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One of the things I’m working on this year is to practice moderation. You see, I haven’t been very good at moderation in the past. Typically I flip back and forth between doing waaay too much of something, and not doing nearly enough. This applies to basically all areas of my life.

For example, there were times when I spent way too much money, and times when I spent hardly anything. Times when I did no investing, and times (now) when I’m pretty focused on it. Days when I ate 2500 calories, and days when I ate 1000. Days when I worked like crazy, and days when I didn’t do a darn thing. Weeks when I exercised a lot, and weeks when I didn’t exercise at all.

You get the picture.

So I think that moderation is probably the one thing I could focus on that would make the biggest difference in my life. Extremes may be easy, but they are not healthy for my body or my pocketbook. So that’s got to change.

Unfortunately, practicing moderation is hard. But, I’m making progress. And I’ve discovered something that’s helping quite a bit: paying attention. (What a novel idea.)

Most of the stuff I do too much of or too little of is because I’m not really thinking about it. I don’t feel hungry, so I don’t eat. I buy a gallon of ice cream, and eat the whole thing in a matter of days because I know it’s there. (Ok, maybe I pay a little too much attention to the ice cream.)

But paying attention to what I’m actually doing can result in some pretty major changes.

For example, I started tracking my spending and net worth a couple of years ago. Doing so enabled me to quickly pay off debt and to double my income (which admittedly was pretty small to begin with.) Paying attention was the change that made it possible. So I’ve decided to apply this to other areas of my life as well, and to continue applying it in the area of spending and income. It’s time to stop with too much or too little, and start with just right.