In an effort to step up my blog posting abilities, I thought that I would start out with a mini-series of posts related to something important to me. This idea came to me last week when I was thinking about all the things I wanted to do and goals I wanted to accomplish. I realized the list keeps growing and it feels like the days are getting shorter. So, I decided to break up some personal goals I have into bit-size pieces that I could work at in 30 day increments.
Why 30 days?
Well the easy answer is, that is all the time I have before things get a little hectic for awhile. I am getting married in September and anticipate total chaos in both August and September.
The more scientific and logical answer is that I spent some time reading various articles on the topic of how long it takes to form a new habit. The articles varied in the duration ranging from days to months to years stating it was dependent on the difficulty of the habit. That made sense to me, so I reviewed the type of habits that were studied in these articles and evaluated my targeted “habits” I would need to create to meet my goals. I began by illustrating my high-level category of goals in the SimpleMind app and then broke these goals down in to smaller and smaller categories until I reached a manageable habit that I could reasonability form in a 30 day period.
What’s the Plan?
The plan is to make small to moderate improvements in three areas of my life by working towards forming habits to drive these improvements. The idea would be to slowly, month by month chip away at the list of improvements – making better choices and habits – until this exercise becomes more of a lifestyle change than a short challenge. At the end of every 30 days or month I will evaluate my progress and tweak my plan to ensure I meet reasonable milestones. As you might sense, I’m applying the Agile Methodology that I use everyday in my career to my life. (I know – a bit dorky – but thats how I think lol).
My Mind
When thinking about ways to improve my mind, various subareas were evaluated. I chose to focus on mental and educational improvements. A mental improvement could be as simple as establishing healthy ways release stress or to relax. While an educational improvement could be to learn a skill beneficial for my career path. These are just a few examples I came up with during my exercise.
My Body
Improvements on ones body are a little bit more standard I would imagine. Most people would probably list areas such as exercise, diet and rest. An example of a habit that could be formed for diet is to drink more water, while an example of rest might be to get more sleep nightly.
My Soul
Now coming up with ways to improve your soul was a little trickier for me, as it is subjective and more personal. In my case, I divided this in three areas: social, happiness and awareness.
Next Steps
I will begin my first 30-Day Shape Up adventure on July 1, 2017. Prior to that day, I will post my plan for those 30 days, as well as some information around the habits I’m hoping to form and how these habits will help me reach my goals. I will post some short blogs of tips and tricks I’ve picked up along the way, as well as what I’ve learned during these 30 days.
Check back in to follow my progress!
Data Dev-On-The-Go! 