I am Keith Hernandez » form new habits

The Artist’s Way Begins

keith hernandez — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 14:52:19 +0000

This week, along with a few co-workers, I have embarked on the challenge of reading and following the activities in the seminal book “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron. The intentions for all of us are to open up our creative spirits and allow ourselves to discover aspects of us that we did not realize exist.
Our first meeting took place in the training room on the 4th floor, we talked about the basics of the book, how it can be difficult to stay with it and how parts of your life will change because of doing it. I will not divulge much else we talked about, as we decided it was best to keep it in the circle of trust that we created. My hopes are that the creative energy realized in the course we are doing will help spark this website and I can make it a thoughtful and creative place to post my thoughts.
The first action in the book, after all the basics are layed out about how we are in fact all artists, we just need to allow it come be present, is to create a morning pages. The morning pages is a notebook intended to be a stream of conciousness activity conducted each morning, right when you wake up. Three pages of hand-written notes, on whatever the fuck comes to mind, is to be completed before anything else, every day. I must say, I started doing the morning pages about a week ago and it has added a sense of clarity to the day. Getting out some of the emotions, some of the crap that lingers in the back of your mind has lead to days where I want to write at the end, where I feel like doing more and creating more. I am only at the beginning stages of this, so let’s see if there is a “dark” period, but right now, I am pumped to see where this activity takes me.
Will keep the website posted on my progress and hopefully will see a difference in the amount and quality that I write on here. The experiment begins…now.

“It’s impossible, that’s for sure. So let’s start working.”

keith hernandez — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 01:40:45 +0000

Over the weekend, I watched Man On Wire, the documentary about Phillippe Petit’s breathtaking tightrope walk across the World Trade Center’s twin towers in 1974. The movie is at once an astounding heist film (his high-wire act was unannounced and very illegal) and a re-affirmation in the power of one’s passion, dreams and motivation. From the very energetic Petit:

To me, it’s really so simple, that life should be lived on the edge. You have to exercise rebellion. To refuse to tape yourself to the rules, to refuse your own success, to refuse to repeat yourself, to see every day, every year, every idea as a true challenge. Then you will live your life on the tightrope.

Watch it and you will want to really live. Any and everything that you dare thought was impossible gets slammed up against the wall by this film, which yells “Watch me!”

Jumping on the Power of Less Train

keith hernandez — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 23:33:09 +0000

Fell into this blog post by Tim Ferriss (author of 4-Hour Work WeeK) and thought THIS is the way to take on learning new habits. Fuck the resolutions (well, not really, I am going to use this system to see if I can realize all of them).

The plan is pretty simple. Find one habit that you want to form, something that you think will have a significant impact on your life. Set a manageable goal of doing that habit every single day for thirty days straight. Make it public, write about it and do it every day. That’s really it.

There is a little more on his site and the creator of the program’s blog, Leo Labauta Zen Habits, but really this is what you do.

I have decided to take this challenge and started yesterday with the first month. My goal: run 10 minutes each day. You might think “10 minutes is ridiculously woosy, why not 5 miles?” and you would miss the point. The idea is to really concentrate on the task and make it something that you can actually do so that once you hit that 30th day it is something innate in your daily routine. Yes, doing a 10 minute run should be a joke most days and I will probably run closer to 20-30 minutes, but think of those 4 degree days where that 10 minutes is going to be beat. Getting through 10 minutes will be harder than running a half marathon.
The other merit to this is that instead of setting a lofty goal of running a marathon by the end of the year (which I did, stupidly) this is a daily goal that if one day is missed, you can jump right back on. So many times with resolutions or goals if a few days or a week is missed the goal is shot. With this, it can be a manageable habit.

I am going to go for all 12 months, with a new habit forming activity for each and will use this site to provide feedback on how I am doing. To read more about the philosophy, check out Tim Ferriss’ post:

The Power of Less: Changing Behavior with Leo Babauta

And please do check out Leo’s website, a great resource for simplifying your life: Zen Habits