Generally a good parameter for me is to try something I haven't done before either in the writing or recording process, to break old patterns and habits. Even if I eventually return to something similar, I'll have gotten there from a different starting point and engaged in a different process.
I'd have no rituals, but I'm a person of compulsive habit. That's just some awful residue of a ritual. And one of the reasons for that is my living this life, which is otherwise so free of obligations. It's not at all unusual for anybody who's independently employed to crave a way of living whereby they create the structures without which their lives would otherwise start slopping around all over the place.
I don't make a habit of watching my parents' films, because it is a little strange. But I will say that I binge watch House of Cards compulsively, and I think it's the first time I've ever seen one of my mom's projects and totally forgot she was my mom! She's honestly that good, and, also, her character is the exact opposite of who she is in real life.
I'm never, never sure which way to go. I'm full of unsureness. That's been a habit for years. I never really want to commit.
I underwent a whole process of slowly letting go of idiosyncrasies and habits and embellishments and everything extraneous to the essentials that I'm unwilling to let go of. I never dreamed that I would be making black-and-white paintings with so little embellishment. But it's been liberating in many ways to let go of that and yet see what I did want to retain.
I would drink gallons of coffee a day. Even now, off caffeine, I talk faster than anyone you've ever met. I finally recognized that I'm naturally amped up. But when I quit I was worried that I would never write again. It was like anyone who's kicked a habit. I was in a blanket shivering, trying to kick the horse.
I met with a bad bout after the trial was over, and while the trial was on I habit of stopping by the liquor store and buying a bottle of wine every night. Just to forget the days courtroom proceedings. Then the next morning I'd get up, go to court again and do it all over again. Well, by 1985, I was a fall down, low bottom drunk. An alcoholic. And in 1989, I finally got sober. And I found the rooms of a 12 Step Recovery Program. And I diligently worked those 12 Steps, and I have changed my life dramatically. I'm happily married. I converted to Christianity.
I am a smoker, I'm ashamed to say. I had given it up for many years, then picked it up again. It's a horrible habit. I struggle with myself all the time. And I love to smoke. An actor has to be very, very careful, as one of the most wonderful props - and actors love props - is a cigarette. There's so much to do with it: you can bring it up to your face, play with the smoke. It's just the greatest - ever since I was 16 and in acting school in England, I've been playing around with cigarettes.
Understanding and admitting that you have an issue is the first way to change. When you quit a toxic habit, you leave room for something beautiful to take its place.
I kind of dropped a lot of bad habits about three years ago and became kind of accidentally straight-edge. I don't have Xs on my hands, but I guess if I wanted to go back to calling myself straight-edge, I could. Around that same time I started running. I never saw myself as the kind of person who would become a runner. It seemed unfathomable to me that I would ever run three miles, let alone 26.2.
Let me tell you something. When I was young, I was an armed robber. I did robberies. And there's no adrenaline rush like that. When you're using drugs and doing robberies, it's hard to distinguish whether you're doing robberies to support your drug habit, or doing drugs to support your robbery habit.
I'd always believed that any song worth singing is worth putting harmony on. When it comes time for the harmonies to come in, I will move to my left because my brother and I always used to use one microphone, and so you had to share the mic. And, even today, I will move over to the left to give the harmony room, knowing in my mind that there's no harmony standing on my right. But it's just old habits are hard to break.
I'm inspired on a daily basis by my personal goals. I make it a habit to write down what it is that I want to accomplish. And I check that list. I keep myself accountable. My kids inspire me, of course. My ambition inspires me. I want to win at everything that I do in life. I understand that it takes hard work to reach my goals and I'm prepared to do it. My confidence comes from preparation. So I spend a lot of my time preparing.
I try to follow certain rules. Nothing in Élysée Palace should become habitual, because routine lends one a deceptive feeling of security. You begin not noticing certain things and lose your focus on what's important. Uncertainty and change keep you attentive. This place and, to a certain extent, my office, help me avoid developing habits.
The behavior of people and the culture of an organization are very different in winning streaks and losing streaks. But what both have in common is their momentum - once winners' or losers' habits and culture take hold, they tend to perpetuate themselves.
Change is difficult and it takes time. It is hard for people to change their own behavior, much less that of others. Change programs normally address attitudes, ideas, and rewards. But the behaviors of people in organizations are also strongly shaped by habits, routines, and social norms. Real change requires new power relationships, new work routines and new habits, not just intent.
We passed law that encouraged consumption through different purchasing habits like, you know, hybrid vehicles. You buy hybrid, you get a tax credit. We've encouraged the spread of ethanol as an alternative to crude oil. We have asked for Congress to pass regulatory relief so we can build more refineries to increase the supply of gasoline, hopefully taking the pressure off of price. And so the strategy is to recognize that dependency upon crude oil, in a global market, affects us economically here at home. And, therefore, we need to diversify away as quickly as possible.
Despite wanting to work in publishing, I was a publisher's worst nightmare: I rarely bought new books. So my goal was to publish the kind of books I would buy, and read. My reading habits have changed since starting the press. The only other "goal", per say, is to continue to experiment. I don't want the press to ever fall into a formula, or to be pigeonholed - "They do great reissues of modernist poets!" - I want to keep pushing, exploring the kind of title we can get away with. And working with authors who challenge the way I think about writing, editing and reading.
Newcomers should be put in an established position where the expectations are known and help is available. New major assignments should mainly go to people whose behaviors and habits are well known and who have already earned trust and credibility.
As each generation comes up that doesn't have the habits for paper it's just easier and cheaper to get your stuff online. You know, people go to what they're used to. Certainly our generation, you know, we'll always want to have a magazine in our hands. We like that, but millennials didn't see the value in that necessarily.
I am by nature not a list-keeper, but I do keep lists of names and add at least one or two every single day without exception. First names, last names, middle names, combinations of. I've collected more over the years than I can possibly ever use in a single lifetime, but I keep the list going nonetheless. I tell my students that it's a habit, an act of attention, that will keep them engaged, keep them thinking about characters and stories, and how that match might get made.
There is a comfort with design that may be a detail, rather than a building; comfort with form that is time-released and never finished. How do you represent an instruction set that will play out in time? There may be slightly different kinds of documents for representing those forms, and different skills for advocating change outside of our fee-for-service habits.
There are dangers surrounding innocuousness and consensus and habit. ISO organizes hundreds of people on technical committees who are, no doubt, trying to do their best. But the standards in some cases end up reinforcing violence and destruction thousands of miles away.
We work with tweens. Middle school grades. That's a key time in a young person's literary history. That's the time when they're still open to reading, but there are other things that are starting to interest them that can pull them out of their reading habits. It's a critical time to make the reading habits stick, but at the same time it's not pulling teeth to try to get them to read in the first place.
The status quo is more tenacious than anyone would ever imagine. The human mind prefers continuity rather than change. So it really has to be committed to eliminating a bad habit to even start down that path.
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