Chris’ Blog

Tonight I was thinking about the word “Tomorrow”. It started because I was going to set some goals for tomorrow. Get up early (4:45am) and get to work being the main one so far. This isn’t going to be easy as its currently 11:30PM… But Tomorrow - there is that word again - is a very busy day, and I need to get up and get going. I have come to find that when I have very busy days, if I get up and seriously get something accomplished in the morning, I have so much more of an effective day. And man do I need effective now! My wife had a kidney stone removed over the weekend and with visits to the doctor and hospital taking up a good portion of the end of the week and the weekend I’m behind at work and in getting things done around the house! So, back to tomorrow - as tomorrow never comes, its not good to say I’ll do it tomorrow, except thats what we do when we are setting goals for the next day. So I wonder if saying I’ll do something tomorrow is not a good idea as it may lead to a procrastination habit. My question then is should I not set goals the night before? I have found that if I have a concrete set of goals the night before I am more likely to get up in the morning than if I just say I’ll get up and get to work - but maybe I should look into finding another solution. For now though, tomorrow is becoming today and I need to get to sleep!

Problems are much easier to solve if you know what the problem is! Tonight I spent a half hour digging out the door frame to our bedroom when the door knob goes in past the plate. It has never latched, and we finally got to a point where shutting our door to keep Jayden out of our stuff would be great. So I finally got to it. I kept digging, putting the plate back on, digging more… so frustraited that it wasn’t working… “IT SHOULD BE WORKING!” was all I could keep thinking. There was no way it needed to be back out that far to close… Turned out that the hole wasn’t too far in, it was too far DOWN! As soon as I noticed that - I measured the height it needed to be, and my now bigger hole was plenty big enough - and boom plate went on, and door closes no problem. Its usually a good idea to step back and look at the problem again if you don’t seem to be getting anywhere. Maybe there is a simple solution you just haven’t seen yet!

    When you are trying to attain a goal, whether it be a one time goal, or establishing a habit, your successes and failures are bound to look like a roller-coaster. Some days or weeks (maybe even months) will seem to be getting better and better, and then sometimes you will hit one of those steep downward slopes where your heart is in your throat and you can’t even scream your going so fast. Then, eventually you even out and you can start the climb back up. The trick is to make the downward slopes as short/small as possible, and to overall have an upward moving ride.
    I had a bit of experience with this the last two days I thought I would share. Yesterday, when I woke up, I could see it was light outside and I thought - Oh good, its morning and its beautiful. I then promptly fell back asleep. Hey, I think that is a small success because I thought how nice it was in the morning, even if I went back to sleep. Today however I didn’t want to get up at all. I know that this is because I stayed up WAY later than I should have last night. I didn’t want to run, and didn’t get up to do so. When I did get up at 7 I had two options. Feel bad that I didn’t go running at 5:30 and try to get myself out to run, or just move on and come in to work. I picked to move on. Coming in to work later would have made my whole day seem a ton longer, and I would have been in a crummy mood. This way I get right to work - look past the mistake, and get back to what I should be doing. I will still go running this evening (about 2 miles I think), and then tomorrow I will run again.
    One problem we can face as we hit the downward slopes is that we get discouraged. This only allows us to slope down even quicker. Although missing the opportunity, or failing in some way is not good, being too negatively effected by it is actually counter productive to our overall goal as it can lead us even further away from where we want to be. When you hit a rough patch, think “Well, I could have handled that a bit better.” and MOVE ON. You can’t change it, you can only change how you react to similar situations in the future. If you want to be able to achieve hard things in life, you have to be willing to let go of the mistakes (big or small) and celebrate any successes as you get them.

    I will be one of the first to tell you how important it is to set goals. I have seen goals do some miraculous things in my life. However, in writing my last post I realized that sometimes things are much easier on paper than we think. For instance, at the New Year I decided that I wanted to train to run a marathon. I didn’t really think much of it, I just had run in High School, I had heard of some other people being able to do it, and I decided some day it was something I wanted to do. Well then a few weeks ago I was suddenly hit with the urge to set a goal to run a marathon. So I looked up what marathons are in Utah, and when, and decided the Salt Lake City Marathon in April of next year would be a good target. It seemed realistic at the time. I even took it a step further and found a half-marathon here in Spanish Fork that I can run in September. I decided that I could do that. “Its only 13.1 miles,” I told myself, “besides I ran that much for practices in high school sometimes.” I am now going to point out some things about these goals and see if we can diagnose what was good and what needed some work.
    One thing I didn’t think about was how long it had been since I really ran. Yeah, I had done a couple of mile runs - but thats no half-marathon! I also didn’t take into consideration how much time it takes to practice and build endurance to be able to run that far. For instance, I started running every other day - thinking this would give me enough time to get into shape. What I have found, is that after a few weeks instead of being dead after just under a mile, I am dead at 3 miles. I need to increase my endurance a TON before I am ready to run that 13 miles.
    Another thing that has come to my attention is that I have a desire to do this. Enough of a desire that I put my goal out where the public “could” see it, and made my goal known to those around me. However, when my alarm goes off in the morning and I haven’t had enough sleep (or even if I have…) I don’t (yet?) hear myself say - “Good morning world! I want to run!”
    The final thing I didn’t do was sit down and write up a full plan. I got as far as run every other day so that I am able to run 13 miles by September. Is that really measurable? Its time-bound, but not measurable as I have been running and only increasing miles when I set myself a goal of “Tomorrow I am going to run X”.
    So were these goals unrealistic? I don’t think so. I have come leaps and bounds and I am going to run that race on Sept. 6th. Will it be easy to get there? - No. Will I have to start running every day? - Yes. Will I have to set specific milestones of where I want my fitness level so that I am ready in time? - Yes. Can I do this? - YES! I have been keeping to my goals that I set - they just weren’t specific enough. The plan was mostly thought through - not quite all the way, but I think I caught it with enough time that I can get this all figured out! I hope you can find points here that will help with your goal setting. Remember, think through the whole picture. Try to actually envision the work that will go into meeting that goal, not just the feeling of accomplishing it. And set out specific milestones so that you keep on track and can achieve it. And Good Luck!

So you know how life, just when you feel like you are starting to get things down can throw some curves… Well, that is how I feel now. I think I started thinking about too many things all at once that I wanted to do. First of all, I started working a little more on the side. I picked up another project and that will put a bit more on my plate. Secondly, I started to stress over this half marathon in September… That happened when I realized it was less than 2 months away and I hadn’t even run 3 miles yet, let alone 13! But that is the way things go. The only way to overcome the feelings of pressure and inadequacy is to start working. So here are my plans.

I am still doing my project based todo list at work, but I mistakenly set some larger things on that list than I should have and so it has been a while since I actually crossed something off - Lesson: Don’t think you can do more than you can, and even if you can set a few smaller task points so that if you don’t get to half of them you can still cross off half your list and mentally stay in the game.

I am still exercising (push-ups - week 4, and running) but I still think that I am in high school and that I can do anything… - Lesson: Realize your limitations and celebrate small successes! (Oh, by the way, I did run 3 miles yesterday, and tomorrow will be 3.1!)

I have been spending more time with my family. - Lesson: Recognize when you are achieving something that you want to do and don’t get disappointed that you aren’t achieving others, you can’t do everything!

Bonus - Lesson: Tomorrow is a new day! Do better each day and you will continue to get better. Do better most days and you will still continue upward. Do better more than you do worse, and you will even still be progressing! Sometimes progress happens over small and simple steps.

    So yesterday, halfway though the day, I was having trouble getting myself motivated to do ANYTHING at work. I work as a web application developer (full time and freelance) and I am constantly in the middle of a bunch of projects. Lately, I’ve been struggling to keep on track or work on what (I think) is the most important project for me to complete. So I tried a new idea that might work for those of us with a bunch of simultaneous projects.
    First, I went through and wrote down all of the projects that I have at work. This included the ones that were to be done “sometime”. I figured then I could see the big picture of what I’m looking at. Next, I went through and prioritized each item on the list so that I could get a feel for what was my most important project. Then, I made a third column on the side for tasks that were the most important thing to get done that day. Yesterday, knowing I only had a few hours, I just put one task each for 3 of the items. (These may be something as simple as attend the meeting that you have for that project.) This way, if you get through every thing on your list (starting with the highest priority project) you have been able to move forward on every project that you are working on. This may not be ideal if you have a deadline approaching for any of the projects, but in that case you may just use a regular todo list for that single project. The important thing here is that since you are making progress each day on the project, you don’t loose momentum and have to take time getting back into it. The projects are all fresh in your mind because you have been working on them each day!
    The other thing I may do is sometimes I may put an upper level task on the list - something like make this part of the site do that - which may mean a whole bunch of little tasks. While other days I may just put the specific small task of change this page to say that. These items are based on the priority of the project, but this way you can get the most important things taken care of first! This new todo list idea was inspired by an old post on Zen Habits which I recently read. I’ve heard the basic idea of the post before, but this time it took me in a new direction.
    Here is the steps again to using this list:

1. List out all projects you are currently working on.
2. Prioritize these projects (taking into consideration due dates and your bosses thoughts)
3. Add an item to each project until you feel your day will be full (don’t make these too hard as you need to shoot to accomplish them all in one day.)
4. Start working on the highest priority task.

    There you go! A project based daily todo list! As a bonus, if during the day you just need to cross something off the list, you have a group of small tasks that you should be able to jump into and cross off so you can feel productive.

    I just read an article on how important mornings are to the rest of your day.  I totally agree with the idea of this post.  I might even say the same thing for a week.  I was actually just thinking about it this weekend.  Last week was a rough week for me.  It really started with Sunday night.  I had something I was working on and I let it take more of my time than I should have.  I was up later than I should have been and come morning I didn’t want to get up.  I ended up getting into work later, and I didn’t want to be at work.  I left before I had finished all my work, and this perpetuated through the rest of the week.  In the end I was a few hours short and had to use some personal time to cover it.  The main problem was that I had trouble getting up and moving in the mornings and this made my whole day less productive.  This perpetuated through the whole week.  In contrast, on days when I get up, exercise, and get going I am so much more productive! And as a bonus, I usually get into work earlier and can go home earlier!

In the past I made a morning plan that I was going to stick to.  I did for a few weeks but then I got sick, and then we moved, and I let it slip.  This week I am going to revisit that plan and make sure it is what I should be doing.  I have been getting back into the exercise thing so that is a big step in the right direction.  My main problem is that I feel my nights are more productive as far as side projects than my afternoons are.  Maybe I need an afternoon plan too… I’ll report later in the week to see if we can come up with a good plan.

    The other day I read a short article called “The Fifteen-Weed Formula“. The basic idea of the story is that there was a lady who suffered from multiple sclerosis which made it difficult to do physically demanding tasks. One day she noticed a whole bunch of weeds in her back yard and noted that she really wanted to pull them out but it would take her weeks to recover from the physical activity. She decided that she would limit herself to only pulling fifteen weeds a day no matter how good or bad she felt that day. By the end of the summer she had pulled the weeds twice because they had started growing back in. She had accomplished her goal of weeding the yard.
    Often times we have good and bad days in life. If we set simple goals that allow us to do just a portion of our tasks that we would like to get done we will eventually get everything done. This is a great lesson that we should all take to heart. Don’t overwork ourselves when we get excited for a new goal, take it slow, and spend just a bit of time on each task, and soon you will realize you got a ton of stuff finished.

The other day there was an article in a newsletter I skim from sitepoint, and it talked about animated css. It was really quite interesting and the link can be found here. I didn’t really see a use for his example (here) but it seemed like an interesting idea. As I thought of it I came up with a way to make it resize the image using javascript and came up with my own example. I stuck it up here. I still don’t know that its usable anywhere, but I thought it was interesting. It gives you an ability to randomize the time the lightning struck. Let me know what you think.

Volleyball:
Yesterday at work we played volleyball for an hour and a half. This was way more exercise than I thought it would be, and I was feeling it this morning - I was afraid I wasn’t gonna be able to exercise or make it through what I started.

Running:
Well I just finished another evening run. I liked that it was lighter out, and it was cooler than it would have been had I tried to run at 9 this morning, but I didn’t like the fact more people were out, and watching me run. For that point I prefer the early morning. We will have to keep experimenting with that one. Well today I ran 1.6 miles according to Google, and it took me 15 mins. I felt the worst while running than I have yet - I think it had something to do with pizza for dinner and v-ball yesterday…

Push-ups:

I remembered last night as I crawled into bed that I had forgotten to do my push-ups… I decided that I would do them today and that would be ok. I manged to get through them all, and I got an additional 2 on my max than was required, but it felt harder than I expected. The problem I also have is I’m supposed to do a test to see how many to do for next week… I was supposed to do that tonight had I done my others on friday morning… I haven’t decided yet if I will do week 2 over again or maybe do my test Monday morning, and do week 3 on Tues, Thurs, Sat… we will see.

In the fear of turning this into my exercise log, I think I’ll just post on Sat. evening from now on - just to keep on track, it gives me some feeling of commitment to know that someone could be reading this.