My 2014 Resolution: No Resolutions!

There have been several years in the past that I did New Year's Resolutions. And like many people, I did not stick with them very long.

I've decided to try something slightly different. Not one year goals I have in the past, but three year goals.

Anything shorter seems like it is trying to change too much too fast. Anything longer range - it's too hard for me to predict what is going to happen that far in the future and come up with goals that are realistic.

Once I have my goals figured out for three years in the future, I take it back to goals that will be in the one year time range, then break those into one month steps, then into weekly and daily habits that keep me moving in the right direction.

Some of the goals are ones I'd rather not publicly post, but I'll share a few of them.

My biggest three year goals are to be 100% debt free (mortgage and everything), have my house be free of clutter that is just taking up space and not providing any benefits, and get to a point that I am doing something with my life I'm truly passionate about.

To be on track for these goals, I need to pay off 1/4 of my mortgage in 2014 (we've been aggressively paying it down and living well below our means, so this is entirely possible), get rid of anything we don't use on a regular basis, and try I few things I might want to do with my life.

I've decided that every month, I'll have new goals on the way to these. For January I will doing daily devotions, be working on some kind of project outside of work every day (blogging counts so this is it for today), work out every day (need the energy and health to tackle the other goals).

I also plan on going to at least one big conference this year that covers what I want to do. Right now the best option looks like one called "World Domination Summit." Besides having a cool name, it is a conference dedicated to all kinds of creative people who make their living online. This includes bloggers, podcasters, and I believe independent developers.

December 2013 Goals Update #1

It turns out December is a crazy month to attempt a couple of the goals. Work has been nuts so finding time to work on side projects and work out has been a challenge. Sometimes my "workout" has been limited to jumping with the kids in the bouncy house we have in the basement. Or in the case of today, spending time with the kids playing outside in the snow.  A couple days I have missed my workout and/or working on side project.

The one that has proven to be really interesting and more of a challenge than I thought is the no unnecessary purchases for myself rule. December has two things going on: general sales just about everywhere you turn as retailer gear up for Christmas. This is something I was expecting.

What I wasn't expecting is almost every digital distribution channel out there - Apple's App Store, Google Play, Amazon Kindle store, and Valve's Steam - are doing some variation of "Here's the best of the year, and it's ALL one sale." type of promotions.

As someone who enjoys using good apps and playing original indie games, this is really hard to resist. So far I have managed.

December 2013 Goals - Making December 2013 the Thirteenth Month of 2014

I've decided the best way to make 2014 rock is start figuring out what direction I want to go in 2014 and take baby steps to make it happen in December 2013. Kudos to Scott Smith of Motivation To Move for this great nugget of advice on his podcast.

I have also decided I need to have a limit on how many goals I try to track at once. Five is the absolute maximum, three would be ideal. It happens this month that a couple of my goals enforce each other so I think five is alright in this situation.

Here are my five goals:

1. Workout daily.
2. Eat healthy more often than not (or "Be more gooder than badder" as Scott would say)
3. Work on a side project every day (app development and blogging are the main two I'm considering)
4. Finish version 1.0 of the Bible Trekking app
5. No unnecessary purchases for myself

I'd like to unpack that last one a little bit now. I've had previous posts about my tendency to impulse buy stuff I don't need and then I go around the house complaining we have too much junk we don't use. Solution: first, stop buying the stuff! Then get rid of whatever I don't use.

If I buy for something else, that's fine - otherwise Christmas shopping would not be allowed. Buying necessities is of course fine. I plan on just adding anything I want to a list and look at it in January and I'll likely be wondering why I wanted all this clutter in my life.

Today I had my first shopping trip with this rule. For some reason I was very tempted to buy a candy bar (which I do occasionally buy at the checkout) and an energy drink (which I normally only buy when I gas up the car).

SFW Streaking

I have discovered an idea that has made a huge difference in my life in building healthy habits: streaking. Now, get your mind out of the gutter. I mean seeing how many days in a row you can do one small habit.

I've found that I cannot have too many streaks going at once. One is very doable, two are manageable, and three should be possible. I think four streaks would not work and five would just result in nothing getting done.

I currently have two streaks going, and I had the first going over 100 days before I started the second.

My first streak was working out 10 minutes a day, every day. This could be an hour long run (if I could do that without falling over from exhaustion) or as little as a ten minute walk outside or on the treadmill. I am up over 170 days on this streak.

The second streak I started was working on some side project every day. I've got two things I'm exploring: app development and writing. Any post to this blog counts to this, as does any work I do on building mobile apps or web applications outside of my day job. I am up over 40 days on this streak at this point.

Why don't we budget time?

It seems like everything I read about personal finances, one of the first things people recommend is having a budget. Except those that don't like the word "budget" they say have a spending plan. But the idea is always the same - plan what you are going to spend, and then follow the plan.

Pretty much the same goes with eating healthy. People plan what they are going to eat and then follow the plan. Examples include Weight Watchers (points system), Paleo (don't eat junk), and things like Nutrisystem (buy our food and eat that).

The one thing that people seem to not really think about budgeting is time. There are scads of methods of doing todo lists, project planning, prioritizing etc, etc. But very little similar to what I would consider a time budget.

Let's do a comparison. If you go out and spend money, you eventually run out of cash, overdraw your checking account, or hit your credit limit. You know when you have run out. You can do the envelope system or follow a budget and keep from going that far if you track your spending and stop before you hit your limit on any category.

Time: it is often that you can start on email, Facebook, Twitter, or maybe looking at cute cat pictures on Reddit and next thing you know what in the world it is 3AM, you meant to go to bed by 10:30 PM because you have to get up at 6AM the next day to go to work.

Very few people I have heard of do a time budget. In the above example - maybe at 10PM you could set a limit of 30 minutes to goof off on the Internet before going to sleep.

Is it hard? Or is it just something no one thinks about that often?

April 2013 Goals - progress update #1

At the beginning of the month, I had a post about my goals for the month of April 2013 which seems to be going entirely too fast - especially for those late in filing their taxes. Luckily this doesn't include me.

Here is the list of goals I had planned and how I am faring on each of them.

Health:
* Work out every day at least 10 minutes - I'm hitting 100% on this one so far. Some days I barely get it in. My 3 1/2 year old daughter absolutely begs to do a kettlebell workout with me. This is not what you could call an intense workout, but it is a work. I'm rotating been that, a walk on the treadmill, Nike+ Kinect, and running outside now that the weather got nicer.

* Eat 80% paleo diet - this is one I'm probably getting right about half the time. Although I am not really tracking exactly what I eat so I couldn't tell you how far off I am for sure. Eating out and bringing junk food into the house for the wife and kids are my downfall here.

* Get down to 195 pounds - I'm down a couple pounds from the beginning of the month. This morning I was down to 200.6.

Work:
* Finish reading “Managing Humans” book by the guy who writes Rands In Repose - I had started reading this book last month and got a couple chapters in. So far it's been pretty enjoyable and has some good points. 

Side projects:
* Work on creating something every day at least 10 minutes (blog, writing, programming, websites, anything really) - I've got 100% on this one so far, although some days I don't really accomplish a lot. That is one of my big challenges - with a busy work schedule and kids that want to spend time with their daddy, sometimes I don't feel like I'm getting anything done. In the last week, I decided to prototype an app to see how I'm doing eating Paleo. I got as far as installing the latest version of Rails and setting up a couple scaffolds. Even that is much better than doing nothing because I'm "too busy."

Finances:
* Read “Your Money or Your Life” book - when cuddling my younger daughter trying to get her to sleep, I have been reading this on my Kindle. I've made it through the first five chapters. The next one is "The American Dream - On a Shoestring" which I'm interested to see what the authors have to say.

The Magic Word

Lately I have learned at work there is a magic word that is really hard to say and I don't use it often enough. It's not the words you'd think - "Please" or "Thank you" or even "I'm sorry." Those words we are taught since a young age - the words and when and where to use them drilled into our skulls to the point that I think everyone knows to use them (even the ones that don't).

I'm thinking of a different word even harder to say for someone who loves to help people. That word?

NO

There's the point where things are just too busy to accomplish everything that you want to do. So you must say "No" to some things. This is going to either be by choice - you prioritize and intelligently pick and chose what needs to get done.

Or it could be more of by default. You try to do everything and just end up running out of time for some things. Who knows what gets done under this second system? It could be what is easiest, what is most fun, what people have yelled at you most to get it done, or just about anything.

I have also realized that I also need to remember this lesson at home, which tends to be a little harder to do.

So what gets done first? Whatever needs to be done to keep major problems from happening - paying bills, keeping the car repaired, etc. Next - whatever keeps making life better and better. Spending time with the kids and wife, learning new things, keeping in touch with friends, etc. Anything outside of those two things will need to fit into whatever time is left.

Gazingus pens are my Gazingus Pins

While reading the book "Your Money Or Your Life" I've run into a couple ideas that really hit me. I'll save my review of the book for later, but I'd like to share one idea from the book at this point.

The authors call this idea the "Gazingus Pin." I wish I knew where they came up with the term, but the idea is this: if you go to a store and there's some item that you buy without thinking even though you get no enjoyment from that particular item, that is your Gazingus Pin.

Examples they give in the book is someone who buys a new pair of shoes every month or upgrades to the latest cell phone even though their old one works fine and the new one has no new features they will actually be using.

I realized I have a few Gazingus Pins.

1. Gazingus pens, I mean fountain pens. Really any kind of nice pen. I almost bought some Sharpie retractible pens at Staples the other day even though I am just fine with my fountain pens, Fisher Space pen, and Pilot G2 pens.
2. Office supplies to help me get organized - planners, calendars, folders, index cards, etc. I've pretty much settled on using a combo of Levenger Circa and Staples ARC systems so I am mostly down to just spending money on the refills I need.
3. Apps - being a developer and always on the lookout for a better way to do things in particular to be organized, I will jump on an app that is on sale that does something I want to do. I am particularly bad about buying note taking or todo list apps. I used to buy a bunch of budgeting apps but have settled down on that as there are a couple that I really enjoy using.
4. Ebooks - I recently bought a Kindle Paperwhite intending that would help me do more reading. It has, but now I also tend to hit Amazon and buy any book I really want to read that our local library doesn't carry.
5. Caffeinated beverages - I am not sure if this counts or not, but I'll buy pop or if I'm really tired, energy drinks without thinking about how much I'm spending.

So what is YOUR Gazingus Pin?

April 2013 Goals

I've decided to start blogging again and keep track of my goals and progress on them publicly. So here goes nothing... My list of goals for this month:


Health:
* Work out every day at least 10 minutes
* Eat 80% paleo diet
* Get down to 195 pounds


Work:
* Finish reading “Managing Humans” book by the guy who writes Rands In Repose


Side projects:
* Work on creating something every day at least 10 minutes (blog, writing, programming, websites, anything really)


Finances:
* Read “Your Money or Your Life” book

Thinking Out Loud On Paper

Last night I realized that some people "think out loud" that is to really figure out an idea or concept they have to say it out loud to figure out how things all fit together.

I'm not one of these people. For me "thinking out loud" is putting something down on paper. Or typing it up. Either way seems to work. I'll do this at work all the time - when trying to explain a particularly complicated concept to a coworker, I'll reach for a dry erase marker and whiteboard nearly every time.

Drawing something out or writing it down makes it apparent how all the pieces fit together.

I need to get back to journaling & writing. I'll post online as I come up with stuff worth sharing. I'm not expecting to have a set schedule for posting, but we'll see where this goes.

Your Planner is With You - Iterating Organization

The Big Blue Brick

Back when I had just graduated college, I realized I was more or less hopelessly disorganized. I found this out when I compared my organization (none) to a friend who had EVERYTHING in a Franklin planner. I thought I was extremely busy, so I bought the "Monarch" size which is 8 1/2 x 11 inch paper size and I made sure I got a big enough one that I had room to write a page a day. This was great at conferences and meetings because I had huge amounts of room to write.

Unfortunately at some conferences, the right page was usually laying on the lap of the person next to me. I'm glad none of them punched me for having my planner across their lap. As you may guess, I often did not carry my planner. My friend reminded me that "Your planner is with you" or it's not really of any use to you.

I'm not sure ho much this thing weighed, but it felt like carrying a square paper bowling ball around with a blue cover.

Downsizing, slightly

I soon realized my friend had a "Classic" sized planner and seemed quite comfortable carrying it. I decided to switch to the same size. I suddenly felt a burden lifted from my shoulders. Classic size is like Monarch cut in half which was fantastic. It was something I can carry without feeling like my arm was going to be yanked off by my planner.

Enter Circa

I stuck with the Classic size a while, until I read something on the site Diyplanner.com that changed the world for me. There was a review of the Levenger Circa system, which essentially has plastic discs that hang on to the paper exactly the same distance apart so you can mix and match and swap out any paper into any bigger notebook - everything from business cards all the way up to full notebook page sizes.

Of course, I forgot where I came from and tried the biggest size first thinking at some point I could print out anything I want to carry with me and stick it in there. Once again, I hit the big paper brick problem and immediate swapped down a size to their version of the Classic planner.

Unbricking

Earlier this year (2012) I saw that I only carried my planner to work and back. While I'm out and about doing anything that is not work, I typically don't carry my planner with me. While thinking about that, I noticed Levenger has the "Compact" size calendars on sale for less than $5. The Compact size is slightly taller and not as wide as a 4x6 inch index cards. So I *HAD* to buy one. I used it for a couple weeks, enough to realize that I really like having a calendar that fits nicely in my back pocket. The problem is with the discs and one year's worth of weekly calendar pages, it is way too thick to fit comfortably in my back pocket.

So I went to Staples and grabbed a Day Minder 2012 calendar. It's about 1/2 the thickness of the Compact Levenger Circa calendar, not plastic rings. I tried putting it in my back pocket while driving around and pretty much didn't feel it at all. The only downside to this set up is I can't put in extra pages in my new calendar like I can in the Circa notebooks. However, I have noticed that I typically only have a line or two of writing in each day's calendar and then maybe two to three pages a month of notes.

My work stuff is nearly all electronic and at home, I'm generally blogging, messing with things on the computer, or playing with my kids. So it's nearly all electronic or things I don't really need to do much writing for.

So where does this leave me?

So here's my current set up:

I've got the aforementioned Day Minder 2012 calendar and Fisher Space pen I keep in my pocket. I also have a Levenger Smartphone Wallet in which I keep my iPod Touch. This wallet also has a place for index cards. I keep one index card in the front pocket of the Smartphone Wallet, three extra cards in the pouch, and then 5 or 10 index card Circa PDA notebook. Also in the wallet is a Lamy Agenda mechanical pencil. The plan is anything that needs to go on the calendar goes there, notes will go on the index cards, and any notes that need to be permanent will be entered into my computer.

I'm currently using Notebooks for iPhone and iPad to track all my notes and TaskPaper for my todo list. Notebooks really does allow me to keep track of everything but my todo list in the filesystem and then syncs to my iPod Touch and iPad via DropBox. The only current downside to this app is the todo list is implemented via .plist files which means you can only view or update them via the app.

TaskPaper keeps the todo list in plain text so would be available via anywhere you have it synced via DropBox.

Today I found out Notebooks is coming out with a Mac and Windows desktop version which means I would be able to use it to organize pretty much everything.

3 Tiny Habits Follow-up

I ended up participating in the actual 3 Tiny Habits program instead of trying to do it myself. The results were actually quite surprising!

The three habits I originally picked:

1. After I get dressed, I will look at my todo list & calendar.

2. After I put my daughter to bed, I will brush my teeth.

3. After I log into my Mac, I will build whatever Xcode project is currently open by hitting Command-B.

Habit #2 turned out to be the easiest by far. I am already in the habit of brushing my teeth right before I go to bed. This tweak was to just do it right after I tuck my daughter in, which tends to be when the night snacking begins if I have nothing better to do. There's not much besides water that tastes good after you brush your teeth. Besides, if I had anything else I'd have to brush my teeth again. And that's just no good.

What surprised me is how much I forget to do habit #3 at first. I'd login to my computer just wanting to check something quick - the weather, my email, etc and realize that shoot - I forgot to do my habit. The best solution I found was to make sure Xcode was up & running with an open project when I left the computer.

You'll notice I left habit #1 for last... This is because what I found with that was most interesting. My morning routine goes like this - get up, use the restroom, weigh myself, eat breakfast & do my devotions, get dressed, head off to work. What I found was that some days the kids get up between me starting to eat breakfast and getting dressed. When that happens, all bets on me doing anything I didn't absolutely need to do to get ready for work are off.

My fix was simple - I put my planner & iPod Touch on the book shelf I pass going from the bedroom to the kitchen & changed the habit from checking my todo list & calendar after I get dressed to after I weigh myself.

In summary: two big things I learned from tiny habits:

1. For a habit to be automatic, you need to tie it to something you already do.

2. To keep doing it, you need to set up as much as possible to reduce resistance to the habit. For example, I'm not going to even look at my development project in Xcode before I check my email unless Xcode is already up and running. I'm not going to run downstairs to check my todo list before breakfast, but I will pick up my planner on the way to the kitchen if it happens to be handy.

I also get the feeling that my best bet for accomplishing what I really want to accomplish - the things that take more than 30 seconds to do - is do them before anyone else in my family gets up or at night once everyone else has settled down to some point. While family is up & about - well that should be family time. After all, they are the most important people in my life! I need to fit the things I want to accomplish in around them, not the other way around.

It will be a work in progress for quite a while - I expect for my whole life.

Three Tiny Habits Different Than Three Small Habits

I got a surprise comment on my previous post on the 3 Tiny Habits program. The creator of the program actually commented on the post.

It seems I missed two things by trying to do the 3 Tiny Habits based off bits & pieces I heard on podcasts and the general description from the website. I went back and read the instructions (that's the last thing anyone does when they have issues, right?)

1. I didn't have "anchors" in place. This is saying you'll do your habit after some trigger or anchor. For example, I said I'd work on a side project every day for 5 minutes. I never said WHEN I'd do it, so it didn't happen every day. I should have said something like I'll do it right after supper.

2. I was doing small habits, rather than tiny habits. The habits I was doing could be 5 minutes as with my "do a side project for 5 minutes every day" habit. Or longer with my "have quiet time after breakfast" habit. The definition of a "tiny habit" for the purpose of this program is something you can do in 30 seconds or less. These are truly tiny, tiny habits.

The point of the 3 Tiny Habits program is not to build a small habit to make life better, it is to build the skill of building habits.

Apps I use all the time

I've been trying to declutter and simplify my life. After listening to a couple episodes of the Minimal Mac podcast "Enough" I decided one good way to do that would be figure out which apps I actually use and uninstall everything else.

Here is the top of my list - apps I use all the time and that actually make my computer useful. I'm going to leave out the obvious stuff like web browsers unless I have something special to say. There other apps I use but they tend to be things I use to tweak my system or things I just use once in a while.

Apps I use every day:

1Password - password manager - because I can't remember them all. I also use it to store the serial numbers for the apps I own.

MacJournal - my note-taking app/everything bucket of choice. If I want to store something and be able to remember it for later, this is likely where it's going to go.

DropBox - currently the easiest way to keep important files in sync between Macs, iPod Touch, and iPad.

Reeder - the best Google Reader client I've seen on the Mac. I like using an app rather than the web interface.

Pomodoro - great simple Pomodoro implementation. You set the timer for 25 minutes of work or 5 minutes for a break and off you go! It logs everything. I've also been experimenting with an app called Vitamin-R that does that plus block out distractions.

WriteRoom - Minimal text editing. I use this for doing quick notes. The iOS version of this has DropBox sync

Sparrow - the best email client I've seen for a while. They seem to have taken the best features of Apple's Mail app, the iPad Mail app, Google's gmail interface and blended them together. This is something you must try if you have a Gmail account.

YNAB - hands down the best budgeting/personal finance app I have ever used. It is built around the concept for zero-based budgeting - every dollar you have is assigned something to do whether this means buying groceries, eating out, saving for an emergency or buying an iPad. There is an iPhone version and Android version. Both sync over the local Wifi network. The iPhone version uses location services to automatically figure out where you are and guess what budget category the transaction will go in making data entry super fast.

Todo list apps
I'm currently in the middle of trying to decide which one I like best. I've actually ruled out two because of cost - OmniFocus (too expensive & too complicated for what I want) and The Hit List (looks like Things, plus has some of the features of OmniFocus but syncing requires a yearly subscription fee)

Things - great app, very slick for managing your lists of things todo. This one is built on the ideas from GTD (David Allen's Getting Things Done) only it refers to "Contexts" as "Tags." It has built in Wifi sync between the desktop and iPhone/iPad version. The general consensus seems to be that Things and OmniFocus are the two best Mac todo list apps if you don't mind dropping some cash on such a thing. Things is simple and elegant. OmniFocus is no less nice looking, but it does EVERYTHING. Most of the time I see people praising OmniFocus, they are either way more OCD than me or own a business and track everything they need to do out of this one app.

TaskPaper - Tracks your todo lists in simple text files. The iPhone/iPad version syncs via DropBox so you can keep everything up to date.

todo.txt - shell script based tool made by Gina Trapani of LifeHacker fame. There is also an iPhone/iPad and Android version of this that syncs via DropBox.


Programming Tools
Xcode - for developing on iOS and Mac apps.

TextMate, MacVim, TextWrangler - because as a programmer, I need a good text editor that does syntax highlighting and I flip between these depending on my mood

Three Tiny Habits - or Five

I’ve run into multiple Podcasts and blogs that talk about a program called 3 Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg and decided to check it out. It’s very simple actually. Saturday or Sunday, you pick three tiny habits you want to adopt for a week. Monday through Friday you do your tiny habit.

I haven’t signed up for the program, but I decided to give it a try. I couldn’t decide on just three habits though, but I did pick five habits I think are most important to what I want to accomplish in my life.

1. Quiet time after breakast every day.
2. Drink pop with lunch (trying to cut back on pop)
3. Track what I eat for lunch
4. Brush my teeth right after my daughter goes to bed.
5. Work on a side project 5 minutes a day. This can be programming, writing, or blogging.

I’m using a program called Sciral Consistency to track my habits. You could use paper & pencil, a spreadsheet or web application called Joe's Goals. I’m sure there are millions of other options, but those are the top ones I know of.

Minimalism vs. Simplicity

A few weeks ago, I read the free preview of the book "The Art of Being Minimalist" by Everett Bogue and liked it enough that I felt it worth it to pay the $17 to buy the full version - which meant I got the second half of the book not included in the preview.

The big idea of the book that got it started was when Everett thought that since people can typically only keep track of 150 or so people in their social circle, they probably can only keep track of about 150 possessions. The book goes into reason you want to live a minimalist life and how to do that with your possessions, time, attention, and a little about how to make money in minimalist ways.

The book had a lot of good info and ideas - such as if you have so much stuff you have to pay for extra storage, you need to get rid of some of it. You should also minimize your interruptions as much as possible (either don't read Twitter or only read it in scheduled batches). Some of the ideas I read there are no way I could do. For example, he suggests getting rid of your car and moving to a bicycle-friendly city and reducing your possessions to the point that everything you own can fit in a backpack. I have a feeling my wife and daughter would NOT be happy with those changes.

After long thought about it, I decided that being minimalist is not for me. I want to be a person who lives a life based on simplicity. Here's the difference, I think. Minimalism means trimming everything out of your life that isn't necessary. Live a minimal life. That is too drastic for me, and I'd imagine too drastic for most people.

Simplicity means getting rid of anything in your life that is over-complicating it. Examples: movies you don't watch, music you don't listen to, stuff that you don't use and just spend time cleaning, dusting, storing and organizing every month. If you aren't getting any use or pleasure out of an object, get rid of it!

There are multiple books out there that at their core are about simplicity: Peter Walsh's book "It's All Too Much", FlyLady's work, and even David Allen mentions it briefly toward the beginning of his best-known book "Getting Things Done."

Put down the computer once a week!

It's turning out one of the hardest goals I have set for myself is once a week, don't do anything on the computer outside of work.

As soon as I decided on one day I was going to make that my "no computer" day, I started thinking of all kinds of things I wanted to do: email friends, check Facebook, do some programming and on and on.

I'm trying to figure out what to do with this info. It seems as soon as I decide I want to cut back or remove something from my life, something in my decides it *needs* whatever that thing was. And I end up coming up with excuses why I need that thing.

Looking back at when I actually succeeded at doing this, I feel the solution is to replace whatever I'm trying to remove with something else. The biggest success I've had with this was back in college when I tried to stop playing video games for 30 days.

I decided to spend the time really digging into learning Unix-based operating systems (namely FreeBSD and Linux) better. I actually found myself telling a friend that I was going to go back to my apartment and "play FreeBSD."

August 2010 Goals

Within the last two weeks, I've hit a couple huge goals I had set for myself. One hundred and twenty days in a row (120!) of working out every day and of doing some kind of programming every day outside of work.

Once hitting this, I have decided to take a new course in my goals. Instead of working out every day, I have heard it is best to give your body one day of rest every week. So I have decided to have the goal of working out at least 5 times a week - one day of rest and one day of just in case something comes up. I am kicking up the intensity with the Couch To 5k program with the help of the C2 5k iPhone app on my iPod Touch.

As for the doing programming every day, I have decided to alter that a little, as sometimes it takes a while to learn something well enough to write any code that is worth it. So my idea is to at least 5 days a week make some kind of progress on a side project or business. Be it programming, blogging, learning how to be a better programmer, or anything similar.

I have also decided that I'm going to read one good book on spiritual growth this month. Being a Christian that area of my life has been sadly neglected.

Last of all, I have decided that I live like there is no life without computers and I want to get away from that a little bit. Every night I have been doing email, Facebook, Twitter, computer games, or some combination of all of them or similar activities. Once a week, I will take a night and not touch a computer outside of work - with the exception of if my wife wants to watch a movie or TV show via streaming video. Obviously that night is not tonight.

Taskpaper for the iPhone

- buy Taskpaper for my iPod Touch @done(2010-02-23)

Would have done it sooner but I just received the email announcement.

I've got DERI on my calendar

At the beginning of this year, I have some goals I want to accomplish. I've not been very good about making things happen in previous years. I read about an idea I decided to try. Decide what you can do each day in order to make your goals happen and do a little each day. I've also found that if I have too many goals, I tend not to do any of them. If I keep to a few, it becomes much more doable. Five major goals seems to be about my limit.

Here's my big ones:

1. Improve my spiritual life. For now, doing devotions every day will make this happen.

2. Improve my health and get down to a healthy weight. I am making sure I do a little exercise every day to make this happen.

3. Become more successful. I am reading a book about success a little every day.

4. Develop an additional source of income. I am doing a little every day to build up other income sources.

So on every day on my calendar I write at the beginning of the week: D E R I

short for Devotions, Exercise, Reading, and Income and place a checkmark next to each one as I do it. I have not managed to do every one of these every day since I started, but I have been doing them on average 5 days a week, which is a HUGE improvement over previous years.

I ask anyone who reads this try this idea with their own goals and let me know what happens.