Playing catch-up here at Double Arrow Metabolism after being on the road for work. Today (yesterday, actually) is day three of Changing Your Habits week: Change Where You Charge It.

Catherine tells me that to break the automaticity of checking my phone before bed, in bed, and first thing in the morning, I need to create a charging station for my phone and other mobile devices that is outside my bedroom. In effect, I'm transforming my cell phone into a landline. So the ringer volume is going to the top, baby. 

This means I'll have to get an alarm clock, which I still haven't done. 

But in the meantime, I'm to pick a new charging station. I think my kitchen island is a good candidate: 

Then I'm supposed to take all my chargers from other places in the house (especially the bedroom) and move them to this spot. To enforce this for everyone in the house, Catherine tells me to start a "phone bank" where I'll have to pay money every time my phone gets charged somewhere else. I'll put my daughter on the case.

Day 11 is Set Yourself Up for Success day. Catherine tells me this is when we add triggers to make it more likely to do the things I want to do, or things I know I enjoy, instead of reaching for my phone. 

One thing that my phone delivers that I love almost without guilt is podcasts. Trouble is, sometimes podcasts don't play in the order I want them to, and I end up messing around with my phone at stoplights. I don't text and drive; Apple's Do Not Disturb While Driving feature, while the target of some criticism, has basically fixed that temptation for me. But the update to the Podcasts app that's system-delivered on iPhones was a nightmare for this. I never could figure out how to get it to auto-play, and I was constantly looking at my phone at stoplights, trying to get the next podcast to play. Mike Pesca, host of The Gist (one of my favorites), fixed this for me. He recommended the Overcast app. It's spectacular. It allows me to have podcasts enter my feed in order, and it'll just play them one after the other. I highly recommend it. I literally deleted the Apple Podcasts app after I tried it. 

Sometimes, though, I'm just not feeling the podcast I'm listening to. I can only take so much news about the dysfunction of the White House, for example, before I have to turn to something else. And there's not really a good control on the dash of my car that lets me go to the next podcast. So I end up janking around with my phone at intersections, trying to skip to the next show. I can think of a couple interventions for this: First, I'm going to try to set up a playlist before I get in the car for long trips. Second, I'm going to take advantage locally of a new radio station that I really like, or just listen to NPR when I get stuck on a podcast I'm not into. 

At home, I plan to keep going to the library and having a book from my "to read" list nearby all the time. That's not a big change, but it's a part of my routine that I like and that I'm proud of.