Wow I've failed my daily posting already. In my defence I have written a lot over the past few days. Just not posted it yet. I will need to revise this goal to cover this situation I think.
I thought I would kick off here with a quick explanation of the first Zen to Done habit.
Leo Babauta's habit based productivity system starts with a simple one - Collecting.
By collecting Leo means for you to write down every little task or idea that comes into your head as you think of them. When you get back to your desk input the notes into your to do list.
Well this all seems quite simple. I carry a notebook around with me most of the time anyway and I have just started to use Todoist. The real habit I need to form then is the transfer of the tasks into the list rather then have them languish in these notebooks and not be found until it's too late.
So I will also schedule a daily reminder in Todoist to transfer these at the end of each working day. There we go, not too tricky. A review at the end of the month should give me an idea if I achieved this successfully but I think this one is already won.
At the end of posts like these I will write any achievements towards my other goals. It could end up reading a bit Bridget Jones-ish but it will help record and review.
Half marathon goal - I ran an 8 miler around the half-marathon course on Sunday in 1 hour 20 which is within my goal of 2:15 for 13 miles. I felt great during, after and even today. I have minimal aches and pains, on track!
Daily blogging - as described above, I think I will change this goal to at least work on a blogpost daily. This should keep the blogs fed with at least 3 or 4 a week.
Book reading - not started yet......but there are Jay Raynor and Colin Meloy books waiting for me.
Podcasting - We recorded 3 episodes last week! This is a huge accomplishment. I will need to edit these and get them ready to go out over the upcoming weeks. If we carry on like this I can see 2015 to be the year of the Beertalkers.
Monday, 5 January 2015
Friday, 2 January 2015
New Year Resolutions
I've had a plan for a while to make the year 2015 really
count and as it started about 19 hours ago I figured I had better write some of
this stuff down or I will just put it off, maybe till 2016.
So here we go, some personal and professional goals
(resolutions if you like) for 2015.
Exercise
I'm a big lad, too big in fact. I currently come in at just
over 100kg (15st 10lb or 220lb in old money) and this puts me firmly in the
obese range according to the BMI calculators. Of course this puts me at risk of
heart disease and diabetes in the future (I'm 35 in May) so I need to do
something about it now. I've signed up for the Croydon half marathon in March
and would really like to do it in less than 2 hours 15mins. I ran the Bath Half
a few years ago and I did it in 2 hours 25 which I know is crap so I have to
beat that score.
There is a secondary consideration for exercising more and
that is vanity. I'm not physically the man that my wonderful wife fell for all
those years ago and with that in mind and in addition to the running training I
will be doing some weight training and stretching.
Goals:
Half marathon in under 2 hours 15 minutes
Be within the healthy BMI range by my 35th birthday. This
would put me, at most, 82 kg (13 stone). A weight loss of less than a kg a week
which I think should be perfectly achievable.
Look hot! (34" waist, 15" collar)
Tools:
Runkeeper iphone app with half marathon training plan
Work
I've always felt that I've been chasing to catch up at work.
I want 2015 to be the year that I overcome this feeling and take control of
myself and my department. I'm a manager and have been learning on the job for
the past couple of years. Now I'm going to catch hold of the reins and drive
the team forward. I have a couple of areas I want to improve and quickly. From
a management point of view I need to improve my coaching and leadership of the
team. I will be continuing to implement the tools and techniques espoused by
the inspiring Mark and Mike of the manager tools podcast whose approach to one
to ones has really helped but I need to follow through with the rest of their
ideas around coaching, feedback and delegation.
Another area I need to improve in is organisation or getting
things done. David Allen’s system, Getting Things Done, is a seminal work of
organisation but it’s a bit of a long read and can take a lot of time and
energy to implement all of the methods. So I am going to use Leo Babauta’s Zen to Done, which, although based on GTD, is more straight forward and is broken
down into nice simple habits that it is suggested are implemented at a rate of
one a month. Ideal for a year’s worth of goals! I've recently discovered
Todoist which is a brilliant cross platform tool which turns your to do list
into a sort of game (whilst also nagging you with text messages, emails and app
reminders). I will be using Todoist to get this stuff done including work but
also the other goals I’m writing about here.
Goals:
Implement ZTD over the year
Achieve a productive and highly successful work year
Implement the excellent teachings of Manager Tools
Achieve a highly successful rating in my annual review
Tools:
Cooking
I love cooking and collecting cookbooks. Unfortunately these
two “hobbies” don’t often overlap and I tend to stick to firm favourites or
things that are quick and easy. I have over 200 cookbooks and have just
received 5 or 6 more for Christmas. It’s all getting a bit silly and so I have
decided to make 2015 a year of cooking from them! We also have a kitchen full
of spices, sauces, herbs and condiments that need to be used. So I we will be
making a concerted effort to get through this miscellany of underutilised
ingredients. I really want to do more Asian cookery so I will be attacking
Vietnamese and Thai cooking with gusto. Same goes for Mexican.
I also have some lovely appliances that don’t get used as
often as they should do. To fix this I will be doing more barbecuing and sous
vide cooking this year.
Goals:
Cook at least once a week from a recipe book.
Cook Vietnamese, Thai or Malaysian at least once a month
Cook Mexican at least once a month
Cook with Sous Vide at least once a month
Cook at least 6 barbecues this year (If not more)
Tools:
The Hungerlust blog. More on this later
Blogging
I have an under-utilised our food and drink blog, Hungerlust, over the past twelve months and I’m determined not to let that happen in 2015. This
should be easier now that I will be doing more cooking but I must also make the
most of writing up food beer and wine experiences.
Including the posts I will be writing on this blog I am
determined to write and post something every single day of 2015. This is a big
challenge but I think achievable. The good news is I put something up on
Hungerlust yesterday. With this post today I am well on my way. I also want to
get better at food photography for the blog. I have a good camera abd two
digital food photography books , so I really should be taking something a
little more appetising than what seems to go up on the blog.
I have had tons of good ideas for themed blog posts and I
have to follow up on them. These include weird recipes, Croydon food heroes,
random recipe book pages (“page 100 challenge”), cooking with beer, cooking
with beer ingredients etc.
If I write a post for the Croydon citizen I will include
this as my one for the day.
Goals:
Post at least one piece of writing a day, either on
Hungerlust, SKOSH, Croydon Citizen or The Beertalkers
Improve my food photography by practicing!
Tools:
The blogs and Croydon Citizen
Food photography books
Todoist should help too
Podcast
The beer podcast The Beertalkers which I co-host and edit,
has never really taken off the ground and flown. We get around 150 downloads of
each episode but we should be doing better. We have only put out nine episodes
in two years which is kind of pathetic. I would like to get at least 12
episodes out this year. I think a monthly recording is doable and it’s that
kind of output which will help push up figures. This means we need to get
better at recording, editing and promoting.
Goals:
One episode a month
Tweeting at least once a day from the Beertalkers twitter
account
Finishing the revamp of the website.
Pushing the Facebook angle
Tools:
Personal
I have developed some pretty bad habits, many of which I
would like to quash. And I want to get into some good habits.
I buy and eat a lot of crap food. One of the reasons I find
it difficult to lose weight is because I find excuses to buy crap food and eat
it. If I stuck to the three healthy meals I have a day then the weight will fly
off. However the supplemental bits and bobs I shove in my mouth are really
hindering the progress. I need to suppress the desire for instant gratification
and enjoy the anticipation of delayed pleasure. This will also help save money
for all the cookbooks.
I would like to stop playing iphone games and read more
books. In fact I would like to read one book a week, every week of this year.
52 books. It can’t be that hard right?
I would like to finish off all of those little jobs around
the house.
I want to at least use my French language skills a bit.
I want to watch a lot less crappy TV.
I will probably have to read less blogs (most of the ones on
my feed are a bit useless anyway)
Definite Goals:
Read one book a week for the year
No extraneous food purchased outside of necessary
mealtimes-for the whole year…this will show up in the weight loss goal from
above plus extra savings.
One conversation with my brother, in French, a month.
Restrict TV viewing to one hour a day. This will be tricky.
Strip out all the useless blogs from my feed so that one
hour a week can cover the backlog.
Use Todoist to record and schedule all the little jobs I
want to get done.
Tools:
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