Week Four! The first month of this experiment is over. This week has definitely been hectic for me. A good signifier of this is that I don’t really have a list of ideas and notes, like I have had in the past few weeks. In the past, this sort of lack of progress would have most likely discouraged me, and caused a downward spiral where I ended up quitting–only to try to restart and begin again a few months later all over again with seemingly nothing learned.
I have a mantra that I often forget to remind myself about when I get dismissive during times like these–shake the dust. For me, the beginning stage of anything is the most alluring, I love diving into things when there aren’t really any stakes involved and everything seems more forgiving. After awhile, the difficulty ramps up and there’s a natural progression of stress. It’s stop being as fun, or at least optically it does.
But that isn’t how it actually works. I’m not a tiny organism that have a lifespan of a handful of time. I’m set here for the long-run, whether I like it or not. And the only way to do anything meaningful is to stick at it when it’s difficult and cling onto the momentum of cumulative progress. As cheesy as it is, every day is a new day to try my best, and that’s all I can ask of myself.
I feel as though I’m yielding to Parkinson’s Law–the more time I give myself to try to get things done, the more time I just end up being idle and delaying instead. I’ve been close (too close) to derailing on a few systems in the past few days. The way I see it, being a day or two behind isn’t that big of a deal as long as you actually do what’s needed to be done within those few days–and hopefully a little extra more if you can afford the energy.
In the big-picture, grand scheme of things, being a few days off isn’t really noticeable to the system as a whole. But if there’s consistent delays, then something is fundamentally wrong and will only get worse if not addressed. So, let’s review how things are going after having a month of data and behavior to look at and examine.
System Review
- /productivity and /github haven’t had any trouble whatsoever. I’ve been having to auto-trim the safety buffer constantly, which is actually an indication that these are too easy and most likely not actually contributing anything other than a way for me to pat myself on the back. If I had no other problems currently, I’d definitely be ramping these up.
- /daily and /gratitude have also been going well. There are times where I skip a day, however I have always simply made it up the day after, as the consequence of ignoring either of them for longer than that means a derailment.
- /journalbar, /blogging, and /poetry aren’t in the red right now, however, they both require more time and attention than I’m giving them. Unlike my programming work, there’s no chunk of time already in place dedicated to my writing. My (obvious) solution to this is just set a certain time and day each week purely for writing.
- /courses is in the red right now, because I haven’t been allocating enough time to studying either. I’ve instead mostly been doing project-based work instead of reviewing lessons. Although there’s arguably more value in that, there are a lot of concepts and techniques I need to learn before trying to implement them on my own.
- /weight is also in the red right now, mostly because I misplaced my scale when I moved! I just need to but a new one. Although there is a chance that I’m currently over my weight-limit. I’m not entirely sure.
New Systems
- /fitness: I’m purchasing a Fitbit Inspire HR tonight after class, and I’m most likely going to just be tracking steps taken per day, until/if I come up with a more meaningful and intelligent metric.
- I’m also probably going to be adding different systems for the different metrics that can be tracked. It seems sort of weird to have a punishment set up for if I don’t get enough sleep for instance, though I suppose I could frame it as ensuring that I get to bed on time each night.