new personal progress program

 

After reflecting about my year of daily art and realizing I had spent too much time working on something that was important, but not important enough to justify they time I committed to it, I decided this year that I would refine my approach to self-improvement goals.

The main thing I realized that I really came to dislike about the daily art project was its dailyness. In other words, the fact that I had to do it every day or I failed became overwhelming. That, and it was taking away from other, more pressing priorities. So this year I have decided to establish a series of weekly goals. I have to admit, I came up with them rather quickly during the first week of the new year - I know that is lame, but I really needed a break, I was so burnt out from the daily art discipline. So I came up with a series of weekly goals, and over the first couple of weeks made a few tweeks, and now I am in my 7th week. Crucially, none of them are daily, though reading is 6 days/week, so that is fairly heavy. But it does give me a built in release, and I have decided that failing to hit every goal every week is acceptable.

So I have nine individual, weekly goals.These goals fit into four buckets:

1. Self Improvement - reading - six days/week. Two sub-goals that I lump into one:

1. Read 10-20 pages from a challenging text.

2. Read 10-20 pages from some popular self-development text.

2. Exercise. As mentioned above, two goals:

1. Cardo - 5x per week, 30+ minutes per session. 

2. Weight training - 3x per week. I have a 3-day work out cycle my friend with a PHD in Exercise Science created for me that I do. I had to adjust it when I gym went out of business, so I mostly do body weight exercise (e.g. push ups) with a few dumbbells thrown in. 

3. Creative. 

1. Make some visual art once per week (not photography). 

2. Practice photography once per week. Usually a session working with many shots and using advanced processing software - not just a phone cam shot.

3. Write and record a poem each week. 

4. Professional Reading. Believe it or not, this is a challenge. I get bogged down in the day-to-day of teaching, mentoring students, dealing with other service obligations, writing newsletters, etc. and I don’t take time to sharpen the saw professionally speaking. 

1. Read two academic journal articles on a management theme. 

2. Read two academic journal articles on healthcare.

Below is a link to the live version of my program tracking: 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YLDgU6R8eGB5TdcGPhkUEoYvPXALyLGF5aAaEvgMcNw/edit?usp=sharing 

So far, this has been going pretty well. Reading has been wonderful. For my challenging texts, I have been reading Nozick’s The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations and Alchian and Allen’s Universal Economics. I had to take a pause on Universal Economics because it is a 600 page textbook and I realized I was burning out after about 350 pages, which is when I switched to Nozick. I will probably start alternating between the two in order to stay sharp. The point is not to have any of these tasks become so difficult that I dread them. For popular texts, I have so far completed Curating Your Life: Ending the Struggle for Work-Life Balance, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead, and The Mind Club: Who Thinks, What Feels, and Why It Matters. I have started reading Kouzes and Posner’s The Leadership Challenge. I feel really good about this part of the program. I feel like I had lost my way in terms of personal study, and this program has really got me back into a good rhythm.

I also feel really good about my workouts. I had initially planned cardio six days/week, but realized that six was too much, especially when I was trying to fit in three days of weight lifting as well. With five days of cardio, there is at least one day each week where I have to do both cardio and weights - which is a lot.

I find myself actually struggling with the creative endeavors, ironically, given that last year was totally focused on those. I'm especially finding it hard to get motivated to paint or draw. It might be because I only have one each week - I am finding I fit them in on the last day most of the time. 

I hate to admit I had to create a goal for reading academic papers, but weeks would go by where I would barely touch one. My research interests are focused on individual development, but as a healthcare guy, I need to be paying more attention to the health literature, so this goal forces my hand both ways. 

So... so far, so good. As I said, I threw this list together rather quickly. I'm not 100% sure it is the right list, or if the goals are proportionate to the purpose. But it is making me feel good, and it is providing me some guidance and motivation. Tonight, for example, I made a bit more progress in Nozick than I require of myself for the program, and I considered doubling up on the Leadership Challenge as well, but I looked a the program and realized I hadn't written a blog post yet this week, so I switched gears and here I am, writing one.