Rebuilding a Routine: The Junk Drawer

I’m not sure how common the idea of a “junk drawer” is around the world but it’s certainly common here. It’s a catch-all for things that we don’t really know where to put. Sometimes there’s real junk in there, but just as often that’s where important things with no home end up. As a result you have to wade through extension cords, zip ties, various types of USB cables, old COVID tests and the fridge magnet a charity sent trying to get donations all to find the adapter that lets your bike fit on the indoor trainer.

That’s most of the rest of my habits. Some work well, some are in need of repair, and some should probably be tossed. All of them, though, need to not live in the junk drawer.

I know enough about myself to know what the junk drawer represents when it comes to habits:

The first type is a good intention or a “I should”. My bedtime should be set in stone regardless of what day it is so that my morning can always start at 5. But it’s not a strong enough intention or I don’t feel a strong enough sense of benefit that I don’t follow through. Last night, for example, instead of aiming for bed by 9:30, Daegan and I were up watching a movie until after 10:30. This resulted in my waking at 7 not 5, feeling tired most of the day and then losing almost two hours to an, admittedly delightful, afternoon nap. Was the benefit of a 9:30 bedtime worth throwing away? I’m not sure. And as long as I’m not sure, this habit will likely live in the junk drawer and not be installed where it will be used daily.

Another type is a habit that lacks a place to store it. It’s a good thing to do, I am good with doing it but somehow it doesn’t have a home in my day like everything in my breakfast room. Writing here falls in that category. I make time on Sundays but other times it doesn’t occur to me so it generally doesn’t happen. For a while updating our budget tracking and personal online tasks were in this realm. I’ve fixed this a bit by blocking out “office hours” after I get home where I sit down at the computer, look at our spending, log it in Actual Budget, and check my to-do list. It is working but limping along a little bit. I feel I could put more in here and make it more useful.

Blocking time is one way to get these things done and another is “habit stacking”. In this method, described in many productivity books, the completion of one habit is the trigger for the next. My morning goes wake up, meditate, toss Squishy the cat three treats, shower, make breakfast (gather my lunch/snacks while it cooks), eat, play games with Sage, bike to work, start work routine. It’s so tied together that there is never a moment where I need to find motivation to do the thing. I just do what is next. My afternoon routine would benefit from this. However, there’s a competing voice, no doubt my teenage self, that likes to tell me I’ve worked hard all day, been on someone else’s schedule the whole day so of course I should get my own schedule. No, I don’t want to do a routine, I’ll get to what I need to do when I get to it. Oh wait, I faffed about for so long that now it’s late and I’m cooking dinner at 7:30? I hate cooking dinner late. What jerk did this to me? Sound familiar?

Another big reason things end up in the junk drawer is “behavioural friction”. If you make something easy to do, you’re more likely to do it. If you lay out your running clothes, shoes and heart monitor the night before then all you have to do is jump out of bed, put those on and go running. Want to reduce it even more? Sleep in your running gear. Then you just need to put on shoes and socks and go.

You can also avoid bad habits the same way: make it harder to do. Don’t have cigarettes in the house if you’re trying to quit, for example.

So the goal of this post is to go through some of my junk drawer – in front of you for accountability – and either toss it or put it away properly. I’ll follow up in the future on this one.

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Eating Healthily:

This one is tricky because for many it can be fraught with lots of difficult psychological stuff around body image and more. For me there’s not a ton of this. I’ve actually got a really good meal plan from an extremely experienced sports dietitian who works with Olympic athletes and was an Olympic cyclist. When I followed it religiously, my weight did drop, but more noticeably, I felt better, had more energy, and slept better. And there are opportunities for lots of snacking – I just need to get on the bike for a few hours at which point I need so many snacks that it’s sometimes hard to eat enough.

But what has put this back in the junk drawer is simple: it’s almost always because I cooked something delicious and want more than is recommended. Sometimes I rationalize it by saying “I’m still hungry – probably I won’t sleep well.” (it has rarely been true) or simply “Oh that snack looks good.”

Where am I going to put this? Well, the training season is starting now so I need to pull this out of retirement and get back at it. Why? Because I need the benefits: I need to be a few kg less for hill climbing on the bike and have my body in top condition for riding 200-300 km/day rides.

When I’ve been good at this the trick has been to have lots of snacks in the fridge, oddly enough – mostly veggies that my dietitian put in the “As much as you want” column. Reducing behavioural friction.

Cycling:

People who know me know that I love riding my bike. We’re having a long weekend now and my colleagues know me well enough that when they go around the table to see what people are doing on the long weekend they just go “Oh and you’re riding your bike.”

This is true, but it’s also not the full story. I love riding my bike for everything after the first 10 minutes all the way up to 12 hours. But that 10 minutes and the time leading up to it? Not great. It’s enough that I can look out the window and see a few clouds or a 40% chance of rain and think “I’m going to skip. Never mind the fact that the longest ride I ever did – over 240 km out to Waterloo and back – was on a day so cold and rainy that I had to make an emergency stop at a Walmart and buy a coat because I was shivering and possibly risking hypothermia in June. Was that a horrible ride? Absolutely not. I had a blast once I got warm. And the thing is, I’ve got gear for just about every possible weather. I have lights and a vest for when it’s dark. I have rain pants and a cover for my helmet to keep my head warm and dry. I commuted through snow and ice this winter. There are no excuses on that side. No real ones, anyway.

It doesn’t help that I love spending time with my family. If I wake up on a Saturday morning and I have a choice between spending the day with Sage playing card games with the loser doing extra household chores and riding a bike for 6 hours, it’s a real dilemma made even more difficult when the weather isn’t great. But the reality is again once I am on the bike for 10 minutes even if I’m pushing into a wet headwind, I’m happy.

So the trick going forward is to put rides in the calendar and stick to them. I’ve moved my bike clothes somewhere more accessible and I can add a calendar reminder to lay it out. Early morning rides are even better because even if they’re 100-120 km, I can get back home just after lunch and still have a half a day to spend.

Action item: Populate the calendar and stick to it like glue. Add as many specifics as possible. Knowing that I can waste hours dithering about a route if I haven’t decided before leaving, I will pick the route when I schedule it.

Caffeine:

This is one I struggle with a ton. I love nothing more than drinking lots of coffee. However, when I drink a lot regularly I struggle with acid stomach and end up eating tons more to “soak up” the acid.

This one is on the balance of going back in the drawer and being solid. So far so good. I’m keeping it down to 2-3 cups/day. Why not a whole number? Because I’ve tied another habit to this. On days I commute to work by bicycle I allow myself an extra coffee at work. I also allow myself extra coffee on long bike rides.

That’s a pretty great carrot. On the other hand I have an excellent “stick” also. If I have an extra cup of coffee on a day I didn’t bike to work I must divert $50 from my discretionary spending budget (“allowance”) to Sage’s.

This is an example of something that ties everything together. If I don’t go to bed on time I’m tired. I struggle to stay awake at work and drink more coffee. The acid makes me feel hungry and I eat more than I need and that makes me sleep poorly the next day. It’s a cycle I need to break. The other side of it is that when I’m on a long ride it actually affects me less. Why? Because if I do have a coffee, it’s part of a coffee stop where there must be pastries or other starchy things to soak up the acid. And that’s fine because I’m going to use up all that in the next hour.

See how this all ties together and how one slip on one can bring down the others?

So while I started writing this section with the intention to maybe throw out the coffee limitations, I realize now that that’s the last thing I should do. However, I should bear in mind the possibilities of enjoying more coffee on a long bike ride. And there’s a push to get on the bike no matter what the weather. Cold rainy ride? A stop for a coffee is a delightful excuse to warm up inside a cozy cafe. Hot and sunny? Great – sit outside on a patio and enjoy an iced coffee. Now doesn’t this beat sitting at home with only two cups of coffee?

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So next week we’ll begin implementing these in earnest. Tomorrow I’ll write up a plan/schedule and one week later I’ll let you know how I did.

How about you? What is in your junk drawer? Are you ready to find a home for those habits or give them a permanent home?