GHD Resolution Review Day 5

By Gaz under Personal Growth

Four months and four days ago, I adopted David Seah’s Ground Hog Resolution Day idea, and made a list of my GHD resolutions. Dave’s brilliant idea is to not try and make resolutions on New Years Day, when exhausted and hung over from the excesses of Christmas & New Year’s eves, but to wait until Groundhog Day a month and a day later on 2/2. And then, every month-and-a-day after that, 3/3, 4/4 etc. to review progress and ensure the resolutions aren’t forgotten.

In Chinese culture, the number 8 is often associated with luck and prosperity. The luckiest number of all is 888, so much so in fact that next year’s Summer Olympics in Beijing will officially open at 8:08:08pm one year from today on 08/08/08.

That aside, today I am due to reveal my progress with my resolutions since last time…

How’d it go?

1. Keep a regular morning routine

Things were looking pretty rosy for this resolution a month ago, and indeed for the first couple of weeks after my last review day I managed to get up between 8am and 9am without any trouble, and launch into my morning routine. For some illogical reason, I had a couple of consecutive late nights soon after, which meant getting up at 9:30am and then 10:15am and being too busy bolting a bowl of cereal and launching straight into the day’s work to maintain the routine. This is an old, old pattern of mine resurfacing. A pattern that slowly spirals down with my getting up a little later each day, and then not feeling tired at night so staying up a little later… and so on. Last Saturday I finally went to bed at 5am, and then didn’t get up again until noon on Sunday

This is where the magic of GHD Reviews starts to work. I knew that I would soon have to shamefacedly confess all before long, and resolve to finish the month on a high note. After only 11 hours out of bed, I went back to sleep at 11pm on Sunday, and have been up just before 7am since then, giving me plenty of time to follow my morning ritual before starting work at 8am.

Result: Patchy, but with renewed resolve!

2. Read a book every week

Copying last months success, I made it to the finish line by a nose again this month. On dead trees, I finished the latter half of Flow, and the entirety of Hellboy: Wake the Devil and Mind Performance Hacks, which incidentally has inspired me to start learning Esperanto and design a custom typing shorthand. I also made a start on reading Journey to Ixtlan, my third Castaneda book, and I listened to The Next 50 Years on audiobook. As usual you’ll find my reviews of all of these and other books I’ve read recently in my book list.

Just like last time, that equates to 3 books from beginning to end plus one more started and another finished, for a total of 4 complete books!

Result: Success — 2nd Time Running

3. Set aside time for martial arts

With all the best intentions, I emailed the instructor of the Orlando Wing Chun school, and received a friendly reply encouraging me to visit. The next morning, Octavia needed a lift across town to collect her Harley from the dealership (replete with new neutral switch) in the vague direction of aforementioned Wing Chun. I had the Tom Tom attached to my handlebars, so I dialled up the address of the school intending that I should initially find the building in daylight, and discover how long it would take me to ride back.

No disrespect to the club intended (and I can honestly say that the best martial arts school I ever attended, was in the worst neighbourhood in Coventry, broken glass on the sidewalks, 20′ barbwire topped fences around the adjoining school, and double bars across the steel plated doors of the dojo), but neither was this a neighbourhood where I would be happy to leave a $20,000 motorbike outside. Unattended. At night. Worse, the ride back took almost an hour. Much as I’m feeling bad about my failure to maintain my martial arts practice, I’m not ready for a 2 hour commute 3 nights a week, and inviting theft or vandalism to my Harley during the lesson itself.

With only 4 weeks remaining before we return to Blighty, I don’t think I’ll be training at a club for the next month either.

Result: Total Bummer. Again.

4. At least 2 blog posts per week

Including this one, I count 15 posts since the last review. Posting frequency has been patchy, with one silent week, and then a post every day for the last week. Even so, that’s still an average of a post every 2 days. No real reason to beat myself up here.

Result: Success

5. Weekly Reviews

I managed one complete GTD Weekly Review two-and-a-half weeks ago, and started another last week but became distracted and didn’t follow through to the end. It’s a far cry from a regular review, but at least I’ve made a step in the right direction this time.

Result: Starting to make progress at last

What went wrong?

A lapse of concentration mid-month almost derailed my morning routine, but I think I’ve got that back under control again. The martial arts debacle doesn’t seem to be improving too much either, perhaps because I’m not giving it enough attention. Even so, overall I’m reasonably happy with my progress again this month.

The real killer continues to be the Weekly Review resolution, which has consistently fallen through the cracks for a very long time now. I think a large part of the problem with that resolution is that since my fallout with Journler, and my dread of manually recovering all the files I fed to it from the filesystem, my whole GTD system is not the well-oiled machine it was a few months ago, and I’m also resisting the temptation to get drawn in to spending precious time replacing the broken parts. I’ve lined up iGTD as the tool I’ll use to fill the gap, but haven’t found the time to evaluate it, or entrust it with any of my real project data.

What to do about it?

Worst things first. I’m two weeks behind with my accounts, and my GTD system has degraded to a stack of index cards clipped to the front of my Moleskine planner. Once I’ve fulfilled this weeks commitments, first order of the day will be to come up with a plan for revitalising how I manage my TODO items. By know, I know what the hard requirements are, and there’s really no need for me to embark on a fun long quest for the perfect system. Having figured out what the minimum I need to do to maintain the imperfect simplified system, I’ll be in a better position to evaluate how the weekly review will fit in.

With respect to my poor ongoing efforts to stay in shape, and keep up my martial arts, Octavia is my role model. Whenever she goes to the pool for 30 lengths, I’ll drop everything, and either make use of the gym, or at least spend that time with some solo practice. When we land back in Blighty next month, I’d hate to be at the head of the class and making embarrassing mistakes, and I don’t dare give myself the luxury of using that as an excuse not to get right back to training once we’re settled in.

To smooth out my blog posting patchiness, I need to work up a weeks worth of future posts to absorb an occasional lapse in creativity, and try to keep myself with a week of posts in hand. There’s no reason to increase my posting frequency just yet; I’m more interested in consistent, regular articles. 2 Pillar Articles per week is a fine goal, so I’ll aim to have at least 2 future posted pillars in the queue at all times. I can slot shorter posts in around that schedule whenever inspiration strikes.

Related Articles

1. Groundhog Resolution Review Day
2. GHD Resolution Review Day 2
3. GHD Resolution Review Day 3
4. GHD Resolution Review Day 4

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