One of the hardest things I find working from home, being mostly by myself and at my own risk, is to find everyday sense of discipline. I have a few things I can count on to always be the same (e.g. make my bed, clean my face, apply moisturizer) but then, it’s a russian roulette. When you spend so much time alone, you end up finding it hard to motivate yourself to exercise, to eat clean (no one is watching), to do laundry, to go to the supermarket. It’s easier to fall into temptation, slack and not do anything at all.
At times, I have too much discipline and others just throw it out the window. I can hardly stick to a diet, an exercise routine or avoid procrastination, sometimes I’d rather clean the apartment than sit down on the computer and work.
After I hit rockbottom, I realize that it’s all on me, whether I succeed, fail, conquer or not and there’s no one else around to be accountable – which scares the bejeezus out of me. That’s why I feel it so personally and attacked when my own mind betrays me and stops me from accomplishing everyday goals. I was reading this article and one of the quotes really, really, really resonated with me:
After thinking about it for a long time, I’ve realized the only common denominators in the things I manage to accomplish in any consistent manner are passion and pleasure…
I’ve had many conversations with M about this and, I truly realized that the most important sense of discipline you get out of me is when it comes to things I’m actually passionated about. This blog is living proof! I’ve been writing and working on it for the past 556 days and, with one or two exceptions, I made it work, even without getting paid or any sort of compensations, if not personal satisfaction.
What experience has taught me, and even M with his hard-working spirit, is that you can only let yourself be disciplined about a few things in your life and face that, there are others we will never be, no matter how much we try. M works has hard as anyone I know, but when it comes to our apartment his lazy and disorganized. I, on the other hand, take too long to start a new project but am the first to wash the dishes, organize the closet or take out the trash.
It’s important to pick your battles and know what you are good at. If you are not into sports, try a variety of things – I do yoga, go for runs or paced walks and high intensity training, when I don’t feel like doing one, I try the other. How do you do it? Any tricks you can share? I would love to know.