I’m sure it’s getting a little tired by now, but since I don’t have any other things to write about this week, I think it’s a good idea to check up on how I’m doing in regards to the goals I set for the year after 50 days. This means looking at my tracking of goals up to February 19, though this post is being written a little later. I can already say that some of these goals are pretty far behind due to the craziness involved with moving, but there’s still plenty of time in the year to catch up. Hopefully.
Run a Half-Marathon in Under 2 Hours
This is probably the one I’m the most behind on. In the first 50 days I didn’t do a single run and my eating habits have been worse than ever thanks to not having any real way to prepare normal food, since all my cookware was in Seattle while I’ve been in New York, and now it’s all on a truck waiting to get here. It’s also really hard to want to eat well when it’s cold all the time and you are traveling around a bunch to try to get things done at opposite ends of the country.
On the plus side, the amount of walking I’ve been having to do has kept my body less stiff than it got during my funemployment. I’m also trying to be more conscious about the amount of food I eat, even if most of it is just meat and carbs. My body didn’t struggle with any of the moving process either, so that’s a good sign that I should be able to ease back into exercise quickly.
Things are getting into a more predictable routine with work, so I’m hoping that in the next week or two I can cut out some time to get in some short jogs to at least get my mind and body back into the idea of doing something after work a couple nights a week. Still need to find a place to do strength training too.
Publish a Post Every Week
Well, you wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t doing this. I haven’t been on time with all of my posts, particularly in the last couple weeks, but I’ve been doing my best to make sure I don’t get too far behind. With this post I’ll be back on track to hit my scheduled time next post.
The biggest struggle here has been getting topics to write about. The idea was to always have a month’s worth of ideas stocked up so this wouldn’t happen. Problem is that I do have a bunch of ideas, I just can’t write about them yet because they are for things I haven’t done yet, but plan to do once I have time. I was relying a lot of having more games and other media to review for most of my posts, and I just haven’t had time to complete much during the last month. A lot of that is my fault for choosing movies and other brainless things over games and books, but you can only do so much when you leave for work at 8am and get back home around 9pm because you have to eat out every night. Not to mention the flying and focusing on getting a new apartment ready to live in.
Needless to say, I can’t wait to get back to some form of normalcy around here. That will help make topics easier to come up with since I will have time to wander, physically and mentally.
Listen to 200 New Albums
As of day 50, I have listened to 12 albums. So 6% of the way there, though almost 14% of the way through the year. That’s not too bad. I don’t have a full list of specific albums to listen to, but I do have a list of artists that I want to visit and see what I’ve missed over the years.
So far all the listening has been done at work. As it turns out, the new workspace is much more chaotic and full of disruptions than any team I had at Amazon, so putting the headphones on has been a must. That being said, I haven’t fully removed all other forms of distraction from my phone yet, so I am still spending more time on there than I should during breaks. I have also been spending a lot of time listening to my own music, which is cutting into time for other new stuff. I’m sure that will eventually lessen once the new album is not so new.
None of the albums I’ve listened to yet have stood out as particularly great (aside from my own band’s, of course!), but I now know some more music from artists I already like.
Make a Focusing/Quitting Habit
I’m not entirely sure where I am with this to be honest. I can say that during this move I haven’t been good at focusing on certain things, but doing okay in others.
What I have been doing well is keeping the daily tracker of what I spent my time on. At least, as far as keeping track of whether I focused on the game, book, and audiobook I should be doing, that’s been going well. I decided to track those three things because they take up distinct parts of the day. Games only happen during normal after-work time. Books only happen during the hour leading up to sleeping. And audiobooks only happen during my commute. For the interested, my percentages for each of those are: 20%, 58%, and 69%, respectively, the goal being 75% over the course of the year.
Where I’m not sure if my system is working properly is that for days where I know I didn’t have any time or ability to do a focus task, I just counted it as N/A, but every other day where I had even the slimmest chance to do one of those things, I would count it against me if I didn’t do it, even if I didn’t actually get distracted from it. So, for example, I don’t count weekends against audiobooks because I’m not commuting, and I don’t count not playing a game against me if I don’t have the game with me, like when I was packing up things in Seattle to move. But otherwise, if I didn’t play the game, but I was spending the time calling or emailing people about moving, or I was writing one of these posts, it would still go against me. I haven’t been doing a good job of tracking those other things, so I should probably start doing that or at least assess if I truly missed my focus task because I got distracted with something lesser than.
Either way, I’m doing okay on books and audiobooks given the system I have been using. Games are in really bad shape though, I just haven’t played anything in almost a month, basically since I started my job. And most of those days are counted against me because I technically had an hour or two at home where I could’ve done it. Some of those days are valid because I would just watch a video instead, but many of them I had other important things to do, I just don’t remember which days they were at this point. Going forward I will make it a point to put the lack of playing in perspective since I shouldn’t penalize myself for doing something more important.
On the quitting side of things, I haven’t felt the need to drop anything yet, but the audiobook I’m currently working on might be the first one. I’m about 3 hours in and I’m not a fan of the characters or the writing. I will give it the 5 hours I said I would, but if it doesn’t improve significantly by then, I won’t have any problem dropping it and picking up something else.
Looks like I ended up having quite a bit to report on. I’m planning to do this again after 100 days, so shortly into April, and see if things have improved by then. After that it’ll just be at the end of each quarter, so end of June, September, and finally the full year assessment. So look forward to those I guess.