Printable 2017 Calendars: 2017 Calendar Four Months Per Page: Fill & Download for Free

I’ve struggled with diligence for years. I can’t say I’ve licked the problem, but over the past year or so, I’ve made definite progress. Last year, I lost 60lbs. I not only went on a diet; I stuck to that diet for over a year, and it’s become a lifestyle for me. I can’t even imagine going back to the way I used to eat. I don’t ever get tempted.(I went from eating a Standard American Diet, with lots of bacon, ice cream, potato chips, and soda, to becoming a strict vegan who doesn’t eat added salt, sugar, or oil—and who only eats whole grains.)I also started meditating every day. That actually started a year ago, too. But for a long time, my commitment to it was sporadic. I did it some days but not others. Sometimes, I’d forget to do it for a couple of weeks. Or I’d put it off.For the last four months, I’ve done it every day, without ever skipping a day. At this point, the idea of skipping even one day feels sacrilegious. (And I’m an atheist!) It’s unthinkable. Once, it almost happened. Stuff kept coming up, and I didn’t get to it and didn’t get to it and didn’t get to it. Finally, it was close to midnight, and I still hadn’t meditated. I was exhausted. I just wanted to go to bed.But now “a person who meditates every day” is simply part of who I am. So I did it. I stayed up another half hour and meditated. It was far from my best session, but I did it.A couple of years ago, I noticed that my lifetime obsession with reading long books was waning. The Internet had habituated me to instant gratification, and I was finding it harder and harder to wade through long books. Finally, my reading trickled to a halt. This made me unhappy, but the idea of picking up a book seemed exhausting, so I didn’t. But, now, I’ve managed to start reading, again. I read every day.Each of these victories make the next one easier. (I recently started working out with weights three times a week!) Not easy. It’s never easy. But easier. Because, more and more, I’m seeing myself as a person who can form new habits, rather than someone who can’t.The four biggest tools in my utility belt are The Seinfeld Chain, Baby Steps, Showing Up, and Analytics.The Seinfeld Chain was invented or popularized by Jerry Seinfeld, and it’s the only thing I do that sounds like something out of a self-help book. I’m not a fan of Getting Things Done, checklists, journaling, etc. But this technique really works for me.Each month, I print out a calendar (Printable 2017 Calendar). This works best with a printed calendar, as opposed to a digital one. I have one for meditation, one for exercise, etc.Every day that I meditate, I mark a big X through that day, as soon as I’m done meditating. And my goal is to keep the chain of Xes going as long as I can. I now have a four-month-long chain of meditation Xes, and the idea of breaking that chain is horrifying to me. So I’ll meditate even if I don’t feel like it, so that I don’t break the chain.When I decided that I wanted to start reading again, I took Baby Steps. I decided that I was going to read one page of a book per day. That’s it. Just one page. If you try this method, I suggest you start with similar absurdly-small goals. If you’re trying to get yourself to work out each day, make your goal to do five push ups.When I reached a point when I knew I could diligently read one page a day, I upped my goal to five pages a day. A few weeks later, I upped my goal to ten pages a day. I do not believe in making things hard for my willpower. I believe in making them as easy as possible.My eventual goal is to meditate for an hour a day. I’ve worked up to 20 minutes. In a few weeks, I’m going to try 25 minutes. It would be a mistake for me to go from 20 minutes to 40 minutes. I would fail. It’s not a mistake for a beginner to set a goal of meditating for one minute a day. Or 30 seconds. Any amount of diligence is good.30 seconds is a platform for 60 seconds, and 60 seconds is a platform for five minutes. But don’t get ahead of yourself. Just do 30 seconds for a few weeks—or whatever absurdly-small amount seems possible.Showing Up means that’s all I have to do: show up. I don’t have to meditate well for 20 minutes. I just have to show up, try to meditate, and, after 20 minutes, I’m done. I don’t have to remember what I’ve read. I just have to read. Daily practice will lead to skills. Let skill take care of themselves. Just show up.Here are some analytics from when I was trying to lose weight:Looks pretty good, huh? Except to see the downward slope, you have to ignore the day-to-day details.I want you to focus on the second to last week, on the right, and imagine how I felt during that week:After my weight dipped down, it started climbing again, and it didn’t start heading back down until several days later. Each morning, as I looked at the scale, my heart sank and I started to lose motivation.That is almost always how progress works. It’s never steady in the direction you want it to go. You take steps backwards, you stall, you plateau.The antidote to frustration is that Seinfeld-chain diligence plus long-term analytics. By collecting data over a length of time, and by zooming out and looking at the general trend, not the day-to-day, I was able to see that I was making progress.UPDATE: here’s a fantastic talk about the science of diligence. It has suggestions which are supported by evidence:I post on here and elsewhere about a large variety of subjects: art, writing, theatre, relationships, education, science, philosophy, psychology, computer programming, meditation, and nutrition. You can support me and my theatre company on Patreon.