Personal Prohibitions

As I work on my personal productivity, or maybe efficiency, getting rid of distractions has been more helpful than purposeful scheduling with mandatory doing.  Thou shalt nots come more easily than thou musts.  My long legacy of kashrut has made avoidance of certain foods rather easy, protection of shabbos by banning otherwise pleasurable weekday pursuits has imposed more of a challenge with a successful trajectory overall.  So if I want to reduce my weight, exercising has been a chore but not putting cookies or soda into the shopping cart goes easily.  I've moved onto harder prohibitions.  Sleep needs to be improved, having had a major setback.  I will now not return to bed until my assigned bedtime once I arise.  No more catnaps and I've started reading in a chair rather than on my mattress.  If I can set aside activities for shabbos each week, I can avoid social media twice a week.  This has gone well.  Removing this from the competition for my attention, or even transient but not very useful pleasure, has made it easier to substitute more purposeful alternatives such as reading or watching my Great Courses that promote other useful initiatives.  

Having altered my grocery shopping for a few months, I do not have a feeling of deprivation but have been pleased with the reading on the scale first thing every Monday morning.  Not having FB or Tw on the days divisible by four still has a sense of deprivation, not really FOMO but an activity I like to engage in even though not in my best interest.  Avoiding my mattress is a new initiative.  So far I don't miss it, though my sleep pattern has not yet responded favorably to the introduction of this difficult element of formal sleep hygiene.  

I don't yet have a good explanation for why Don't Do avoidances have been easier for me than Must Do tasks, but they are.  As long as they can be put to good advantage, that will be the preferred path to my personal upgrades.