yet another fresh start

Last time I posted a Plan post was at the end of June. I made it two weeks of being productive before I had a bad day and slid back to endlessly refreshing google reader, eating crap, not exercising and staying up to 2am. My mother was visiting until last week, so now that I'm back to only having to worry about myself, it would be a good time to get my life in order.

My advisor seems to have discovered accountability in the last couple of weeks, which is unfortunate for my meeting tomorrow, but should be a good thing, if it lasts. I've been trying to think of better ideas for motivating myself, too. A friend recently had some success with real gold star stickers, and silver ones for days she almost made it, but not quite. Maybe I'll try the stars again both virtually and in real life.

So, The Plan is:

1. exercise
2. eat 5 servings of fruit and vegetables
3. leave home by 9.30am
4. no internet without doing an hour's work first and then only for 10 minutes at a time
5. go to bed by midnight
6. blog about how well I did each day

I want to go back to using the star icons at the top of my blog to keep track, but I need to learn to keep starting afresh every day instead of giving up entirely every time I have a bad day. I need a reward system that isn't all or nothing so I'm just going to use the stars to count how many total days I meet my goals, not how many days in a row.