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Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.

Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life

ARTAAAAAAXXXX!

Man, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen that movie. Bets that it doesn’t hold up at all?

Anyway, hello again my friends. Welcome back and thank you for the advice / pointers / well-wishes / suggestions after the last post. They were all very well received and helped me get to this launching-off point.

So, what’s the play? Exodus, nothing, or somewhere in between?

I like to think of myself as someone who tends toward the Go Big or Go Home mentality, but in this case I decided to pull back on the reins a bit. So, instead of going full-bore into Exodus 90, I’ve spent some time boiling down what it is I would be trying to get out of the program, as well as what I want to do for my life in general, and built something of a progressive habit stack. Start small(er) and build.

What I’m doing here is MUCH more malleable and isn’t requiring that I jump into the deep end day one. Which is good, particularly now when things are ramping up all over. It gives me room to pick a couple of things I can get quick wins with, get them engrained as part of my lifestyle, and then I can take that next step when I’ve adapted. Plus – and this is a big one for an over-planner like myself – I don’t need to have all the details now. I don’t need to know everything I want to do and how. It’s okay that it feels like my future updates are lacking, because I have plenty of time before I get to them. Not to mention the fact that I’ll likely develop new needs as I turn the first ones into habits.

Because this isn’t some 90 day challenge but rather a lifestyle change, I’ve gone about it differently than a lot of these other things. Sure, there are still some daily tasks, but I’m also planning things on monthly and quarterly bases, as well as ramping things up over time. With that in mind, here’s how things look to kick off:

• Wake up at 5AM on weekdays.
• Write 45m a day (Increasing by 5m every week until I hit the 10 hours a week mark – roughly 86m a day – where I’ll hold steady for a while and assess).
• Pray the Rosary daily.
• Listen to the Bible and Catechism in a Year podcasts daily.
• Restrict myself to 1 YouTube video a day.
• Attend Adoration once a month.
• Go to Confession once a quarter.
• Read to and/or watch an episode of a show with the kids every school night, provided they’re all around with time to do it.
• Take no personal time until all the tasks on my daily list are complete (This will require I be WAY more realistic on these goals than I currently am).

Okay, so immediately throwing 9 things on the list after I just talked about how I’ve gone the “start small” route is a little laughable, but it’s me, what do you expect? Some of these are continuations of things I started earlier and some are pretty light in terms of commitment. Others are big deals for me. I’ve become pretty addicted, for lack of a better word, to wasting my time on YT. And it’s exactly that, a waste. The amount of productive time that’s gone down the tube is really just terrible. When I get off work I’m usually so braindead I end up allowing myself to just zone out and I hate it. That’s gotta go. I’ve got too much I want to do in life to let that time die. Plus, if I’m going to be spending time not accomplishing life goals, it should absolutely be time I’m instead spending with prayer or the family, not being a hermit. Nobody benefits from Sloth, no?

As for things I’ve got on my potential / upcoming list:

• Begin working through the Seven Daily Habits of Holy Apostolic People.
• Start meal prepping.
• Pick a couple of days a week to get up at 4.
• Start fasting, be it through IF or specific fasting days.
• Bump Adoration frequency until it becomes weekly.
• Start tackling one woodworking / homeowner project a month.
• Bring back a day or so a week where I do some outdoor exercise.

I’ve already gathered a couple of tools to help me with all of this. Beeminder is there to sting me if I’m not adhering to my writing time (And give me some sweet graphical KPIs to keep tabs on progress) and ToDoist is great for some digital list tracking. There’s one kind of app I’ve been looking for and had no luck with, however. If anyone knows of something that tracks fluid due dates that’d be great. ToDoist, for instance, requires I put a due date, so if I want Confession to show up on the list I’d have to put it due today, and then from that point on it’ll be overdue, or I’ll put it at the end of the quarter so that it’s never overdue but won’t show up on my list until the last day. Annoying.

Regardless, I’m excited for this next step. Not so much the 5AM thing, but the results. The reasons. Giving purpose to time, as it’s the most valuable resource we have. Wasting it is just a crime.

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PEW PEW, ATTACK CHOPPER. Not a Lego, again, but close enough for government work.