personal progress program update

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I have been working on a multi-pronged personal development program this year (see https://recalcitrantegg3.blogspot.com/2022/02/new-personal-progress-program.html ), focusing on tracking nine different weekly goals that hit on a range of themes that I want to improve on. Below is last week's final report. As you can see, I kind of blew the fitness goal of doing three weight training sessions/week. Well, totally blew that goal, but hit all the others. Accepting some failure each week is actually one of the underlying emotional goals. This isn't a rigid, absolute exercise. I am actually trying to build habits, rather than simply hit arbitrary targets.

 


If you are interested, you can see the Google Sheet where I keep the records live here: 

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

One of the things that has been effective is I can access the Google Sheet from my phone - so as soon as I complete one of the tasks, I mark it as complete. This gives me a small dose of satisfaction and rewards the behavior, and I can see my success on the right "overall" column as I push toward completion. 

With 23 tasks each week, one of things I have started to pay attention to is how even the execution is. To spread the work evenly (and thus more sustainably), I need to do 3-4 tasks each day. This past week you can see I failed to do that, and wound up doing 5 tasks on Thursday and Friday - and still not completing everything. 

Ideally I want all of these tasks to feel like a natural part of my life. I want to sit down each evening (or at some point during the day) and read. I want to feel like the day isn't complete if I haven't done some form of exercise. I'm not quite there yet, but I think I am making progress.

I think this method is both simple and effective. It allows you to track performance in real time with minimal cost and effort. My goals are mine and reflect my own values - anyone else would have to think about what habits they want to build. With habits, there is no final end goal. I want these things to be part of my life forever. Maybe the academic stuff for the next 20 years, but that's almost forever, and it's long enough to be thought of as forever for now.

I'll update again maybe around week 15.  

 


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