New House, New Rules

Later this month, we’re moving from the apartment we’ve lived in for the last 8 years to a house! It’s an exciting time. We’re still fixing and improving a few projects, but it should be mostly set to move in.

Whenever I go on a trip, I like to use that as an excuse to change my routine. It’s a time when my schedule seems the most flexible. I’m no longer evaluating things daily, allowing me to change my plans with a clearer view of the future.

I’m using the upcoming move as another chance to reset my routine and figure out what I want to leave behind.

New Rules

None of these new rules are focused on maximizing productivity or physical fitness. The focus is on feeling healthy. This includes not feeling as anxious about everything happening while still being healthy enough to protest, contact representatives, and support people in my life who need someone to lean on.

Mental Health

🛑 Stop using anonymous social media (TikTok, Reddit, Reels, YouTube Shorts). Any social media you can scroll forever, and it’ll keep feeding you new content.

🛑 Stop picking up my phone in the morning. I’d like to not even touch it until I’ve at least worked out and read a little.

🟢 Start reading in the morning. Rather than plugging my brain into the news, I will read more books. I’ve been doing this on and off for the last month, but lately, doom scrolling has won out more days than not.

🟢 Switch to pre-selected news sources. That includes The Salt Lake Tribune, WIRED, Aaron Parnas, and a few others on BlueSky.

Physical Health

🟢 Continue going to the gym 3x a week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 6 am to 8 am.

🟢 Start going for a walk every day. It doesn’t matter how long it is. Our new house is close to a park, which I imagine I’ll get to know even better than I already do (I trained for my marathon there and already know it well).

🟢 Start doing cardio 2x to 3x a week in the morning. I’ll plan to start with 2x and see increasing it to 3x. This could be a Peloton ride or, a run, a hike or anything else that gets my heart rate going. If I don’t do this when I first wake up, the likelihood of this happening decreases fast. 😅

Diet

🛑 Stop drinking any alcohol unless it’s a special occasional (Super Bowl) or I’m out socially with friends. Last year for ~6 months I mostly stopped drinking, but since November I’ve been having the occasional cocktail or beer at night.

🛑 Stop any THC consumption on multiple days in a row. I never vaped or took edibles until my 30s, and I’m tremendously grateful for past me for that. Doing so negates any desire to be creative or even play games. Instead, I want to lay around on my phone and watch TV. I will start with this change, but I’d like to cut this out entirely – except on weekends.

Fun

🟢 Start playing more video games! Somehow, in the last few years, my attention has shifted from video games to news and social media for entertainment. Playing video games is much healthier and is a habit I’d like to restore.

🟢 Start playing more board games, especially with friends. We love board games, but haven’t played nearly enough of them lately. Having a small apartment doesn’t make it easy. We have a Desden Board Game Table set to be delivered this summer, with a smaller 4-person IKEA table for now. I love that we’ll now have a place to actually play games that’s now our kitchen island.

Personal Projects

🛑 Stop working on Hardcover outside of working hours. With the new house, I’ll have a dedicated office. I plan to consider that “the place” where I work on Hardcover. If I’m not in there, then I won’t worry about work.

🟢 Start dedicating more time to personal projects! I have a tendency to let projects take over my life. It’s happened with Code School, Minafi, and Hardcover. With the new arrangement, I’d like to dedicate some of the “social media & news time” to doing more creative projects. I’ve already mentioned some of these on my Now page, and I’m excited to work on them (especially the Astro conversion of this blog!).

🟢 Start gamifying progress. Some of the most productive times in my life were when I was actively tracking what I was working on. For a while this happened on lineofthought.com, my now defunct tracker. I have a plan on how to restart this, while also using it to learn some more about Swift and iOS programming. In the meantime I’ll keep tracking using Exist.io.

“Don’t Change Too Much At Once”

This is common advice. It can also be wrong.

For example, if you’re trying to replace one activity with something else (like replacing social media with reading), you need to stop one behavior and start another one.

A few years ago I read Cal Newports Digital Minimalism. Most of the book talks about doing a “digital detox” – stopping all use of social sites. After trying a detox myself, I noticed it lacked much advice on what to replace that time with! It’s important to have things you’re excited about to substitute in.

Instead of reaching for your phone when you have a few free minutes, you’ll need to create a new behavior. Reach for a book, pick up a Nintendo Switch, or read your RSS feed.

I’m considering February a trial period for any of these changes I can put into place now. Even just two days with less news consumption has given me enough time to write this post!

Let’s see what a month looks like.