It takes a long time to re-learn life habits

Anthony Holmes  18 June 2009 03:20:12 PM

Some personal background about why I think it takes time and commitment to change deeply ingrained personal habits

Two years ago I did a course on diabetes management called DAFNE. The course covers how to juggle eating, activity, sickness, with the insulin doses needed to manage diabetes. The raw material in the course could probably be read in less than an hour. The course itself takes FIVE DAYS, with a half day review at six and twelve months. Before starting the course I seriously doubted that the full five days was needed. I had a suspicion that the health professionals who put the course together merely worked in a slower world than me. Possibly five days was needed for people who didn't study much?

As it turns out, the five days WERE useful, even for a smarty pants like me. (In fact, the course taught me maybe I'm not really so smart after all.) Although most people in the class could quickly recite the rules that DAFNE taught, when presented with real life scenarios, we kept needing to remind each other about how to apply it in practice. Taking it slowly wasn't just useful: it was necessary.

All this is a long winded way of explaining that I'm entering in to a new process of trying to learn and implement a new set of habits. It's going to take a lot of careful learning and painstaking reinforcement. This time I'm trying to change the way I deal with my work life.

Starting with eProductivity

After repeated procrastination, I'm setting aside time to learn and implement the productivity habits of David Allen's Getting things Done. I'm going to use the tools provided with Eric Mack's eProductivity.

I read about the GTD principles two years ago. I feel like someone trying to quit smoking: I only changed my habits for a while, and then fell back to my old ways of working. I'm now going to try it again.

In my job I get asked questions. Any individual question can be answered in many ways. Somebody might ask "what are the benefits of upgrading" and I might answer them face to face. I might send them a link to the Notes/Domino 8.5 Reviewer's Guide, and I might prepare a 15 page document that specifically addresses their requirements. In any week I might have 10-60 questions float past me. And I am very conscious that some of the harder questions get pushed to the back burner: sometimes for a couple of days, sometimes forever.

I need a better way to rate the relative importance of each question and rate my responses.

Last time around I tried to re-organise my life using standard email and To Dos. This time around I'm using the eProductivity application.

Initial time requirements

If you are thinking of adopting the eProductivity application, I recommend that you dedicate half a day to reviewing the requirements. Listen to David Allen's introduction, look at the screenshots and make sure you are uninterrupted whilst you watch the video. I'm never very good at watching a video that relates to a work/product topic. I'm going to sit through it a second time after I have installed the software, because I'm sure I'll need to watch some bits of it more than once to take it all in.



IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER  

I'm using a licence provided to me by Eric Mack. That may colour my opinions. I hope that I'm objective. But studies show that doctors who get provided with pens, lunches, conferences and/or five star holidays in resorts etc., by pharmaceutical companies change their prescribing habits. So please bear that in mind.

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