Two Weeks, a Rock Band, and an Unemployed F*ck Off Box

Two weeks ago, I decided to experiment with some of the ideas in James Clear’s Atomic Habits.

The plan was simple. A one-minute plank every morning, a little music practice every evening, and a timed lockbox to stop me wasting my life staring at screens. Start small, make things easy and build consistency.

Fourteen days later, I’ve exercised every morning, rediscovered piano and meditation, continued learning salsa, eaten an unreasonable number of poached eggs and joined a rock band.

Meanwhile, the Fuck Off Box has spent most of its existence sitting under the television, doing sweet FA.

I expected exercise to be difficult and controlling my phone use to be easy. Apparently, I know absolutely nothing about myself.

The plank that started it all

My first habit was ridiculously simple. While my morning coffee brewed, I’d do a one-minute plank. If I fancied doing more, brilliant. If not, one minute counted.

And it worked. Seven days out of seven in the first week, including a weekend away. I’ve continued exercising throughout the second week, sometimes for five minutes, sometimes longer. I’m now adding stretches and other exercises to improve my core strength, mobility and posture.

I haven’t developed an overwhelming passion for planking. I’m not leaping out of bed desperate to suspend myself above the carpet like a poorly constructed coffee table. But once I’m down there, doing a bit more feels easy enough.

Getting started was the difficult bit.

There was one problem with the original plan. My cafetière takes five minutes to brew, so the exercise was effectively limited to five minutes unless I wanted cold coffee. And I’m willing to make sacrifices for personal development, but there are limits.

So I moved the trigger to something else I do every morning: feeding the dogs.

That works better. It’s not perfect. I’ve been away in hotels, and on a couple of mornings I’ve fed the dogs, gone back to bed with my coffee and exercised later. But I’ve still exercised.

Which has taught me something useful: a habit trigger is supposed to help me remember, not become another bloody rule.

I’ve also abandoned my original weekend gym target. Not because I’ve developed a sophisticated new exercise philosophy. I just don’t want to go. I’ve got a home routine I’m actually doing, which seems considerably more useful than a gym routine I’m enthusiastically avoiding.

From owning instruments to actually playing them

My second habit was to play an instrument after feeding the dogs in the evening.

I already owned a piano, a guitar and a bass. Unfortunately, owning musical instruments and regularly playing them are two quite different pastimes. This has probably been the biggest success so far.

I’ve played piano for half an hour or longer on several occasions, and I’m enjoying it enough that I actively want to practise. I’ve also been attending salsa lessons, which remains a mildly surprising development. I’ve now completed three classes. The initial terror has subsided, and I’m genuinely having fun.

So I’ve broadened the habit from play an instrument to BE MUSICAL. Piano, guitar, bass or salsa practice. All count. If I’ve spent ninety minutes learning to dance, forcing myself to do a piano exercise afterwards would be ridiculous.

And then, this week, I auditioned for a band. Two hours of mostly 70s and 80s rock later, I got the gig. That feels like quite a significant development from an experiment whose original ambition was to play one song after feeding the dogs.

I’m not suddenly a better musician because I’ve been practising for two weeks. I’ve played bass for years. But I’m becoming someone who actually makes music part of his everyday life again, and that feels good.

Rediscovering the art of sitting on my arse

During Week 2, I introduced five minutes of guided meditation after dinner. I’d meditated before and enjoyed it, but, like piano, it had gradually disappeared from my life.

I’m using a free app called Medito, usually sitting on the sofa while the dogs provide absolutely no spiritual guidance whatsoever.

The first evening, I worried about whether the living room was suitable. The dogs were there, my bedroom didn’t have a chair, and I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about building a meditation sanctuary complete with cushions, incense and a small brass gong.

So I sat on the sofa. It was fine. The dogs didn’t object. I didn’t achieve enlightenment. Nobody levitated. I just sat quietly for a few minutes and followed the recording.

And I’m enjoying it. I can’t claim any dramatic benefits yet. I’m not wandering around radiating inner peace, and my chakras haven’t sent me a thank-you card. But I like those few minutes.

It’s interesting that two of the most enjoyable things I’ve done — piano and meditation — aren’t new discoveries. They’re things I’ve refound.

Perhaps changing your life isn’t always about finding exciting new activities. Sometimes it’s about remembering what you used to enjoy before you stopped making time for it.

Meditation has also highlighted something rather less encouraging. I seem to be spectacularly shit at relaxing.

One evening, after nine hours of back-to-back work calls, I was exhausted. I’d exercised, played music, attended salsa, worked on the blog and done considerably more that week than I would have done a month earlier.

And yet, lying on the sofa, I felt guilty. I should be doing something. What? No idea. Just something.

Perhaps it’s an age thing. At 42, I’m increasingly conscious of time passing, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering where it went.

But there’s an obvious problem with that thinking:

I’m trying to create a life I enjoy while making myself feel guilty whenever I stop long enough to enjoy it.

That’s a fairly spectacular piece of self-sabotage. Like buying yourself a lovely new sofa and then refusing to sit on it because you haven’t cleaned the gutters.

I suspect this particular habit will take more than a fortnight to sort out.

My new accountability partner is a robot

I started with a beautifully organised paper tracker. Then I realised I didn’t really want to use it.

Instead, I’ve been checking in regularly with AI, reporting what I’ve done, what I’ve avoided and how I’ve felt about it.

Surprisingly, it’s been one of the most useful parts of the experiment.

A piece of paper records a tick. AI gives me immediate feedback, offers encouragement, asks awkward questions and challenges me when I start treating a perfectly good evening as a failure. It can also hold me to account when I check in and start quietly moving the goalposts.

It’s not infallible. It only knows what I tell it, and sometimes it’s rather too enthusiastic. If I successfully put my trousers on, I don’t particularly need a standing ovation and a certificate from the King.

But having something that helps me reflect on why things are or aren’t working is proving considerably more useful than collecting fourteen little ticks.

The Fuck Off Box can sit there and think about what it’s done

Now for the less successful bit.

My beautifully simple solution to mindless phone use was a timed lockbox. Recognise when I’m wasting time, lock away the phone and remotes for two hours, then go and do something worthwhile.

I’ve used it once.

And I wasn’t particularly keen. I spent the first part wanting my phone back and eventually retrieved my iPad before the two hours were up. Other evenings, I’ve spent far too long scrolling and haven’t even bothered putting anything in the box.

It’s basically an expensive ornament with a built-in timer. An unemployed plastic piss pot sitting beneath the television, waiting for its moment of glory.

But I haven’t given up on the problem. In fact, I’ve stumbled across something more interesting.

I’ve started using Hinge again and noticed that I’m checking it far more often than I’d like, mainly to see whether someone’s replied. For years, I’ve turned off notifications on apps because they’re distracting, but I’ve started wondering whether that has actually made this particular problem worse.

With notifications switched off, I have no way of knowing whether someone’s replied without opening the app. So I turned them back on for new likes, matches and messages.

Almost immediately, something interesting happened. The urge to check started disappearing. I received a notification, looked at it and moved on.

It’s only an initial observation, and it might not last. But what if turning notifications off has actually made me spend more time thinking about my phone?

Perhaps there’s a difference between being interrupted by something and repeatedly interrupting yourself to find out whether something has happened.

I rather like that possibility. It means the solution might not involve more discipline, stronger willpower or locking my phone in a plastic prison. It might simply involve understanding why I keep picking the bloody thing up.

The other little victories

There’s been more going on than planks and piano.

I’m eating breakfast regularly, usually avocado and poached egg on toast. My poaching technique has improved from crime scene to reasonably respectable café.

I’ve been reading more, helped by the astonishingly complicated strategy of putting a book on my pillow.

Perhaps more importantly, I’ve been learning that activities don’t all need to count towards something. Sometimes an evening out is just an evening out. Sometimes playing piano is something I want to do, rather than something I ought to do. And sometimes sitting on the sofa watching football is a perfectly reasonable way to spend a Thursday night.

I don’t want to replace wasting time with obsessively measuring whether I’ve wasted time. That’s just the same problem wearing a little clipboard.

What happens in Week 3?

I’m not adding a dozen more habits. I’m trying to make the existing ones work better.

The exercise continues after feeding the dogs, with longer sessions when I have the energy. One minute remains the minimum. BE MUSICAL continues too, including salsa and whatever I need to learn for the band. When I’m away from home, I’ll use a simple reminder rather than relying on the dogs to follow me into hotel rooms.

I’ll keep meditating after dinner and see whether it helps me become more comfortable doing nothing. I’m enjoying the short sessions, and there’s no reason to turn them into another endurance event.

The Fuck Off Box gets another chance. It hasn’t worked particularly well so far, and I want to understand why before deciding whether to change the approach. I’ll also monitor the Hinge notification experiment. It’s started promisingly, but I’m not declaring a behavioural breakthrough after a couple of hours.

I want to move my phone out of the bedroom too, using something else for my alarm and sleep podcasts instead.

Most importantly, I’m going to pay attention to something that doesn’t fit neatly on a tracker: whether I’m actually enjoying my time.

I’ve also been sleeping badly, waking at four or five in the morning and struggling to get back to sleep. Being more active is great, but I can’t pretend my energy is unlimited.

Sometimes doing less might be the sensible thing, even if the productivity gremlin in my head starts waving a tiny clipboard and demanding an explanation.

So, is any of this working?

Yes. Not everything, not perfectly, and certainly not because I’ve suddenly developed superhuman discipline.

But the little changes are adding up. I’m exercising, making music, meditating and trying new things. I’m also beginning to understand why some behaviours come naturally while others are remarkably difficult to interrupt.

The biggest surprise is how enjoyable much of this has been.

I started the experiment expecting to force myself into better habits. Instead, I’m finding myself wanting to do things I’d previously struggled to make time for.

That’s a fairly substantial improvement.

I still check my phone too much. The house hasn’t magically cleaned itself. My sleep is rubbish, and I sometimes feel guilty for sitting on the sofa.

But I’m only halfway through, and I’ve already got a healthier morning routine, a rediscovered love of piano and meditation, three salsa lessons under my belt and a place in a rock band.

Not bad for fourteen days.

Now I just need to learn that having a fuller life doesn’t mean filling every waking second of it.