Weekly update:
My ‘reduce number of possessions’ goal has been going well. There has been quite a lot of low-hanging fruit, and I have been rummaging around at the end of most days and finding something that I should get rid of. This has made the goal somewhat unexciting, but I am hoping that it will become more interesting as the number of obvious things to get rid of reduces.
I have a box in our bedroom where everything is going for now. A jumper will be turned into a kindle case, some things might be donated, and others thrown out (like a horrible dead USB cable that I still try every X months when looking for the one that works)
Existing Goals:
https://www.beeminder.com/penten
To keep the number of goals under control, I will try and reevaluate my current goals each month, removing any that are no longer useful.
A breakdown of my existing goals is below:
wake
I have an IFTTT button that sends the current hour when I click it. The goal is a do-less goal. The result is that I need to get up at 6:30 on week days and 8am on weekends to prevent myself from going over. I am only allowed to hit the button once I am standing up, out of bed, to prevent lying in bed for half an hour after waking, or hitting snooze and going back to sleep.
This is quite a new goal, but so far, this has been working great, and I have not been wasting time lying in bed on weekday mornings.
working fine, keep for now
daily-plan
This goal is to write a daily plan in the morning of each work day, blocking out time for tasks, something like this: http://calnewport.com/blog/2013/12/21/deep-habits-the-importance-of-planning-every-minute-of-your-work-day/
Especially on days when I am working from home, I have found this, combined with pomodoros, to be excellent at keeping me productive. Non-productive time like meetings, lunch, email reading etc. is all planned in, so I can be confident that I will get the important stuff done before the end of the day. I write the initial plan in blue, then make updates in red where necessary. Most days are covered in red, but it is still much better than no plan at all. This has not quite become a habit yet, so I will keep the goal for now.
not yet a habit, keep for now
work
The number of pomodoros I get done each day. This is set at a (depressingly) low level of 6/day. I only run a pomodoro when I am doing deep focused work, so it does not count emails, talking to people, meetings, small bits of reactive work etc. A day where I do 10 pomodoros is a very productive day. This has been amazing at helping me focus on tasks despite constant distractions in the office.
working great, keep for now
writing
This is my central personal goal right now. It requires that I write 400 words each day on my novel. I have made quite a few changes to make this go more smoothly in the last month, which I may talk about in the next update!
This has been amazing, I am able to push out 400+ words a day, without wasting time on “research”, “editing” or other procrastinatory behaviours. The end result will probably be very rough, at which point I will create an editing goal. (I am not yet certain what form that will take, I may do a diff each day and count the number of lines changed? Or I could count the number of scenes marked as final-draft, etc.)
working great, keep until book complete!
frugal-lunch
The number of times a week I do not eat out at lunch. It is a big money sink, and so very easy to avoid by preparing something the day before. I have great trouble with this goal, multiple times I have made a sandwich and left it on the table at home. This one annoys me because I am so bad at it, so I am definitely keeping it.
good for me, keeping until a habit forms!
mustdo
Exactly this: https://blog.beeminder.com/mustdo/
If there is a task that I have been putting off, the mustdo goal gets it done. For hard ones I might leave it on there, festering for a day or two, but as the goal becomes blue…then orange, the task does in fact get done. Brilliant, awesome goal.
love this, keeping forever
vitamins
Makes sure that every morning I consume my vitamins. Currently this is: 5000iu of vitamin D, 3g of creatine, 1000mcg of B12. This has been easy, but without it I would probably forget most days. I think this is almost a habit, and I could maybe consider removing it in another few months, but I am not quite ready yet.
still need this for a while, keeping for another month
chinese-reading
Since leaving the country, I have found some aspects of my mandarin level getting worse. Comprehension is fine, day-to-day conversational is fine, but I find myself talking using simpler vocabulary and less complex grammar. The very clear reason is that I did not allow myself to read English books for a number of years while I was still learning the language, so I was constantly exposed to the complex grammar and vocabulary of books. Now that I am reading English books again, I use Chinese mostly just when watching TV or talking to people.
To prevent myself slowly starting to sound more and more like a five year old when I talk in Mandarin, this is a mini goal to read something, anything in Chinese every day. This could be a page of a book, a single paragraph of an article, a forum post, etc. (skype/social media doesn’t count, too conversational!)
Recently my kindle broke, and I only had Chinese paper books at hand, so this task has become an automatic pass every day as I read through this book. Once I have moved back onto an English book, it should keep me reading however.
I am very happy with this, and considering adding a similar goal for French, but I think that would be a bit much right now, maybe in a a few months once the writing goal is complete.
love this, keeping forever
Overall I am happy with all these current goals, there is nothing in there that I would be willing to lose right now.
Next update in a week!