goals

The Art of Showing Up

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Raptitude Experiment No. 8

I’m finally settled from my return to Canada, with a permanent apartment and a permanent job, so I feel ready to dig in and make some strides in the self-improvement department.

Self-improvement is about habit change, I know that now. But I have a poor track record for habit change. I have been ping-ponging between two different strategies, and neither has worked too well.

My old strategy was to summon all my enthusiasm, pick a day and try to change everything at once: begin exercising, meditating, staying organized, and practicing guitar every day. Usually I start this on a Monday and it lasts till about Tuesday.

It’s too much. There is too much of a sudden schedule adjustment, and the habits have a tendency to get in each other’s way. Any new habit makes ripples in your life that you can’t really predict until you’re doing it.

For example, if you’re in the new habit of working out with kettlebells after work, when you sit down to play guitar you may notice your hands are sore and tense, your mind is a bit dull, and it’s just not conducive to playing guitar. Your practice is an uninspiring one, and it’s getting late anyway, so you don’t do the next thing right either, if you get to it at all. Getting even the first day right is hard when you take on multiple new habits.

Many people suggest never trying to change more than one habit at a time. My problem with this is always the same: I have some initial success and then I can’t help but think about other habits I could be forming. I want to ride the momentum. If there are five or six habits I want to form, and I’m not allowing myself to begin on the second until I’m 30 days into the first, that means I can’t even touch some of those habits until I’m five or six months down the road, and that assumes that I’m successful in my first attempts.

I don’t know about you, but when I want to make a change, I don’t want to put my inspiration on hold for six months. In my life it seems I am either comfortable and complacent, or I want to make a dramatic change (a revolution!) in how I spend my time. Right now I want to make several changes at once, and I’m determined to find a way.

The Plan

I have a suspicion, and I’m going to test it out.   Read More

by David on September 13, 2010
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First Things First

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birds on light post

Ever since I declared my Big Goal — complete self-employment by my 31st birthday — I’ve been flip-flopping about where specifically to start. Because I’m working with such a long timeline, it doesn’t make sense to chart out every action along the way, because I just don’t know how it’s all going to play out. It’s almost all new territory for me so I’ll need to be making constant adjustments the whole way.

So the “middle game” and “end game” of this goal are going to stay undefined until I get closer to them, but the opening sequence is to be decided now.

I am still abroad at the moment, so my workspace is constantly changing and never predictable. I have no desk and no filing cabinet, not much privacy, and often internet access is expensive or unavailable. There is also an uncomfortable internal conflict between my desire to make the most of my time abroad by sightseeing and socializing, and my desire to get this project underway.

Most of the sub-projects involved in my goal will have to wait until I return home, where I’ll have the stability and privacy to work, with fewer distractions. But I can still make one or two big strides between now and then.

I’ll be living out of my backpack for another six weeks yet. I’ve left New Zealand to explore Australia until I go home. Not that six weeks is a long time — I can’t believe I’m so close to the end of my trip — but I do want to get closer to my goal during this time, rather than defer it all until I get home. Enjoying my trip is the number one priority, but I don’t need sixteen waking hours a day to enjoy myself.

My goal’s general plan is clear to me, and I know that the first stage is going to surround establishing certain fundamental habits: writing habits, workflow habits, networking habits, and blog marketing habits. These habits will put me in a better position to complete everything between now and D-Day (October 8, 2011.) Any good habit established now will pay great dividends over the next eighteen months, and will facilitate the development of other habits.

In my research on habit change, one point keeps coming up again and again: the likelihood of your habit sticking decreases dramatically for every additional habit you’re attempting to change at the same time. If you only focus on one habit, a successful take is almost guaranteed, but trying to change five habits concurrently almost guarantees failure for all of them. Read More

by David on May 18, 2010
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Insight Is Not Enough

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candle flame

Recently I hinted at a huge goal I’m working on. It’s been on my mind for a few years now, but two weeks ago it graduated from wishy-washy “dream” status to concrete “goal” status.

In previous articles, I’ve made clear what I think about supporting myself by working for an employer. Having been at the mercy of the fickle and disorganized kiwifruit industry for my income for two months, I’m remembering how strongly I yearn to be free of arrangements where somebody else decides when I work and don’t work, how much money I can make, and what I can wear, say, or do at work. I no longer want to have sell my weekdays to somebody else’s purpose.

By my 31st birthday, I will be completely self-employed. That’s less than 18 months from today. Mark it on your calendar: I will cease to be an employee by October 8, 2011, and I will never get a job again.

I know I can do it a lot sooner than that, but 18 months will give me the option of maintaining a more-than-decent lifestyle in the mean time. I always knew I wanted this, but I did not actually believe it was within reach until a recent insight made it clear that I can pull it off in a relatively short time-frame. I’ll explain what that insight is below.

Now, I have made similar “Okay things will change from this day forth” resolutions before. Typically, I come up with a thrilling new project, and enthusiasm mushrooms until it has crowded out all my other concerns of the moment — like that afternoon I became infatuated with the idea of tracing my family tree. I dropped everything I was doing and lost myself in dozens of blogs and articles about genealogy. By 8pm I was quite over it, content again to sit on it for a few years. But at 4pm it still felt like I was turning a giant page in life, undertaking this huge, rewarding project.

That same jilted-project pattern should have happened with this blog, too. I could have just as easily devoured Problogger articles for a few days, registered a domain name and written half an article, only to drop it all and start something else when the initial excitement faded.

That “honeymoon period” for new projects always fades. You need something to keep it moving after that. Willpower might work for a while, but it’s not sustainable either. Read More

by David on April 27, 2010
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Where Does The Time Go? — Experiment No. 6

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hourglass

You are young and life is long
And there is time to kill today
And then one day you find
Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun

~Pink Floyd, “Time”

Something big is brewing. Life has been telegraphing this particular development for a while now, but last week I was smacked with a stroke of clarity about it, and now it is happening.

I am undertaking a massive goal. It’s the biggest goal I’ve ever had. I have no doubts I will complete it, on time, and that it will change my life dramatically. I’ll save the details of it for an upcoming post, because the whole thing hinges on my ability to overcome one of my lifelong weaknesses. This experiment is the first step towards my huge goal.

You may have noticed a conspicuous absence of posts about personal productivity here on Raptitude. I do write about how to improve your quality of life in all sorts of ways, but I am no authority on getting things done in a timely manner. There are 14 posts in the archives tagged with the topic “Productivity” but they are only peripherally related.

When it comes to personal productivity, I blow. I have had so much spare time this last three weeks that I could have written twenty articles and a book of limericks, but I was able to squander nearly all that time, and just get my bare-bones tasks done. This latest mismanaged stretch of free time is typical.

I am not lazy. That isn’t the problem. I never sleep in, I don’t watch TV, I don’t play video games, I don’t get horizontal on couches. I love doing. I have loads of exciting projects ready to go, and I want to work on them. But I am highly conditioned to get very little purposeful work done. The fact that this website even exists is a small miracle. My inefficiency is so consistent it’s almost comical. Read More

by David on April 19, 2010
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Complaining is Only a Symptom — Experiment No. 5 Results

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complain

Done. My campaign to go 21 consecutive days without complaining or gossiping is finally over, and what I discovered surprised me.

To recap, the experiment was to cease complaining or gossiping for twenty-one straight days, as long as that took. If I complained, I started the count again from zero. The idea was inspired by the book A Complaint Free World, by Will Bowen. The original post is here.

I cruised through the first week complaint-free, then cracked on my eighth day. I had to restart four times in total. My last screwup was on the eighteenth consecutive day, within 72 hours of finishing.

It took a total of 55 days. Read More

by David on April 5, 2010
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3 Pieces of Advice I’d Give My 18 Year-Old Self If I Could

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Lockers

Once upon a time…

At 3:45pm Friday afternoon, the corner of Fermor and St Mary’s was a busy place. The intersection is dominated by Glenlawn Collegiate, a brown brick complex that happens to be my alma mater. It’s one of the division’s two high schools, virtually unchanged in the eleven years since I graduated except for the addition of red LEDs on the sign outside.

I happened to be passing by right at that time for no particular reason.

The teenagers in the giddy mob at the bus stop looked a lot younger than I remember being in high school. At the time I figured seventeen was about a year away from being a proper adult, but these kids were definitely children. Loud and aimless. Maybe we were too.

The number fourteen and the number fifty-five rolled in one behind the other, brakes whining, and most of the mob funneled in. When the light changed, both buses pulled away, and that’s when I spotted him.

His identity didn’t register for a moment, but his hurried, self-conscious gait appeared so shockingly familiar to me that I froze. He was wearing grey, baggy cargo pants with ragged bottoms and a drab green t-shirt that was too big for him. His hair was a half-messed mop of gel-hardened spikes.

He was walking towards me, looking over at the departing buses, and we almost collided. When he caught my bewildered stare, I realized who he was.

It was me. At eighteen.

He was stunned too, but clearly knew who I was. Suddenly I felt a lot older than my twenty-nine years. Knowing him, I knew I would have to take the initiative here. I recovered, and smiled. He didn’t.

“You missed the fourteen.”

“Yeah I know.”

“We’ve got twenty minutes or so till the next one. We should talk,” I said, hopeful.

“Sure.”

***

Imagine if you had a golden opportunity to talk to your eighteen year-old self. Read More

by David on February 11, 2010
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The End of Negativity – Raptitude Experiment No. 5

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No complaining

Time for another experiment. This one I’ve been meaning to do for a long time. The idea behind it has made the rounds for a few years now and I’m not the first to do it, but I think the concept is fascinating and brimming with potential.

One day Will Bowen, a mild-mannered Missouri Reverend, challenged his congregation to develop their habit of gratitude by going 21 consecutive days without complaining or criticizing.

His method was quite simple and ingenious: Read More

by David on February 4, 2010
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What Were Your Highlights in 2009?

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bright spot

The first week of January is a natural time to look back. Just as the earth begins another whirl around the Sun, we can’t avoid confronting the reality that yet another sizable chunk of lifetime has been sealed and locked away in the archives. We don’t get many of those chunks, seventy or eighty if we’re lucky, so it makes sense to step back, look at how we’ve spent this last one, and adjust the sails if necessary.

A family member had a great idea and passed it on to me. This time of year, we should all come up with the year’s highlights, much the way they do for sports, news, and the arts. It’s a good way to identify exactly what the year means to us when we consider the big picture, zoomed out far enough that we can only see the brightest bits.

So here’s the deal. I’ll post my top five highlights of 2009, and hopefully you will be inspired to post yours, either in the comments below, or on your own blog if you’ve got one.

Approach it however you like. They can be things you started or finished in 2009, decisions you’ve made, experiences you’ve had or any other memories that stand out. All that’s important is that they serve to represent to you this particular chapter in your story, whether you’ve been authoring it consciously, or haphazardly. Read More

by David on January 4, 2010
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What Passion Will Buy You

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studio

There is an interesting discussion brewing in the blogosphere at the moment. My friend and fellow blogger Lisis Blackston of Quest for Balance wrote a controversial article last week about the feasibility of dropping your day job to pursue your passion.

We’ve all witnessed a growing culture of people who are quitting their lukewarm office careers to do what they’ve always wanted to do. There are countless success stories floating about (particularly in the online world) and it almost seems like following your passion — given an unwavering will — all but guarantees financial success. Lisis challenges this notion in her post.

Her article is here, and it is absolutely worth a read.

Several bloggers have responded with their take (a full list is at the end of Lisis’ article) and the topic is dear to me, so I’ll weigh in too.

It does seem passion generates income for some, but not for others. Therefore, ditching a steady job — under the assumption that your passion cannot fail you in the income department — is not exactly a bulletproof idea. But how do you know if your passion is the kind that would make you rich if you ran with it? Read More

by David on December 8, 2009
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What’s Your Problem? And Why?

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rain

A recurring theme in Raptitude is that why is a more useful question than what. Why is the mother of all whats, and tells a much more meaningful story.

A 600-foot triangular stack of stones sitting in the Egyptian desert for five thousand years is notable, but it’s the mystery of why someone was compelled to build such a thing that makes it so intriguing. If we only look at events and things, and judge them as if they were isolated entities, we can’t possibly understand them. Everything is both a cause and an effect, so there is no way of knowing what something is if you never look at why it is.

So if that isolated entity is something in your life that you want to change, such as a personal weakness or a lingering dilemma, your efforts to solve it may seem to be in vain. Your plan, at a glance, makes sense, but the problem keeps coming back. Try as you might, ten years later you still haven’t lost the weight, found a better career, or learned to play piano.

Contemporary self-improvement material seems to be concerned simply with what you should do:

To be more productive, start doing this.

To lose weight, eat this and don’t eat that.

An isolated tweak to one troublesome part of a person’s behavior can’t possibly address why they do it. There is a whole lifetime of momentum behind a person’s habits. To change the trajectory of something with as much inertia as an adult human life, we really have to understand the forces that put it into motion in the first place.  Read More

by David on September 17, 2009
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