GHD Resolution Review Day 2

By Gaz under Personal Growth

A month and a day ago, I adopted David Seah’s Ground Hog Resolution Day idea, and made a list of my GHD resolutions. The idea is not to try to make resolutions for New Years Day, when exhausted and hung over from the excesses of Christmas and New Year’s eve, but to wait until Groundhog Day a month and a day later on 2/2, and then to review progress every month-and-a-day after that, 3/3, 4/4 etc. Now that 5/5 has arrived, I get to shame myself in public by reviewing my progress on the (late) resolutions I made.

How’d it go?

1. Keep a regular morning routine

This one has been patchy at best. I taught an Apache Security course in Birmingham a few weeks back, which entailed getting up at 6am to have time to maintain my morning routine, and catch the 7:00am train to Birmingham, so that week went well. I also had an article to submit that ran over its deadline by a week, so my sleep pattern went to pot while I scrambled to catch up with myself, and of course in between all of that, I’ve been trying to organise around my run in with customs, and get my bikes and myself back to America, while putting my other stuff back into storage. Consequently, I’ve spent a good part of the month staggering through the day zombie-like, hardly knowing whether I’m coming or going.

Result: Failed Miserably

2. Read a book every week

I should have read at least four books by now. I finished The God Machine. I’m close to the end of The Doors of Perception, which I’ll review when I’m done. I also read another two hundred pages of the giant The Singularity is Near, and read a short self-published book about crop circles. Oh, and I started the year long page-per-day Mastering the Toltec Way a couple of days ago on the full moon. So, by my reckoning that makes three and a half books since 4/4…

Result: Failed Marginally

3. Set aside time for martial arts

With the prospect of jetting off in the next couple of weeks, and all the organisation that entails, I only made two Wing Chun classes this month.

Result: Must do better!

4. At least 2 blog posts per week

Thankfully, I’ve set myself something entirely achievable here. I would have needed to make ten posts to succeed, and breezed it having posted eighteen times — probably to relieve my angst!

Result: Slam Dunk

5. Weekly Reviews

Oh, did I make five resolutions? Bugger. Weekly reviews? Yes, I really must do one of those real soon now.

Result: D’oh!

What went wrong?

The best laid plans and all that. My main problem this month has that I’ve been overworked, pushing 70 to 80 hours a week just to meet my commitments, and consequently been stuck in firefighting mode, rather than being in control and proactive. Even my trusty macbook started to give off smoke with the number of hours I’ve been plugged into it, and has had to go back to apple for a new keyboard, a new optical drive, and a new motherboard to make it well again. I suspect that even without these excuses, I’ve set myself some lofty goals to achieve by tackling all these resolutions at once, and the last thing I need is to discourage myself by seeing a long list of FAILED! come GHD review day… Instead of beating myself up, I’ll acknowledge that it would have probably required superheroic effort for anyone to achieve all of the above with all that transpired last month, and instead give myself a pat on the back for almost making it on two of the five resolutions.

What to do about it?

So, my work load is a little lighter this month, with only one article to submit in amongst my normal 30 hours per week, although my book contract is still gathering dust, and I need to make a start on planning the writing for that pretty soon if I’m going to fit it in comfortably before the deadlines start to bite. Also, we’ll be jetting off to Miami towards the end of the month, and have to find somewhere to live while we are in Florida in amongst everything else. So, I’m going to set a more achievable target for being able to achieve all 5 resolutions by Ground Hog Day 2008, and in the meanwhile to not let my current successes slide. So by 6/6, I should have written at least another 10 blog posts, read another 4 books and maybe nailed one of the other 3 resolutions… Check back in a month-and-a-day to see how I’m doing.

I’d also be interested to hear if anyone else is experimenting with Dave Seah’s GHD Resolutions…

Related Articles

1. Groundhog Resolution Review Day
2. GHD Resolution Review Day 3