July 20, 2007: Creating a Scaffold

Steve Pavlina wrote a terrific post for someone like me, working at home and wasting far too much time reading email and surfing the web. http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2007/07/how-to-create-a-personal-productivity-scaffold/
The whole day can go by with little accomplished when I end up reading favorite blogs all day, in between hits of "catching up" with my email. Sure I've kept my inbox to 0 but that can't be the whole of my day. I want to get over this bad habit, replace it with better habits. Steven is the big "30 days to form a habit" man (I don't know where he really got that data, that 30 days in a row is what it takes to form a habit). But he maintains that in order to form a new habit, first it is wise to have what he calls a day's "scaffold" in place. This, he says, will help me stop the nonproductive use of my time. Steve reports that the way he has managed the email-surfing-email problem was to create a scaffold, a structure or edifice to hold the beginning and the end of his work day. With a highly structured beginning, he is able to the proceed to be productive in the ways he wants all through the day. His beginning includes a simple review of the day, a short period of journaling, meditating and a few other activities that he does somewhat by a checklist. His whole "morning scaffold" takes an hour, from 8 to 9. Now I know from other Pavlini posts that he has already gone out and run or lifted weights or whatever else his current exercise programs consists of, and that he does this every day. He failed to include that in his description of his "scaffold" or morning routine, and this is an important emission. If I were getting up at 5 everyday, running for 45 minutes, eating breakfast, I would be ready for a sold scaffold by 8, and it would be a whole new me. I tried getting up early for a few weeks, and it fell apart, I couldn't keep it up, I simply got too tired. Right now I am trying to establish a daily Kundalini yoga habit.

I like the idea of establishing a "scaffold" for my day in my at home office. I'll let you know how I progress; I'll work on it over the weekend when things are varied (family demands) from my usual patterns.