Establishing Habits

So this habits thing is getting to me. I've been back to reading blogs again lately and everybody seems to have a list of things you're supposed to do to get yourself together.

Healthy Habit Changes
10 Morning Habits
7 Habits of Highly Happy People
21 Habits of Happy People
50 Habits of Highly Successful People

The best thing that I can think of for me is something that I keep seeing on multiple sites. Having a morning or nightly routine, or both. So this is what I'm going to spend most of my habit real estate on. I'm going to build a morning routine and a night routine, drink water, and exercise. Thank should take care of most of the 20 habits. The only thing left to do is to keep track of how well I do with each habit.

So there are two types of habits I'm trying to track, "yes/no" habits and "how much" habits. Yes/No habits, for example, are either completed or they are not. I either got 6 or more hours of sleep or I didn't. I either worked out or I didn't. How Much habits are a little more interesting. Today I ran 2 miles, yesterday I ran 1 mile, tomorrow I will run 2.5 miles. How you choose to measure your goals depends only on you. When I first started running I only recorded if I ran or not. The more I ran, the more I kept track of other information for each run.

There are a bunch of different ways to keep track of habit info. I'm using these ones. They're all digital, so I don't have to worry about where I wrote stuff down. That's always been a problem for me before. Out of sight really does mean out of mind sometimes.

Yes/No Habits
Joes Goals - lets me add individual habits and check them off when you do them each day. it keeps track of how many habits I did in one day and how many days in a row I did (or skipped) a certain habit

How Much Habits
Daytum - lets me add items to do and quantities for each item. also makes graphs for when, how much, or what I did

Nike+ - I could really just use Daytum to keep track of when and how far I run, but this is sooo much more fun. it lets me interact with other people, set goals for myself (miles run, calories burned, speed) and challenge other runners. Things like this are for when you already keep track of basic information and want to try a little something extra (or just like the extra incentive - message boards are a great accountability tool)

You can also make your own checklists and graphs on the computer or by hand and use those to track your progress. Some of my favorite graphs have been ones I colored on graph paper in school. But for now I'm gonna use these. They work. Joe's Goals is programed to come up every time I get on the internet. Can't get much more of a reminder than that now can I?

Setting Goals

So a bunch of months ago I started with this whole rant about how i hated certain parts of my life and really wanted to change them. Then i started a whole set of blog posts about what i wanted to change, and why. But i made a huge mistake. I never really sat down and thought about HOW I was going to change anything. So now several months have gone by, and just by writing my goal ideas down I've made progress. But not nearly as much as I could have.

Time to start over.

No excuses. No trying to fix everything at once. No trying to catch up. I'm just going to start where I am and pick one of my goals to focus on. So from the previous posts that I've made on this topic, here we go.....

Before I pick which of my ten goals to get started on again, there are two types of goals that I want to talk about. Smart goals and dumb goals. Not good goals and bad goals, there is no such thing as a bad goal - unless your goal is to kill someone, then, not so good.

Smart Goals

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

Dumb Goals
Dangerously Unattainable, Monstrously Big goals

The point is that there are two things that will push you to accomplish what you want. A plan, and your ego. Smart goals help you by making sure you have a plan. There is a specific thing to accomplish, a measurable way to tell when you're done, you've proved that it's not impossible, you have a reason to do it, and you know when you want to have it done by. This keeps you from not knowing where to start, getting overwhelmed, wasting your time on useless work, dragging your heels, etc.

Dumb Goals on the other had play merely to your ego. Who doesn't want to say they were great enough to triple their income in 6 months all while quitting their day job to start their own business in a new city in a field they knew nothing about before they started. Some would say that's dumb, others would say it's adventurous. These are the goals that push us to our limits and help us strive not to accomplish but to over-achieve.

You can read more about Smart Goals and Dumb Goals here.

So now back to my goals again. I'm going to pick a SMART goal to get started. There are a few DUMB goals that are hanging around on my bucket list, but that's another post entirely.

For now I think I'm going to get back to my goal of starting new habits. Originally the intention was to start 52 good habits by the end of the year. Now that it's almost August that's not so achievable, so I'm gonna make it 20 habits. I have 4 that I do already, so that just leaves 16 more to come up with between now and December. I think that's a bit more doable than still aiming for the 52 with less than half the year left.

If you wanna get on the goal setting bandwagon with me, here are a few sites to help you figure out what goals to go for
Achieve your goals by putting them online
How to stay committed to long term goals
How to choose the right goals for you
How to set deadlines

In one of the next posts I'll get a little deeper into what kind of habits I'm going to be adding as a part of my goal, how I'm keeping track of my progress and why I'm adding habits to my life in the first place. Hopefully I can stay focused this time...

Where in the World is.....

And now I've got the Carmen SanDiego theme song stuck in your head.
Mission Accomplished!!!

The real question is where am I? Or, more or less, where have I been.

I skipped May. In June I let you know that I wasn't dead. And now it's July. The END of July.

I honestly have no idea. I think the theme of this blog finally caught up with me. So here's the whole story, or most of it anyways.



For as long as I can remember, I have always been a person who was easily entertained and just as easily distracted. I've been interested in everything from swimming, track and field hockey, to piano, saxophone and clarinet, to Windows, OSX, and DOS to cats, dogs, and fish, to Spanish, French and Japanese to - well, you get the point. Just about everything. And sometimes all at once. There were very few things I didn't like, and it was very easy to figure out what they were. But the list was super short and still is. I am not a fan of strawberries, tomatoes, scary movies or roller coasters.

Anyways - now I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere. Where nothing ever happens. Without most of my friends. With all of this running through my brain.

So where have I been? I've been trying to figure out what gets to stay and what needs to leave my life. Maybe then I'll be able to make something interesting of this blog, or my life in general. Cause right now, I'm kinda a real Renaissance Polymath. Interested in everything, Good at most things, and as focused as a Goldfish.