New Month's Resolutions 2025

I did this a few months ago and I was surprised that what they mean by servings in those recommendations is a way lower amount than I assumed. I also thought that my regular level is way under, but I was surprised. E.g. most apples (your example) are closer to 1.5-2.5 servings. Of course I am not encouraging you to count everything by weight - it gets overwhelming very quickly, but I just wanted to share this because I also entered a similar goal with a similar initial understanding of my baseline.

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Let’s see…

April: /morningreading

I managed to keep up with this quite well once I managed to remember this was the plan (which didn’t always work on a groggy morning), but I don’t know how much it helped. I want to spend a bit more time with the goal and try to be a bit more mindful.

One benefit is that it did help me knock out my Serial Reader goal very early each day so that didn’t hang around. On the other hand, on days when I was raring to go, I had to stop and read first. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

May: /bedtime

Quite the classic use-case, I know! I’ve been bad about consistently going to bed, since I’m currently staying with my parents and sister, so everyone here (including myself) is a nightowl by nature. I’m not trying to get to bed at midnight or anything, but pulling it back to make sure I’m lying down in bed (even if I then read for a bit) by 1am is the plan.

It’s set to a rate of 5/week, to give wiggle room, and reports the following day so there’s no problem with forgetting to add the data because I’m in bed.

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April: puzzling

This one was enjoyable, but I set it to end at the end of the month because jigsaw puzzles are something that are really easy for me to get hyperabsorbed in, which can be pleasant and enjoyable, but after a month of glutting on it, I need a break (and so do my shoulders).

May: gradcards

Faire wants to send Graduation cards out to people, a lot of whom I will need to track down addresses for. And then actually addressing envelopes, and buying postage, and all that. I guess for starters. Also this is not solely my responsibility, so I’ve settled in on a group goal, shared with danny, where the metric is “cells in the spreadsheet”. We’ve got a google sheet of the folks we want to send cards to, with columns for name, address, addressed, sent, and “asked” (because we’re gonna have to reach out to get a bunch of the addresses, since we don’t already have a habit of sending xmas cards or somesuch).

So I set up one specific cell that counts the number of filled in cells in the range, and then there’s an IFTTT applet that sends a datapoint whenever that cell is updated.

This is something that is time-relevant and highly specific to things that I need to get done, so hopefully it will feel a little more.. aligned? than my last couple goals, which were both fun, but also arguably somewhat negative in the end result (e.g. staying up till 4am reading Exciting Novel because beeminder told me to start reading at 11pm).

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So, I’ve been feeling lately like often I get too absorbed in reading the news, talking on discord, or something like that while I’m eating breakfast or commuting, and then have trouble transitioning to work. So I thought for May I’d try to make a goal which enforces a habit of not doing anything other than work & essential routines early in the day.

The basic idea: a goal to get X points / week, where a point is awarded for each hour after 6 AM I go without doing anything non-essential that isn’t work (or responding to whatsapp—I’m not just going to ignore my family). So for example, checking discord, or the news, or reading a novel, or doing anki—any of the above would stop the timer for the day.

Ideally, then, while I’m on the bus to work I’ll just think about what I’m going to do that day, rather than getting sucked into some nonsense.

On weekends, same idea applies but replace “work” with “my to-do list in Things + beeminder goals”.

I haven’t made the goal yet because I want to wait a couple more days to see if I can think of a good name. :stuck_out_tongue: Right now I have something like morning_focus but this sounds lame and doesn’t really capture the idea.

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Did someone say “think of a good name”? This is my favorite thing.

Out of curiosity, I tried the AI built in to the forum now:

I guess “focusfirst” is fine. More brainstorming from me and my usual bots:

  • focusfirst
  • focuspocus
  • AMnesia (forgetting about everything but work in the A.M.)
  • prefrontal
  • sunscreen
  • busstop
  • busmode (by analogy to airplane mode)
  • precrastinate
  • dewdiligence (if “dew” evokes “morning”, not sure)
  • cerebus
  • jumpstart

PS: My May goal is gradcards, as a group goal with @bee.

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EDIT: oh no, goals aren’t case sensitive so it displays all lowercase?