Productivity
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I spent the first half of the week scheduling my projects for the year. My experiment with full-year project scheduling last year worked well enough that I decided to keep it going with some changes. The main change is that instead of cramming in a bunch of little projects and trying to address a broad sweep of my interests, this year I’m spending more time on fewer projects, basically one project per quarter. Those are productivity, learning, math, and modeling. I’ll try letting other interests come in as side projects.
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I started adding messages to my motivational album, and it was an effective way to keep my latest productivity principles in mind. These are reminders like “It’s easier to take care of it now” and “Keep the the end time in mind” (so I don’t get too absorbed in what I’m doing). The act of writing and displaying these principles has put me in a proactive mindset, and it’s led to some concrete changes. One of these was to move my phone and tablet chargers away from my bed to motivate myself not to lounge and surf randomly when I’m tired, since I hate draining the battery. I have to choose—work or rest, not some hybrid waste of time.
Spirituality
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I started a one-year Bible reading plan for 2024, listening through the Oasis NLT audio Bible. I’m using the simple, chapter-oriented book order plan from BibleStudyTools, and I’m listening on the Life Bible app. The Audible version was having technical issues.
I used to push myself through the Bible in 90 days. But I would always end up with the same reflections, and this time I wanted to see if different insights would come up if I slowed the pace. The main reason for my Bible speedruns was that I didn’t trust myself to maintain a schedule long-term, but I knew I could listen to a lot of audio in a shorter time. Now I have better habits, and my approach is to tie my listening to those. I’m listening during one of my daily routines, usually the afternoon one, and then writing my thoughts afterward. So far the strategy is working well.
