What things have been lingering on my brain taking up mental real estate?
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Tweet by @herrowna on September 28th, 2020:
Snapshot of my lifelong journey with productivity (thread)
Everyone knows it's hard to set goals like 'I will be productive' or 'I will lose weight' and stick to them. It's not that you _can't_ achieve them necessarily, but rather you're not giving yourself a good enough motivation to work towards open-ended goals like that.
.@anthilemoon from @ness_labs talks about setting tangible goals by making a PACT with yourself: SMART goals are not so smart: make a PACT instead
An example from myself, 'I will build a consistent habit of working out/yoga 40 minutes a day, 5 times a week by 31 Dec 2020'
.@JamesClear talks about psyching yourself into building habits by embodying and identifying with the habit you want to build.
Same example from myself, 'I want to become the type of person that takes care of their physicl health', or 'I am a yogi' for short 🧘🏻♀️
Both of these frameworks are great & tangible for decomposing your goals into smaller, measurable, iterative chunks. I also like to think that in addition to setting 'ongoing' habits (which then results in goals) there's some magic in naming the milestones.
On one hand there's the tangible output from your new habit, on the other there are changes to your quality of life & self-perception.
Reclaiming time to do more pleasurable/meaningful activities.
Compared to when I first started exercising, the time commitment for working out has significantly increased, which is worth a review.
I found out my time has been reclaimed by exercise rather than shitscrolling.
So rather than doping myself up on social media, I've actually wired myself to make better decisions for my health. A shift from dopamine → endorphins?
This is related to @JamesClear's idea on breaking a bad habit via substitution. You're never going to really 'lose' a habit, but rather you can replace the habit with something else. Kind of like energy I guess? It's never really lost, only transferred.
Building trust & confidence with myself
Another shiny milestone is building trust with myself so I can count on myself to make better decisions, for me.
'I'm gonna workout' in 2019 would have been easily shrugged off by my conscience but now it's a 'sure, let's do it'
I can't imagine how this has subtly translated into other decisions I make for myself, particularly when it comes to how I want to be treated by others and what I want to spent my time doing.
Other 'qualitative' milestones I imagine you can benefit from, plus some of these I've felt to some degree:
Finding new people to hang out with
Starting a new content stream
Saying 'no'
Rediscovering your self & shedding off your self-image (thanks @haideralmosawi!!)
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