Yeah but bad habits are often formed because they’re things we enjoy on some level. The idea of just like doing something at a set time without 20 different reminders and alarms going off is absolutely baffling to me. Like, my husband will just wake up in the morning and go through his routine IN HIS HEAD without any reminders or lists. He does like 50 things and it’s so effortless for him he just remembers. He even has different things he does for different days of the week and he just remembers them. I deeply envy people built like that because some of us genuinely don’t have the capacity to learn it. I tried for 20 years even mirroring my husband to try and find a similar groove and it never takes. I have to have reminders, reminders about my reminders, and then sometimes an extra one to remind me to get back to it because I tend to end up doing something ridiculous like scrubbing baseboards halfway through doing the dishes 😭
I assume that routine developed over time. I’ve tried going from no routine to some complex morning routine I saw online, it never works, as there isn’t a larger framework it’s fitting into. If I’m starting a project at work, I might do 20 different things to get started, but I’m not running through a memorized list, or referring to a list, I’m just doing what seems to make sense… and the same things make sense over and over again, to the point that it may look like a routine. A lot those things make sense because of past failures that I learned from.
If you’re getting distracted and scrubbing the baseboards while doing dishes, I assume there is some ADHD in there playing a role, so don’t beat yourself too much. Use some tools and set things up to help, and give yourself some grace when things go sideways. Sometimes all you can do is laugh.
I’ve had some good habits develop out of laziness. In high school I only drank soda, loaded with caffeine. When I went to college I didn’t have anyone to buy it for me, I didn’t want to go to the store all the time, and I didn’t want to waste money on soda… so I drank the tap water in the room. It was gross at first, but I got used to it. Now water is my default and I can count on one hand the number of sodas I have in a year… I used to have probably 10 per day. I went a good 10+ years not having a single one. Not all good habits can develop from being lazy, but I keep looking for them, because that one was almost effortless.
My strategy these days is to just give myself a break. If it takes two hours for the dishes to be done then it takes two hours. It’s whatever I got it done. I now only use aggressive reminders for important and less frequent things to prevent me from becoming numb to or overwhelmed by alarms. I also do this super dorky thing where I have cleaning roll tables that I use every day. One is for like surfaces, floors, walls etc and one is for rooms etc. There are a few tables but they all cover more niche chores that are easily overlooked and then have little extra things like “find a permanent place for something”. It’s made a shockingly big difference because it’s kinda fun to roll and I end up doing unpleasant things I would normally try to put off if they were on a list lmao. If I roll a nat 20 I get a free lazy day to use whenever I need a break. If I roll a nat 1 I have to roll for a second chore 😅
And yeah, in case it’s not already overwhelmingly obvious, I got a heavy dose of the ADHD you were correct.
Did you know that some people just naturally form habits without even trying? I kinda hate those people sometimes lol
I think we all do that, they’re just not good habits.
Yeah but bad habits are often formed because they’re things we enjoy on some level. The idea of just like doing something at a set time without 20 different reminders and alarms going off is absolutely baffling to me. Like, my husband will just wake up in the morning and go through his routine IN HIS HEAD without any reminders or lists. He does like 50 things and it’s so effortless for him he just remembers. He even has different things he does for different days of the week and he just remembers them. I deeply envy people built like that because some of us genuinely don’t have the capacity to learn it. I tried for 20 years even mirroring my husband to try and find a similar groove and it never takes. I have to have reminders, reminders about my reminders, and then sometimes an extra one to remind me to get back to it because I tend to end up doing something ridiculous like scrubbing baseboards halfway through doing the dishes 😭
I assume that routine developed over time. I’ve tried going from no routine to some complex morning routine I saw online, it never works, as there isn’t a larger framework it’s fitting into. If I’m starting a project at work, I might do 20 different things to get started, but I’m not running through a memorized list, or referring to a list, I’m just doing what seems to make sense… and the same things make sense over and over again, to the point that it may look like a routine. A lot those things make sense because of past failures that I learned from.
If you’re getting distracted and scrubbing the baseboards while doing dishes, I assume there is some ADHD in there playing a role, so don’t beat yourself too much. Use some tools and set things up to help, and give yourself some grace when things go sideways. Sometimes all you can do is laugh.
I’ve had some good habits develop out of laziness. In high school I only drank soda, loaded with caffeine. When I went to college I didn’t have anyone to buy it for me, I didn’t want to go to the store all the time, and I didn’t want to waste money on soda… so I drank the tap water in the room. It was gross at first, but I got used to it. Now water is my default and I can count on one hand the number of sodas I have in a year… I used to have probably 10 per day. I went a good 10+ years not having a single one. Not all good habits can develop from being lazy, but I keep looking for them, because that one was almost effortless.
My strategy these days is to just give myself a break. If it takes two hours for the dishes to be done then it takes two hours. It’s whatever I got it done. I now only use aggressive reminders for important and less frequent things to prevent me from becoming numb to or overwhelmed by alarms. I also do this super dorky thing where I have cleaning roll tables that I use every day. One is for like surfaces, floors, walls etc and one is for rooms etc. There are a few tables but they all cover more niche chores that are easily overlooked and then have little extra things like “find a permanent place for something”. It’s made a shockingly big difference because it’s kinda fun to roll and I end up doing unpleasant things I would normally try to put off if they were on a list lmao. If I roll a nat 20 I get a free lazy day to use whenever I need a break. If I roll a nat 1 I have to roll for a second chore 😅
And yeah, in case it’s not already overwhelmingly obvious, I got a heavy dose of the ADHD you were correct.