Flex_ Do Something Different - Ben [56]
Here are a list of codes. Try to categorise each two-hour chunk of your day according to what you spent most of that time doing:
(HC) Household chores
(IN) Intimacy, building a relationship
(FF) Time spent with friends and family
(SD) Self-development
(WK) Working, earning money
(TV) Watching TV/chilling out
(EA) Exercise, leisure and activity
(SP) Sleeping
Fill in each block in the table with a code for how you spend the time.
Once you’ve filled in the table, look back at that description of yourself in the future. Now look again at the week you’ve just filled in.
Colour code each block according to whether it takes you towards becoming that person you’ve described.
If you did anything that moves you towards being that person, colour the block in green.
If what you did would have no effect on you becoming who and what you want to be, so you’re standing still, then that will be an amber block.
Any activity that takes you away from where you’d hope to be should be coloured in red.
Green MOVING FORWARD
Amber STANDING STILL
Red MOVING AWAY
Remember that some things may come into two categories. Cooking, for example, could be:
GREEN if it’s baking your own bread for the first time and you’re choosing to do this because you want to be the sort of person who is able to turn your hand to anything or engage in activities that will de-stress you and reconnect you with simple pleasures.
RED if you want to be that kind of person but you heat up a ready meal.
AMBER if you serve up your usual meal because, in terms of your goal, it’s standing still.
You’ll probably colour code the time you spend with your partner too. If you’re aiming to be closer and communicate more in the future but your time together is spent in front of the telly that may be an AMBER or even a RED. In the next stage of this project you might plan to spend an evening over a candlelit dinner just talking. That would move you towards your goal and would definitely be a GREEN block.
Now look ahead and plan a week that WILL move you in the right direction.
Build things into your diary that will make a positive difference to where you are going – things that you can colour code in green.
Think carefully about all the red blocks in the table you filled in for your last week.
Try to minimise the red blocks in the week to come. Just swapping two evenings’ TV watching for more productive activities or an alternative form of relaxation could make a huge difference to your life.
Aim for more green blocks and write in each what you will do. Make it coherent with the ideal self that you wrote about earlier.
You can repeat this exercise in future weeks too if you want to.
Remember your aim is to get more green blocks into your week. It may not become totally green overnight, but if you can just add one green block per week you’ll be able to see how, step-by-step, you’re moving towards your goal.
Here are the codes again:
(HC) Household chores
(IN) Intimacy, building a relationship
(FF) Time spent with friends and family
(SD) Self-development
(WK) Working, earning money
(TV) Watching TV/chilling out
(EA) Exercise, leisure and activity
(SP) Sleeping
4
Section 4:
Global issues and flex
61. A modest claim – flex can change the world!
One goal we have collectively is to improve the world and make it a better place where people can live happy and healthy lives. We think flex can help achieve this goal in all sorts of ways. flex can help by equipping individuals to be better people and better citizens, for example. A more powerful proposition, however, is to influence the social and political context we all live in. This is more difficult to do, but a basic tenet of flex makes this a real possibility. You’ve seen how flex works by increasing our range of possible behaviours in different situations. One consequence of this is that we are far better equipped to see things from the perspective of other people, and to know something about others’ ways