Deciding Once.

Building new habits so I can be a new version of myself

Hey friends! Guess what my latest hyper-focus is? Developing new habits!!!!! I need to be a different version of myself so badly right now. I am sick of the current Reannon. She has no energy. She makes plans but never follows through. She is eternally angry (see last post…). She is not who I want to be right now.

This is the great thing about being a human, you can change whenever you need, or want, to. And I want to. Enter a shallow dive back into the world of James Clear and Atomic Habits. I say shallow dive because I had already read the book years ago and I only spent a few hours going over his stuff, instead of days, which would have been a DEEP dive! I also dipped my toes into a few unheard episodes of Kendra Adachi’s Lazy Genius podcast to help me focus on what I wanted. Shallow dives are where its at!

Over the weekend we had some of the most glorious winter days. The sky was blue and clear. The air was crisp. The sun had some warmth. It was GREAT! I decided to weed my back garden. My back garden is massive and was 99.9% weeds. It took me all of Saturday afternoon and most of Sunday. I decided to not listen to anything but the world around me. That meant I had hours and hours and hours to roll ideas around in my head. Usually, I would hate that but sensory rest was exactly what I needed.

These are some of the things I decided on that can help me become version 17(?) of myself. ( Friends, I don’t know how many versions of me I have been but 17 was the first number I thought of)

Decide Once is a concept I heard about on the The Lazy Genius podcast. It’s a principle used to stop decision fatigue. You decide once on something and move on. Some of the things I have settled on are-

• waking up at 545am Mon-Fri and exercising for 30 minutes at home. I went to look at some gyms but I really wanted to remove as many obstacles as possible to make this whole “get rid of internal energy/move your body/become an active person” thing as easy as possible for me to carry out. As James Clear says “What can I stick to even on the bad days”. I can stick to walking into my book room and doing a half-hour workout so that’s what I will do.

• Make a workout plan on Sunday night so I don’t have to find a workout each morning. I am using my Move subscription for workouts. I like that I can pick from different categories (cardio, strength, yoga, pilates) and then filter it by length or no jumping or beginner. I have 5 workouts written down this week, two done already, and then I might just repeat it each week until I feel like something different.

• on weekends I am going to wake up at 7 am instead of sleeping in. I had started noticing that despite sleeping for as long as I needed on weekends I wasn’t feeling any more rested so this weekend just gone, I woke up at 7 and started my day. And what do you know? I felt better for doing it!

• for breakfast each week I will eat one of four meals for the entire week. I am still having savoury breakfast most mornings (occasionally I’ll make protein pancakes for Blake and me) and the ones I enjoy most are- eggs and roasted tomatoes on seedy toast. Avo, smashed roasted sweet potato and feta on toast. Homemade sausage and cheese muffins. Baked beans on toast. I am going to keep rotating through those selections until I get sick of them.

• I will sort the kids’ washing but will not fold it. There is no point. Sometimes it never makes it to their wardrobes or gets put on their bed only to be knocked to the floor and hastily shoved in drawers. I am choosing not to care what happens to it once I have sorted it. That’s up to the kids.

• any new clothes I buy myself will be denim, blue, green, grey, lavender, pink or white/cream. These are colours I know look good on me and can form a capsule wardrobe of sorts. It will make it easier when I go looking for a top or skirt because I will be able to ignore all the other colours and stick to what I know will work for me and my existing wardrobe.

• meal plan formula for the foreseeable future - Monday = stew/casserole or soup (means leftovers for lunch) Tuesday = Mexican Wednesday = meat & veg Thursday = pasta Friday = take away Saturday = instant pot meal Sunday = eggs

• I am no longer packing anyone’s lunch but my own I have packed everyone in my house’s lunch for decades. My husbands. My kids every day of their school life, even some of their work days! I will make sure there is food in the house suitable for lunches but I am choosing to spend that half hour each morning doing something for myself, exercising. Sure, if someone is running late or needs help to put something together, I will help but that job is no longer solely mine.

I cannot tell you how much lighter I feel having made all those “decide once” choices. I truly feel like I have regained some space in my life. And that has allowed me to look around and say “ok, what else can we change around here so I don’t feel swamped by everything?”. My kids had better be ready because their chore list is going to grow! I am also trying to do things in the moment instead of thinking I’ll come back to it later but then never coming back to it. Stuff like, I see the box of toilet paper hasn’t been unpacked so I do it then and there instead of thinking I’ll do it later only to forget about it. I’m also working on completing a task ( mainly household stuff) before starting another one. I am TERRIBLE at having 5 half-finished jobs on the go because I get distracted by a new task when I haven’t even finished the one I am doing!

This might seem silly or inconsequential but I feel like this is the stuff I need to move me forward right now. Small wins. Less decision-making. More energy.

Are there some things you could apply the “decide once” principle to? What are they?

Talk soon xx