Monday, April 25, 2011

Posting here requires that I dedicate the time to actually doing it - and while I feel like I could have spent time posting, I have not. Rather than beat myself up about it, I'm going to move forward and go ahead and start from scratch.

The point of this blog is to track my progress in several areas and provide a structure to my thinking about ways to improve my life - specifically in areas that I have found particularly challenging in the past - financial, health, and focus. To give myself some diversity in projects, I've divided my thoughts into three days - Money Mondays, Wellness Wednesdays, and Focus Fridays. I'm going to steal some thunder from my first Focus Friday and clarify my thoughts on how to go about improving my life, regardless of the area of improvement.

In much of the reading I've done about success, productivity, and personal growth, the single most powerful tool suggested is to set clear goals that represent not only long term success, but also smaller breakdown goals that are reachable in short time spans - the idea being that you can't lose 10 pounds without losing 1 pound 10 times. Part of the delay in making this first post has been somewhat of an analysis paralysis when it comes to laying out goals for each area. However, I feel like I have some more concrete ideas about what I want to achieve in the future, so I can start moving forward with laying out the smaller steps to get to the end result.

When it comes to personal improvement, I've also come across the idea of attempting to visualize the person you want to become, which helps in goal setting (you have to know where you're going in order to draw a map there). So I think the first step is to make a sketch of the person I want to be, and that will help me set smaller step goals that I can work on in the near term. I've attempted this in the past on my livejournal, with the "When I'm 40 I will..." set of goals. I've accomplished some of those already - and others seem destined to probably not come true. The lack of smaller step down goals probably made those goals harder to reach, and so I may be able to accomplish them now with a little bit more focus on breaking them down.

So here's the sketch:
My finances - I want to accomplish becoming debt free as soon as possible. I don't have a good time frame yet, but one of the first small goals I'll be setting is to create a manageable time frame based on the inventory I'll be doing soon.  Debt freedom should happen in concurrence with the second part of the sketch, which is owning a home with Jennifer. Jennifer and I have an idea about the type of house and location we want, and creating the road map to buy that house is another priority. The third piece of the puzzle is finding new ways to produce income passively - with investments. I've done a lot of looking into the idea of being a landlord, owning a rental single-family home and then expanding into multiple homes. Finally, once I have enough passive income to replace my "job", I'll devote myself fully to working for myself - though I feel that the type of business remains to be seen. Perhaps I'll just buy more rental properties, or I'll own a game store - I think that when I get closer to that dream, I'll address what my plan is.

My health - Strong and fit - and that's far too generic a description to be a goal, but I think that in some realms, it's harder to nail down a specific thing. I could say "I want to weigh 200 pounds" but I think I need to spend more time considering what I want from my health. I think that I'd like to feel comfortable participating in any athletic event and that I wouldn't feel winded after 30 seconds. I'd like to feel comfortable taking my shirt off at the pool (my hairy back be damned!). I'd like to either use diet and exercise or surgery to give myself a normal man's breasts and belly. I'd like to feel strong and fast - and I recognize that as a relevant idea, but I want to feel like I've reached a reasonable body potential for myself. I'm not shooting for superhuman - pretty good normal human would be just fine.

My focus - This is an area where measurable results may be harder to come by. I feel like I've let my brain go somewhat - not that I feel like I'm not intelligent - I still feel competent and smart - but I don't know that I feel as on top of my game as I did when I was in high school. I don't read as much, I don't feel like my problem solving skills are as sharp, and I feel like my intellectual life has.... dimmed. In my dream sketch of my focus/intellectual life, I see myself continuing to watch some TV, but continuing to elimninate the watching without purpose. Recorded TV (never live) allows me to just watch the content I'm looking for and avoid wasting time watching commercials or terrible shows. (Why do I ever watch Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives? What do I possible get from that? I recognize that there is the idea of mindless entertainment, but I feel like I want to trade that time for health and wealth improvement). This area has the most nebulous room for growth, possibly unlimited.