First Week of the New Year ✅: Are You On Track?

I wish I could audit myself in spreadsheets, graphs, tables, maps, etc. That would be so cool!

First week of the new year complete.

Take some time to audit it.

What did you like?

What did you not like?

I already wrote about Auditing Yourself here but it’s worth reiterating again.

Auditing what you do with your time and comparing what you are doing to what you say you will do is so critical to establishing whether you are actively matching the expectations you set out for yourself.

This past year, I’ve had the chance to talk to more people and to connect more deeply with friends about how we’re wired. For me, I’m always wired to want to do more self-development or wired to want to learn how to do things more efficiently.

Whether that’s trivial things like finding the fastest route to work with the least traffic lights, stop signs, and traffic jams to more professional duties, trying to figure out whether macros and text expanders are allowed at work (where we can’t install Google Chrome by ourselves - hospital IT protocols).

The take-away is that I’m wired to think about optimizing and doing things more efficiently.

The thing for me, is that it becomes a struggle and hurdle to try something new or try something different because it can feel inefficient or a ‘waste of time’. For me, that means the biggest barrier to growing and learning is with new skills and new interests. I am inclined to watch youtube videos, study up on the subject more, and know more about the subject, but it becomes a barrier to actually trying the new skill because I have this expectation that I can recreate what I theoretically know as ‘good’ work compared with what I can currently achieve.

The kind of life that I want means I have to get over that hurdle.

So here’s my plan.

Over the next year, I want to learn new things on a forced schedule.

By committing to it at the beginning of the year and forcing myself to document my learning, I can establish a habit, make it publicly known so I have external/societal pressure and accountability (even if no one reads this) cause I have to post about it, and create a schedule to accomplish it consistently.

So here’s my SMART goal for accomplish.

I will attempt one new thing every week that pushes me creatively or towards one of my current interests for 52 weeks 100% of the time. This will be documented and posted publicly on my blog to capture the process of learning on a weekly basis. Some will be longer projects if they’re more complex and some will be shorter projects if they are more simple. Nevertheless, I will post weekly.

I will attempt one new thing every week that pushes me creatively or towards one of my current interests for 52 weeks 100% of the time. This will be documented and posted publicly on my blog to capture the process of learning on a weekly basis.

(For added intentionality, it gets its own quoted format to stand out)

My goal is to design the life I want and I want a life where I am comfortable pushing myself, failing, trying, and growing. That will sometimes be successful and smooth and other times, challenging, uncomfortable and frustrating. But I want that process to happen because I’d rather it be uncomfortable and challenging now rather than unknown and unaddressed.

This goal will help me structure my weekly schedule cause I have less time to do random, unrelated things like playing video games, watching TikTok or whatever else that mindlessly eats up my time. If I want to spend 30 minutes on TikTok, then it must be intentional and decidedly important.

Auditing my time forces me to come face to face with my actions and put a spotlight on them. It forces me to come to terms with the reality of how I spend my time and it forces me to make a conscious decision moving forward.

I’m excited and nervous to see this through, but it’s the lifestyle I want. And maybe along the way, it may help you with your own goals too! Seeing someone else chase after their goals can always be motivating.

So, stay tuned!