Leading Things Off...

I've thought about writing a blog off and on for a couple years now, but had always held back due to never having a very good answer to the question, "What are you going to to write about that people would care to consistently read?"  I have plenty of opinions about politics, music, movies, and everything else, but I had a hard time believing that my opinions on those topics were so revolutionary that people were going to choose to read mine, given all the competing options out there.

This blog isn't going to be about that.  While I'm sure I'll diverge from the primary topic at times, this blog is about tracking my attempts at self-improvement.  For several years now, I find myself going through the same pattern:  

• Notice that I'm not as productive/healthy/adventurous/responsible as I feel that I should be
• Vow that I'm going to do things differently from now on
• Make dramatic changes to the chosen area of my lifestyle
• Stick to my new responsible lifestyle for about two weeks
• Feel good about what a responsible human being I now am
• Start making little excuses to lapse on my new-found will power
• Exceptions to my discipline build up and reach a breaking point, and I find myself back where I started

 This blog is a small part of my attempts to break that cycle.  A couple weeks ago, on a whim, I ordered The 4 Hour Body, by Tim Ferriss.  I ordered it after reading a review of it in Wired, not because I had any particular desire to take up a wild new diet or exercise routine.  Ferriss' general theme is that there are lots of ways to greatly improve your health and well-being that involve very little effort or exercise.  His points are interesting, but that's not really what struck me in the first couple hundred pages I read. 

Ferriss tells lots of stories to get his points across, but one of the most interesting is about an old computer programmer friend he ran into, who had been obese, but then lost 70 pounds.  When asking his friend about what major tipping point finally motivated him to lose the weight, his response is really thoughtful:

"I am, in most of my endeavors, a solidly successful person.  I decide I want things to be a certain way, and I make it happen.  I've done it with my career, my learning of music, understanding of foreign languages, and basically everything I've tried to do. [...]  If I want a better-than-average career, I can't simply 'go with the flow' and get it.  Most people do just that: they wish for an outcome but make no intention-driven actions toward that outcome.

[...]  Yet here I was, talking about arguably the most important part of my life - my health - as if it was something I had no control over.  I had been going with the flow for years.  Wishing for an outcome and waiting to see if it would come.  I was the limp, powerless ego I detest in other people." (pp. 38-39)

This struck me, as I generally consider myself a pretty capable person.  I've been successful at many things in my life.  Most of them took some level of self-discipline to accomplish.  Getting a good job, getting into a good grad school, being successful at debate - all of these things involved solid amounts of work.  It occurred to me how odd it was to pat myself on the back for being a committed, effective person in these areas of my life, while simultaneously dismissing eating healthy, exercising, and not procrastinating as just "not really my thing," apparently beyond the spectrum of things I could stick to.

I'm writing this blog to make my attempts to be a better person more concrete, but there's more to it than that.  I could just keep a journal if all I cared about was tracking what I was doing.  What a blog offers is some form of public accountability for my success.  Ferriss references the Hawthorne effect, where people work harder when they think they're being observed.  In addition to that, you can check out my roommate's blog, while he engages in a similar endeavor.

A couple weeks ago, when I was asked if I had any New Years resolutions, I responded off the cuff, "Maybe just generally be less of a piece of shit."  That's not a very concrete resolution (it probably encompasses everyone's New Years resolutions, in the abstract), but that doesn't make it a poor choice.  What I plan to do in the days ahead is to make that resolution a bit more real by first setting my goals, and subsequently, tracking my effort to achieve them.  If you're interested, keep reading.