So, what's the point of this? Not much. But, I did want to at least set the stage about how I think about things, to hopefully guide anyone who reads any of this.
The ultimate goal is to get personally, incrementally better,* without adding shame or anxiety to my thoughts along the way. I've found that threading this needle is fairly nuanced and have made many changes over the years, and will likely make many more in the years to follow. This is based principally on two basic facts: 1) I am not great at doing this (but willing to learn and get better), and more importantly 2) even if I was, I am not observing a houseplant or a brick - I am evaluating a living person who interacts with lots of people and who himself changes over time. Things get complicated, amiright?
All of which is fine: if it was easy, everyone would do it.
Anyway, I generally get as atomic as daily routines/plans, and as global as annual trips/reviews (this all being personal and not strictly for business or other reasons, although obviously that comes into play). As such I've structured this from the most to least atomic things that I do to try to bring order to my life. Along the way I'll mention some things that I've invented (hardware, software, or otherwise) that has helped. I'll do my best to link the next logical step along the way, in case you want to follow along in that way (remember webrings? Pepperidge Farm remembers).
At no point have I ever considered this to be the 'correct' way to do anything. Please do not take this as some kind of course or approach that I think you should implement. At the same time, I would strongly encourage you to salvage any and all parts that you do find interesting. I have no monopoly on good ideas, nor am I presenting to you my finished product. One day I will die, and on that day (be it tomorrow or 50 years from now) this project will be left incomplete. I do not take that as a negative at all - just a fact of the human condition.
You'll see a mix of more and less technical things. Like mentioning what a cron job is. This is meant only to help those who may not yet know (or care) about some of the more technical parts of how this works. I'm threading a new needle here, so if you want more detail please let me know. If you want less...maybe squint if we end up with some SQL.
Step 1: the daily 'routine': Here be dragons
*Also I use AI a lot but I refuse to use AI to help write anything here. So please excuse incorrect commas or dashes where they should not exist. Or don't - I don't have a comment section so you can scream into the void if it helps. This blog is personal so seeing something expressed or spelled incorrectly actually feels like a win, versus several emdashes that clearly came from the void.
I've been journaling for a hot minute. If I cared enough* I would go take a pic or two of all my old paper ones. But mid last year I decided to go digital and bought a ReMarkable2 and took my journaling online. I did it for reasons that will probably make some of you think I am actually Patrick Bateman, but hopefully after this I think* it'll make more sense. One of my weekly tasks is to wipe the previous 7 days of journaling, so just assume for now that this works (because it has for going on a year). I load 7 versions of the same 3 page PDF into my ReMarkable tablet, one for each day of the week.
First off, I am no therapist. But I do see one monthly (suggest you do the same if you can find the means to do it. If you cannot, there are lots of free ways to get close and if you are in a position to need to know about that - please do reach out). Anyway, my daily routine is an adaptation of CBT (new window). I basically want to do 3 main things (in order of how they show up, not importance):
Rate myself in some important categories. Page 1 is a simple box that has 6 columns: the thing to rate and then a 0,2,4,6,8,10 place to scribble how I feel like I did. There are 7 rows I rate myself on: (CBT to start) thoughts, feelings, behaviors, [then] balance, spirit, diet, and routine (if you came from daily, you know routine has some feelings behind it. The nice thing about ReMarkable is that you can do whatever you want on top of a PDF - so you can scribble as you see fit. See notes after the next 2 sections.
Suss out my thoughts/feelings/behaviors. These are kind of the base principles of CBT - your thoughts inform your feelings, which inform your behaviors, which inform your thoughts. I like it - it's not a hammer I wield looking for nails, but it is personally helpful to see how these are in fact tightly coupled. After all, the only person in your head...is you.
Make notes about my day, be thankful, and acknowledge God. I added this later. Notes is just a nice way to sprawl out what happened since I last journaled, and what I expect. I have a spot specifically to be thankful: can be mundane in that I had a road trip without incident, or more profound. I also have a spot where I imagine what it would be like if I had a talk with God. Sometimes God is talking and something God is listening.
When I am done I email this to myself...but by myself I mean Postmark (a transactional email service) so it ends up processing in an interesting way. This has been, to date, my most recent change. Most of this step is just archiving: I convert the first page into actual data and then just store the journal. Maybe one day AI will be able to actually read my handwriting. But the interesting part is the next part...
I decided to try to determine if a day was a success or not. I defined that as the following: by default the day is a success - however it is not if either of the following are true. If any of those 7 rows are a 4 or less, that is a failure. Also if the average of all 7 rows is less than an 8, that is a failure. Now, what does a failure mean? Jack shit**. Honestly - like I picked 7 things and only a couple can I fully control. BUT, I then pivoted to scan the rolling previous month and if we had more than 20% failures - that in fact is a problem. That means there is enough of an issue where the thing(s) I want to do are not happening, and we need to figure out why. So now that issues a command that I must take a day off from work to reset.
I also, which hopefully is not too surprising, having a metabase (a data reporting tool) that sits on top of all of this data. This makes querying and alterting easier. Like most people I went too hard in the paint at first: I tried to store all my Apple health data - all the data. I feel good about the current state of affairs.
*I don't
**cursing again, shit
If you came here from my daily routine, then head next to weekly via: https://blog.therosebunch.com/weekly-biweekly
Hello there - glad (why?) are you still here? At least things get easier (until we get to annual stuff). So this runs on Sundays at 6am.
So weekly is interesting - lets split this into cleanup and planning.
Cleanup. This is that weekly part where we clean up 'Done', send a brief email, and basically Wall-E this thing.
Planning. This part is a little more interesting. [to do is fill this out]