Weekly reviews

Weekly Review - 13/8/07

This is just a quick supplementary post that I have been writing once a week about my own personal development progress over the past 7 days.  Read it if you are interested in my journey, if not, read my other article posted today.

This is the third week of LifeGoalAction.com and I am re-discovering an interesting thing about myself.  I am a bit of an achievement junkie.  During the first two weeks, I saw spectacular growth in site visitors, page views and RSS subscribers.  This third week has been much less spectacular.  This felt kind of disappointing.  I put in exactly the same amount of effort into writing but had less progress to show for it.  I have become accustomed to progressing, so that holding ground does not feel right.  Rather than being glad for the wonderful readers that do come back day after day, I am sad because I am not reaching even more!  I have developed a kind of addiction to achievement.  This is good and bad, but I’ll have to think a bit more about it before I write any more.

This website aside, I feel like I am really getting into the groove of early rising.   It is past 21 days now and the general advice that people spread is that between 21 and 30 days is when a binding habit starts to kick in.  I am not sure if I believe in numbers like these but I do believe that I am well on the way to a new and sticky habit.  I have had some (probably four) productive afternoon power naps this week.  I have found that they allow me to feel good throughout the day until I am ready to go to bed.  It is a good exchange, I rise an hour earlier for an hour of peaceful, productive writing and I pay for it with a 20 minute power-nap in a time that I would be relatively unproductive anyway.

I am still developing my next short term, self contained goal.  I am going to start my new Kanji learning program today, but I have yet to decide how long I will give myself to complete it.  If I concentrate it into a very short period of time, then I will have to put other goals on the shelf temporarily.  If I take a more moderate pace, then I will have the opportunity to try another complementary goal at the same time.  I will decide which way to go this week.  But I’m starting.

Yesterday, I completed 6 weeks of 100% unbroken running training.  This means that I accomplished every single session as I had programmed in advance (including rest days and replacing one workout with a race).  I consider 95% completion of any phase of a training program to be a success and so I am very happy.  I have a brand new pair of running shoes waiting for this week as a reward and overall I am excited.  It is now time to work out a reward for when I complete the next six weeks 95% or better!  I picked up some entry forms for races coming up, and these add even more to my motivation as they are definite stepping stones towards my major running goal.

I’ll leave it there to avoid boring you with too much detail about my personal journey, but believe me, it is possible for even ordinary people like you and I to achieve our goals if we use the right tools.

Thanks

Tom