Habits

I am trying to institute a number of habits this semester. In some cases, they are things I fell out of doing and want to reinstate, others are completely new. It's not an inherently easy concept, instituting habits. Some people say you need to do something for two months straight, every day, in order for an action to become a habit; others say it's 30 days; others say longer or shorter. Personally, I found last year that instituting a habit of journaling during Lent (40 days) was enough to get me in the habit, but it probably depends. This morning I started the new morning routine I want to reinstate: Get up, go do my sinus rinse and shower, put on exercise clothes, do my knee exercises, eat breakfast, check email/Facebook/weather/Google Reader/Twitter/Surviving the World, get dressed for the day. A bit of an involved routine, but a very satisfying one. The trick is going to be later in the semester when life is busier and I am not able to get to bed early, so getting out of bed early enough to do all this will be harder. Breakfast is usually the first thing to go; showering and checking the computer are non-negotiables unless I oversleep.

One thing is clear, though-- I am going to have to be quite disciplined this semester in order to get through. I have a full load of challenging classes plus a 15-hour per week internship, so the need for good work habits (and the ability to work in short bursts whenever I have time) is probably going to be key. I already have several assignments for this first upcoming week of classes; arguably these assignments (readings) are probably not urgently necessary, but I have found myself to do measurably better when I do most of the readings for a class. I count them as needed, until it's absolutely necessary to skip a reading in favor of a graded assignment. Any suggestions from my readership on how to cope with the classes + internship load and stay relatively sane would be most welcome.