What changes have you made in order to promote a lifestyle which is happier and more fulfilling, or one which is productive and allows you to reach your goals. I recently re-read a book by Paul Dolan called ‘Happiness by Design’ in it he delves into the components of happiness and how to design your life so that you create an environment that is conducive to your wellbeing. There were a couple of aspects which struck me about my own quest for change for change, which has centered around 4 goals for 2019:

• Complete running coaching certificate.
• Start a side hustle.
• Run a marathon.
• Apply for US citizenship.

What struck me after reading the book was how finite my goals were. They are not process orientated, by which I mean they do not focus on the day to day habits that facilitate behavioral changes making a well-intentioned life possible. This provoked a number or musings on my parts.

• What obstacles do I need to remove from my life to ease mental baggage?
• What aspects of my daily life do I want to enhance?
• What new experience can I explore to find meaning or playfulness?

Considering obstacles, one is the general cleanliness and tidiness of my apartment. I am not slovenly, but I leave dishes in the sink, laundry on the floor and letters unopened. This is because my conscious self believes I do not hold any value in living in a show-home. However, paying attention to my feelings, having order to my environment is important, otherwise I would not be irritated when looking at my whiskers in the sink and not put clean kitchen/bedroom/bathroom on my weekend to do list, which invariably stays unaccomplished having negative consequences for my other weekend pursuits. Therefore, behavioral change number one is, recognizing that having an ordered environment is important to me and make it a daily practice to maintain its upkeep.

It is one thing to observe a thought. It is another to bring it to the fore and examine it. One such observation is the time pressure I put on activities when none exists. For instance, take my weekly long run. I am always concerned with how long it will take me. In fact, I give this thought less credence when I do in fact have time pressure, as my attention is honed on achieving my goal within the time I have. Instead, I focus upon how long the activity will take with the desire to move onto more passive activities. I fail to make the effort to engage in the flow of the activity. Counter intuitively, time pressure channels my energy and focus, I do not allow my mind to drift invariably to distraction. Therefore, the concern about wasting time is results in productive or enjoyable hours down the drain. Therefore, having a schedule especially for non-structured time such as weekends will aid my desire to maximize time. Often, my to do lists are flexible leading to a lot of deliberation about when I should do activities, with long bouts of procrastination in between. This deliberation spills over to the activity itself leading to decision fatigue affecting my choices with regard to whether to write one more paragraph or run that additional mile. Consequently, my second behavioral change is to make a schedule and apply it rigorously. This schedule should compact activities, whether they be fun, purposeful, passive or active. The purpose to fully allocate my attention to that activity for that period of time which I calculate will allow me to attain a state of flow more easily and accomplish more with less mental expenditure.

I started this post, highlighting the need to design your environment in a manner that is more conducive to your passion and purpose. This has required zooming out from narrow goals to examine the thoughts which obstruct the progress towards the goals. I so doing, I have highlighted two behavioral changes which I will now incorporate into my daily practice. It is my way of re-designing my life to reduce the friction in accomplishing purposeful routines and in so doing having more time and less guilt to engage in more fun pursuits without the worry of time getting in the way.