January is an important month, and this analysis is very important because it will adjust the plan to what is most probably will have minor changes for the rest of the year.
I tried my new plan beginning of 2017 which divided my goals and life into 26 paths.
In the month of January, excluding the last day (which is today), we had 30 days. The 26 paths are divided into 30 steps. That is a total of 780 steps.
Out of the 780 steps, there were 221 cancelled steps. After couple weeks of implementing the plan, I discovered that it will take about 12 hours a day (in addition to work, cook, eat, basic hygiene, spending time with family, open mail, and sleep) to accomplish all these 26 paths simultaneously. So what I did was, I twined some of the paths as to make them alternating. If I accomplish a step in one, I delay the step in the other. So two paths of 30 days each, will be one path of 60 days, taking two months to finish these 60 steps instead of 30.
In doing so, 221 steps were cancelled starting about 9th of January, and it reduced the pressure of the schedule.
The schedule made me super productive, entertained, feeling accomplished, and truly structured my productivity in a meaningful way.
Out of the 559 steps left, 308 were accomplished successfully on time (55%), 52 accomplished successfully but late (9%), and 199 failed or were never accomplished (36%).
Accomplishments of January:
- Successful and comfortable Diet plan losing 5 pounds and feeling healthier. (This was under the failed paths since the actual goal was about 10 pounds, but accomplishing 50% of the goal is better than nothing!)
- Finished a course on Coursera
- Studied one full piece of piano, and half of another.
- Established the Advisory Board in one of the Non-profit organizations and recruited a number of volunteers for it. Also started two regular recurring meetups for it.
- Established Meetups in about 40 cities for another Non-profit organization and membership skyrocketed.
- Started Facebook Live Series and recorded the first two episodes live.
- Bloggins (obviously! 83% successful)
- Launching WDD with a full time Chief Designer.
- Successful Family Vacation in Florida
- Finishing 15 lessons in French (Fluent 2%)
- Establishment of a new business group
- Other accomplishments in Art, business, and family (confidential)
- Accomplishments at work (confidential)
Challenges of January:
- Workout (60% of planned)
- Writing in Arabic (0% of Goal)
- Reading two books (67% of Goal)
- Daily Meditation (43% of Goal)
- Connecting with Extended Family (37% of Goal)
- Launching new phase of the W Network (17% of Goal)
- Working on Autoboard (0%)
- Working on consolidating New Personal Site (0%)
- Preparation for Publication of book of Poetry (37% and I am happy with that for now)
- Getting GeoBuzz.co to work again
- Catching up with target weight
- Create something artistic in Music or Visual Arts
I will be discussing in the next blog how should I tackle the challenges I faced in January in February so I may accomplish more success in them.
Also, I will be discussing some reflections from January and lessons learned, and some resolutions and goals going forward.
The point of all this as far as the reader is concerned is this:
If you don’t control your time, it pours away into the mud, and draws you with it sometimes.
Wissam Charafeddine 