I’m sure Ben will read this and have commentary to share, but in any case this post is dedicated to Ben and the motivational tidbit he shared with me yesterday.

Jerry Seinfeld has been reported (by Ben) to say that the idea of “don’t break the chain” is a powerful and effective tool for a) productivity and b) habit forming. My real life example is running – I’m resuming my running habit after six months off, and my focus inland performance yet – it’s simply logging miles. I will tick off every day that I’ve run, and try not to miss a day.

(Obviously when incinerate to focus on performance I won’t run every day, but I will work in some kind of low impact fitness on the running rest days. Recovery exercise. This messes with my example, so don’t focus on this.)

Day two, so far so good. I know it’s working because I thought about not working out tomorrow and then immediately rewrote my day so that a run is feasible. I WILL NOT BREAK THE CHAIN!

How many days does it have to be before I can consider the habit formed? I think even time alone cannot tell. Time and my inclinations will tell. However, I’ll add a photography chain after the running chain is built. One task at a time.

Update:
Benjamin Katz: Lifehacker article about it is here: http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret

Cheryl Brummer Katz: Oh and here, Lifehacker says it’ll take 21 days. Reiterating some of my habit forming thoughts! http://lifehacker.com/5724234/how-to-form-good-habits-this-year?skyline=true&s=i

Since returning from Perú, this is really the first week of somewhat-semi-normalcy I’ve had. Sami is at school with her regular class, Ben is at work and I’m no longer entertaining Ben’s mom and dad (lovely as it was to have them around.)

It still would be hard to describe my time as “normal.” I suppose I can call it normal when I don’t feel uncertain about how to direct myself every morning when I wake up.

On Monday I made the fabulous menu I posted about – a Peruano lunch to give Ben’s team, my former coworkers, a taste of what the cuisine was like in Perú. I woke up early, got Sami and her lunch ready, dropped her off early, made a last minute market run, and got back to my house shortly before 9 AM to hit the ground running.

I cooked straight through from 9 until 12:15, packed everything up and took it to the office. This alone is a point of pride for me, and here’s why: I somehow timed everything perfectly. The hot items were hot, the cold items were cold, everything was fully cooked just in time. I had to resist the urge to fritter away a minute here and there, and I’m glad I did because I had allocated my time exactly perfectly, but with no room for error.

It’s a new experience for me, this cooking like a madwoman experience. Granted, it won’t be a part of my daily life. Which is why I’m using the word “normal” somewhat hesitantly.

Dinner on Monday was a reprisal of the lunch menu – we have so darn much rice left, it’s insane.

For lunch Tuesday Sami got… you guessed it… Rice! With potatoes and fruit and a carrot or something. I had leftover hearts of palm salad, which suited me just fine, and I made rice pudding to eat up some of that leftover rice.

I also took the leftover ceviche, which after marinating in lemon juice for over 24 hours, was pretty thoroughly acid-cooked, though had not gotten tough. I drained the liquid off some of the fish, threw it in a pan with a tablespoon of oil, and added some leftover salsa, oregano, red pepper and fresh cilantro. With some shredded cabbage, warmed up tortillas, and a bowl of rice (spruced up with some chopped cilantro) we had a lovely fish taco dinner! And I came away feeling like a champion.

Tuesday was way more “normal” than Monday. I straightened up around the house and got our finances in order, which needed desperate doing since we’d been away for 3 weeks and entertaining for another week after that. Everything’s good, under control and such.

I made motions toward getting the house in order, and of course there’s plenty left to do. I need to:

* Sort through Sami’s clothes and weed out the ones that are too small. This is a somewhat ongoing task… but it’s getting dire now.
* Sort through the piles of whatnot that are on my desk/craft table in the home office. Since I moved the computer to the kitchen nook and designated the desk as my craft space, it has only been used for general crap storage – the piles are driving Ben crazy, and of course it’s hardly usable surface space.
* Kitchen/cupboard organization overhaul and audit. Six month old half-eaten bag of pita chips? Buh-bye. (Hopefully cleaning for Passover won’t be such a chore this year.)
* Organize, audit, donate and organize some more! This may be my mantra for 2009.