"full of regulations and being strict" (Poom)

Also: "discipline" (Put), "the habit" (Kitt) and "control myself" (Num)

The quotations in the title and heading are from your responses to our first blog writing, where you shared your ideas about Zemach's suggested five strategies for successful learning. As I read Poom's comment, and the replies to it, I realized how well it applies to myself, or, rather, how badly I manage my time. Zemach doesn't really address it, but Poom and his commentators are right that having regular habits is an important part of achieving a goal that takes time, which is why achievers from sports stars to successful novelists all talk about sticking to regular habits: doing things at set times. 

I'm not going to pretend that I excel at that, I don't. But I do have some regular habits that help me to get things done. I start the day with my morning coffee, during which I also read the news from few different newspapers and magazines, and sometimes I write a quick, or not so quick, response to some of the articles that interest me. I usually set aside the first two hours of my day for this. It makes for a relaxing start that also lets me achieve something, and that gets the day off to a positive start for me. 

I then have my breakfast a couple of hours after I've got up, except on weekends. On weekends, I have a reading and discussion class at 9:00 AM. In fact, this class also means I have to modify my usual coffee time activities: on weekends, I cut my time on browsing the the news to one hour, before moving to work mode, which includes reading the coming text for class again and going over my lesson plan. 

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Ways to regulate and discipline your life

Google calendar boxes nicely.
Include the fun things

With breakfast, I enjoy watching some NetFlix. But I have to resist the temptation to binge. A useful trick (strategy?) I learned a few years ago is to box my time, including time to relax and do things that are fun. This means that when I have my late breakfast after the coffee and news browsing, I'm allowed to watch about 30 minutes of NetFlix as I eat. Series like The Big Bang Theory are good for this — each episode is only 20 minutes. Gripping series like The Queen's Gambit would be dangerous for me: each episode is way over the breakfast time limit, which would tempt me to watch just a little bit more: disaster for my daily schedule of things to do. 

View from my phone

Since I've gone into Covid mode, following routines has been worse and more important than ever. The usual external disciplines that regulated my day have been messed up, leaving me more dependent on myself to manage my days. And I've never been good at that. Just making a to do list does not work for me; I'm very good at finding excuses to not do things on the list. But having time actually set aside — boxed — for a particular activity, including fun things like like NetFlix or lunch with friends, does help me to impose a little constructive "discipline" as Put put it, or "being strict" as Poom put it. And some of  my boxes are regular habits, which make them much easier to stick with. 

The reason I wrote this post was not only to share my own ideas, but to invite you to share your own experiences about how to effectively regulate your time so that you get things done as an independent learner. 

And my real reason was to push you to think about setting aside time for regular reading and writing in English. When will  you box some time for reading and writing, for example, reading and responding to posts here on our our class blog?