18 Apr Off balance

Off balance

This week I hit my wall. I felt off balance.

I’ve been trying to keep everything tightly co-ordinated. But I could not keep up the steady up-beat momentum of previous Covid-shutdown weeks.

Apologies to those I may have let down or left hanging.

Trash Day

The final straw came when I missed the garbage pickup. How did I forget what day of the week it was?

Habit stacking

I climbed despondently back under the covers, my mind turning over this big miss. Because, as we all know, it was not just about the garbage.

If I could forget which day of the week it was, what else had fallen through the cracks?

What else was at danger of getting missed? What was my hippocampus up to?

Cues

I searched through my mind for my habit stacks, and the cues that would normally help me locate the date, and get the blue box and green box to the curb on time.

For those wondering where those phrases come from, I am a big fan of Atomic Habits by James Clear and BJ Fogg with his discussions on habit anchoring in ‘Tiny Habits‘.

And I realized something:

This wasn’t Covid related!

It was about the long weekend!  The Easter long weekend had thrown me off my game this week. But if I look back through history … this happens every long weekend, and particularly EVERY Easter.

Normally, however, I would be saved by my better organized neighbours. Being out and about, I would be triggered to put the blue box out as I pull into my driveway and noticed their boxes at the curb. That was my ‘signal’.

But I missed that crucial cue this week, seeing as I was in a zone of social distancing.

It was a good reminder that I can’t blame everything on Covid-19!

Sometimes it is just ‘life as was normal’!