I didn’t really have a New Years Resolution this year. I couldn’t pin down one thing I wanted to do. I wanted to do a lot of things, so I figured I’d just do things consistently, track them well, and see what happens.
Here’s the spreadsheet I made at the beginning of the month:
I wanted to meditate more, I wanted to read more, and I wanted to write more. I also wanted to write more thank you cards… but I gave that one up after 3 days. I’m OK with that.
I missed 2 days of meditation, and 3 days of writing. I’m also OK with this (although the worst part is the blank spaces messing up the continuity of the spreadsheet). I ended up writing a total of 33 times in 31 days, since I wrote multiple times in a single day several times.
Here are my writing results:
What did I learn?
Tracking things daily is not that hard.
After you firmly decide what you want to do, it becomes ingrained in your subconscious after a few days. I didn’t really need to check the spreadsheet, but it felt satisfying to add another “x” in the column. It also made it more stressful for me to miss a day.
Sometimes you’re wrong.
I thought I wanted to do thank you cards every day. I could have done it, and it would definitely be valuable for me. For some reason it didn’t feel as important as the other 3 items, so I cut it and decided to focus on the others.
You will mess up.
If you’re consistently doing things, you will mess up. The only way you won’t screw anything up is if your ideas stop at the perfect picture you create in your head. Perfection is impossible in reality. But reality is impossible without action.
While I did miss 2 days of meditating and 3 days of writing, my results and growth were exponentially better than if I hadn’t decided to do and track these things daily. Patting myself on the back for now.
I like reading a lot more than I thought.
If you talked to me 3 years ago, I would have told you I’m just not good at reading. Now I realize that’s bullsh*t. I refused to read because I was so used to being forced to read certain books in school. When I freely decide to read on my own, and I get to choose which books I want to read based on what interests me at that time, it becomes a creative party in my brain.
This month I found myself reading as procrastination, when I used to procrastinate reading.
What’s next?
I won’t be blogging much in February. I’ll still be writing every day, though, for a February project (stay tuned).
I’ll still be reading every day. I enjoy it too much to stop (plus I need to finish all the books I’ve started).
I’ll still be meditating every day. I enjoy the 5-10 minutes of silence every morning. It allows me to practice forgetting and redirecting my focus consciously.