GHD Resolution Review Day 7
Six months and six days ago, I adopted David Seah’s Ground Hog Resolution Day idea, and made a list of my GHD resolutions. For new readers, 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.
Hard to believe that another month and a day has passed already since last time, so here we are on 10/10 and I’m due to bare my soul again with respect to how I’m progressing with the resolutions I made back in April.
How’d it go?
Curiously, after moving back to Blighty on the 6th of last month, there’s been a reversal of fortune with my performance for most of the 5 resolutions I made. I’m not yet sure whether that’s down to cultural differences due to where we’re living or simply because I concentrated so hard on the resolutions I neglected last month that the others suffered…
1. Keep a regular morning routine
I started this review period fighting from the steely clutches of jet lag, and soon fell into my lazy old routine of dragging my sorry butt out of bed around 9am, and jumping right into work at my laptop with breakfast still in hand. Despite reminding myself of the advantages of a bright early start last week, and this impending review, too many late nights and late starts have broken my almost-habit of maintaining some semblance of a morning routine.
No excuses….
Result: Non-starter.
2. Read a book every week
By contrast, I’ve had my head stuck in a couple of riveting books this month, and my night-time routine has been pretty much rock solid, taking a cup of tea and a book to bed almost every night. I made a good start to Castaneda’s fourth book Tales of Power, but became distracted by Paul Davies’ awesome About Time which I’ve been caught up in so much over the last week that I didn’t get back to the Castaneda again. Much as I love Hellboy, I refuse to pay almost double for them in England £9.99 from Amazon.co.uk vs $12.21 from Amazon.com so I haven’t had the luxury of a graphic novel this month. Instead, I’ve listened to the entirety of Entanglement: The Greatest Mystery in Physics, and the refreshingly different This is Your Brain on Music plus the first half of the weighty Death by Black Hole. By my count, a respectable 3 half books and 2 complete books.
I’ve reviewed everything I’ve read in my Now Reading Library as usual.
Result: 3 and half books without resorting to a graphic novel.
3. Set aside time for martial arts
As predicted, no sooner had we settled in to our lovely autumn cottage that Octavia and I immediately started training at Andre Martin’s recently reopened Coventry Multi-Cultural Martial Arts Academy every Monday night. There’s also the promise of more classes in related styles on Thursdays and Sundays, which will hopefully begin before we leave England again next month.
Result: Couldn’t be happier to be back to training.
4. At least 2 blog posts per week
Including this one, I count 19 posts since the last review. A couple of weeks ago, I joined John Chow’s blog post every day challenge, which started strong but faded out after 10 days when I stopped myself from posting just for the sake of it. It would be nice to post more often, but not at the expense of quality. I’m more than happy to maintain my 2 posts every 3 days average.
Result: No problem, pity about the failed daily post challenge.
5. Weekly Reviews
Now that I have a new super-streamlined analogue system, the review process is light weight enough that I’m avoiding the psychological barrier of a formal weekly review altogether. Instead, I’m performing ad-hoc reviews every day or three, which seems to be working better for me.
Result: Solid progress.
What went wrong?
Not too much. I’m delighted with how well I’ve stayed on top of things overall. I continue to be guilty of overcommitting myself, and then struggle to find the extra time to meet the additional commitments: of which the daily post challenge is a prime example. I also managed to address most of my action points from last month, with the exception of setting up some future posts for azazil to even out my irregular posting schedule.
What to do about it?
I think my lesson to take away from this month’s review is that my schedule is already full to bursting, and that a polite ‘No!’ will earn me more respect than a ‘Yes!’ I can’t follow through on. A few action points to address before the next review:
- Figure out a regular posting schedule that I can actually keep up with, and stick to it.
- Take a good look at my GTD system, and make sure it is really addressing all my needs. If it is, then scrub the Weekly Review resolution in favour of a Keep the Trusted System Upto Date resolution.
- Think of a way to reward myself for a morning routine success, to help reform the habit.
Related Articles
- Groundhog Resolution Review Day
- GHD Resolution Review Day 2
- GHD Resolution Review Day 3
- GHD Resolution Review Day 4
- GHD Resolution Review Day 5
- GHD Resolution Review Day 6
