Month: November 2018

I started this blog in July to change my habits and through that, to change my life. After four months, I have discovered the following:

• My efforts have had small positive effects on my business and relationships. But it feels to me that the real repair work is still a ways ahead.
• Am I kicking the hard-work-can down the road? How do I tackle the big things in a sustainable way? It still seems like there is soooo much more to do.
• Old characteristics, behaviours, and habits keep trying to seep through.
• I seem to have changed, but I also seem to have stayed the same.
• If I look carefully, 99.9% of my old habits are still there.
• Keeping a detailed log appears to be the only reason why I haven’t relapsed completely to old habits.

TL:DR- they seem to work, but change is slow and difficult. 

Well, that’s not unexpected. Some habits have been around for decades. I guess four months is baby steps.

Sometimes I update my log once a week, sometimes once or more times a day. When I update less, it’s harder to stay on track. The more often I update my log, the more I put in some effort to stick to the new habits that I have set. I infer that this is the right cue to help build the new habits.

One thing I noticed is that a few important cues during the day are the biggest trigger for relapse. When those cues appear, it is very easy to succumb and relapse to old habits. Like, to pull up Netflix once I sit down at my desk after dinner. Or, to open social media apps once I wake up. Or to look at the clock, see that it’s 11pm, and think: “Right I can still do an hour of work” and then end up going to bed at 2am.

 This GQ interview with author James Clear on Key Moments struck the nail on the head. I am introducing a Key Moments table to my Airtable Habits Log. By tracking the cues during the Key Moments, I hope to reduce the poisonous effects of old habits cues.

I realise all this sounds incredibly nerdy. But I’ve always known I have a huge nerd in me. Cue Flora rolling her eyes. Well. As long as it works. 

Last saturday evening an old friend Stephen sent me a message on Facebook. He had flown into Kuala Lumpur from London via Bangkok, and would be here for a week. Was I free to meet up?

We met up the next day. He visited our place with his fiancee. We chatted and caught up for about an hour and half, and had a beer together. Then they left for dinner.

We touched on it during our conversation, the fact that it has been 10 years since we met. It didn’t sink in till later though.

We were working together in the same architecture firm during our year out placement. The company comprised eighty-plus architects and engineers. In the whole firm, there were only three East Asians. Me, Stephen, and a middle-aged senior associate. Both of them had grew up or spent a long time in the UK. I, and another Brazilian lady, were the only foreigners.

I was a very quiet person at that time. (I still am, mostly). To be honest, it was because I couldn’t yet hold a conversation with the British. I had nothing to talk to them about. I kept to myself and did my work.

I didn’t apply for any jobs in Scotland, where I was studying, and no London firm replied me. The only reply, interview and later offer was from this practice. It was in a small garden town in the Southeast of England, 30 minutes away from London by train. The kind of town that existed in Enid Blyton’s books.

One cold evening, Flora and I went to a shopping mall the next town over. It was a rare occurrence, to visit a shopping mall in the next town on a weekday night. We probably only did it that one or two times throughout the entire 10 months we were there. I don’t even remember why. But anyhow, we were there, and I bumped into Stephen. We became friends after that.

It’s an unlikely friendship, but that was the norm. In those years, I had a knack of striking random friendships with people (always guys). We introduced our girlfriends to each other, who became our fiancees and wives. We started on our careers, progressed through life. And every once in a few years, our paths would cross somewhere around the world. We’d meet up and get a beer together. I don’t know why things turned out that way, but those are great memories.