Good Habits are Great.
Structure and habits help me aging gracefully.
Getting old so I’m told, Settle down sit and read, occasionally snore.
“Act your age!” they say, Reject such advice, Let naysayers dig their own graves.
My goals are simple, Be useful to family and stay independent, Useful implies keeping mental acuity, Being in control facilitates usefulness, Physical health combined with positive attitude provides means of achieving goals.
Mental Acuity
No getting away, Mental acuity or cognitive decline, Ability to reason focus and recall information at optimum speeds decreases with age.
Exercise and Diet started regime 90’s, Stood me in good stead, Lost weight and much improved physical health, Helped increase attention span to younger days.
Cognitive decline, Decided my best strategy was work with it or around it.
Spent some years assisting corporate group ideation and decided to leverage my experiences to tackle problem of cognitive decline.
Organising Life, Developing Habits.
Being engineer, I like place for everything and everything in its place, Seems facile, But I don’t have to think where things are, By habit I retrieve and use then return to rightful place, Alleviates anxiety and stress from misplaced things like glasses and coffee cups.
Organised daily life, Exercise and walks meal recipes and shopping days cleaning and washing, Necessary habits become enjoyable moments of getting things done, Performing habits frees mind to ponder and bring things together, Relaxing and satisfying.
Found doing my routines helps put stressful situations into perspective and formulate positive attitude to reach solutions.
No Rigidity.
All my life remember Grandmother telling me “If it’s worth doing then do it well and never compromise”, When I was young sitting in her country kitchen, Enticing aromas delicious and nutritious best country cooking, She lived her saying.
Don’t believe in soulless schedules dividing day into activity slots, Making endless repetitive and pointless lists, Waste of time and mental space.
Day structured as activity and thinking songline, Walk daily songline of sequenced activities, Doing each activity properly with smile, Remembering grandmother so long ago, Completing one activity then moving to next, Peaceful and satisfying.
Career involved in tackling complex engineering and IT related problems, Usually in crisis situations, Impossible to structure time around careful approach to doing what has to be done, Many branched activity songline.
Find that my diet and exercise coupled with songline approach gives each day great satisfaction, Not finished today? There’s always tomorrow.
Gardening in my LED gardens watching Gaia’s unfolding songline is Icing on life’s cake.