Yearly Theme (2021) - Healthy Habits

The Missing Year

As I am sure happened with lots of people, 2020 passed in a bit of a blur. Being cooped up in the same small area day in, day out meant that time appeared to move a little quicker. Maybe that was just me, but I suspect not.

As each day blended into the next a little more was taken from any remaining healthy routine, eating or exercise as my routines relaxed and relaxed more. I’m sure that I was still trying to keep things together but it’s hard to remember with much clarity as large parts of that year are blurred chunks of time. The outcome of this was a constant reduction in effort made in many areas in my life and this cause a feeling of ‘driftng’ through life which was horrible to look back on.

The final straw came when I realised just how unfocused my mind was becoming and how small my attention span had gotten, especially when trying to read and, coming from someone who used to read a lot, this was a pretty disappointing realisation.

The Turn Around Point

As the New Year loomed and restrictions were lifted, I started to move in the right direction again; eating better and getting some more exercise. I was never one to get overly involved with resolutions as a New Year tradition, but I felt like this time around was a little different. Plus, a friend had talked a lot about a big yearly review that they’d done and I really liked the idea of reflection. I’d been coasting through almost a year without a huge amount of (positive) change and didn’t want that to continue.

I used to be reasonably good at note taking up until I stopped using OneNote (for privacy reasons) but, leading up to a (sorely needed) Christmas break I had started up my daily note taking again. As part of this daily note, I was recording what (if any) exercise I had done and tried to write a goal or two for the next day, or over the weekend if it was a Friday.

This routine was the start of what would (eventually) be called my Year of Healthy Habits.

A Focus on Habits

The feeling of coasting and drifting through almost a whole year scared me and I was determined to make sure that the next year was different. As part of a reflection on the year past, I decided to try and set small, discrete challenges to incorporate better habits throughout the year, recording passes and fails as I went. This would be a part of my daily note taking and, after a few months, I decided to write it on a whiteboard as well, just for an added prompt¹.

Each month I would introduce 3 or 4 habits to try and work on. These were often an addition/improvement to a previous one, but some were completely new. This kept some nice variety throughout whilst also working at some long term improvements.

The Healthy Habits System

The system was basically a series of note files (written in #markdown, obviously!). Each day jotted down notes or tasks to complete then the next I copied the previous day’s note file and renamed for that day. The first step each morning was to go through and check off each task that had been completed and delete each note that was not relevant any more. This left me with a list of things to be done for each day and notes from previous days. The point wasn’t to complete all of the tasks in a day, but just to start a better record of things that I wanted to do in the future.

I also noted the exercise that I had done that day as well and eventually added a section at the end for any thoughts about the day.

These daily notes were intended to track progress for habits but was also a habit in itself that I was trying to enforce. An example note is included at the bottom of this post.

The end of each month was where I reflected on the month past and decided upon the new habits for the next month. This was done in an EOM (End of Month) markdown file that listed the months' goals/challenges and whether or not I had completed them.

In the same file I also wrote the next months goals, whether they were completely new things to try or goals to build on from the previous month.

The Theme System

As I’ve mentioned previously, I’m a big fan of the Cortex podcast by CGP Grey and Myke Hurley and, after having already been working on these frequent goals and habits for a few months, I got to the episode where Grey initially talks a bit more about his ‘seasons’ and themes for those seasons.

It was at this point that I got a little more clarity on what it was that I’d been doing. Up until this point I hadn’t thought or heard of the ‘theme’ idea and had just viewed it as a series of small goals. Further episodes including this topic helped cement the ‘theme’ idea in my head and Grey’s theme video helped clarify this further. I found that the idea of a yearly theme really resonated with me and I decided to formalise what I was doing to: The Year of Healthy Habits.

The Results

Whilst I didn’t complete all of the goals/challenges set within each month (as part of the EOM) the idea of having them written down prior to starting each month definitely helped to give me a little more focus.

Some of the habits I was trying to make stick were continued over a few months, and some were just worked on within a month, but that was the shortest period I worked with.

Over the course of the year I found myself working better and achieving more day to day and month to month. There were definitely months that I didn’t do as well with various habits but I found that it was during these times that the Year of Healthy Habits worked in my favour. Getting motivation back seemed easier than it had in previous years and I found myself to be a little more forgiving when it goals/challenges that I didn’t accomplish.

The other big difference I found was having a better recollection of past events. I’m not sure if this was actually the case or it may have just seemed that way as I had better notes and more information tracked over the course of the year.

Over the course of the year the goals written on the whiteboard expanded to include longer term goals as well. I found this to be an interesting outcome as it’s been a long time since I’ve had fixed long term goals.

I like having data available and historic records of things in life so working on having more frequent and involved daily notes helped with this massively. It also gave me an excellent basis to import data into my Personal Knowledge Management System

All in all, the theme of the year has definitely rolled over and is something that I have been trying to keep going, if at a slightly reduced focus.

Example note

# 6th April 2021

Fitness:
	-	Gym:
		-	10mins crosstrainer, level 10
		-	20mins rowing machine
		-	5mins treadmill walk, incline: 2.5%, 5km/hr
		-	5mins treadmill walk, incline: 0%, 4km/hr

Shopping:
	-	Best Linux book apparently: "Linux Bible - The Comprehensive Tutorial Resource"
	-	Deadlift straps

Privacy:
	-	Try setup nextcloud
		-	https://nextcloud.com/athome/
	-	There's a 30 day privacy challenge on the Privacy podcast
	-	Look in to Blur for online purchases:
		-	https://www.abine.com/

Podcast:
	-	Cortex
		-	From episode 17: Dialling Down, Grey was talking about how he has a larger number of inputs in to his life than previous and this has led to a feeling of 'over-whelmed-ness'. He also described this as 'fragmented'. This is quite possibly what I've been going through in some part as well. I've been trying to reduce a number of things that are on my mind and to log things to do when I think of them (the daily diary) so that I can start to clean things like this up.
        -   Read the "Dialing Down" article that Grey posted
	    -	Book recommendation (based on the above):
   			-	Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
   		-	Wallpaper:
   			-	Low-poly artwork (CGP Grey's search for phone wallpaper)
   		-	Apps:
            -	Look at a better alarm for phone
    			-	A light buzzing/vibrating

Music:
	-	From Cortex:
		-	Girltalk – All Day (this was referenced as great for concentration)
		-	Girltalk – Feed The Animals (Myke's preference)
		-	Bravewave – Retroactive Part 1
	-	Perturbator
	-	https://wildfuzztrip.bandcamp.com (from r/Eve, apparently it's space rock)
	-	http://smarturl.it/TheWay_Bandcamp

Programming:
	-	From the Python Discord episode of Talk Python To Me
		-	Look in to the Python Discord for projects
		-	The Discord can be used for resumes as well
	-	Web development:
		-	Check out https://gohugo.io/
	-	Sign up for #100DaysOfPython https://training.talkpython.fm/courses/explore_100days_in_python/100-days-of-code-in-python

Cyberpunk:
	-	Buy soda from machines (30 for $300) and dismantle for materials