My never-ending quest to have a tidier house continues. I am making some progress, I think. No, I definitely am, it’s just that there is so much to do that it is daunting. I think that I’ve mentioned before how my poor habits lead me to leave things lying around and not clean up after myself.

Despite this, things are slowly improving at the moment. It goes in fits and starts but if I just focus on doing a little at a time I can make inroads into the piles that I’ve accumulated.

One technique I have learned that works for me is to start with my back bedroom, which is full of things thrown in haphazardly. There is no room for the bed; I’ve had to leave that dismantled. Anyway, I file or throw things out from there. Then when I’ve made a small space I move things from other rooms into it.

That way my living area gets an immediate benefit and I don’t have to view the debris every day.

Habits form the bedrock of our lives. It is very difficult to imagine maintaining the level of concentration needed to plan our every action. We’d spend the whole time planning and not do anything. If habits then are so important,  why do we develop so many bad ones and why so few good ones?

We are a strange mixture of things. We have free will (or the appearance of it)  and yet we are animals. We have built into us the same mechanisms of reward and avoidance as determines their behaviour. So our intelligence tries to govern our lives but our unruly nature drags us in different directions.

If there is a battle between our conscious wishes and our animal passions, it is the passions which win, almost every time.

I’ve finally begun to tackle the jungle of my gardens, starting with the front one. I’ve been hacking away at the rampant vegetation for the past few nights for about 10 minutes at a time.

Even after a small amount of work I’m beginning to make a difference. At least now when the postman makes a delivery, he can actually find my front door. OK, I exaggerate, but not by a lot.

As to why I don’t do a concentrated assault and spend a few hours at one go on it, that is more complicated. I have a number of things on the go that I want to devote regular time to. So setting aside a whole evening or weekend afternoon to the garden just doesn’t seem practical at the moment.

I also feel that building it into a regular event (another habit, like my writing project) will have more lasting results.  Maybe ‘m making excuses but that is how it seems to me.

The efficacy of simple behaviour modification techniques is shown by the continuing production of material for my blogs and other article writing projects. I’m now into my third month of writing. I’ve missed writing on only a handful of days in that time.

Today means a second early start for me this week. This time I’m off to London for a meeting.  I’m hoping to get some time in the afternoon to take a look around and maybe visit a couple of bookshops in London.

My meeting is scheduled for 11am to 1pm, though I may have to work a little beyond that to catch up with emails.  I’m booked on the train to return at 4pm so I should have a little time to browse around.

I’m an avid reader, have been since I was a child but I don’t bother much these days with fiction, unless it is science fiction.

I haven’t bought a novel in quite some time, though I’ve borrowed the odd one from the library. I’m much more interested in ideas in a range of areas such as psychology and science. I have a pronounced weakness for self-help, books though I’m applying a lot more scepticism to my choices in that area now.

I began my writing project in May, with the intention of forming the habit of writing for a period each day. The purpose behind that was to be able to create material for a blog and other online projects.

Although I’ve been doing things in this area for two or three years, I’ve never been very consistent or had much success. One main reason for this is that I was relying on other people’s material, mostly in the form of PLR articles. These turn out not to be effective, at least not without substantial rewriting, something I was unable to sit down and do with any consistency.

So to create original material for my own blogs, I needed  to write on a regular basis. However, I’ve had good intentions of that kind before but without lasting success. This time I decided to apply some simple behavioural modification techniques to myself

I arranged a reward, in the form of breakfast, for writing for a certain length of time each day.  Note that I started very small, at only 2 minutes a day. This was deliberate as my intention was to form a habit that lasted. Rather than commence with too difficult a target which would make it tempting to give up, I began with a small effort. I then gradually increased the time spent writing each day. I’m now, after two months,  at over 17 minutes a day and still going.

Of course, we all know that he is, so the question is this: Are Freud’s theories of psychology dead? Probably not, at least not yet. But they do seem to be becoming less influential. More scientifically based explanations for human behaviour are taking centre stage.

Looking back, I find it a liitle strange how large an influence Freud had, and how quickly he achieved it. I say this because I can’t see how he could have done the same in another area of study. Not without having real, repeatable proofs.

Perhaps it was because we are so intrigued by stories and his case studies were full of stories. But the theories he developed had no connection to testable reality. Essentially they too were stories, very good stories.

My health regime is very, very limited and really needs to be better. I exercise only sporadically. Sometimes I go for a few days or even a week at a time when I exercise every day, or nearly so. Then I stop and a little later I’ll start again. So each time I’m starting back at the lowest level.

On the good side, at least I’m still doing some workouts, however limited, and I haven’t given up altogether.

What I need to do is apply some behaviour modification techniques to the situation, just as I’ve done with my writing project. Which, by the way, is now up to seven weeks in duration of writing on an almost daily basis. None of my previous efforts have lasted so long.

What I’m reading at the moment is “The One Thing You Need To Know… About Great Managing, Great Leading And Sustained Individual Success” by Marcus Buckingham. To tell the truth it is not the only thing I’m reading. I usually have at least two, usually more, books on the go as I’m interested in the ideas I can pick up from them.

Back to “The One Thing…”I like it for several reasons: it is well written and has interesting mini biographies used to illustrate his points. But the main  reason I like it is that it seems to be grounded on facts.

There is a mass of advice out there based on nothing more than the author’s opinion and this is true of every subject matter under the sun. As human beings we are designed to create explanations for what we see around us. This is both one of our greatest strengths and weaknesses. The upshot is that it seems there are more available explanations  for things than there are grains of sand on the beach.

Th problem is that that, while we provide explanations and theories in abundance, we don’t feel we need to test them before adopting them and advocating them as true. So to find someone who does test, as good science tells us to do, is very important.  Such people as Martin Seligman in positive psychology or James Brausch in internet business come to mind.

Marcus Buckingham with “The One.. ” and his other books draws on Gallup research and other scientific material to form his conclusions.

Already this is a record for me in terms of persisting with a project. Although the time I spend writing each morning is still small (under 10 minutes) that is not as important as the fact that I’m still doing it.

Good intentions are not enough in themselves to make things happen, as I’ve seen over many attempts in the past at working in a more disciplined, steady way.

Maybe I’m not going out to celebrate just yet, the gains are not that large  and I’m still a very long way from achieving my goal of writing for an hour each day. But nevertheless I’m quietly pleased with my progress.

One immediate benefit is this blog. OK, so it is not a work of art. It is just a small contribution with no great claims to entertain, teach or otherwise improve the human condition.  But there you are, at least it exists and it wouldn’t have without my attempt at applying behaviour modification techniques.