Tasks, repetitions, and habits
I accept my imperfections by doing more work because I know I may mess it up. And that’s ok!
The more you do, the more you'll improve and after a while it becomes a habit to do or act a certain way. There’s a difference between making a mistake and learning from it, and redoing the same preventable mistake over and over. Making a mistake once is one thing but redoing it without learning is a choice and we have to stop playing the victim when we can choose a different path.
Two things that cause the most damage in my case are distractions and lack of focus. Lately I was doing the 50/10 which is 50 minutes of work for 10 minutes of break every hour. At first, it worked great but after a bit, the distractions slowly crept back in and suddenly I found myself looking for something to buy online. So I now shifted this to a shorter period: 15/1 which is 15 minutes of work with 1 minute of break. 1 minute isn’t long, of course, but what I do is close my eyes and try to relax for that period of time. Overall it helps me disconnect from the stress for 60 seconds and then I can keep going for a bit more. I find myself less trying to distract myself because I don’t really have the time for it.
In this case, I’m suffocating the distractions with the time crunch. Over time, it’ll become more automatic and slowly will transform into a habit.
Changing habits can take time but it’s the little things that can compound in a bigger way after a while. Again, the more you do, the better you “can” become. I say “can” because you could be doing “something” but that might not be enough to move the needle or make an impact or a dent in the overall goal you wish to achieve.
Having clarity on what you want to achieve will help you focus your attention on what matters. Once that is clear and concise, you can do the steps over and over until it’s anchored in and you no longer need to think actively about it.
In order to help anchor good habits, praise the good and ignore the bad. Focusing on the good of what was achieved will give you a short burst of satisfaction and should help you to keep going for a bit longer. But be careful because extreme discipline without being given a chance to please or help or make a difference or even have some kind of satisfaction is torture for the mind. Your self-esteem is reduced to 0 and you just stop doing what could potentially help most of the times.
So overall, the goal here is not to be perfect but to do our best to complete some tasks that’ll help you move forward just a bit further toward your goals. And if we can develop habits along the way, why not?