Low-overhead advice on how to build a new habit from Google engineer Matt Cutts, who was inspired by Morgan Spurlock’s various short-term experiments. Try something for 30 days, and at a minimum get a new experience, perhaps a lifelong habit.
Daily things are a great pleasure of mine (a morning poem courtesy of Poetry Daily, and checking out the gentle adventures of Mooch and Earl in Mutts.) Of course, like everyone, I quickly hit the limit of just how many daily things can be crammed in (this despite working at home and having no kids, so hardly fair to gripe).
That said, I really want to try two things he mentions in his blog and in the video: no email after 9:00 p.m. for 30 days (in fact, I’d like a “no digital devices after 9:00 p.m.” challenge, but that’s probably going overboard, and 30 days of novel writing (or, as nanowrimo.org has it in their, tag line, “Thirty days and nights of literary abandon.” Sounds more like a clothing optional resort in Key West than being a writer, but then I mostly write proposals and curriculum, not Harlequin Romances. Thirty days to a new genre?
A Few Reasonable Words 