Making Appropriate New Year's Resolutions

Making resolutions, or setting new goals, can be done at any time. Certain "transition times", such as birthdays, the start of summer, a new school year, or retirement can be good times for resolutions and setting new goals, though they can be really done at any time. Of course the period around New Year's day is the traditional time for making new resolutions in our culture. I have a membership at a local fitness center, and those of us who are long time regulars there get a chuckle the first week in January which is always the busiest week of the year. We know that things will return to normal by the end of the month.

Finding appropriate New Year's resolutions can be a tricky thing. Ideally it should be something realistic that you can accomplish in the coming year. Consider an impressive grand goal, such as "develop a 2nd career that you can follow after you retire". That's a great goal, but one that involves many steps and spans many years. On the other extreme, consider one such as "cleaning out the basement". Another worthwhile goal, but it's something that takes much less than a year (hopefully). Neither of them are really ideal New Year's resolutions.

After giving this some thought, here are some New Year's resolutions I'm considering making. Note that I am writing these down in a public way, which helps to increase the odds that I will actually keep most of them.

Health - to enable a long active life:
- Jog at least 500 miles (something I've successfully done for the past 2 years)
- Make an appointment for a physical by January 15th
- Restrict coffee to normally at most one small cup a day

I considered "eating healthy" and "getting more sleep", but these seem too vague with no defined targets or plans to be useful resolutions in those forms.

Simplify / Unclutter My Life - allowing more focus on what's important:
- Start with the bedroom in January - remove anything not related to sleeping or dressing. Simplifying your life, not just rearranging things, can call for drastic changes ;-)
- Continue with one or more uncluttering projects per month.
- Unclutter my mind: Simplify, organize, and plan my schedule on an ongoing basis. Edit down my list of projects based on my major goals. Experiment with some new techniques to reduce and manage information overload. Learn and practice new approaches to become more patient.

Other Interests:- Become known nationally in the small but growing "Great Turning" community by participating in discussions, writing articles, giving presentations, writing in my Provocative Futures blog, and taking other initiatives.

Didn't I just say above that a goal of simplifying my life involved editing down (reducing) my list of things that I'm working on? Hmmm... not off to a great start, am I?

Making and Keeping New Year's Resolutions

It’s the time of the year when people traditionally think about New Year’s resolutions. I did some research on what the experts had to say about these resolutions and came up with some interesting thoughts I’d like to share with you.

How to fail:
1) Picking resolutions at the last minute without adequate thought, especially if they are based on what happens to be on your mind at that moment.
2) Trying to make too many resolutions
3) Pick ones that your friends want, or that seem socially proper, instead of ones that you are really internally motivated to pursue.
4) Being unrealistic and underestimating the effort required.
5) Being too abstract, or just plain frivolous. Examples include “getting fit” or “having more fun”. These are too difficult to develop a detailed plan for, especially when there’s no time frame in mind. “Winning the lottery” is another example of a frivolous goal - you cannot develop a detailed and realistic plan to accomplish it.
6) Framing your resolutions as absolutes by saying, "I will never do X again."
7) Being too critical of yourself and giving up on the resolution as a failure.

How to succeed:
1) Pick the right resolution: Your resolution statement should include why you want to make the resolution, and/or a description of the benefits you expect from achieving it. You should have a strong initial motivation to work on this resolution. Give yourself adequate time to think the resolutions through. Start well before New Year’s Eve, and don’t consider Jan 1st as a hard deadline. It’s better to take a few weeks in January to come up with the right resolutions and plans than to commit yourself to a poor resolution after 15 minutes of thought on New Year’s Eve.
2) Work on a small number at a time. Your best success rate will come if you work on one at a time.
3) Frame the goal in terms of specific things you will do on a schedule. Instead of “getting fit”, resolve to “get fit by exercising 3 times a week starting next week”.
4) Develop a specific thought-out plan for how to achieve your goal and write it down. Include sub-goals that you need to accomplish along the way, and small rewards when you achieve them. Also include plans for what you will do when you face difficulties or temporary setbacks. Have coping strategies to deal with problems that will come up.
5) Get started immediately when the motivation is high. Or if the motivation is not high, get started immediately anyway. Action will increase your motivation level and help you build momentum.
6) Don’t be an extreme perfectionists. Look at temporary failures as growth and learning experiences. The key to success is often the ability to keep going in spite of the temporary setback along the way. Remain flexible - expect that your plan can and will change.
7) Don't keep your resolutions to yourself. It helps to share your goals with friends. It builds your own resolution to succeed, and your friends can gently nudge you in the right direction when you veer off course.
8) Remind yourself every day - After a few months, a resolution has a tendency to work its way out of your mind and off your to-do list. One way to combat this is to create a simple reminder, such as writing your resolution down on a small piece of paper and tape it to the mirror in your bathroom. Do this simple action is a good way to judge how serious you really are about achieving the resolution.
9) Keep track of your progress, monitor how you’re doing, and make adjustments when necessary.


Some great links that I found helpful:
How to keep up with those New Year's resolutions,
researchers find commitment is the secret of success

New Years Resolution Results

Thoughts for the coming year

Some thoughts for the coming year:

May you get what you want, and not what you deserve.

May the good guys win.

The Dangers of Fear and Anger

One rule I learned over the years from personal experience is that you should never make decisions based on the motivations of fear or anger. This tends to lead to some very bad decisions. Things tend to work out much better in the long run when you use compassion and respect as the main factors motivating your final decisions.

There was an interesting article in the recent edition of Newsweek on the role fear plays in our politics and elections. It’s an unfortunate fact that some politicians can successfully use fear to get elected or to promote their policies. This has a serious danger of leading to some very bad decisions.

“… fear tends to overrule reason… [it] hobbles our logic and reasoning circuits. That makes fear far far more powerful than reason”

The article goes on to say that:

“And when a candidate reminds voters of their fears about one issue, it can have a powerful spillover effect: Fear that you cannot provide for your family because of an economic downturn can translate into hatred for immigrants”

So here’s the lesson for today – on a personal level do not let fear or anger run your life or drive your decisions. And on a national level do not let fear or anger drive your policy or decide your elections. Here's to hoping that in the coming elections the politics based on a vision of cooperation and compassion win out over those based on a vision of fear and anger. Experience from the last several years tells us that the later motivations tend to lead to some very bad outcomes, and I think people are open to a change.

The Meaning of Centering

I’ve heard the terms “centering” and “centering prayer” used on many occasion, but I was never sure exactly what they meant, so I did a little research.

In the Christian tradition, centering prayers were intended to quiet the mind and open oneself up to the influence of God.

In sports, centering refers to a technique for staying focused and avoiding distractions. It helps an athlete stay in the moment and release past and future thoughts, worries and plans, and redirect their focus from the negative or anxiety-causing event to the present task. This process aims to keep you in the present, help you drop any baggage you carry about performance anxiety, expectations, and worries.

Centering often works best with regular practice. It can be aided by focusing on a slow, steady pace of breathing. This is often accompanied by repeating a key word (mantra) that helps you refocus on what you want to do.

But centering also refers to achieving a sense of balance in your life as a whole. To me this means being neither too busy nor too idle, neither too excited nor lethargic, calming the emotions that are pulling you to one side of the other. Being centered means remaining calm amidst the business of everyday life, and not being diverted by stressful circumstances or negative thoughts and emotions. Being centered means both being able to focus on the present, while simultaneously keeping in mind what is truly important in the long run.

Morning Affirmations

Experienced people sometimes recommend that a great way to adjust your attitude is to start each day with a morning affirmation. The recommended time is the first thing in the morning before you get out of bed, and literally before you open you eyes if possible. I started doing this and it does seem to both improve my attitude and help me keep my priorities straight.

Most of the examples of such morning affirmations tend to be a simple sentence. I started that way, but over the course of a few months I kept adding to it. My current morning affirmation has grown to the following:

I will let compassion, respect, gratitude, and an optimistic view of a better world guide my decisions and actions today.

It's a great way to start out the morning. How can you wake up grumpy after that?

Developing a Growth Mind-set

I found a lot of useful insight in a recent article in Scientific American Mind by Carol S. Dweck. The article is titled The Secret to Raising Smart Kids, but it contains many useful comments on success and failure in general. For example, in one study it was shown that after repeated failures, most animals concluded that a situation is hopeless and beyond their control. From then on, the animals tended to remain passive even when they could affect events. They were in a state called learned helplessness. How often do we find ourselves in such a state with regards to a situation?

Now consider the attitudes in children towards successes and failures in school, in particular with their beliefs about why they fail. Children with a fixed mind-set believed intelligence was innate and fixed. Making mistakes or even the need to exert an effort was seen as a weakness, an indication that they lacked ability, which often lead to a downward spiral of further failures and learned helplessness.

Children with a growth mind-set believed that intelligence was malleable and can be improved though work and education. They viewed mistakes as something to be overcome and an opportunity to improve, as if the brain was a muscle that gets stronger with use. One inspiring student was observed to respond to a problem by pulling up a chair, rubbing his hands together, and saying “I love a challenge!” Students with such attitudes performed better academically in the long run that gifted children with the fixed mind-set.

How do you transmit a growth mind-set to children (or develop it in yourself)? They key way was to praise them for their effort, not their intelligence. Instead of saying “Wow, that’s a really good score – you must be smart”, use an alternative praise of the form “Wow, that’s a really good score – you must have worked very hard.” We can encourage similar attitudes in ourselves in a variety of fields by consciously deciding to view failures as challenging learning opportunities, and to be more proud of our efforts than our natural intelligence or skills when we do succeed. We should try to view ourselves as agents of our own brain development.

The Surprising benefits of standing and puttering around more

There's an interesting study out that claims there is a significant health benefit from simply standing up a puttering around more. Apparently when we remain sitting for long periods of time, important parts of our metabolism system pretty much shut down. Getting up and walking around exercises the big muscles in our legs and backs enough to produce a significant change. It seems that this should apply even if you exercise regularly at a gym but work in an office environment during the day.

So I'll give this try for a while. That means I'll try to establish a habit of standing up and talking a walking break every 30 minutes or so. At my office I can even use the stairs to get a little more intense activity for my legs. And although the article doesn't say this, I suspect that the time right after meals is particularly important. So a nice walk after lunch is also something I'll try to work into my routine too.

Denial - Part 1

A recent article in the NY Times about denial got me thinking about how much of a source of problems this can be for people. We all know intelligent educated people who should know better, yet continue to lead an unhealthy lifestyle. One of the most common problem seems to be poor diet habits. A friend who teaches culinary arts recently taught me about how culture and habits are the overwhelming factors determining our overall diet, and people tend to be in complete denial about the health impacts of what they chose to eat.

Lack of exercise is another big problem. So is getting a regular medical checkup. People intellectually may know that they’re mortal, but in practice they seem to live in denial of this most basic fact of nature. There is also a strong tendency to live in denial about the most basic financial law - you cannot continue to spend more money than you make forever. Sooner or later the bills come due. People seem to be in denial of this both on a personal level, and on a national level. The lack of outrage over the federal debt being run up can only be described as a population living in complete denial of what is happening.

Denial is a psychological device that lets people avoid making changes, or facing anything unpleasant. Living a more effective life requires that we recognize denial when it start happening and takes steps to overcome it and address the problems that we are trying to avoid. How to recognize it and overcome it are topics for future postings.

So should our goal be to live a life completely free of denial? That may seem worthwhile, but the NY Times article referred to above actually suggest that denial has its positive aspects in some select cases. This has to do with the ability to overlook problems and minor transgressions in small group settings. In particular, denial can be very useful when overlooking small problems with your spouse in order to maintain a healthy relationship. So the real challenge is how to recognize unhealthy denial and overcome it.

10 Career Killers to Avoid - part 2

Thomas Hoffman has an interesting article in Computerworld on 10 Career Killers to Avoid. Here are some more interesting thoughts that are worth exploring (part 2)


6. Believing You Knowing all the answers. "... Winners remain unceasingly interested in learning new ideas and approaches. Asking a lot of questions is a hallmark of great leaders" [ Remember, the world keeps changing and that rate of change is increasing. Learning needs to be a life long process, now more than ever. ]

7. Surrounding yourself with "brown-nosers." - Get a good set of friends and advisers that can give you honest views on how you're doing, and good advice when you face difficult decisions.

8. Forgetting to give credit to others. - Your reputation for honesty and integrity will impact how much people are willing to work with you.

9. Failing to self-promote. "Bragging is one thing, but letting colleagues throughout your industry know of your success is quite another" [In any career, I've always maintained that it's your own responsibility to keep your manager informed of what you're doing, the problems you've overcome, and your successes. Finding a way to document or report these to others is also a good idea. Now, if I could just learn how to better promote this blog... I guess that's an important "to-do" task for me.]


10. Losing perspective. "Despite your best attempts to do everything right, sometimes you approach roadblocks and seek the advice and perspective of a respected friend or colleague... Don't forget the reasons why the business exists, why you're in this business, and what you intended to accomplish when you entered this industry. You need to be excited about what it is you're doing, and you need to put more enthusiasm into what it is you're doing. If you're not looking forward to getting out of bed in the morning, you're working on a downward trend"

10 Career Killers to Avoid - part 1

Thomas Hoffman has an interesting article in Computerworld on 10 Career Killers to Avoid There are some interesting thoughts here that are worth exploring.

1. Failing to have a life plan. "This is the No. 1 biggest mistake that I run into with my clients.... Three life aspects to focus on include one's career, personal and family, and financial goals.... this plan should be written down. Only 14% of people do that."

2. Not keeping your skills current. "The business landscape is ever-changing..." [In other words, learning should be a life long activity]

3. Failing to deliver results "... Those who harbor a sense of entitlement for simply having put forth effort are guaranteed to fall by the wayside...becoming preoccupied with creating greater efficiency may be a short-term solution to helping the bottom line, but it doesn't help the organization to grow...Great leadership is all about asking questions." [ I would add that delivering important and valuable results is the key, both in your career and in life]

4. Confusing efficiency with effectiveness. "Those who think that communicating via e-mail replaces the need to actually talk with people around them fail to recognize the importance of personally connecting with others in today's highly automated and technological environment. Communicating in person whenever possible is imperative for success-seekers." [Sending off a quick email with a question is a bad habit that I have fallen into at times. Experience has shown that a personal conversation it often a much more effective way to communicate.]

5. Believing that you are irreplaceable. "There is no room for divas in the workplace [or life]. Comparing notes with others in the organization helps keep people grounded. It helps anyone in the organization to have different trusted advisers' perspective on what's going on and how their performance is being viewed." [In other words, remember the value of being humble and trying to learn from others]

More later....

Having a "Research Attitude"

After working for many years in a development environment, I transferred to a research department last year. After working there for one year I had a discussion with my manager about how I was doing. I commented that I didn't feel like I had changed to a research organization - it's as if I was still doing the same style of work I had been doing in development. His reply was yes, I was still working as if I was in a development group. Specifically, I was working on projects as if I had to succeed on almost everything I did, and if I didn't, I had to explain why I screwed up.

He went on to remind me that in a research organization, you have to be more aggressive at taking risks to explore new ideas. He wanted me to come back at the end of the year and list the 5 big projects I worked on that failed (and if I had maybe 3 that succeeded that would be good too). What great advise! That really produced a change in the way I started viewing things.

I started wondering if there were phases or areas of life that corresponded to research and some that corresponded to development. Starting and supporting a new family has some similarities to development. While there can be periods in college or early adulthood that call for more of a research attitude as far as aggressively exploring new ideas. There may also be times later in life when things start to stagnate or plateau which also call for some more aggressive pursuing of new ideas. In some cases perhaps this might correspond to the infamous mid-life crisis.

Other situations corresponding to transitions or reaching former goals may also call for more of a "research attitude" when it comes to exploring what to do next or what changes to make. The key lesson for today is that trying things that don't work out is supposed to be part of the process of moving forward.

Handling an overflowing eMail inbox

When I read my email for the day, I often follow these steps: 1) browse through it quickly, deleting anything uninteresting and saving for later anything that requires some time to respond to. 2) Read anything interesting, or that has a pointer to an interesting article worth reading. 3) Get tired, go do something else, or go to bed.

Unfortunately the most important actions - responding to email that needs a response, especially from family or friends, was getting shoved to the bottom of the list of actions. In fact it was too often falling off the bottom of that list. In reality it should be the first thing I do. If other things get left undone with the email when I run out of time, such as reading interesting articles, well then so be it. The important thing is to make sure the important things get done.

So now I have a confession to make. I have a hard time resisting subscribing to a large assortment of email lists. So much potentially useful information, all sent to your inbox for free. I have a hard time resisting the thought that I might miss something worthwhile if I don't subscribe. Of course I often can't get through everything that comes into my inbox each day, so I put it off to tomorrow. You can guess where that leads. My inbox just topped 3000 messages, sigh. Time for some drastic action.

Here's what I did. I copied my entire inbox to a new folder, which I intend to slowly work my way through in the coming weeks. In the mean time, I have a fresh new clean inbox to work with. The goal is to keep the size of my new inbox down to about 1/2 page by the time I go to bed each night. So far, I've been successful for the first few days. It requires deleting a bunch of potentially interesting articles at times, but I'm putting priority at responding to messages that need a response first.

I haven't gotten around to unsubscribing to any of the email list though... I just don't want to missing something potentially important on any of them. I'm too much of an information junkie to make some needed changes here.

If you have any thoughts, or pointers to how to handle email, especially dealing with an overflowing email inbox, I'd love to hear about them. I think this is becoming one of the great new challenges of our times.

Another Benefit for Goal Oriented People

Goal Oriented People May Avoid Alzheimer's Disease — A new report claims that individuals who are goal oriented --in other words, those who are more conscientious and have a tendency to be self-disciplined, careful and purposeful--appear less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease, or at least suffer less from the effects of it. That's a nice side benefit :-)

Left Brain vs. Right Brain, and a test

Here's a neat little test to see if you're "right brained" or "left brained" based on which way you see a dancing figure spinning.

Click Here - try it, it's really cool.

Some people might guess that I would tend to be "left brained" (uses logic, detail oriented, facts rule, math and science...). But in many aspects I actually consider myself more "right brained" ("big picture" oriented, present and future, philosophy & religion, can "get it" (i.e. meaning), appreciates, presents possibilities..) I clearly came out as "right brained" in the test based on the way I saw the figure spinning. Interesting and kind of fun, but I have no idea how accurate or meaningful any of this really is.


There was one very interesting comment about this that I read in the Andrew Sullivan blog. It brings up an important political lesson.

"The dancer is a great optical illusion... it's in how your brain is interpreting the data its getting, not in anything physical/visual. [With some practice you can make the dancer shift directions] It's a very strange sensation when you get the first "switch". After some practice, you can make it switch directions at will.

There are lessons here, aren't there? Most of us are caught in left or right mode, absolutely sure that 1) we are right, 2) our opposite numbers are wrong, and 3) there's no other rational way to interpret the data: isn't it true that when you first watch the dancer - whether you think she's spinning left or right - you simply can't IMAGINE how anyone could rationally make the opposite interpretation? You can SEE she's going left - or right. There's absolutely no other option - until you see the shift. Then you realize both interpretations are right - and both are wrong. You realize it's not either/or - it's both/and. "

An important lesson about unjustified certainty and keeping an open mind.

"Wow, what a ride!" and other quotes

Three quotes to think about today.

"Do one thing every day that scares you." - Eleanor Roosevelt

"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, totally worn out and proclaiming. "Wow, what a ride!" - author unknown but sometimes attributed to motorcycle racer Bill McKenna.

Attending two funerals in one week recently made me think about what I will have accomplished when my time is up. Sometimes I think I have decades to go, but I also know that things can change in an instant. Time is not something to continuously waste (though regular relaxation and rejuvenation is needed). I've been on a short hiatus from focusing on goals lately due to other pressing events, but I think I need to figure out what I can do tomorrow that's scary.

To help remind yourself that every day is precious, I want to include one final quote I recently heard from Nick Donofrio, an IBM executive.

I have two major thoughts every morning to start the day:
(1) Today I will make a difference
(2) Today I will do no harm

Thinking about what you did to make a difference today seems like a good way to reflect on each day as you slip into bed.

In Appreciation of Gratitude

My brother's wife just succumbed to a long struggle with cancer. When it became clear that she was in her final hours, my brother stayed at her side in the hospital room all night waiting for the end. I went to bed that evening aware of what was happening, and expecting to get a phone call in the morning saying that it was all over (which we did). As my wife joined me in bed and fell asleep, I couldn't help but thinking of my brother waiting in the hospital room. What would he give to be home in his bed, with his wife sleeping next to him in good health? He would probably gladly give every material possession he had, along with any other financial resources he had saved up. I would undoubtedly do the same in a similar situation. It was a strange night.

According to classical market economics, the value of something can be determined by what people are willing to pay for it. I now have a hard, rational, economical calculation which clearly shows that sharing my life with my wife has a greater value than the grand total of all the other economic wealth I have accumulated throughout my entire life. The experience drove home of the importance of taking time to appreciate the enormously valuable things we get to experience in our lives on a routine daily basis. Maintaining a sense of gratitude sure helps you to keep things in perspective, and to appreciate all the joys in your life more.

Has setting goals become more challenging?

Why are setting goals more important and more difficult than they were in past generations? I can name to major reasons. First, people are simply living longer periods into retirement with better health and more resources than previous generations did.

The second reason is that people seem to have many more options today. It was not too long ago when people had fewer choices and fewer opportunities. Most aspects of people’s lives were determined by fixed conditions such as tradition, social class or race, limited education, or simply where they were born. For most of the population this dramatic growth in options is a recent development. But it will be increasingly common for an increasing number of people from now on. And the continued growth in computer and communication technology will only increase the opportunities and options in the future.

Am I wasting my time?

I recently read a book by Alan Lakein titled How to Get Control of your Time and You Life. I don't know how long it's been laying around the house, but the paperback version cost $1.95 new, so it must have been there quite a while.

The book emphasizes the need to focus on the truly important tasks and not let your time get taken over by less meaningful ones. One of the interesting pieces of advice I wrote down was:

Every time you find yourself working on an old or unimportant project, tell yourself “I’m wasting my time”. Do this often during the day if necessary.

Now here's a situation that brought up some interesting questions about applying this. This week while working from home, I found myself watching the Congressional testimony of General Petraeus on the progress of the Iraq surge. On one hand I'm a very strong advocate of insisting that citizens of our democracy need to make a real effort to keep informed on the important political events of the day. And the future of the Iraq occupation is right up there near the top of the list of important topics. However, given the amount of time that it would have taken to watch (and really pay attention) to all of the testimony, would it really have been better to read summaries of it in the paper, or catch the review of it on PBS later that evening?

In the end I decided, with some regret, that watching the live testimony and paying close attention to it was not the best use of my time. This is not meant to be a commentary on the quality of the questions and answers (though it could be). It's just that you need to accept the fact that you cannot do everything you want to do, and some activities though well meaning, are effectively wasting your time.

Life Expectancy Test

I just took a great little Life Expectancy test at http://www.poodwaddle.com/realage.swf It asks you various questions about your health, life style, family history, and then computes your life expectancy. In my case it turned out to be 82 years, which isn't bad. I actually expect it to be longer, potentially 100, because of medical science progress over the next 30 years.

I was curious to know which factors effected the results the most, either positively or negatively. Compared to the average person, I expected the moderately intense exercise I do (jogging) would be a real benefit. It only added 1.4 years to my life expectancy. My diet was slightly more important, adding 1.8 years. The biggest single benefit was that I am happily married, which added 2.0 years to my life expectancy.

The biggest reductions? Sleeping only 6 hours per night (or less) on the average knocked down my life expectancy by 2 years. Hmmm... getting 8 hours of sleep per night would actually improve my life expectancy more than all the exercise I do. That's unexpected, and good to know.

By far, the single biggest detractor was the amount of driving I do - over 20,000 miles per year. This dropped by life expectancy by a whopping 4 years. Ouch! That was at least double any other single factor in the entire test. Now I know where my greatest health risks lies.

Morning Affirmations

One interesting practice that I've heard recommended by several people is the daily morning affirmation. The idea is to chose one for you, then say it in your mind and give it some brief though when you first wake up in the morning. Ideally, before you get out of bed, or even open your eyes. Let it put you in the right frame of mind for the day and remind you how you want to live out this day. I'm still working on mine, occasionally adjusting it, but here's what I try to remember each morning on awaking.

I will let myself be guided by compassion, respect, and a sense of gratitude today.

I find that this can actually begin to make a difference if you make a conscious effort to keep it in mind when you make those quick little decision on how to act and respond to people.

Others have suggested that you wake each morning and try to envision a what a better world would be like. I find that takes a little too much mental effort early in the morning when I'm not fully awake yet, but maybe it's something to practice at some point.

Success with MITs

I've been trying to write down ~3 MITs (Most Important Tasks) for the day each morning for about 3 weeks now. Here's my success rate at actually accomplishing them so far:

1st week: 63%
2nd week: 64%
3rd week: 82%

This takes some practice, but it's beginning to pay off more. Some lessons learned so far on setting MITs for the day:

1. Be realistic. There are occasions when spending time with the family or with friends is the most important thing you can do that day.
2. Focus on truly important tasks for the long run. Less important daily to-do items belong on another list. I caught myself listing responses to a fairly routine email as an MIT, ugh.
3. Be flexible. Sometimes there are good reasons to modify or remove items, or replace them with others during the day when something comes up. Just be honest with yourself when you do this.
4. Keeping score each day for fun actually helps. I found myself staying up late just to complete a task and get a perfect score for the day (i.e. completing all my MITs)

This should be obvious, but to get the maximum benefit out of this, spending enough time choosing the right tasks can sometimes be the most important task of the day.

NY Times Article on Setting Life Goals

Alex Williams wrote a NY Times article titled Ten things to Do Before This Article Is Finished (Aug 26, 2007). It's a fascinating description of the growing phenomena of people writing down their life goals - a list of things they want to accomplish before they die. This is apparently becoming quite popular with a number of web sites devoted to collecting a summary of the most popular goals sent in by people (ex: www.43things.com )

People are often drawn to create a list of life goals because they feel unmotivated, lack a sense of accomplishment or direction, or just need more focus in their lives. Working through the list of goals gives more meaning to their lives, creates a greater sense of accomplishment, introduces them to new activities, and helps them take steps towards self-improvement.

One women described a fascinating exercise she undertook to make good on her vow to "develop persistence". She trained herself to pause at work every 15 minutes to record the activities she had just finished. The point, she said, is to eliminate distractions and time wasting activities. She says she has doubled her daily productive hours. I'm tempted to try that.

The article also observed the growing phenomena that "baby boomers are at a point in our life that this is the moment to stop and take stock". All this is really great as far as I'm concerned. But there seemed to be one important element missing - a discussion of how you chose what goals to set. Among the life goals given as examples in the article were: attain the perfect golf swing, see a dinosaur fossil,get a tattoo, and learn to surf. Those are all fun (except maybe for the tattoo one) and can add a sense of adventure to your life. But can't help but think that life should be more than just a series of personal adventures undertaken for the fun of it. Such adventures should be a part of life, but the main goals? That seems a little shallow to me.

Seek Meaning

In his book "The 100 Simple Secrets of the Best Half of Life" David Niven expresses the following thought.

"You want to live in a nice home and enjoy certain luxuries. You want to have a certain position of respect in your community. But no accomplishment will be of value to you unless there is meaning in your life. Unless you know what you are living for, the style in which you are living will not matter one bit. Seek the meaning in your life and in what you do, and you will feel satisfaction in the process, regardless of the outcome."

I'd be hard pressed to say it any better.

"The meaning in life takes on a special significance when people reach their fifties"

I have been reading a little book titled "The 100 Simple Secrets of the Best Half of Life" by David Niven. I want to paraphrase a wonderful little discussion found on pages 161-2.

"...the question of meaning in life takes on a special significance when people reach their fifties. Before age fifty... most people have almost an automatic identity either through their work or through their family or both. There is little need or time for big questions of meaning...

But then you reach a stage in life when you enter a new phase. You may be winding down a career, you may be retiring, your children may be off raising children of their own. And for the first time, you are confronted with a combination of big questions and big openings. Because now you can go in a new direction. You can redefine yourself, because the responsibilities you have carried are no longer there...

...the greatest gift people can give themselves is the opportunity to think through what they really believe and value"

It was wonderful to read a confirmation that it is common to take some time in this period of your life (I just turned 50) to look for meaning and set new goals. In my case though, it was not a result of a transition leaving me with much more free time and flexibility (such as retirement). If anything, my responsibilities and work are more time consuming now than they has ever been. Instead, I just used turning 50 as a significant milestone that gave me the incentive to step back and reexamine my goals and efforts. It's somewhat arbitrary compared to using a major life transition to do this reexamination, but it seems to be incentive enough to work for me.

I guess also that the busy nature of my life forced me to accept that I can't do everything that I wanted to, and time is starting to run a little shorter to get major things accomplished, so I better decide just what it is that I want to accomplish from here on.

First Week of Progress on my MITs

One of the more interesting habits I'm trying to foster is writing down my "Most Important Tasks (MITs)" for the day each morning. There should typically be about three of them, with at least one dealing with long term goals. They should be viewed as the most important tasks, things which get done ahead of all the other little daily activities on my to-do list.

So how did this work after my first week? I've concluded that this really is a good way to set priorities and decide what is important to accomplish each day. Did I actually accomplish them? Well, reviewing my fist week (I keep a journal, which is a requirement for this) showed that I accomplished 63% of them. That's a start, but I clearly need more work on this and want to do better the 2nd week.

However, mid way through the 2nd week I'm facing the reality that I completed 0 out of 3 MITs for the last two days. Part of that was because of family activities (attending a local county fair), and part of that was because I thought it was worthwhile to watch the CNN special series on "God's Warriors".

This brings up some interesting questions. (1) Why didn't I write down the family outing to the county fair as one of the MITs for that day? I probably should have in in retrospect. Family activities are important, and this process is reminding me to keep that perspective. (2) The CNN series was certainly educational, and it was time critical (watch it when it's on, or miss it for the foreseeable future). But was it really the most important task for that evening? You can't do everything you want, so you have to make priority calls. That's what being "effective" is all about. This process is forcing me to clearly think about such priority calls, and the likelihood that I made the wrong choice to view a TV show just because it seemed interesting. Yes it was a good show, but in reality there may have been better ways to spend my time. This is a difficult consideration I simply would not have faced without the processes of specifying my MITs ahead of time.

Do Something Scarry

My son asked me recently what lessons I had learned in the first half of life. The one that immediately popped into mind was a philosophy that I adopted recently that has turned out to be quite beneficial.

Do something scary on a regular basis

I'm not talking about doing something physically dangerous here. I'm talking about taking a step with your life that you may be a little scary. We often are faced with options that have only a small downside if they don't work out, but have a potentially significant benefit if they do work out. A reasonable view would normally say such is risk is well worth taking, but we to often fail to do so because of fear of failure or embarassment, uncertainty, or just lack of initiative. The philosophy of "do some thing scary on a regular basis" is a way of saying - take that risk. It could be submitting a letter to the editor, joining an organization, attending a conference, creating a business venture, starting a new project, or making a phone call.... Or starting a new blog as an experiment. So far, this philosophy has worked out very well for me.

Less than ideal examples of life goals

There are some very interesting web sites out there dealing with setting life goals and life after 50 in general. One that I came across in my searches was http://www.eons.com/ which uses the catch phrase “Lovin’ life on the flip side of 50". Overall it seems to be a nice site, but one thing caught my eye. People can submit their life goals and dreams, then the web site tabulates the 100 most popular ones. When I first saw this, I thought "great, this should give me some really good ideas for setting my own life goals." However, here is a list of their top 20:

1. Lose weight
2. write a book
3. stay healthy
4. exercise more
5. Become debt free
6. Take a cruise
7. Go to Hawaii
8. Retire
9. Travel to Europe
10. Pay off my mortgage
11. Travel in Italy
12. Learn Spanish
13. Go to Alaska
14. Visit Australia
15. volunteer
16. Be financially secure
17. Take an Alaskan Cruise
18. See the Grand Canyon
19. Get a college degree
20. Make new friends.

Does it occur to you that many of these goals are rather superficial?

Write a book (#2), and volunteer (#15) – OK, these seem admirable to me as ways you can indirectly or directly help others. Lose weight (#1), stay healthy (#3) seem to be more examples of good habits than important accomplishments.

The rest, which seem to be dominated by travel, are nothing more than expensive vacations. If you sit down and list what you most want to accomplish in life, and visiting a popular vacation destination pops up to the top of that list, then I think it’s time to do a little soul searching about what’s really important to you. I once heard that nobody wants to die and have the epitaph on their grave stone read "He took exotic vacations".

More on some better web sites I found in the next append.

Most Important Tasks (MITs)

One of the common themes from many experts on organizing your time and your life is that you should be aware of and pay attention to your long term goals. Unless you give them some attention, the most common result is that short term day-to-day activities, which are easier to do but much less important in the long run, tend to crowd out work on the more important longer term goals. If you have to chose between starting to prepare for a second career after retirement, and checking your email this morning..... well I think we'll all generally decide that checking your email is an easier task to get your arms around, so let's do that first. And so it goes, with an unlimited stream of short term activities continuously sprouting up and pushing out the really important stuff.

One way around this is to make a short three item to-do list each morning containing of your three Most Important Tasks (MITs) for the day. You can then add other tasks which may or may not get done, but make sure that you spend adequate time on the three MITs. At least one of these tasks, if not all of them, should be related to longer term goals.

The more I think about it, the more I like this approach. Even my wife said it sounded like a great idea. So I started giving it a try, with the goals of keeping up this habit rigorously for 2 months to help get it established as a longer term habit. The results after the first few days? Great success at writing down my 3 MITs - it really does help you focus on the important longer term tasks. I strongly recommend it. Actually getting my MITs accomplished (or at least spending adequate time on them to make some progress)... well.. it turns out that habit is going to take some work still. Simply having a birthday does not cause change to happen, it's going to take some more work.

Effectiveness vs. Efficiency

I just turned 50 (a few minutes ago in fact), so it's time to make my first posting to this blog. I've spent the last few days reading books and articles on how to better manage your time and life in anticipation of this event. It's clear that one of the most important things to do to achieve success is not to focus on becoming more efficient, but to become more effective. Effectiveness means selecting the best task to do from all the possibilities available and then doing it the best way. Making the right choices about how you’ll use your time is more important than doing efficiently whatever job happens to be around.

Obviously being more effective means setting the right goals, having a reasonable plan to actually achieve them, and realistically pursuing that plan. That's what I plan to discuss in more detail in my next append.