Personal Unit Tests for Year 32 [08/20/2007 18:11:22]
Hooray! I'm 31.
I've been trying for the past week to decide on a new list of "big" goals for the year, and it's just not happening.
I have a pretty good idea what my goals are, it's just that most of them are either small projects/changes, or else they're big goals (like getting in shape) that boil down to daily habits.
So, instead of creating a big list of goals, I decided to approach this year as an agile development project.
The way I see it, there are certain things I ought to be doing to be productive and effective no matter what my goals are. These are things that are relatively easy to set up, but take discipline and awareness to maintain. I really think that if I focus on maintaining these habits or processes, then the goals will take care of themselves.
Basically, I've made a list of personal unit tests: assertions about myself that I'd like to be true.
These are similar to affirmations, except that each one is something that - if it isn't true at the moment - could be made true within a few hours, max. So while I would like to weigh 200 pounds, that's not on the list, because it will take months to achieve. Instead, the list says "I worked out yesterday," and "I stuck to my diet yesterday".
The idea is I will go though the list every day as part of my morning planning session, and score myself. If any of the tests fail, then I can take appropriate action.
| pass | I got up at or before 8AM today. |
| FAIL | I stuck to a paleo diet yesterday (or it was my free day). |
| FAIL | I worked out yesterday (or it was my free day). |
| FAIL | Nothing in my work mailbox is more than 1 day old. |
| FAIL | All my software unit tests are passing. |
| FAIL | My company ledger is up to date and reconciled with the bank. |
| FAIL | My personal ledger is up to date and reconciled with the bank. |
| pass | I have a list of all my goals, projects and roles (contexts). |
| pass | The contexts are clearly prioritized. |
| FAIL | I have clear goals for the month posted on my wall. |
| FAIL | I have defined and printed clear goals for the week. |
| FAIL | I've scheduled time to complete each of my weekly goals. |
| FAIL | I have collected all notes for each context in one place. |
| FAIL | For each context, I have a list of tasks to work on. |
| FAIL | The tasks are clearly prioritized within each context. |
| FAIL | Each task has an estimated completion time less than 30 minutes. |
| FAIL | My work today is scheduled in detail. |
| FAIL | I've recorded and graphed each of the following metrics:
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| FAIL | For each context, I've anchored an optimal state of mind. |
| FAIL | My desk is clean and clutter free. |
| FAIL | My apartment is basically clean. |
| FAIL | My hard drives have been backed up in the last 30 days. |
| pass | I'm reading exactly one book at the moment. |
| FAIL | I practiced piano for at least 20 mins yesterday. |
| FAIL | I practiced Spanish for at least 20 mins yesterday. |
| FAIL | I studied chess for at least 20 mins yesterday. |
| FAIL | I've removed the spam comments from all my blogs. |
That's 27 tests and 23 failures. I've got quite a few more I want to add, but this is enough to keep me busy for the next few days, so I'm just going to stop here for now.