Designing a Well Lived Life: Checking In (December 2019)

Checking in for December, and the end of 2019 for my "Designing a Well-Lived Life" blogging. This is about making small changes during the year to make larger changes.

Administrative focus: Some slight progress here. I've gotten better about putting things into my phone and having them sync elsewhere, but for the most part I've been a bit rubbish about keeping my physical inboxes and computer inbox empty (not email though, which I'm better at keeping cleaned out once a day). I think I need to schedule more time for this each day.

Writing more: I've been progressing with editing on my book, and have published several blog posts over the year that weren't related to this challenge. Still some improvement to be had but overall calling this a success.

Design more: Going to tackle this in 2020. I really let this one slip more than I would have liked.

Programming more: I let my expectations get in the way of progress here. Most of my programming was for work with the occasional detour into Godot and Rust, but that was about it. Need to take my own advice and give myself 10 minutes each day to work on this.

Getting out of debt: Small steps here, but still progressing. I'm committing to making more of a dent in our finances and keeping on top of things for 2020.

Physical Health: Absolute rubbish here, but I'm going to be kind to myself and give myself more opportunities in 2020 to do exercise. I'm hitting that age where not exercising is going to cause serious issues and its high time that I stopped coasting.

Mindfulness: Calling this a success even though I had spates where I wasn't as mindful as I could be. My meditation was also sporadic, but have find myself pausing and being more mindful when stressed or frustrated.

Deeper work: Early on this year I wasn't good at this, but with a large project I've gotten much better at getting into deeper work. I still allow myself way more distractions than I should but overall I've improved a great deal with this.

For 2020 I'm looking to tackle the following:

Dropping expectations: I tend to make expectations about how things will proceed and how the day should be. This leads to disappointment, guilt, and anxiety. I want to work with dropping these as much as I can.

Physical Health: This desperately needs attention.

Writing more: I've been meaning to keep a journal of my thoughts, so perhaps I can work with that intention in mind. Would also help with my mindfulness.

Programming more: Ostensibly I should enjoy programming more, but I have expectations of how far I should be with this. I'm going to instead try to work with this as though I'm a beginner again with no expectations to find the joy in learning and being a programmer. I have joy in my work, now let's find it in my leisure programming.

Mindfulness: Continuing with being mindful in my day-to-day practice.

Decluttering: I've accumulated a lot of shit over the years, and I need to pare down the things that I have and the things that have stuck to me over the years. This also ties in to the administrative focus, but from a more runway perspective.

Deeper work: More focus is the order of the day.

Getting out of debt: This is going to be a constant refrain, and is part of the decluttering.

Happy new year!

Craig Maloney More than you cared to know

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