Week 4/2024: Tracking my habits

Week of 22 January 2024

I had a full week at work. I tried to focus on moving more, getting more sleep and tracking my habits.

Built to move update

Last week I wrote about the three things from Built to Move I want to focus on to rebuild some more helpful habits.

They were:

• Less sitting (set the timer for 25 minutes every time I sit down)
• More sleep (shut down at 9.30)
• More movement (8000 steps a day)

This hasn’t gone exactly as planned. I’m still not keeping very good track of this, especially the 25-minute timer, which I seem incapable of setting, even when the timer is sitting on the desk in front of me.

But I can say that I achieved the 8,000 step goal on five days this week, and I got at least six hours of sleep every night.

Tracking my habits

I’m tweaking my weekly planning page to keep better track of these things, because tweaking my systems and habit tracking is way more achievable than actually doing any work . . .

I’ll write a separate post on that later.

The only other thing I can say about this week is that the sunset on Sunday was exceptional.

The clouds had been amazing all day, and the end of the day was spectacular!

Sunset sunday

Week 4 summary

What was the best thing about this week?

I appreciated my employer and my union agreeing to allow us to substitute the 26 January public holiday for another day.

The more I learn and understand about the perspectives of First Nations people, the more it seems inappropriate to celebrate a ‘national’ day on this date. It’s a complicated issue with no single answer. Some people advocate to celebrate ‘Australia Day’ on another date. Several dates with possible relevance have been suggested that may not cause offence or represent the beginning of invasion, land theft and attempts to eradicate First Nations culture.

Others would abolish the concept of a national day altogether, arguing that until this country can acknowledge and tell the truth about its history and come to genuine reconciliation with the first peoples, we have nothing to celebrate.

I don’t know what the answer is, so all I can do is listen and learn. I feel like not taking a public holiday on a day that is offensive to so many people is a very small symbolic step, but it is by taking small steps that we can eventually take bigger ones.

Indigenous X has a range of articles that provide more perspectives and I invite you to read some of these if you aren’t familiar with their content.

What did I notice this week?

This is something that’s become more apparent to me over the last couple of weeks, but ever since I had covid, I randomly forget things. I don’t know if I was doing this before and it’s something I’ve only just noticed and attributed to covid or if it’s new. But I’ll be halfway through a sentence and forget what I’m saying.

It’s awkward and it’s embarrassing.

What did I learn this week?

Wooden chopping boards are better for your knifes than plastic ones.

What I’m reading this week

• The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander