(Specifying “personal” in case potential future employers read this - I can work just fine with plenty of motivation. ;))
I’ve asked something like this before, and got good advice (although I’m still not sure how minestrone and quinoa are in any way substitutes for pasta - doesn’t mean it wasn’t good advice, of course). But I forgot all about that thread until just now, having done absolutely NOTHING with it.
It’s sort of a pattern I follow. I really need to clean my apartment; it’s gotten pretty bad. But I come home from work exhausted on weekdays (and wanting to spend my three hours free per day doing something I want to do) and spend my weekends catching up on sleep and luxuriating in not having anything required to do (normally)… I’m sure everyone knows how easy it is to keep to habits. Same with eating less pasta. I try to mix it up some more (if only for variety’s sake), but I’m still eating it at least four times a week (sometimes more than double that if I eat leftovers over the course of an entire week) because it’s really really delicious, easy to cook, and extremely cheap (which seems to make it unique in the culinary world, really, apart from tearing up a head of lettuce and pouring salad dressing on it).
Any thoughts on how to break out of lazy patterns (whether it’s personal or a resource I can look up), especially when it’s so difficult for me to start doing anything about them in the first place? It’s all about not doing what I want to do, which is, of course, the difficulty in the first place - learning how to do things I don’t want/hate to do (clean, eat right, exercise) is important, I know, which is why I’d appreciate thoughts on how to get started!
Little tiny goals every day. Today I do one load of laundry. Today I do not take a nap. Today I only spend 1 hour online. Today I wash the dishes. Today I put the dishes away. Today I have a meal without pasta. Today I walk once around the block.
Once you get the hang of little goals, start grouping them together or repeating a goal several times in one week.
You can also give yourself little rewards, but make your “bad stuff” a reward - if I clean the fridge, I get pasta for 2 days. If I walk two days in a row, I get an extra hour of online time. If I do the dishes AND put them away, I get a nap.
Treat yourself like an idiot child. It works for me.
Agree with ZipperJJ, little goals. I tell myself that today I will do ONE thing above and beyond bare requirements to get by. Any ONE thing.
When that gets too easy, I’ll start making categories. Okay, I will do ONE health-related thing, and ONE financial thing, and so on. (That might turn out to be flossing my teeth and opening my bills, but it counts.) Eventually these little things set the stage for big things.
Maybe I shouldn’t give away this secret, then, but I also find that once I break out of the inertia of the bad habit, I don’t even really end up wanting the “bad stuff” reward.
"I will act now, I will act now, I will act now. Henceforth, I will repeat these words each hour, each day, everyday until the words become as much a habit as my breathing and the action which follows becomes as instinctive as the blinking of my eyelids. With these words, I can condition my mind to perform every action necessary for my success.
I will act now for now is all that I have. Tomorrow is the day reserved for the labor of the lazy. I am not lazy. Tomorrow is the day when the failure will succeed. I am not a failure. I will act now for success will not wait. If I delay, success will become wed to another and lost to me forever. This is the time, this is the place, I am the person." - Og Mandino
Some people can only break into healthy habits through a schedule. Make yourself a schedule. Post it on the wall. When you do it, give yourself a big green X. If you fail, you get a red X.
When I was training for a marathon, just looking at all the green Xs kept me going. Some days, I’d go running just for the green X.
Also, if you tell others what your goals are, and you have to answer to someone, that’s motivating as well. Even if you only post your successes on facebook and see 15 acquaintances “like” it. It makes a difference.
In trying to get my husband to lose weight, the doctor gave him a list of one hundred little things to do. He was to pick any one. Then the next week he was supposed to keep doing the first thing and add one more.
It wasn’t the greatest list because some of them were redundant and several of them didn’t apply to him, but you get the idea.
I’ve sort of combined that idea with the small goals idea mentioned upthread, to get myself going on cleaning and organizing the house. For a while I was trying to get rid of one thing every day, whether it was throwing it out or giving it away. At this point, the kitchen is staying mostly clean (acceptably clean if not spotless, to where it doesn’t require massive effort to prepare for company), clothes get put away when the laundry is done, and things are mostly not piling up in other places.
One thing at a time, and don’t worry about all of it. You can’t do everything at once anyway.