An easy way to modify undesired behavior

Let's look at my example. Not long ago, I found myself spending some time on the game solitaire. That, of course, is not the most efficient use of my time, but somehow it became a habit. In order to stop with playing solitaire, I decided to do something useful before each game.

I have chosen a task that takes two ore three minutes to complete. The task was to translate 10 words from a foreign language, as I was trying to make a small dictionary. After completing the task I allow myself to complete with some other task or to play the game. There were several reasons for doing this.

• I will do one useful task at least,
  
• I will have less time to play the game,
• In order to play the game I have to do something, so playing game is not that interesting as before.

How can you implement this method in your life?

• Find undesired behavior,
• Find some useful task that doesn't take much time (3 minutes max.) that could be done before undesired behavior. Ideally the task should be continuable (you can do it more that three minutes),
  
• In order to indulge yourself with that behavior, finish the task first,
• After finishing the task, decide what would you like to do? Start with behavior or continue with the task
  

For example:

• You watch to much TV,
• Useful task could be to wash two dirty plates or to do some exercise (two push ups) ,
• Oblige yourself that before watching any TV you must wash two plates.
• When you start
  

It is important to notice that if the task is time consuming, you will avoid to do it. That is the reason that the task was to wash TWO plates, and not all dirty dishes (or to finish complete aerobic session).

Declutter your time

After finding out where do you spend (waste) your time, you can start with blocking this wasting. Usually the biggest time wasters are TV and the Internet. Are those things necessary? Of course not. Remember the days when you were on some exciting trip (Hawaii, Paris, ...)? You probably didn't need the TV or the Net for being fully excited. So the idea is to throw away useless behavior and invest that time into something better (kissing your spouse, playing basketball with your kids, going to yoga, etc.).

You probably wander "What if I miss something?". You will not miss anything, believe me, and if you don't you can try to isolate your self from the TV and the Net for a week (or a day if a week is too long for you). There is always some catastrophe somewhere in the world. There is always some people doing something odd or crazy. The movies and series are no better than the evening news. There are some people killing other people, or chasing them with cars or something like that. I know that it might look like fun, but it is far better to find your own thrill in doing something than to watch some other people doing interesting things. Of course, if your profession requires from you to watch TV, that is another topic.

How to escape from TV?

This is quite simple. Sell it, give it away, burn it (just kidding). Unplug it, remove antenna, put remote controller somewhere far away. Do anything that makes difficult to start watching TV. That will remind you that you should something else.

How to escape from the Internet?

Find out where do you spend your net time. Probably it is either news, pornography, blogs or socializing over the net. It likely that all of those is obsolete. It is better to hang out with real people than to socializing with some virtual people. If you are using Firefox for all of that, you could install FoxFilter addon and block all unwanted behavior on the net. I did a couple of weeks ago and it works and it is quite simple. Also, many firewall program has options for blocking certain sites.

What to do with all that time?

You will have to find out for yourself.