Goals – What’s Working, What Isn’t, & What’s Next

Wall Calendar

In recent months, I’ve not only moved to a more analog existence, but I’ve experimented with a variety of planning tools. What I’ve found, more than anything else, is that I only do what I plan with few exceptions. The calendar above is on the wall in my home office, with color coding for specific items. The things on the calendar are my church giving, my running schedule, and some basic stuff that needs to be kept up with around the house.

What’s not there is the books I want to read, which was there last year. The goal last year was 24 books read and I ended at 28 as each had a predetermined end date and it was easy to adapt and adjust to how life went. This year I didn’t put it on the calendar, even after making 30 my goal, and it’s July with only 7 books finished. After taking this picture, I filled in the calendar with the books in my stack that I want to read (and the 3 I’m working on) and I’m sure it will make a difference.

The other items missing are workout days other than running and my summer goals for working on the literature review for my dissertation. I’m now creating printouts for my home workout routines that will go on the fridge, with the days for each filled in on the calendar, until I feel healthy enough to move on to weight training and start going to the gym. I also printed out some of the key articles I need to read, and I’m putting them on the calendar this week with an ambitious goal to be ready to defend my lit review in September.

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July 1, 2020 Add Comment

Dave’s Not Here Man

If you get the Cheech & Chong reference, good for you. If not, why are you here?

Insert nifty transition here.

It’s been a few months (like 5 – zoinks!) since I wrote something here. I honestly forgot all about it for a minute. A random feedback thing from my contact page showed up in my personal email, meaning a setting was wrong, and I had to check it out and figure out what I had even written here.

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November 19, 2019 Add Comment

Think deeply and quietly

Quite a few people have written about the need for solitude and deep thought in modern society. Cal Newport writes frequently on the topic. Stoicism is making it’s way back through whack jobs like Tim Ferris and less absurd people like Ryan Holiday.

My current read is Farsighted, by Steven Johnson. He focuses throughout the book on the value of putting proven processes and models into practice when trying to make better long term decisions. One of the revelations that is most counter-intuitive, and yet relevant, to modern life is the idea that our brains are actually more active during “rest” than when we’re actively trying to use them.

In other words, when we are left to our own mental devices, the mind drifts into a state where it swirls together memories and projections, mulls problems, and concocts strategies for the future…There is a simpler — and less revelatory — way of describing these discoveries: human beings daydream. We didn’t need an fMRI scanner to find this out about ourselves. What the technology did reveal was just how much energy daydreaming required. What feels like the mind drifting off into reverie is actually, on the level of neural activity, a full workout. And the brain regions involved in the workout happen to be the ones that are uniquely human.

Steven Johnson, Farsighted, pp. 79-80

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June 8, 2019 Add Comment

Welcome to the disconnect

If you know me, you know I deleted all social media a month or so ago (it’s almost June 2019).

I’m done with it for good. I already don’t think highly of most people, and getting away from that crap has been great for my own focus and well being. I’ve read 7 books in that time and am well into my 8th.

I’ll be borrowing from Cal Newport on the ideas of Deep Work and Digital Minimalism for sure. I’m even considering titling these shorter posts as shallow and longer ones as deep.

There’s a contact email for this site that I’ll probably check from time to time, but I’m really not interested in much more than getting ideas out of my head and onto something more permanent.

Here’s a nice little starter video to give you an idea of how some of these concepts have affected a person whose entire job is built around being always connected:

May 21, 2019 Add Comment