August Goals

I think the goal setting thing is working out for me overall, but I want to keep things very simple for this month.

So I won’t set any rules for myself, and the only thing I want to keep to is sleeping on time and consistently – making it to bed by 11pm each night and getting ready with reading.

The main goals I will set should be very attainable.

1. Continuing on from July, and having completed my 12km run, I’ll move on to the 10.5 mile, 16.8 km run according to the marathon training program. This shouldn’t be too tough, though it may take me around 2 hours… [gulp!] I also aim to complete the 10k at the end of the month in under one hour.

2. I want again, to be waking up before 7.30am every day, starting today, which I didn’t manage last month.

3. I don’t read enough, especially fiction. I want to read one book a week from now on, and I’ll begin this month. So four books this month! I’m currently reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.

July Goals Summary

I set myself three rules for July. I only managed to keep one of them.

The first was to take Sunday off, in order to increase my desire to program during the week. I’m happy to report that I broke this rule, and did a little programming last Sunday!

The second was to do 20 minutes of ProVoc every day. This proved to be harder than I had thought. Whilst I could do it much of the time, ProVoc soon became a little dry to me, and listening to music while I did it didn’t help that much, seeing as I needed my full concentration. I’ll revise this goal in a later post.

The third was that I couldn’t use the Internet once I disconnected. This worked great. Although towards the end of the month, I would find myself reluctant to turn it off, all I needed was that single use of willpower, and then it came as a huge relief.

I’m pleased with the rules I set, and I’ll try to revise them for August.

In terms of my goals,

I did run 12km, last Tuesday, and it proved to be surprisingly easy. I was hardly going at Paula Radcliffe pace, and even more depressingly, not even half Paula Radcliffe pace. However, I did 12km in about 80 minutes, which was satisfying – doing it was far more important than doing it quickly. In terms of speed, I’ll be running the Nike Human Race on August 31, a fun 10k, and I hope to run that in under an hour.

Waking up before 7.30 was easy during the week, but at the weekend, I faltered again. Annoyingly, Shi Da gym only opens four days a week, which is pretty disgraceful, and I’ll be looking into a membership somewhere else, if they’re cheap enough. Without the constant gym attendance, I just wanted to sleep. So a resounding fail, but at least the ease at which I managed to wake up on the days I did is encouraging.

I only managed to write my A1 speech, which I’ll deliver next week. My A2 will be a storytelling speech, which doesn’t inspire me much. At least it should be relatively easy to write.

The programming went well – I managed to program my target of five hours every week. Although my calculator hasn’t been touched, I managed to learn a few important Cocoa concepts last month. I’ll need to push a lot harder this month.

Overall, I’m keeping up my result of failing to achieve the goals that I set for myself Still, as long as I keep going, I know the process will work in the end.

July Rules and Goals

I can’t believe it’s already July. Half the year has gone, and I haven’t made much progress on the programming. I’m going to have to be far more productive from here on in.

One of the key things that I tend to do in my life is to set very tough conditions for myself. I think I’m going to be a little easier on myself this month, but at the same time, this is merely a strategy, as I’m hoping to achieve (much) more overall in terms of productivity.

Let’s start by addressing two of the big rules I set for myself last month.

Getting around the Internet problem is something that I’ve always struggled with. I’m not going to fight it this time, and see what happens. I’ll make a commitment to avoid some certain websites, such as YouTube, which waste far too much of my time.

The control over my sleeping is difficult to manage. I’ve conceeded that waking up at 6am has little benefit to me. Since I like to start the day with exercise, and the gym at Shi Da only opens at 8am, I’ll aim for 7.30 and head out to the gym at 8am.

Due to the failure of these two rules, I feel like concluding that this process of setting rules for myself doesn’t really work. It’s easy to break these rules and beat myself up for it, so I feel that any rules I set cannot be too difficult to follow. In addition, the motivation behind these rules should always be very clear.

So I won’t try to do the sleep thing, nor explicitly manage the Internet this month at all. I’m going to shake things up a bit, and have some nice fun rules instead.

1. Take Sunday off. I think the constant pressure I’m feeling to program is getting to me. I’m rebelling against my self-enforced commitment to program as much as I can, and I’m becoming less productive and beginning to resent the programming. The no-programming Sunday should help me to enjoy life a little more and relieve pressure. It makes no practical difference, seeing as I only spent around an hour programming on Sundays anyway!

2. 20 minutes of ProVoc. The ProVoc will continue. I’m going to make use of ProVoc’s alternative testing methods, which I’ve been neglecting a lot of this time. Reading Chinese characters is a far more practical skill than writing, and testing reading is far more efficient. I’ll set a very manageable rule of 15 minutes a day of ProVoc, which I can spend on any testing system I want.

3. Once I turn off the wireless for the day, I cannot turn it back on until the following day. An almost pointless rule, it might seem (I’m hoping otherwise.) It’s certainly quirky. But I feel that this rule is empowering. First, it’s ridiculously easy to follow and abuse – if I want to bum around, I still have that option. But if I get to that state where I have been wasting too much time, then I can decide in an instant to turn off the wireless, and hence it’s all over for the day. It’s an interesting rule for me, and though I haven’t tested it, it again seems like another weapon I might use.

So, these three rules seem to be very much achievable. With these rules, I’m really doing an investigation to find lifestyle changes that work so well they seamlessly become a way of life for me. Again, I’m trying to keep the pressure off this month, after my previous failure.

Now for the goals.

As mentioned earlier, the programming goals will be treated separately, as this is surely the most important area of my life. So with regards to the other goals…

1. Run 12km. I’m currently training for the Taipei International Marathon in December, so I’ll be required to follow a training regime. I’ve chosen to follow this one by experienced marathon runner Jeff Galloway, and so I’ll need to be up to 7.5 miles by the end of this month. To represent the adherence to this regime, but without too much pressure (and allowing for flexibility), I’ll simply set the goal to run 12km once by the end of the month.

2. Wake up before 7.30am daily. Compared to 6am, this should be easy. 7.30 gives me enough time to get to the gym. But this is a goal, not a rule, so I won’t beat myself up if I don’t do it.

3. Write A1, A2 speeches. Although I’m not scheduled to deliver any speeches at all this month, I’d like to start writing my next set of speeches as soon as possible. I’ve a habit of leaving things until the last minute.

This should be a nice easy set of goals (apart from the sleep one). The real challenge will be the programming, so I’ll write that in another post. I need to be a lot more active in goal setting on this front. So that’s it for July. Already it seems like this will be a lot easier to follow than the June rules. I’m looking forward to success instead of failure this month!