Kicking the Personal Development Into High Gear

Photo: Vic Brincat

Yesterday it became abundantly clear that many of my personal improvement activities and efforts have eroded to unacceptable levels. The domino effect has rippled through them and failures in one area have led to others.

I've been oversleeping in the morning, which pretty quickly put an end to the morning walk with the dogs. Some project-related stress has ushered in the return of the Snickers-and-a-Coke school of stress management and a couple of pounds have crept back on. The major mess in my office has been promoted to a 3 star general mess and I'm finding no time for my personal projects, including this site.

So, my inner drill sergeant has been recalled from whatever tropical paradise he'd apparently retired to and was put back on active duty. He's instituted the following actions:

1. A return to the 5:00am wakeup with an offset for really late nights, targetting 6.5 hours of sleep.
2. The morning walks followed by breakfast and writing.
3. The office gets cleaned (this got started yesterday).
4. The community center membership form for gym access becomes more than just a piece of paper sitting here and I start going (checked off yesterday)
5. The convenience store (Ken's Market, which claims to have "everything") clerk shouldn't know my favorite candy bar. That's got to stop. Re-implement 300/600/900 calorie breakdown for meals and ditch the rest of the food.
6. No TV before dinner. I'm not going to be cutting TV completely. I enjoy it and have absolutely no snobby approach to it. I just need to make better use of the time between getting home and dinner.