As I promised at the 50 day mark, it is time for the 100 day update on how the goals are progressing. I probably won’t take as long to go over them this time around, so this will be short and sweet. This is everything up to April 10.
Run a Half-Marathon in Under 2 Hours
Still the area where I’m behind the most at this point. I have managed to do three runs in the first 100 days, which is pretty bad. My eating habits also haven’t resulted in any significant body change, though it is definitely better than it was. Still eating too much and not cooking at home enough, but getting in more healthy and less bad foods.
The hard part right now isn’t that I don’t have the time, since I do have time. I just don’t think about it most days, so I need to start setting reminders and making sure that I don’t make other obligations for when I get home on the days I should do a run.
One option I’m considering is that there is an Orangetheory Fitness next to our train station, which I used for a several years in Seattle until it became too inconvenient. Positives with this option is that you have to go to the classes or forfeit money, which creates incentive. The workouts also balance cardio and strength training, and I do feel like I need both to make any real progress. Just need to figure out what time works best if I go this route. In any case, I need to do something soon or I won’t have enough time to train up.
Publish a Post Every Week
No real change here, I have managed to have a post for every week, even if they arrive a week or two late. This is week 15, and you can see that there are exactly 15 posts in the column to the right within 2019.
The biggest struggle has continued to be thinking of topics to write about. This is mostly due to not having as much time to work on things to review as I’d anticipated. I suppose this is also partially due to having ideas for posts I want to write about, but not willing to do so without having enough data/experience to give a worthwhile opinion. Like, I could talk about my time with VR, but I’ve only spent like 5 hours with it, which isn’t much. I really want to talk about some board games, but with only a couple plays I can’t say that I’ve really engaged with them (which is partially why last week’s post happened).
On the plus side, with my schedule more settled and fewer trips coming up, I have time locked down to do the writing, so I have been getting more consistent at being on time.
Listen to 200 New Albums
As of day 100, I have listened to 33 new albums. That means I’ve almost tripled the number since the last update, but still only 1/6 of the total I need. Considering that we’re only a little more than three months in, I’m positive about the trend.
What has been helping is that instead of forcing myself to follow a set list of albums, I’ve been jumping around between different artists and just going through their whole discography, making note of the new stuff. That was always the plan, but I’m okay with going with what I want to hear rather than doing a purely alphabetical journey. On the other hand, what hasn’t been helping is that I still have to try to keep caught up on podcasts, which eats into music time. My office is also not conducive to consistent listening since interruptions are constant.
Since the last update, a couple albums have stood out as worth repeat listening. Rubber Factory by The Black Keys, Favourite Worst Nightmare by The Arctic Monkeys, and Queen II by Queen (duh). I already liked all those bands beforehand, but these albums were new to me and I keep thinking about them.
Aside from those new ones, I’m also still giving Dreams in Space (my band’s album) a lot of listens, plus I’ve re-remembered how much I love the album Origami Eyes from my friends in American Island, so that’s also eating up some time. But, gotta do what you love.
Make a Focusing/Quitting Habit
In the last update I mentioned that I wasn’t sure where I was with this, and I’ve had to make some adjustments to make it work better. I’m still tracking books (should read every day) and audiobooks (should listen every work day) the way I was before. Incidentally, the percentages for focusing on those are currently 65% for books (better) and 65% for audiobooks (slightly worse).
The games have completely fallen off because I realized it wasn’t actually what I should be focusing on. I kept having other things I needed to do, so what I decided to go with instead was simply marking if I got my focus activity done or not. Each day I determine what that activity is going to be, and then do it (or not if I get distracted). Some of these activities are games, but some are writing these posts, learning new skills, and doing things with my wife. It has made it a lot easier to make sure that the activities I want to do get more equal time, as well as making it less frustrating to see myself not getting things done (because I am getting things done!).
Back on the quitting side of things, I still haven’t encountered anything that I’ve wanted to drop yet. The audiobook from last time (Gone Girl, which I ranted on a few weeks ago) was able to survive the axe. There are a couple more things on the block now though, so we’ll see again what happens. The thing is that right now I’m doing enough different things that I haven’t had a chance to get a full experience of anything.
Alright, that’s pretty much it. Obviously I need to keep going in the areas that are going well, and I really need to get the exercise kicked up a notch. Another update will come at the end of June.