A weekly check-in has become a much larger cornerstone to a number of areas in my life than I expected. It’s funny how such a small habit can ripple throughout the week. Knowing I have to give myself a grade at the end of the week has made sticking to daily habits and routines much easier.
Like a Doctor’s Appointment for Everything
If the past two posts on this trial haven’t proven that I am seeing improvements then let me spell it out once more. Forcing myself to look back on my week has made me feel that I’m actually becoming a better person. Sure, not everything is perfect, but that’s never the goal. The only goal of this is to get my thoughts on the past week into something tangible.
Taking the time to review each week has inevitably led me to think about what I’m doing each day and what that means for those categories. In turn, I’ve made sure to do something right each day to improve one of the selected categories: Health, Finance, Relationships, Projects, and Learning.
That’s a Wrap on This One
There is definitely room for experimenting with the general idea, but I believe this will be a habit I continue for an indeterminate amount of time.
What’s next? I’ve had a number of ideas of what to start next, but I think this one is the simplest, but possibly most difficult. I won’t be eating anything with added sugar.
With this post in mind, Little Things by Good Charlotte has been in my head all day.
Regular review sessions have not only helped my weeks as a whole, but even the smallest decisions. This week especially, I’ve noticed that I’m more willing to do little things that benefit at least one area I’m tracking, particularly when it comes to relationships.
Micro Makes Macro
The core inspiration of this trial was to breakdown a the huge concept of these areas in my life to just single week chunks. With that in mind, I’ve naturally started taking note of most decisions I make. This has really helped with making better decisions, though certainly not fool proof.
It’s interesting to see the impact of the smallest decisions build up into essentially our human experience. From the time we set our alarms to pursuing that impulse buy or not, even a single decision can ripple out to a number of areas. For example, deciding to wake up and run early in the morning this past weekend not only made me feel accomplished, but gave me a huge opportunity to catch up with a friend I hadn’t seen in probably close to two months. Catching up gave me a boost in energy and confidence that has stuck with me through today.
Decisions are often like dominoes. One good decision can build momentum for a number of others.
Anything to Say Hey
Something I’ve found myself doing more is to be willing to send someone a simple message or text just for no reason other than I thought of them. For some reason, this is something I’ve had weird reservations against. I don’t know why, but sending a no context message was never something I was particularly comfortable doing.
This trial has somehow gotten me to get over that previous restraint. This past week alone, I’ve sent a few messages out of the blue because something reminded me of a joke or a cool thing made me think of someone.
Keeping in touch with friends and family is something that is so easy nowadays that it can be even easier to take that for granted. With that said, why don’t you shoot someone you haven’t heard from in a while a text or if you’re really feeling bold, a call to say hey and catch up.
Trivia Beer: +2 to Relationships, + 1 to Learning, -1 to Health
A weekly grade has so far been a small change that rippled out into a number of larger improvements. Knowing that any choice I make has a chance to impact what score I give myself across a number of categories, has led to an increased adherence to quite a few habits.
Measured is Managed
I’ve mentioned this adage by Peter Drucker in the past and this may be the best implementation of this principle. Taking the time to reflect on the week allows me to recognize what decisions were positive to some areas, but may have had a negative impact elsewhere.
When I sat down on Sunday, I started by simply writing out all of my thoughts on the prior week. I sought to drain every detail from my mind, then gave my grade. This allowed me to see the whole picture, even if I had some expectations for each area before writing, as I’ll touch on a bit below.
This may become a cornerstone habit I can use to develop many more habits beyond this. I’ve already taken better steps to improve a few areas in my life with a single assessment.
Personal Progress
Last week turned out better than I expected overall. There were a few moments that led to more average scores than poor ones.
Relationships is where I felt I really excelled, though this was largely impacted by starting a new job. Meeting a lot of new people increased my assessment pretty well. I also fostered a number of existing relationships spending some quality time with friends.
Health was the category I saw the lowest performance in. Diet and sleep were the major factors there, even though exercise and mental health were better than I initially though. A few poor decisions in what I ate and my sleep habits offset any good decisions otherwise. I’ve definitely worked to set up better habits for both of those areas since.
With deeper reflection, finances turned out to look better on paper than I initially thought. I felt I didn’t do a very good job of where I was spending my money and decisions made financially, but sometimes it’s the things we don’t do that really improve our lives. A few bad decisions avoided gave me a bump up.
Projects and learning were areas that I felt were just about average. Nothing in particular stood out for these. Decisions made didn’t lead to overall gains or losses in these areas of my life.
Are these areas you can measure in your own life? What do you think of your last week? Let me know in the comments below!
New Year’s Eve allows many of us to see the ideal version of ourselves we want to be in the next twelve months. The difficult part is actually taking the everyday steps to become that person. While it can be easy to set lofty goals and resolutions, it’s often the simple things we can be doing each day that actually matter.
Report Cards
In school, there was one objective matter that counted, the grade at the end of a course. That grade was, of course, made up of every small decision that was made since day one. I like to think of goals as that way too.
Goals are easy to set, but can be really hard to achieve. What I am hoping to start off for this year is a weekly report card on a number of metrics: health, finances, relationships, projects, and skills. I added that last one after sending out a sneak peek to newsletter subscribers. Not all of these areas are tied to specific goals I had in mind, but all are things I believe need momentum to maintain. Throughout the year those areas may change, but that’s what I have in mind right now.
When it comes to health, I am thinking both physical and mental health. Diet, exercise, and sleep are critical to both, but managing stress, boredom, and happiness should be considered as well.
Finances is straight forward in that I want to keep track of my thoughts on my spending. I’m out of town for work this week and so it’s not looking so good. Hopefully, I can turn things around for the latter half.
Relationships include family, friends, co-workers, and I might as well throw in strangers. I want to make sure I am being sociable and connecting with the people around me.
Projects and skills might end up becoming one, but for now, I have projects as progress in a few specific things, including this blog. In regards to skills, I want to make sure that I am making actual progress on things that I am learning. For example, a goal of mine is to pass a Japanese proficiency test sometime this year. I haven’t done much research into exactly what that entails, but I’ve been learning since late last year.
Correcting Course
One thing I don’t expect out of this is to always get “passing grades,” but that also doesn’t mean I’ll be struggling each week. The final grade I give myself will ultimately be subjective, though there’s a vague idea of what each will be.
To make things a bit easier for self-applicaiton, I’ve pretty much determined that a “C” will be staying the same. No real progress may have been made, but things haven’t gone for the worse. An A or B would be given for progression depending on the scale, and vice versa for a D or F.
A major piece I am looking for out of all of this is patterns. Trying to detect that I’m slipping in one place for the worse is something I’d like to course correct. Even an F one week may not be so bad if I have an A or two. For example, maybe I had to miss out on a few social events, but was able to make huge progress on a goal or learn something big. For me, the problem starts when performing poorly becomes a trend.
Getting Granular
I’ve already found myself taking note of things I do throughout the day and how they impact my weekly score. It’s only been a few days into the week, but having the regular check in helps to keep me on track for what I really want to be doing.
Knowing I need to grade myself at the end of the week, I actually jotted down a few key events of the day tipping the scales for each section. While I did journal in the past, I didn’t really like the daily commitment, but maybe a weekly cadence might be enough to get me to at least jot down the key moments of each day.
It’s good to be writing again, though the time off was definitely rejuvenating! I have a lot of fun ideas for 2019 and hope you’ll read, if not follow along!!
Trying Out Before Buying In 