RingoSo if you’ve been following my life obsessively in the past few weeks, You may have noticed that I keep posting updates on “Stoic Challenge.” Also if you’re obsessively following me, you need better things to do with your life. Seriously. But since you probably haven’t found those things in the 2 seconds it took you to read that sentence I figure I can go into it a bit more. As Dec turned into Jan, as months are wont to do, I decided I wanted to attempt a long term(ie. A year) goal. I wasn’t sure exactly what I waned but eventually I came up with this.
Things have changed a bit since I wrote that. The challenge has begun to come abit more into clarity and I’ve developed a bit more of process. The basics are still the same. I’ve been spending less, sticking to a mostly strict budget, trying to reduce in all ways. However the specific mechanics of the challenge have manifested a bit more.
I’m trying to build a morning routine. While that is still in flux some things are steady. Read the current day of 336 days of stoicism. Write out the quote word for word to try and internalize it more. Write down 1 Goal for the day and 1 thing I’m grateful for. Look at my To-Do list and pair it down to 7 total items, 1 of which is a collection of the days minor tasks(check email, brush teeth, etc). A significant portion of this time is suppose to be visualizing the day’s work and play as well as really trying to internalize the message written.
I’m also trying to build an evening routine. Where I sit down and reflect on the 4 questions from Seneca, as well as looking at my goal for the day and the thing I was grateful for. This time should be spent trying to remember the day, what got done, what didn’t, what went well, what didn’t. How I felt and how I reacted to it. Was I in control?
I’ve also started trying to block my time in what’s called the 12 week year. Which is coming up with near term goals and projects and blocking out time accordingly. The projects are supposed to be aligned with your long term interest, which is a problem as I’m not sure what mine are, but I’m kinda hoping that will emerge simply by following the process. Every week I do a post mortem and see what I found time for and what I didn’t. Based on that feedback I either adjust my effort to match my goals or adjust my goals taking my effort as a sign that my goals were either more or less important than I had imagined, based on how engaged I was.
So far with a month in, there are no great results. I’ve done better than average at sticking to the resolution. I have only missed reading an entry twice, though I think I missed reflecting on entries close to 15 times out 38 days so far, so slightly better than 50% success rate. However the practice has begun to get slightly deeper and more meaningful and I THINK messages are sinking in better. Weekly post mortems have been very humbling in my inability to hit metrics. I’m short in 8 of the 12 goals I picked.
One problem I’ve realize is that my mind is far far too flightly. By the end of the day I’ll sit down and have no clue what the lesson of the day is. The words of which will have fled within an hour of reading. Completely gone is the quote and the message soon after. This is why I’m trying to focus more on it and transcribe the words. I may start actually writing both in my digital journal, for easier tracking later and by hand, simply to get better tactile engagement, if the extra effort yields poor results. I’m also finding a much deeper urge to explore the source material as I tend to like engaging whole concepts, but I have yet to find the time.
This flightiness is compounded on long term goals. Sometimes at the end of my week I’ll be looking and be like, holy shit I completely forgot this entire project. In short I’ve realized just how bad my ADD is. Hopefully I’ll see some fixes as I pay more attention and work to determine hacks.
My budget is not looking great, in that I spent over 100% of the money I made in Jan, instead of the 80% target goal. Partially this was because I put money down on long term things like gauntlets and a years membership at the knights hall. Partially this is due to bad accounting. And partially I’m just bad with money and saying no. That’s the whole purpose of this practice. To get better.
Feb is on track to just barely hit my goal, but I’ve made a few impulse purchase I shouldn’t have. I’m also cheating a bit, by working more hours to make more money, which means I can still hit 80% with out reducing my spending. I may adjust my budgets going forward so that I’m aiming for 80, 70, 60, and 50% of my EXPECTED earnings, not my actual earnings. This way I work the challenge as intended instead of trying to find clever ways around.
I also need to figure out if I will penalize myself for missing Jan’s goal. Not sure, but for now thinking no.
Anyway, While there are no substantive returns in money, I do feel and think different. I believe I’m getting the beginnings of internal change, but its still just glimmers right now. A seed maybe planted but I don’t think even the start of sprout is poking up from the chaotic dirt of my mind.
The only major improvement I’ve seen is that I’m doing better at accomplishing the tasks I say I will. I’m at an 80-90% success rate on finishing the tasks I put on my to do list. This isn’t cause I’m doing more, its cause I’m telling myself that I’ll get less done than I used too. I’m still missing some major milestones though. Biggest struggle is in tedium work as it always has been. Focusing on repetitive, non intellectually stimulating labor, has always been my downfall. And while I’m doing, I don’t Know,50% better, 50% better of accomplishing 10% of your tasks is only accomplishing 15%.
So that’s still a struggle. And my biggest struggle and failure overall has been reducing Facebook I have reduced it alot. And yet I still spend 2-3 hours on social media, at least one of which is pointless browsing. I NEED to figure out a fix for this. It’s the single biggest waste of productivity.
Last thoughts, While I’ve been focused mainly on productivity and conservation, I’ve been missing a huge part of Stoicism. Internal peace and acceptance of the world as it is. This is both incredibly foreign to me and at the same time somehow very very familiar, due to my years as essentially a nihilist stoner. Appropriately enough I’ve been listening to a book on the science Mindfulness and it dives into a lot of the Buddhist teachings. Seeing how the teachings align and then split off has been fascinating.
I wish I had included somethings about Zen, Tao, Meditation, and Yoga in my original challenge. I don’t see a place to add them right now and I think resetting this early on is a bad idea. So Maybe in the next 12 week year…or more likely in 2020, I’ll see what eastern thoughts do for me.