This Boring Exercise is Making My Life Extraordinary (week 1 results)

Boring November challenge.

In case you forgot, for the month of November, I am taking action on a very simple truth. 👇

We become the little things we do consistently.

Quick recap

In this post, I shared about my discovery of the boring tax. This is the part of the learning/improvement process that is slow, often boring, and unimpressive. I call it the boring tax and we have to pay it to accelerate to the next part of the process. These are the little daily behaviors we do on a regular basis that either make us better or deader.

I won’t repeat that post, you can read it yourself. Long story short, I made a list of all the little behaviors I want to add and for how long I want to do them daily. They are a bit boring and not overly impressive. Yet. Every Wednesday, I’ll be sending out a newsletter to update anyone interested in my progress. If you don’t want to get these update emails let me know by replying and saying so.

The list of improvements

• Devotions - 30 minutes

• Read - 15 min

• Active recall/public speaking - 15 min

• Online writing - 15 min

• Spanish practice - 10 min

• Journal - 5 min

Keep in mind, this is the ideal amount of time I’m shooting for. Even if I only do something for a few minutes, if I went through the process, I still count it. For example, today my devotions was only about 15 min. I still counted it. The most important part of the process is going through the action of starting.

Also, I’m not going to time myself for each, that gets cumbersome. Usually, once I start I end up going for longer than the time anyway. If you think I’m cheating let me know.

My progress (welcome to the land of accountability)

Devotions, Read, Active recall/public speaking, Online writing, Spanish practice, Journal. Left to right.

Nov 1 - ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌

Nov 2 - ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌

Nov 3 - ❌ ❌ ❌ ✅ ✅ ❌

Nov 4 - ❌ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅

Nov 5 - ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ❌

What I’ve learned so far

I’ll be brief.

I learned that there are 2 that I really struggle to get done each day. Spanish practice and journaling. I genuinely do not like doing them, even though it only takes a few minutes each day.

The old me would have just “tried harder” which wouldn’t have been much help long term.

Instead, I played around with doing it at different times. Spanish for example, is much easier to fit into my day at the beginning. I’ve started doing it right after my devotions and there’s little to no resistance. If I’m short on time I can journal in Spanish, thus doing both at the same time.

I’ve also learned that if I have to do something, it’s not good to wait. At the end of the day, I don’t have much time left and it’s easy to rationalize that sleep is more important. At the end, I’m crunched for time meaning every minute available is exponentially more important. The last thing I want to do is fill that time with something I don’t enjoy.

Journaling has been a struggle.

There are two reasons I’m finding it hard to journal.

1. There’s no ritual or routine built around it.

2. I’m not going to bed early enough.

Going to bed on time is hard enough, the last thing I want to do right before bed is halt the whole process and journal. Instead, I’m thinking about moving it entirely. Instead of right before bed, I think I’ll try doing it earlier in the evening on my front porch. Giving it it’s own location might be beneficial. I’ll try it and let you know.

Conclusion

The first few days I had to work to get most of these done. But after a week or so, there are only a few that I have to really be intentional with. Active recall and reading happen almost naturally every day now. As time goes on the goal is for each to become like that.

Stay tuned.

Send me an email with how you’re doing in this boring November challenge.