I feel like I've accomplished a lot this week. I owe that to watching a couple of talks by James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits. James Clear, doesn't get all the credit, because I also started reading How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life and also got some inspiration from that as well. Both guys talk about systems and I missed a lot of my goals last year, so I started thinking about how I could reach my goals this year by re-evaluating my personal systems.
When the kids are in bed, I default to helping my wife clean up the mess that's created throughout the day. I still do this, but I don't keep cleaning until it's all clean (or I get tired and can't clean anymore). I stop after 30 minutes. If it's really late, I may not clean at all. My first priorities are my projects and exercise. Once I finish those, then I move back to cleaning, where I'll eventually stop before I go to bed. So far, this has been working for me.
Project Progress
| Project Week | Project Hours |
|---|---|
| Jan 10-16 | 4.5 |
I decided to create some tutorials about some of the common features of Git that a developer would find handy when working on projects at work (or home). I've been going at it steady and I'm solidifying my knowledge about Git as well. The current topic is squashing commits. I find that I try to only commit when something is working well, which doesn't help when you're experimenting and don't want your branch or local copy to have a bunch of unnecessary or messy commits. Anyways, I've been working on that steady throughout the week. I'm currently aiming to only spend 30 minutes on my projects, but sometimes I go over that. Going over 30 minutes makes things less sustainable for my busy life at the moment, but sometimes I can get away with it. It doesn't seem like a lot of time, but I'm banking on consistency making the difference.
Life
I've been consistently walking my dog and have incorporated that into my night time routine. My dog needs to play with other dogs, but after the new lockdown, they shut down the dog parks, so I can't take her there to have a good romp. The nightly walks help keep her energy levels at bay, but she still needs a bit more. Maybe later on, I can start walking her in the morning. That's a big maybe. Regardless, I'm happy that I've been doing this consistently for a week.
I've been working out consistently during the week. Specifically, I've worked out from Monday to Friday for no more than 30 minutes and I'm already feeling a difference. I do dumbbell exercises where I target all the major muscle groups in my body. I used to do 45-60 minute workouts when I was a wee lad, but the daily realities of my current life don't allow for that. Nevertheless, 30 minutes is better than nothing. I'm already noticing that my energy levels are much higher. While I'm writing this, I feel like I'm starting to sound like Jared Vennett in the Big Short when he essentially brags about what he's accomplished in the short time that he's been in Vegas.
One of the big events that happened over the weekend is that I built an Ikea bed with my daughter. She just turned 4 years old and loves being a "big helper". This was a great moment for us. I tried to let her use the screwdriver as much as possible. Sure things took twice as long, but you can't buy that kind of quality bonding time. These are the moments I relish and we'll definitely have more. I always try to keep her in mind when I'm about to work on smaller tasks here and there. She loves helping out and I love teaching her new things, especially when it involves tools.