A Year Of Growth

July 26, 2017

As I’m thinking about what I want to do with this blog - I have a large and long project in mind. Here’s my idea.

A Year Of Growth

“Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.” ― W. H. Auden

I really like James Clear - this is an extension of the stuff he talks about in his article, Achieve Your Goals: The Scientific Argument for Mastering One Thing at a Time.

I want to take a year and change a habit / grow every day.

Since there are 365 days in a year, this can be very gradual. This is a marathon, remember?

There are 12 months in a year, so I want to develop 12 pillars of habits that can be edited.

These can include:

  1. Health
  2. Fitness
  3. Family
  4. Spouse
  5. Morning Routine
  6. Spirituality
  7. Reading
  8. Producing
  9. Meditation
  10. Waking Up Earlier
  11. Evening Routines
  12. Sleeping
  13. etc.

I’ll add more and cut some from this list, but you get the point.

Then, each month is focussed on editing one of those pillars gradually.

There are roughly 4 weeks in a month, so I will take 4 gradual steps to editing that habit.

For example, if the habit is ‘Waking Up Earlier’, the weeks in the month could look like this:

  1. Begin Waking Up at 7 AM
  2. Wake Up at 6:30 AM
  3. Wake Up at 6 AM
  4. Wake up at 5:30 AM

The start and end times could be anything - depending on the person. They can also be more coarse or gradual depending on how successful they are at making the habit stick (Maybe 4 or 5 days instead of a week).

The object of the pillars, is to have them stick, and you continue to do the previous pillars while editing new pillars.

There is a snag, though, some pillars cannot be done very easily before others. For instance, staying on the ‘Waking Up Early’ habit - It’s nearly impossible to be successful at getting up early if you don’t have an evening routine / good sleep habit.

So, before we can wake up early, we have to sleep well, and that would come first in the program.

And before we can have a morning routine, we have to be waking up early.

And before we can make time for meditation, spirituality, journaling, exercising, etc., we need a morning routine.

So most of this all hinges on sleeping well. The thing we do for more than a third of our lives.

So that’s what this is all about. I am going to make a plan, stick to it and write about it’s affectiveness.

A year from now, if I am successfully doing all of the things mentioned above, I don’t think there is anything that could stop me.