something like:
[01] [xx] [xx] [04] [05] [xx] [07]
[08] [xx] [10] [xx] [12] [xx] [14]
etc.
Maybe someone can show me an app for that?