Lights: the most relied upon self-mastery tool I have is also the simplest (and it’s free)
By: Rosie Odsey
Tags: Wellbeing, Productivity, Habit Building, Habits

Scroll through my writing and you’ll know that I don’t really do clickbaity titles. I just didn’t know how to title this one without it being understated.

I moved out of full-time employment in early 2018 and found myself with the glorious freedom (and complete overwhelm) of a blank slate.

When you’re busy, you think that you’ll get around to all of these amazing things when you finally “have the time”.

Look, I’ve had the time. If you go from busy to an empty calendar, you’re more likely to do whatever it is you currently do when you veg out. It’s kind of sad and I felt super pathetic.

Anyways, a few months into self-employment / retirement-rehearsal, I started using Lights. (Actually I started using a heap of things of which only a few stuck but for today we’re talking about lights).

In case you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, this was my first Lights:

Lights is a spreadsheet. At the beginning of your week, you set all of the things you want to do daily and then you update it throughout the day. I have so much advice for past Rosie on how she could improve this but 71% isn’t bad for a first week.

At the end of 2018, I did a year-end review (which I described here). I did that review completely offline, which meant that when I was reviewing the Lights data, it looked like this:

What a weirdo haha

It gave me time to really reflect on how this has made such a difference in my life. Here’s why it’s great.

It forces you to face the full reality of you

If you were to name all of the things you do daily, you’re probably wrong. It’s not a criticism, it’s just human nature. Capturing data is the easiest way to see your blind spots about this sort of stuff. Unlike our suspicions about friends, coaches, and mentors, the spreadsheet isn’t judging you. It’s just a representation of what you think you’re capable of doing.

It’s about maintenance not game-changing, which — consequently — is game-changing

If you get a copy of the spreadsheet, it comes with instructions. Use them. There’s a reason they’re there. When you first use this sheet, it’s not about taking on 7 new habits at once (which, even for advanced get-shit-done types, is almost impossible). It’s about defining your bare minimum actions that could survive your worst possible week.

Don’t be fooled by how simple this seems. Before you try it, you’ll think it may only give incremental change. I thought the same. I was wrong. It is amazing how much of your life you can change, once you’ve started with getting your bare minimum straight.

It’s a form of taking control of your life

For everyone who hates systems, this bit is for you.

What stops me from being an ice junkie? It’s cheap, you have few problems in life except for getting your next hit and, in some places, everyone is doing it.

What stops me from eating cake every meal? It’s delicious, I can afford it, and there is an amazing variety available.

What stops me from scrolling through social media every second of every day? The algorithm is keyed to keep my attention and I will continue to get dopamine hits every 1 in 10 items I scroll through.

Me. I stop me. Because there are things that are more important in my life. Because the cost of those actions is higher than the benefit I’ll receive.

If we extrapolate out into life, I argue that I’m just making that explicit or concrete by using systems like this. If I don’t define what I do daily, I’ll be pushed and pulled by reacting to whatever I see, hear, and read.

I can hear someone say, “But I do what I want.”

Maybe you do. My worry is that being self-aware and not being self-aware feel the same — the only way I can tell the difference is by tracking things.

You get to see how impossible your expectations might be

One week, I added 8 things. After that week, I was so disheartened that I ditched the spreadsheet altogether for a while. We’re human. By doing adjusting your expectations of yourself on a week-by-week basis, you get to see how bad we are at knowing our own capacity.

Mind you, it’s not that we’re bad at executing, not really. If I set myself 5 tasks in a day and complete those 5 plus an additional 2, I’ve had an awesome day. If, however, I set myself 12 tasks and only hit 7, I’ve had an awful day. An execution improvement may change this but I reckon you’re more likely to see execution improvements once you give yourself the gift of knowing your capacity.

So, if you think you have no habits, that’s ok. Start with brushing your teeth in the morning and the evening. That’s enough. Assuming (or once) that’s like clockwork, add other things that you would consider bare minimum. Then you can try other game changers.

You get to move your life in different directions

Once you get good at knowing your capacity, you can do some awesome stuff. Because you’re looking at this thing so regularly, you’ll notice tiny optimisations in your life to help it facilitate what you want for yourself. One day, I realised that fish oil was difficult to remember (“Have I taken it yet?”), so I got one of those tablet cases for breakfast / dinner / lunch. My adherence skyrocketed. Since I started Lights, I’ve been able to do things like:

Take fish oil

Journal

Practise yoga

Set Most Important Tasks

Complete the Most Important Task

Inbox zero

Track food

Exercise

Review my vision and current projects

Block my time

on a daily or close-to-daily basis.

That’s the nitty gritty. In a broader description, I’ve been able to add things and let go of others. I’ve also been able to “try on” a habit to see if it works for me.

It’s not magic. It’s not even complex. It’s just a great lens disguised as a spreadsheet which facilitates enough self-awareness to figure out what you want to add to and take from your life.

Winning with Lights

If an item is really low performance ask yourself if it’s likely — notice I didn’t say important — that you can make it work next week. This may be the case if you have a different approach to making it work or if the current week had unusual circumstances that caused a performance breakdown. Don’t be fooled into thinking that “trying harder” will work. If you’re not changing any other factors in your life, remember that that’s just doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

If it’s not likely to happen next week, that’s not a failure. Failure would be staying the same for the rest of your life. You’ve recognised your limitations. I call that a win. With regards to the action itself, there are a few things you can try:

Set your benchmark lower. Instead of “Meditate” make it “Meditate for 5mins”. Instead of “Floss” try “Floss one tooth”.

Write it more clearly or more concretely. Instead of “Prepare for tomorrow” try “Review tomorrow’s calendar”.

Write it more convincingly. This may not work for everyone but, if you’re using words that repel you, you could try to make it sound more inviting. I once had “Reading self-date” which replaced “Read for 30mins+”. If you think about why you’re doing it (in my case, for pleasure) this may guide you into rewording. For me, it worked because I was changing it to an indulgence instead of using KPI-style wording.

Move the action to a lower frequency. Maybe you’re not at the stage where this is a daily action yet. It’s super hard to go from never playing guitar to playing every day. Either keep in Lights and call it “Played guitar in the last 3 days” or remove it from Lights and use another system (anything that’s not your brain) to make it happen. If it’s working for you, it can come back into Lights later.

I wish I had known this when I started out: don’t get attached to things. I keep these habits because they keep my life in a good way. Sometimes they fall out of serving their purpose. I no longer need “Up by 7:30am” on my Lights because I’m now focusing on sleeping enough instead of getting up early. I no longer have a “Laptops down by 9pm” on there because I have an 8pm routine instead. I do yoga instead of meditation now. It does yourself a great disservice to continue doing something even when it stops serving you.

For the Lights veterans

Some things I’ve tried that I’ve loved. If you’ve used digital lights for a while, I’d recommend giving some of these a try (beginners, stick to digital until you’re hitting 70%+ at least 4 weeks in a row).

Play with tense: see if present or past tense works best for you. I find “bed made” works better for me than “make bed” because I being told what to do 😂.

Clump actions that trigger each other together. I only tried this recently and I love it — I’m more likely to do the whole routine because otherwise it doesn’t “count”. I also got more critical about what belonged in the routine and what didn’t.

Look horizontal as well as vertical. You’ll find a few insights around what’s not serving you.

Have a Lights Review ritual to make sure you’re entering each week with intention. I re-read Best Practices almost weekly.

Consider an alternate day for Lights Review. I know that Sunday — Saturday / Monday — Sunday are the most common, but often other things in our life follow that cycle which means that we’re doing Lights Review in tandem with other weekly reviews (I know you have them) or the craziest work day of the week.

Analog Lights (see below)

Analog Lights

I switched to paper a few months ago.

Reasons I like analog:

When you hit a wall or overwhelm during the day, having your keystone document in tangible form is great. You can walk away from the computer and reset.

It forces screen breaks.

When you do things the slow way, you only migrate stuff that you’re damn sure you want in your life.

This book is open to this page more often than any other page

If you’re interested, here’s how I do it:

Use a dot grid book

Write the items in a column on the left — write on a line, not on a gap

Write the days up the top — justify them on a line, not on a gap

As you go through the day, put a + in the intersection between the day and the item when you complete it

At the end of the day, join the vertical lines together and total the column

At the end of the week, draw a horizontal line between all of the + signs and total each row

At the end of the week, total the whole week and calculate the percentage

Follow the suggested Lights Best Practices

Ultraworking and me

I am not earning anything from this.

I’m doing this because genuinely love the tool. I’m a current member of The Work Gym and I am happy to support what Ultraworking is doing in the world.

Or you can get Lights on its own here.