I use the trick to help me stay focused on the task at hand when I have a strong desire to goof off instead. I keep a piece of paper next to my keyboard. When some random thing comes to mind that will distract me from what I need to get done, I write that random thing down in the queue. I also write down anything that is useful, but also a distraction *at that moment*.

So by the end of the day I may have a list like this:

• Check out what Megadeth is up to.
• Research Happy Days “Jump the Shark” episode.
• What’s going on with the Principality of Sealand?
• Learn more about oAuth.
• Research home inventory software.

The next morning, when I’m reviewing my tasks for the day, I pull out the 24-hour To Do Queue.  I can see that “Megadeth”, “Jumping the Shark” and “Sealand” were momentary flirtations but “learning oAuth” and “home inventory software” are worthwhile tasks. I move the worthy items to my real to do list. I discard the useless tasks and start a new queue for the day.

The trick is that by writing down these frivolous tasks, I’m essentially giving myself “permission” to do them, just not right now.  Tomorrow I’ll know better and ignore thme], but they are written down where I won’t “forget” about them.

• Deploy
• Serve
• Connect

Deploy

I’m full of good ideas. Have I ever told you I invented XML back in 1994? Too bad I never did anything with the idea; I could be rich like Al Gore after he invented that Internet thing.

I have these great ideas, but often don’t deploy them into the development stage. Those I do develop often languish in the last 10% of completion. I don’t deploy them into the wild. I think they stay there because I don’t like to ship imperfection, and it’s always imperfect.

How arrogant.

It’s better that I deploy something not quite right than to never deploy at all.

The story of Flickr is pretty interesting and relates to this, I think. The founders of Flickr, it’s said, were working on an online game. One of the features they created was a way for players to share photos with their friends. The photo sharing piece got such rave reviews by the players that Flickr became what it is today. The game? Discarded.

Had the team built their game and not deployed until it was perfect they would have their big opportunity.

So for me: I need to focus on deploying. It doesn’t matter whether it is a code project, website redesign or blog post; I need to ship earlier than I do now. Or, I need to ship. Period.

Serve

The church we attend here in Indiana does a Weekend of Service each fall. The doors of the church are closed and services are cancelled. The congregation goes out into the community and serves. The impact is amazing, both to the community and those who have served. I want to focus more on serving others; both outside and within my family. It is important to spiritual balance and well-being. It’s an example I want my boys to see and participate in.

Connect

In the next few months, we will be leaving Indianapolis and moving to Chicagoland. It’s a big step for our family just as it was a big step moving to Indy two years ago. There are many new things for us: New schools and friends for the boys, a new territory for my wife, and a new marketplace for me. It is primarily about meeting new technology partners, networking, and getting to know the community in which I’ll be working. In Indianapolis, it took nearly two years for my connections to start paying dividends in the form of referrals. I would like to reduce this time in Chicago. Surely, they can use a good freelancer there!

We also need to connect into a church, community, and neighborhood. We are moving to Chicago for the long term and I want to make sure we’re embedded and get to know those around us. I’ll be looking for ways to connect with others in my neighborhood, community, church and marketplace.

The specific goals

I read an interesting blog post at the Church of the Customer. Ben McConnell writes about creating a 1-page strategic plan in the form of an info graphic. He believes this allows you to visually see the Objectives, Goals, Strategies and Tactics that will move you forward. In the next few days I will create my strategic plan for "Deploy / Serve / Connect". These will then translate into Groundhog Day Resolutions I can monitor.

You can follow a special Twitter account I’ve created to document my successes: @2010_3words

One piece of advice he has there about writing practice is this:

Publish often. Another place where our practice falls down is that we keep tons of drafts of things around, but never publish. Here’s the truth: If it’s not out there, it doesn’t count as much. (Journal keepers, I don’t mean you. Put down the purple pitchforks.) Get your work out there onto the web, onto blogs, into the hands of other people, whatever. Get it out there. The more you publish, the more people will take swings at it, the more people will riff off it, the more you’ll get the chance to get feedback.

This fits perfectly into one of my 3 words for 2010: Deploy(). If I don’t get it out there, it doesn’t count. So this is getting posted right now. As is. Even if this post is 90% Chris’s content ;-)

The new year… broken in a little bit but still with that new year smell.

We’ve rounded the corner to February and its first holiday: Groundhog Day! Hey… that means it’s time to set some resolutions!

As my regular readers know, I’ve been following a scheme created by David Seah where I set resolutions on February 2nd, Groundhog Day, and review these goals on each month/day combination through the year (e.g. 3/3, 4/4, 5/5).

One of the most interesting concepts that emerges from this pattern happens during the holiday season. The last goal review day is in December (i.e. 12/12), and no goal review happens on 1/1. The theory is that no goals should be set on 12/12 either. That leaves a month and a half (give or take) to enjoy and recover from the holidays.

For me, that’s been great! Despite the craziness of moving to a new state, buying a house and trying to sell our old one, I really made sure to appreciate the time spent with friends and family… something I took for granted, I think, over previous holidays.

In January we moved our belongings from Wisconsin to Indiana. By purposefully not setting goals on New Year’s Day, I was free to concentrate on those things rather than the resolutions I wouldn’t be able to follow anyway. That took off a lot of pressure.

I also found having an extra month to think about resolutions to be a great benefit. Dave hit it on the head:

The timing of New Year’s Resolutions are out of sync with the realities of our daily routine. While it makes sense to make New Year’s Resolutions on January 1st as to maximize the time to act on them, the beginning of the year is also the time when you are most mentally exhausted. Think about it: you’ve just survived another massive holiday season of eating, traveling, drinking, gift buying, and celebration. On top of that, there’s all the stuff that you were hurrying to finish last year that got put off until now. The first month of the year is so packed with catch-up activities, who has the time to think about resolutions?

I figure you need at least a few weeks to settle into the year before you even have the big picture necessary to target a few things to do.

I put those few weeks to good use, and started listing out some general goals I would like will accomplish this year.

Priority Categories

As I began to assemble these goals, I wanted to see what I would come up with for priorities and the categories into which they fall. The way I see it, they fall into six main categories, conveniently all starting with the letter “F”.

The Six Fs

Faith

Of utmost priority should be my relationship with God. For those readers who aren’t Christians, this may seem silly, but in my experience having a right relationship with Him sets a good tone for the rest of the categories.

Family

The Wife and our two young men are the next highest priority. I’m to be the head of the household, and to lead well. Mostly that will happen through time spent. In the past, I’ve seen interacitons with the family as a hindrance to work or other things I’m trying to do. But they are the second in priority over work.

Friends

I need to keep in contact with my current friends and meet new friends as we settle in. Because I work from home, this will be a challenge as my interactions with the outside world consist mostly of the barista at the local coffee shop.

Finances

This category, for me, is actually less about specific dollar and cents as it is about my business (i.e. work). Keeping the business up and running over the next year will be a major challenge. Again because I work from home, my interactions in the business world are something I need to be deliberate about.

Fitness

Last April, I started getting up in the mornings and exercising six days a week. I combined this with improving my diet and saw some great results. Unfortunately, I lost steam on the exercise front in September, and with all that went down in Q4, my diet was shot as well. I need to watch my health again.

Fun

Everybody needs a little fun. Ok, not really, but I want to make sure to keep a focus on having a bit of relaxation. This will keep other things in balance. This category may also cover some of the other categories, like family or fitness (read: Dance Dance Revolution for the PS2).

When it comes down to a choice between one of two priorities, one higher in the list should (in most cases) take priority over the other.

The Goals

• Daily Devotions. Spend at least 7 minutes on prayer and Bible study each day. Going to church does not count as part of this. (Faith)
• Weekly Family Devotions. As a family spend one evening doing a devotional or Bible study. Help the kids memorize a Bible verse they can apply to their lives. (Faith, Family)
• Take two hours, on separate days, to do something individually with each of the boys. Some examples might be playing video games, building Lego or Geocaching. Playing music or reading is also an option. Most importantly, I should not try to wait until Sunday to do this. (Family)
• Have a date night out of the house once per month with The Wife (e.g. theater, movies). (Family)
• Spend Saturday nights with The Wife doing something together (e.g. watching a movie, playing Scrabble). (Family)
• Contact one friend from Wisconsin each week to touch base and keep our relationship going. (Friends).
• Connect with a small group and attend regularly. I’m setting a completion date of 4/4 because finding the right small group can take some time. (Faith, Friends)
• Work out 6 days a week for a minimum of 20 minutes. (Fitness)
• Floss at least once a day. This seems like a stupid goal, but I think it helps build self discipline. And it’s good for me too. (Fitness)
• Read 4 fiction books this year. That’s one per quarter, and can mostly be done in the evenings right before bed. I’m not setting any goal for non-fiction or total books this year. Four books will be twice as many books as I read last year. (Fun).
• Redesign uhri.com. I’m setting a date of 6/6 for this one as it’s definitely not a high priority. (Fun).
• Write one 1000 word blog post per week. That isn’t much, in terms of posts, but I think it is a reasonable goal to start with. (Finance, Fun)
• Practice guitar 10 minutes a day. I used to play guitar, but haven’t played in years. With one definitely musical son, and one potentially interested one, my practicing may encourage them to pick up a musical instrument as well. (Fun, Family)
• Unpack 5 boxes a week. If I don’t make this a goal, I’m not going to get around to making headway with getting completely settled in. (Family?)

My business goals are important too, but as they occur in a different “time box” as the rest of my goals (at least for the most part), I am breaking them out into their own list.

• Increase work hours to 25 hours per week by the week ending 2/23. I haven’t been focusing in on billable hours with everything going on on the personal side of things. Since having billable hours is pretty much the lifeblood of a business, it’s something I need to concentrate on. Understandably, I am responsible for more family-oriented tasks than in the past, but this should be a reasonable goal.
• Redesign Red Bit Blue Bit by 4/4. My website is basically a placeholder. It needs to be redesigned in a major bad way as it’s my primary way of communicating with potential clients.
• Read and do the homework for one chapter of Book Yourself Solid every two weeks. I have a great client right now who has been my lifeblood, but I need to make sure that I have a pipeline available should that project not continue. Michael Port’s book outlines his strategies to ensure a solid inflow of work.

Implementation

Thinking about these goals has led me to two think about two areas I need to work on: self-discipline and spending less time thinking about things and more time actually doing them.

There’s almost 20 goals listed (including some implementation goals below). That’s a lot of goals. It’s many tasks with little time, so focus is going to be a huge issue for me. One of my biggest personality flaws is my unquenchable penchant for useless trivia. This wasn’t so bad until 1994 when I discovered the internet, the ubiquitous, always-on source of useless trivia. The net makes it easy for me to learn a lot of completely irrelevant things and waste a lot of time doing it. I’m going to need a lot of self-discipline to keep to task.

I’ve talked about tiny discipline in the past: doing one small thing that, cumulatively, results in success over time. There’s a few things I can do that will help keep me disciplined, or at least aware of when I’m not being disciplined.

• In his post How to Get Any Project Up and Running, Mark Forster suggests the following mantra for getting stale projects moving:

  • Take some action
  • First thing
  • Every Day

  Starting each day by working on one of my many projects will allow me to keep momentum going.

• Use a timer: When I’m at the computer, I especially need to make sure I’m doing the things I need to. In the past, I’ve used an online timer, i.e., nTimer, a Google gadget to bring my focus back to where it needs to be. Setting the timer for an interval like 10 minutes allows me to work, but if I’ve gotten distracted and the timer goes off, I can reset and focus back where I should be.
• Use the Groundhog Day Resolution Tracking worksheet. Like Dave and other productivity fans, I’ve created my own form for tracking my GHDRs. It’s not production ready (it’s only in “alpha” stage). I plan to use it to check off daily those tasks I’ve accomplished.

Implementation Goals

My implementation goals are really meta-goals. They are goals that don’t fit into the priority categories, but help me accomplish my goals. Not meeting these goals may result in the failure to accomplish the goals as a whole.

• Limit television time to 4 hours per week, not including movies. Nothing sucks up the time more than mindless TV. I’m not counting movie time because that’s usually done in the context of a family event.
• Daily review. I’ve created a Groundhog Day Resolution Tracker to check off whether or not I’m meeting my goals. Doing a daily review allows me to see and track where I am in meeting my goals.
• GTD Weekly Review. The weekly review gives an opportunity to better plan a week’s activities and ensure that goals are met in a timely fashion. As a higher level, the weekly review gives me the chance to make sure the goals are going well and are still relevant.

Other Groundhoggers

• Dave Seah
• Corrie Haffly
• Gaz

I hope to have a very successful year and get a lot of things done by December 12. If you’re down with the Groundhog Day Resolutions, send me a note (John at this domain) and I’ll link to your resolutions as well. Good luck.

Deo Volente

Subsequently, on the third day of the third month and the fourth day of the fourth month (etc.), we review those goals to ensure we’re still meeting them.

I’d like to cover two aspects in this post. First, the results of my actual goals as they stand. Second, my thoughts on this experiment and where it can go from here.

Schools, Relocations and Temporary Housing, oh my!

By mid-November, we had enough of living apart. The Wife was sick of traveling each day, and I was tired of running the household by myself. We moved pretty quickly to secure temporary housing — a nice 3-bedroom apartment in Fishers, Indiana. We moved in the Monday following Thanksgiving after a snafu that set us behind a day. We even set up a Christmas tree to ensure our kids would have as normal of a holidays as possible.

I’ve gotten the kids enrolled in school. We’ve started to settle into a good routine which I think should be able to work going forward. It has been tricky, though, getting into the swing of things, especially when my work place is currently the middle of the living room.

This wasn’t a goal explicitly listed during last month’s review. It was something that needed to be done, though, so it made priority.

Business dealings

The collected sum of business for the past month was staying billable. I’ve moved from on-site consultant, to off-site consultant working for the same client I did in Wisconsin. The challenges of keeping focused on the project has been difficult when facing all of the issues involved in making a cross-state move. It has been particularly difficult as I’ve picked up where The Wife has left off: her new job is occupying much of her time. I’ve been picking up the slack on both the relocation and parenting. It has made things very challenging.

This has left me with zero time for marketing and business development. Somebody once said “If you aren’t marketing, you’re not in business”. I don’t think it is that drastic, but I haven’t made efforts to do so. It feels like I’m leaving a flank unguarded.

Servanthood Leadership

The time leading up to and after this temporary move (we’ll be moving again in January, out of corporate housing into the house we bought) hasn’t provided a lot of quality family time. I’ve discovered that my personal devotion time directly correlates to my ability to parent well, and the devotions have been lacking.

Be fit

I don’t have a scale. I don’t have exercise equipment. I have a pantry full of snacks. You do the math.

Write More

I haven’t really done much journaling, although I have started to pick up blogging a bit more again.

Groundhog Day Resolutions: Thoughts and Opinions

This has been an interesting 10-month experiment. I’ve mentioned in other posts (and below) the other fine folks who have taken Dave’s challenge to create better resolutions. It has been good to see how other have worked with the system and overcome obstacles to their success. Reading their posts have encouraged me to continue the process.

I’ve never been satisfied with the results of my New Year’s Resolutions in the past. Over Christmas break, I am usually asked by family if I’ve set any New Year’s Resolutions. Put on the spot, I usually throw out the same half-dozen lame goals that look good on paper. By February, real life has left these swirling in the eddies of some dark alley.

But shifting to a February start date, that is just enough of a perspective shift to make this work. I had enough time to get over the insanity of the holidays and can put my mind to work on what it is I really want to get done. I wish I had taken more time to implement my strategy.

Strategy verses Tactics

I looked back at my goals from February. At the time, I had whittled down a list of 26 goals to the top 6 I felt were most relevant. Some of them were still my standard New Year’s Resolutions. Looking back, I don’t think I put a lot of work into really thinking about where I wanted to be by the December review date. It shows. I lost some goals to apathy. Others fell to busyness. Others just didn’t fit my mental model of the world and what I do in it.

At each month review, I set very tactical goals: “I want to do [x] by xx/xx/2007″. The following month, I either had it finished, or more likely, hadn’t started. The ones I never started concern me. If I’m never starting them, why list them as goals? Considering these goals, I may have had a breakthrough. The tactical goals don’t match the strategic goals I’m really running under. Understanding where I am going strategically will help me better determine the tactical operations to accomplish this. The bigger picture of my personal goals, like my company’s business plan, sits in a drawer unused while I do the day to day things to keep things running. Both tactical and strategic need to be focused in the same direction. The tactics support the strategy.

Accountability

A giant benefit to a monthly, posted review of my goals is a bit more accountability. It isn’t nearly as beneficial leaving accountability to random readers on the Internet as it is having a real person holding your feet to the fire, but it is better than nothing.

Fall Reset

By autumn, I was feeling like the goals I had set in February were grossly out of sync. This lead to a “fall reboot” as it were, where I tried to change the goals to more accurately reflect my life. I wasn’t the only GHDRRer that had this problem. Corrie Haffly also reset her goals this fall. Either its poor planning on each of our parts, or we just need to realize that these goals need flexible within a six month time frame.

Coasting into the New Year

Officially, I don’t need to set any more goals until February. There are a few things, though, that will be coming up that I’d like to keep my mind wrapped around going into the Holidays. A quick bullet list:

• Enjoy the holidays. With the craziness of this move we haven’t gone all out decorating the house for Christmas. Moving south meant we don’t have the snow we’re used to having, either. For me, it has diminished the holiday spirit a bit. I need to deliberately keep it alive.
• Get this move over with. Our belongings are still in Wisconsin except for what fit in two cars. After the Christmas break I’ll be supervising the packing and loading and the delivery to Indiana. After that comes the unpacking and the insipid tasks like buying curtains and decorating the new house. Lots to do there.
• Keep up on billables. My work has slowed with all the rest of this and I need to start to focus on it in a major way again. At a minimum, I need to start billing at least 30 hours a week.
• Freshen up my websites. I was hoping to do this in my “free time” in November. I got started, but I really need to give my sites a freshening. I want to start a couple other blogs focused on specific niches, so getting the software set up for those is on my checklist for the break.

Doing it again

The big question when trying any productivity experiment is whether or not to continue. I say this is a keeper. I like the mechanics of this system, it’s mystique (Groundhog Day needed a good purpose), and the ability to be a schemer with Dave on this productivity hack. So sign me up for GHDR08!

The GHDRR-ers

• Dave Seah at Groundhog Day Resolution Review Day 10: Wrapping up the Year.
• Corrie Haffly at December Review for Groundhog Day Resolutions.

Previous series posts

Here are my previous posts on the subject.

• 2007-11-11 Groundhog Day Resolution Review
• 2007-10-10 Groundhog Day Resolution Review
• 2007-09-09 Groundhog Day Resolutions
• 2007-08-08 Groundhog Day Resolutions
• 2007-05-05 Groundhog Day Resolutions
• 2007-04-04 Groundhog Day Resolutions
• 03-03 Groundhog Day Resolutions Review
• Groundhog Day Resolutions (2007-02-02)

D.V.

Previous Goals

Prep our House to Sell

• Meet with 2 realtors to determine a selling price. 10/19. Completed 10/19.
• Sort through all our junk to have a garage sale. My mother-in-law has been recruited to handle the actual sale, but everything needs to be sorted and moved to her house by 10/18. Done
• Declutter for showings by 10/23. Late, but done.
• Bang through as much of the Honey-do list of repairs as is possible. This list will most likely grow after meeting with the realtors. 10/23. Done, I think.

Look for a new house in Indy

• Review listings suggested by realtor. 10/12. Done
• Visit Indy and attend some showings. 10/28. Done
• We have found, and made an offer on, a house in Fortville a suburb of Indy.

Business dealings

• Touch base with my remaining contacts here to see if they know anyone down there. 10/19. Failed. Didn’t really contact anyone with everything else going on.
• Create a networking website (with a minimum of a blog) for Indianapolis freelancers. 11/2. ???. After last month’s mention of “Indianapolis freelancers” I was contacted by Noah from IndyLance.com a freelance group in Indianapolis. Too bad it was after I had already registered my own freelance domain name.
• Freshen up my business website. 11/11. Late My schedule has cleared up a bit, so picked up this task again.
• Attend the User Interface conference in Cambridge, MA. 11/8. Canceled. Despite looking forward to this conference, I just didn’t think it was right to attend, leaving the boys in the care of others while both parents were gone.

Servanthood Leadership

• Find one active way to serve my sons each day. In progress. I started strong, doing things like helping the kids make their beds or taking dirty laundry down for them, but sort of stopped doing things deliberately toward the end of the period.
• Continue to remember that we must function as a family, and therefore its important to continue to do deliberate activities together at least once per week. Pass. We tried to do something fun with the kids each weekend. The Bee Movie is pretty good, BTW.

Be fit

I’m not going to set much of a goal here, other than keeping an eye on my diet.

• Cut soda and junk snacks from my diet. 10/19. Failed. Halloween is bad, bad news.
• Begin tracking dietary intake again. 11/2. Failed. I haven’t been diligent in starting to track my food again.

Write More

I’m going to start using my daily journal entry as a place to track these goals with more regularity. At the next review, I should have a nice bullet list to know where my successes have been.Failed. Again I started strong, but didn’t finish well. I stuck my journal in the nightstand during a frantic cleaning, and haven’t pulled it out since. I did keep a little bullet list of accomplishments, though.

New Goals

Only a couple of new changes here, otherwise I’ll keep working at the failed and “in progress” ones listed above.

• Move? We don’t close on the new house until December 20th, unless the builder finishes up the remaining changes sooner than than. We though we might move to Indy and live in corporate housing after Thanksgiving.
• Enjoy the start of the holidays. If we really are moving, I don’t want to rush through Thanksgiving and forget the purpose: Being thankful as well as spending time with friends and family.

What the heck are Groundhog Day Resolutions?

From last month’s installment:

The whole idea for moving New Year’s Resolutions to Groundhog Day instead was an idea by David Seah. The best part of the idea is a monthly review to see how the goals have gone and to readjust as necessary. To make it more memorable, Dave suggests doing the review on the day that matches the number of the month (2/2, 3/3, 4/4, etc.)

The GHDRR quartet

There are four primary followers of the Groundhog Day Resolution Reviews (that I know of). Below is a link to the others. I’ve posted to their October reviews; I’ll update to the new ones if I remember to.

• Our fearless leader, Dave Seah at Groundhog Day Resolution Review Day 7.
• Corrie Haffly at October Review for Groundhog Day Resolutions.
• Gary V. Vaughan at GHD Resolution Review Day 7.

Previous series posts

My previous claptrap on the subject:

• 2007-10-10 Groundhog Day Resolution Review
• 2007-09-09 Groundhog Day Resolutions
• 2007-08-08 Groundhog Day Resolutions
• 2007-05-05 Groundhog Day Resolutions
• 2007-04-04 Groundhog Day Resolutions
• 03-03 Groundhog Day Resolutions Review
• Groundhog Day Resolutions (2007-02-02)

Be Fit

Getting (and staying) fit can be hard to do. This month has been particularly challenging. I mentioned in last month’s post that I was having some issues with the software I was using to keep track of my food, it was just too cumbersome. I haven’t had a chance to look at any other software, so I haven’t been tracking my diet at all. That has made it much easier to make poorer choices. Items of bad choice are ice cream (I rediscovered vanilla ice cream with maple syrup as a topping) and soda, which I’ve been drinking again for the caffeine.

Turning to stimulants was a response to less sleep and trying to get more done. The lack of sleep resulted in my skipping more morning exercise routines than in any previous month since I started exercising back in April. Partially, I find aerobic workouts (on a treadmill) boring. I’ve also grown tired of my weight routine. The time to complete three sets of each exercise after an already late start has butted into the normal routine of getting ready and off to work.

This past week, I looked into Tim Ferriss’s post From Geek to Freak: How I Gained 34 lbs. of Muscle in 4 Weeks. After two days using a single set to failure system, I feel as though I’ve been exercising harder than the previous 3 set method I was using. I need to evaluate if it was just a fluke from not exercising during vacation, or if there really is a difference in the exercises done this way. If the feeling of a true workout continues, I’ll keep his method of strength training.

I’m resisting my urge to build my own application for tracking food and exercise. I’m not sure if this is just a mental tangent I’m using as an excuse to avoid tracking things, or a legitimate opportunity. Either way, I just need to track things to really keep track of my progress.

Write More

The idea I stole of writing a One Sentence Journal was successful, at least the first three weeks of August. Each day, I write a minimum of one sentence in a journal, but this week, I simply have forgotten to write anything at all.

My blogging efforts have been improved this month over last month; although you wouldn’t know it by reading the RSS feed. Longer posts have been interesting me lately, but by the very nature of their size they are much more difficult o write. I have several sitting in the queue waiting to be finished.

Deliberate Dates

Uh oh. I’ve failed here… The Wife asked me to ask her on a date again. That means I didn’t follow up like I should have.

Previous series posts

• 2007-08-08 Groundhog Day Resolutions
• 2007-05-05 Groundhog Day Resolutions
• 2007-04-04 Groundhog Day Resolutions
• 03-03 Groundhog Day Resolutions Review
• Groundhog Day Resolutions (2007-02-02)

In his first point on timing the creative urge, he mentions one way to extend a creative work cycle:

I don’t believe that it isn’t possible to do more than 4 hours of good creative work per waking cycle. This can be extended only slightly by caffeine power naps (down a cup of espresso and then take a 20-minute nap) or “ultra-naps” that are multiples of the 90-minute ultradian cycle (I prefer 90 minutes or 3 hours).

For some reason, I never thought to use the ultra-strength power of espresso as I’ve mentioned my previous experiences with Caffeine Power Naps. Still, its good to see I’m in league with a best selling author.

Since I’ve been slacking the last two months (in posting an update, at least), I’ll get right to it.

Be Fit

Last Month:

Six days a week I get up entirely too early (between 5:00 and 5:30 am) and hit the gym. Well, the gym in our basement, anyway. I alternate my exercise routine between strength training and aerobic exercise. Traditionally the aerobic exercise has been brisk walking on our new treadmill. While I was hoping to be able to jog, I unfortunately have a bad ankle which has prevented me from doing so. On strength training days, I switched to less reps at a higher weight back in May. For some exercises, I’m still dialing in the correct weights.

For my diet, I have switched to a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet in accordance with my doctor’s recommendation. This has been easier to do now that The Wife is also watching my diet and purchasing foods that are better for our whole family. I was tracking my foods online, but the app I was using has just become too cumbersome for daily tracking.

The weight goal I set at the beginning of the year was to lose 30 pounds by my birthday. That day is approaching quickly (toward the end of this month), and I still have about 9 pounds to go. Unfortunately, that means I will not make my goal by the intended date. Ultimately, though, it is healthy habits I’m looking to instill in myself over an actual weight. Goal Status: Fair (Good on exercise, poor on diet).

This Month:

I will continue my morning workout routine. So far it has been successful. On the diet side of things iI need to do a better job of ensuring the foods I eat are within my dietary restrictions. For example, while shrimp are low in fat, they are high in cholesterol. Also on bad eating days, I tend to skip the tracking, which (I think) leads to even more bad eating.

Write More

Last Month:

Blogging has pretty much been out of the picture for me. Ever since I started exercising in the morning, I’ve found it difficult to make any other time for writing. I’ve continued to maintain a list of potential blog posts and have even done some mind mapping exercises to determine what I might write on a few topics. Alas, nothing has come of that. Status: poor.

This Month:

I’m stealing an idea from Gretchen at the Happiness Project, by starting a One Sentence Journal. I’m using my moleskine notebooks and making sure I write at least one sentence in each (one personal and one business) each day. My goal is to use this as a springboard back into the world of blogging. I’m one day into it.

Remember significant events

Last Month:

I called or sent cards to everyone on my calendar last month. I guess that’s a win.

This Month:

Keep on truckin’… This goal can probably be moved into a maintenance mode going forward.

Deliberate Dates

Last Month:

I might mention the night The Wife and I went to see Die Hard. Unfortunately, that was the month before. Time flies. As a family, we bought a bike rack and have taken the kids on family bike rides on local trails.

This Month:

Uh… I dunno. I need to make time, as usual.

Previous series posts

• 2007-05-05 Groundhog Day Resolutions
• 2007-04-04 Groundhog Day Resolutions
• 03-03 Groundhog Day Resolutions Review
• Groundhog Day Resolutions (2007-02-02)