To briefly recap from last month, Lift had been vaguely annoying me with notifications. It became the relentlessly optimistic friend that constantly encourages you, even when you clearly just want to phone in it (or…give in altogether). Although turning off notifications altogether was the more appealing option at the time, scaling back to twice a day seems to have done the trick.
The other agenda item from last time was to challenge myself a bit more. There are two levels of “challenging” here: challenging in terms of making the time to do something and challenging in terms of getting outside my comfort zone. For the Health/Fitness component, I added Speed Work (once a week) and Yoga (three times a week). Normally, I’ll just run for awhile and call it a day. Speed work is the bane of my existence, so it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. Next, I upped the number of days I spend writing a week from 3 to 5 days, so I’m pushing myself to make the time for it. Finally, I added “Say Thank You/I Love You to Someone” (ideally in a meaningful way) every day, as a matter of getting out of my comfort zone.
Entering into week 3, here are a few things I’ve noticed about my goal-reaching process, and Lift itself.
1. I’m better at checking off the everyday things than the once or twice a week things. For example, “30-60 Minutes of Reading” is marked as an everyday task. That has 55 check-ins, compared to my once a week goal of Cooking Something New (apparently this only has 2, which makes me sad). My theory here is that the day to day goals exist in the front of my mind a bit more than the less frequent goals. Sadly, it’s not possible for us to do all the things every single day (although this is a good read on productivity). Navigating the balance between the every day and the every once in awhile will be my goal for next month.
My stats for “Cook a new recipe.” Pretty sad, huh?
2. The longer you spend time on Lift, the more other people will interact with you. The more frequently I complete goals, the more Props other people give me. At first, I was mildly annoyed by this, and I don’t interact with people at all on Lift- goal #2 for next month!
The “props” get lumped in together, but as you can see, Lift isn’t shy about the Reminders!
3. Skipping a day can easily slide into weeks. Suddenly, it’s been a week, and then two weeks, and…why bother with it all anymore, right? It’s a pretty common for people to give up on their goals/resolutions altogether because they took a few days off (especially around the holiday season). I’m no exception. The “there’s always tomorrow” mentality kicks in, and suddenly you’re in thirty tomorrows deep. Don’t let it get away from you! After Thanksgiving until today (putting my foot down) I’m putting more effort into goals I’d already set that got put on the backburner since Day 2.
4. It’s time to start the winter bucket list. This isn’t Lift related, but is something “for fun” I started this past summer. The idea is to make a list of things you want to accomplish during the season (fun or otherwise). In the Downeast Maine area, staying busy in the winter is key for maintaining your sanity. Now that December is almost over, I still need to write my list…but, in my defense, the warm weather and lack of snow is making it hard to mentally get into winter mode!
I’m interested in hearing if anyone has any New Year’s Resolutions for 2015, and if so, do you have a plan of attack? Hope everyone has a great holiday season!