Done To Zen

30 Day Trials are one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal of personal development. I can talk about why they are so brilliant, but there are already hundreds of articles on the subject. This article is about some of the things I noticed in the last two years that I’ve been employing this tool.

1. Sometimes, no matter how much you push yourself, you simply cannot see a trial to its end. Don’t beat yourself up over it; it’s simply not worth getting frustrated over. Try again next month. In 2007, I think my failure rate was 90%. In fact, I failed the same trial 12 times (if you guessed that this was the “don’t eat out” trial, you are right). I became rather depressed last year, but what’s the point? If it were easy to change habits, you wouldn’t need all these tricks and tools, would you?

2. On the other hand, sometimes it feels like the stars align and the universe bends over backward to make sure that your trial is a success. This certainly felt like this when I finally managed to stop eating chocolate in January. This, by the way, is after several trials, some successful (during which I didn’t eat chocolate for 30 to 60 days) and some not so successful. I wish I could say how to bring about these perfect trials but I have no idea why, sometimes, everything just works.

3. It’s OK to attempt more than one trial at a time, but don’t attempt more than one hard trial at a time. I often try out two to three trials in any one month, but I give myself two easy ones and one hard one. For example, running for me is hard. I hate running with a passion but I keep wanting to become a runner (if you’re wondering why I do this to myself, it’s gotten me stumped, too). So I’m once again attempting to make running a habit this month. But as this is my hard trial, I’m not trying any other hard changes. Trying to make two hard habits at the same time is sure way to fail in both of them.

4. Make your trials public. If you can do only one thing to ensure that you succeed, this has to be it. Nobody likes failing in front of other people. When it’s only your motivation that you have to rely on, it’s rather likely that you will fail. Let’s face it: the habits you want to make or change are never easy. But you can dramatically increase your chance of success by telling other people that you are going to make something happen: I’ve succeeded in more trials in 2008 than in all the previous years combined.

5. Check-in regularly. I found out that the trial is much more likely to go smoothly if I check in with my progress every day. This is something I learned during my “Wake up at 4AM” trial. I’ve tried this trial a couple of times before, to some success but it was always a painful experience. But the last time, I was excited to wake up early because I couldn’t wait to toot my horn so as to speak.

6. Trials will get easier. Trust me on this one. The first trial is always the hardest, even if what you’re trying to change is not that hard. By the time you’re at your tenth trial, it becomes very easy to make yourself stick to to your new habit for at least the 30 days that you are on your trial, after which, of course, it typically becomes trivial to maintain the habit. This is true even when you’re trying to break habits that you are really unhappy about breaking (ex., eating out for lunch every day).

7. Don’t commit to more than 30 days when trying to make/break a habit, especially not when it comes to those hard-to-change ones like eating out less, not smoking, and exercising more often. If I had started my “don’t eat chocolate” trial thinking that I was not going to do it for the rest of the year, I would surely have failed. I love chocolate too much, and it was hard to fathom the misery of having to force myself to not eat chocolate every day. So I started by committing to it for just 30 days. It was still hard, but it was not so bad because there was a clear-cut end to my self-inflicted torture. Once I was done with 30 days, I extended the trial another month. It was much, much more peaceful; I hardly thought about it once. I haven’t had a single bite of chocolate since January, and I can’t say that I’ve thought about it at all over the past several months.

8. When trying to make a habit, do it every day. It’s hard to make a habit when you’re doing it only once or twice a week. It takes too much self-discipline and you can’t ever really make it a habit anyway. Even if you have to do it only once every week, do it every day. For example, if you want to clean your bathroom every week, do it every day anyway. You are far more likely to stick to it.

9. The people around you can make or break some trials. For example: eating out. I used to go out with my colleagues for lunch for the better part of 2007 and 2008. Everyone goes out a lot at my workplace; on any given day, at least three people used to ask me out for lunch, and this made it all that much harder to stick with my trial.

10. If people are pressuring you to quit the trial but you don’t want to share with them why you’re doing the trial, then simply make something up. The goal is to get people to stop blindsiding you. You don’t want to tell people that you don’t want to go out with them because you want to save money? Tell them that you’re trying to get healthier or that you’ve got work to do or that you don’t like the restaurant. Whatever. It’s easier when your excuse is more long-term (”I want to eat healthier,” you can use over and over again, but “I don’t like the restaurant,” not so much).

Bonus Tip: Don’t start a trial on January 1st — thanks to long years of failures with January 1st goals, most of us are probably conditioned to fail just because we started the trial on that date. Start on December 31 or January 2. ;-)

What about you? What tips do you have on 30 day trials?

Waking up at 4AM Trial

Today is the 26th day of my 4AM trial. I’ve been staying awake longer after waking up at 4AM over the past week, mainly because I have something to do that I absolutely have to do before going back to sleep (something that isn’t too painful/hard to do, actually). :-) I’m still checking my blog statistics right after waking up, and that’s helping a lot when it comes to jumping out of bed (figuratively-speaking) as soon as my alarm rings.

I still keep the alarm far away from my bed. I made the mistake of placing it right next to me once and almost ended up breaking my trial after so many days of following it faithfully: I had gone back to sleep almost before I knew that I had woken up, but fortunately, I “woke” up again at 4:02AM.

Only 4 days left. Not that I plan on stopping, but it’s nice to know that I am almost done with the first 30 days, at least. :-D

Stop Eating Out Trial

Today is day 12 of the “stop eating out” trial. I found it much harder to resist eating out this week than I did last week. The main reason for this is that my coworkers keep asking me out to lunch. Every time they ask me to come out for lunch is another opportunity to stop the trial. I love eating out, so I keep wanting to argue with myself about why I should break the trial and go out and eat out, enjoy my life, stop paining myself, etc. But I managed to survive so far, but only because most dishes at restaurants are bad for the waistline. So: the main purpose of this trial has shifted from saving the money to keeping fit.

Another Previous Trial

I previously mentioned the 5 30 day trials I did so far. I actually did six trials; I completely forgot about one — I did a trial in April: making my bed right after taking a bath. I read somewhere that cleanliness in the bedroom starts with an inviting-looking bed, hence the trial. That was probably the easiest trial of the year.

So that brings my successful trial count to 6. Another 4 days, and it will up to 7. Another 18 days, and it will be up at 8. :-)

What did I learn this week?

Your coworkers, friends, and family can make or break the trial. Well — at the very least, they can make the trial very painful. Case in point is my “no eating out” trial. A new coworker keeps asking me out for lunch every day — even after I told them that I’ve decided to not eat out because I’m spending too much on it. They are trying to convince me otherwise…

This post is dedicated to Steve Speirs for linking to my blog and sending tons of traffic my way. :-)

Waking up at 4AM Trial

Today marks the 22nd day of my “waking up at 4AM” trial. I can’t say that I’m thinking about it any longer. The alarm rings, and I’m up for at least 1/2 hour to 1 hour. No voice in the back of my head nagging me to go back to sleep. I feel pretty confident that I will be able to continue this through the rest of the year without any trouble. But as I worry about long-term commitments, I’m still telling myself that at the end of June, I’m only going to do it for yet another 30 days.

The whole point of waking up at 4AM was to get important things done early in the morning, but I dropped that at some point along the way. Not getting enough sleep was making just getting up at 4AM hard enough, and I really did not want to start the trial over.

On the other hand, I noticed something interesting over the past week. Even on days when I’m dead tired because I didn’t go to sleep until 12PM on the previous night, I still get up right away. As soon as my alarm rings. But that’s not the interesting part; the interesting part is that, for the first time in my life, I’m excited to start a new day. Not because my day job suddenly got more interesting, but because I’m doing things that make me feel good as soon as I wake up.

My morning routine for the previous week has been to wake up, check my blog statistics, my feed statistics, and read personal finance articles until I’m too tired to continue. I love watching my blog and feed readership going up, which it is doing in leaps and bounds, hence my excitement in waking up.

I’ve always woken up fairly early — between 5AM and 6AM — on weekdays, but I’ve always tried to stay in bed as long as possible. Even if I had gone to sleep at 9PM the previous night, I was tired and miserable the next morning. But the aforementioned routine puts me in immediate high-spirits, which is the yardstick by which I measure the rest of the day, so my whole day feels better, even though nothing else changed.

First impressions are the ones that stick with you.

Stop Eating Out Trial

I keep wanting to say “Not eating out” trial, but I’m trying to phrase all my goals and habits in the positive (not negative) sense. You know: “Lose weight” instead of “Don’t be overweight.” I still keep slipping up.

Anyway.

Today is day 8 of my “Stop eating out” trial.

The first thing I got to say about doing two trials at a time is that it’s not hard. There are several reasons for this, but the main reason is that I started my 2nd trial after I was about halfway done with my 1st trial. If I had started both of them on day 1, I’m sure I would have failed at one or both them.

The second thing is that this trial is going far easier than I thought. 8 days, and I can’t really say that I’ve ever had a day in which I felt suicidal about not getting to go out. In fact, most days, I didn’t even think about it. There are two main reasons for this: (1) I’m eating sustaining and tasty food at home, and (2) I now have a purpose in my life, so I just concentrate on that whenever I start to feel like eating out.

Trials and Confidence

More than any tangible benefits, the nicest things about doing 30 day trials is the confidence it gives you when you finish them. The 2 trials I’m doing now are my 4th and 5th trials this year. The first trial was to stop eating chocolate (now, that was hard) and the second trial was to stop buying at vending machines (I slipped on that one and had to restart, which sucked). My third trial was to go to karate 6 days a week. I missed only 1 day because I had to go to some work-related party, but I made up for it in advance by going to an extra class. From that week on, though, I’ve been going to 8 classes a week, so I’m happy.

Crystallizing the next 2 trials

For the next two trials, I want to do something hard and something easy. I already talked about what trials I want to do in July, and this is essentially what I’m going to be doing, but with some tweaks.

Trial #6: write from 5AM to 6AM and run from 6AM to 7AM. Trial #7: leave credit card at home for the whole month.

I expect #6 to be hard and #7 to be easy. (The reason for the latter is that I only have to have enough will-power to leave the credit card at home. For five minutes. That’s it. I won’t have to constantly battle with the temptation to use my credit card for the rest of the day because I won’t have it with me.)

And what do these trials have to do with personal finance?

Waking up at 4AM: gives me time to do the important things in my life. I am a wimp when it comes to evenings. I always want to get tons done, but I usually end up getting nothing done. Besides, I love getting the important stuff done and out of the way before I go to work so I don’t have to keep worrying the whole day about whether or not I’ll get them done. The things I’m doing will help me financially. Hence…

Not eating out: eating out costs more than not eating out. More than that, though, I’m also taking the $6 I spend every day and putting it in my bank account, which means that, every month, I will have saved $168 every month. That’s a lot of money. :-D

Writing from 5AM to 6AM: I’ve been writing a book since I was 15. I want to get it done this year. It’s a fabulous novel, in my humble opinion, and once I’m done with it, it will provide a nice source of passive income. That’s one of the two reasons. It’s also the secondary reason. The main reason is that I just want to get done with it and move on. I’m kind of sick of it at this point. It’s been 5 years in the works, and it’s a huge source of stress. Less stress = more happy = better health = fewer medical expenses = more money for me = less stress = more happy = better health = fewer medical expenses = more money for me…

Running from 6AM to 7AM: I’m not overweight (technically-speaking) but I want to convert about 30 pounds of fat into muscle. First of all, these 30 extra pounds are bad for my health. Second of all, they cause a lot of stress, which is also bad for my health. Third of all, running will improve my mood, which will reduce my negative thoughts, which are bad for my health. So running improves my health in three ways. Better health = more happy = fewer medical expenses = more money for me = better health = more happy = fewer medical expenses = more money for me…

Leaving credit card at home: for obvious reasons. Credit cards are the root of all evil. I’ve recently started stressing out because, while I still pay the card fully at the end of every month, I’m paying more and more money. (Mostly because of all the restaurant bills.) I don’t think that I’m addicted to credit card debt, but in case I am, it’s going to be easier to stop myself in the beginning than when it becomes an entrenched habit. Hence, the trial.

In Conclusion…

I’m excited. I want July to come already so that I can start the trials, which is something I’ve never felt before. Yes! Progress! :-D

Did I break the trial?

If you wake up at 4AM but then go back to sleep at 5AM, does this still count as waking up at 4AM? I did this a couple of times during the last week, mostly when I’ve had to stay up until 10 or 11PM the night before. (I always have the best excuses to do so, of course.) Today, I woke up at 4AM, went back to sleep at 4:30AM, and didn’t wake up until 7:15AM. That is to say, I’ve been aware of the passage of time before and kept checking my cell phone every 15 minutes to see when I need to wake up, but I was too tired to actually do that.

I am actually OK with this, though. I don’t think I’ve broken the trial yet. My goal was to wake up at 4AM; i.e., jump out of bed as soon as the alarm rang. Well, sit up and start doing something, at least. I’ve been doing that regularly. It’s just that some days, I go back to sleep after realizing that I’ve been staring at my laptop screen like a zombie for five minutes. Other days, I’m awake the whole time and doing something productive (or unproductive).

For the next trial (July), I’m planning on creating a chain of habits: wake up at 4AM, work on my book for one hour, work on my blog posts for 1 hour, go to the gym/running for one hour, brush my teeth, take a bath, and eat breakfast while reading personal development and financial articles. I think it will work well. I already do most of these things; I just don’t do them consistently.

Stop eating out - day 2

Today is also the second day of my “eating out fast” trial. I know, I probably should have waited until July, but as you can see from above, I’m committed to something else that month, something that I feel is more important than this one. However, I don’t want to wait until August to do this, because this is pretty important, too. Besides, no time like present to start a habit to break your addiction. If I didn’t do it now, when motivation is high, I’ll probably not do it for a long time.

I managed to not buy anything yesterday. I’m so proud of myself. This one is going to be challenging enough (I think) that I’m going to be making daily updates.

Credit card fasting

No, this isn’t another trial. However, for July, one of the trials I was considering was not using my credit card for an entire month. I don’t use my credit card a lot. I have only one of them and it has a $4500 maximum, which I have never reached before (except for one time, but I paid it off by the month end). I’ve still been using it more than I’ve been using it previously. I’m having to pay off balances of $300 - $500 every month, and I don’t like it.

So, I started figuring out all the instances I might have to use my credit card (there’s a $12 charge, a $50 charge, and a $4000 charge). I already got rid of the middle one (this is the subscription I cancelled). Yesterday, I prepaid the $12 charge. I’m going to be using the card to make that $4000 (education) purchase and pay it off this month, itself. With those three taken care of, I should have no other charges on my credit card next month.

Now, you might have noticed that I already have a 30-day trial in mind for July. But as I already did 2 out of the 3 things for this one this month, I feel compelled to finish this one, too.

After much thought, I’ve decided to try both of them over July. My focus is going to be on the first one — I’m not allowed to break it — and I’m really going to try my best to do the second one, but if I happen to break it, that’s OK.

We’ll see how it goes.

Speaking of which, who knows where the title came from?

Today is the 7th day of my trial. I am 1/4 of the way done. I also did something so incredibly stupid yesterday that I have a hard time and knew I was going to have a hard time staying awake today morning. Actually, I sort of did two stupid things, but the first one pales in comparison to the second.

1. I napped during the day. I was dead tired, so I took a nap, knowing full well that it was going to throw off my schedule. I could have gone to bed around noon and woke up at three, which would have been better, but I didn’t even come home until three, so I wasn’t able to do that.

2. I stayed up until 2AM doing basically unproductive stuff. I kid you not. After having to take a nap for being too tired, I stay up until the wee ours of the morning while knowing full well that I’m going to have the worst time waking up the next morning.

The good news is that despite all this, I’ve woken up at 4AM today. The bad news is that my eyes keeping on their own as if they are drawn down by an invisible force. I’ve sat on the bed for a little too long and almost went back to sleep, but I’m now writing this from the couch. Still want to sleep but it’s not as easy to do so.

So: if you’re trying to make a habit out of waking up early and are doing a 30 day trial, I’ll strongly recommend that you not stay up until 2AM on one day.