Making Good Habits

I recently read an article by Scott Young on The 99% about how to fix bad habits. Although I think it was really more about how to force yourself to create good ones. Scott, through years of self proclaimed experimentation on himself has found a method of how to effectively do this. His method in a nutshell is "do it everyday". After a period of forcing yourself to do something it will eventually become a habit, a routine, that you don't have to think about anymore. No longer will you have to force yourself, but it will be second nature. Such a simple concept, yet I've never heard anyone else explain it in such a way that made so much sense.

As soon as I finished reading the article I was determined I needed to follow the method, and get started. Here are the habits I wanted to create for myself:

1). Wake up earlier
I've always been more of a night person. My whole family is. I just don't naturally want to jump out of bed. It just feels too good to hit snooze 10 times. However getting a late start on the day is probably the worst thing you can do for productivity.

2). Do some quick exercise
This is another thing that does not come to me naturally. I always found working out or exercising just for the sake of it to be an embarrassing and honestly kind of stupid activity. Somehow I can't imagine our ancestors thousands of years ago finding the biggest rock they could and lifting it over and over again for the purpose building muscle. Basically it doesn't seem natural to me. Incidental exercise through work, sport or a rigorous activity seems better to me, but alas I work on a computer... so yeah.

3). Draw everyday
Believe it or not, I do not draw everyday. If fact I feel like I haven't been drawing much at all lately. I suppose it's because I am constantly going back and forth between creating posters, to logos, websites and everything else in between. So I pretty much only end up actually drawing when I have an assignment to. That needs to change.

I'm happy to say that today was my first day, and I accomplished all 3. Ok yeah I know what you're thinking "first day is always easy." True, so we'll see how things pan out.

• I woke up at 7:30 (usually I get up at 9)
• Did pushups, pullups and situps
• and I drew this