How I Avoid Old Habits: Physical, Mental, Sleep

11/10/15

So, I have gone quite a while without serious indulgence in any of my bad habits. I have not gone to reddit save for when google has brought me there, and only stayed there for a bit to gain the information I needed. I have not read any webcomics, read any webcomics, or watched any YouTube videos. I have watched some TV, but only with someone else as an actual social event. I drank a bit of soda once, but again it was more of a social thing.

I have felt no desire to binge on any of these things.

A large part of it has been the enforcement of the rules that I have been following since about a month ago (wow, time flies). But that was the motivation to do it, it was not an actual strategy to avoid all the time sinks that I had had so much trouble quitting before.

Something I've noticed myself doing is placing things into three distinct categories: physical, mental, and sleep. Nothing more. If I want to watch a video, that means I want to do something mentally stimulating, and so I should do something like write a blog post or code, or something of that nature.

If I don't feel like doing anything mentally stimulating, then I decide that I don't actually want to watch a video. It will just further mentally drain me, causing me to feel like watching more videos, and cause a negative-feedback loop that will ruin my day. This was a thing that happened all the time before I quit using media as a break from work. Media can be stimulating, and it can be draining, and for the longest time I had trouble deciding what it would do to me.

Now, I know that if regular productive work is something I can choose to do, then media will be stimulating, but in that case I should just choose to do the work. I currently gain little value from consumption of media.

When mentally engaging things don't sound appetizing and I feel the urge to go to reddit, then instead I do some exercises or stretch. This usually clears my head in an absolutely amazing way and I can happily get back to the mentally stimulating tasks that I was avoiding before.

If physical activity is also something I am unable to choose to do, it simply means I should sleep. This is a choice I often didn't consider, but now it's the only choice if I can't focus on mental tasks and haven't the energy for physical ones.

What's interesting about this attitude is lately I'm sleeping less than I used to. It's like I know when to sleep now, and thus sleep better.

Speaking of which... it's almost 2000 (8 p.m.). Time for bed.