In 2009, I was in a good full time job working downtown, near where all kinds of food establishments were. That included a food court accessible by a tunnel from the building in which I worked, being in cold and stormy Canada during winter, to give me easy access to work lunch year round. It made it all too easy to buy lunch every day and never having to think about making lunch the evening before. After all, what was I earning a decent living for if not to enjoy life? And this was no splurge. There was a lot of fast food from that food court, I regret to admit. It was just the free time from cooking that motivated me not to cook for lunch, though the fact that a regular meal also got me two fast food meals, and not one that seemed much healthier. That perception, though, was probably a misperception, in part, from my choice not to go for vegan salads or other healthier meals that didn’t provide caloric needs for my marathon training.
Resolutions
Posts related to resolutions making, and my resolutions made.
A Couple of Sleepy Resolutions
After having shared my Resolutions Planning Workbook yesterday, I thought I’d show an example of how I use it through a couple of resolutions I just committed to in 2021.
These resolutions are about sleep, both going towards getting what I deem to be enough sleep, but done in a consistent way rather than binging catch-up sleep periodically. The body can’t fully catch-up on shortage of sleep to get the same benefit as if the same amount of sleep had been spread out evenly. Lack of sleep on many days also means one can’t be as fully alert and present as if with good sleep, to bringing the same energy to things, all else being equal, to life, whether to activities and/or to other people. That energy is about as fundamental a thing as a person can bring to life to live it best, and sleep is, without doubt, the most effective way to fuel that, even more important than the equivalent food deprivation. That’s how important sleep is once you understand what the latest research tells you, and that’s why it’s worth two resolutions to me, with that goal of sufficient sleep (around 7 hours a night to minimize cognitive decline) consistently, being my number one goal of the 2020s. So with that background in mind, here are my notes for the two goals. I will make the headers of one goal red, and the other blue, to denote the difference.
Printable Workbook to Plan Resolutions You Can Fulfill
According to research, only half of New Year resolutions make it out of January (27% given up in first week), and only 8% last the year, fulfilled or not. If making New Year resolutions, or any time of year resolutions, hasn’t worked out well for you, try my methodical approach based on research and a few decades of personal experience in the new printable workbook, with detailed instructions, I have just created to share. It’s on a separate page so as to have a tidy URL, but creation of those pages don’t get “announced” so I am writing a post for it.
A Trial Run of New Year Resolutions
Most people don’t give a lot of thought to their New Year’s resolutions. That’s why only 8% of resolutions last for the year, succeeding or not. Some give a decent amount of thought, but I doubt very many give it a trial run before committing. You can put reality checks into your plan to succeed at resolutions, as I do, and as I will share soon in a workbook, but there’s no reality check like reality of actually trying it out as humans are notoriously bad at our ability to predict the future, even when it’s our own. Doing trial runs with my resolutions is exactly what I’m doing this December with a handful of resolutions I am planning on committing to come January 1st, including this creative writing thing, and I want to share its value.
Customizable Daily Activities Tracker on Google Sheets
I recently created a daily activities tracker on Google Sheets for myself, to track my activities I want to do more or less of, as well as balance some relating to my many interests. Anything I make for myself digitally, I take the time to create a version others can customize to use for themselves, and this is no different.
Customizable Daily Activities Tracker on Google Sheets
With the Google Sheets document in the link, if you’d like to use it, you should make a copy for yourself before using. On the Android platform, that’s under the Share and Export choice in the main menu for managing the document. I’m not sure where it is for iPhones.
I’m not an expert in Google Sheets so I’m not sure if you can use this document via the Google Sheets app, without a Gmail account. Perhaps someone can tell me. However, you can use the document offline so you don’t need data to always use it.
Setup and usage instructions are in the document in the Setup & Instructions tab.
The tracker will ask you when you want to start tracking, so this isn’t a “New Year’s” document that will become useless if you find it too late. The tracker will track how often you do some things (on % of days) and/or how much you do it (average amount or frequency), with the latter pending on how you set up things. It’s all explained in the document.
There is a summary report page you can then screen capture to file, or share.
If you use it, please let me know if you have questions or suggestions. I may not be the greatest tech support, but I hope I’ve designed well enough I don’t have to be. 🙂
Happy New Decade!
Digital Citizen 