commitments for 2018

during my reflection retreat, as i was reviewing my calendar and how i spent my time, there are many commitments i realized i wanted to make. commitments that, if implemented, would help me live more in line with my values and achieve more of my goals. and really, just be more of the person i am / am trying to become (so that i can be of the deepest value to myself and to my communities).

these could be thought of as new year’s resolutions… but that frame is so played out that i don’t even want to use it. instead, i’m going to call these my commitments for 2018.

i’m going to commit to building them in over the course of the year. because one of the biggest downfalls in trying to build new habits or commitments is taking on everything all at once. it makes it hard to achieve any of them *and it makes it likely that once you fail with one, you’ll give up on all the others. i’m going to take on just a few/month and see if i can get to them all by dec 31.

also, many of these will be developed via practice (practice practice). they’re all aspirational and i reserve the right (to myself) to renegotiate these at any time lol.

anyway, here’s the (almost) full list. i might keep some detail here about i’m going to stage them, but i’ll more than likely end up doing that on my new website… ^_^

• make my list of commitments public on my new website.
• one no meeting day per week (it’s looking like mondays)
• 2 fridays / month are tech sabbaths (sundown friday to sundown sat)
• mornings are for deep work/flow/focus (and in order to make that happen…)
• do not check or send email before 12p
• “first” meeting with me are best over lunch
• plan to end all meetings at :20 or :50. this is a practice i’m borrowing from many places, but most directly from my therapist
• write a poem daily
• write daily (usually via my blog) (not a new commitment but want to keep it up)
• don’t eat while working (i.e. no working meetings)
• never answer “how are you” shallowly. i can either (a) answer for real, (b) politely, explicitly abstain from answering, or (c) offer to answer a different, more specific question (how’s my day? how am i right now?)
• publish one medium post about my coaching work per month
• meditate: 20 mins/day + 1h session/week (the 1h session can replace one of the 20 minute days)
• facilitate 100 meetings this year
• schedule all my meetings during a 2-hour chunk of time on fridays (instead of trying to schedule meetings on the fly). note: there will be many exceptions to this, but i’m hoping that i can at least save non-urgent meetings to be scheduled during this chunk of time.
• keep my commitment made during amb’s time in boston in nov 2017
• collaborate with more people of color on side projects
• launch one experiment with each person on my list of schemers (if we’re not already working on something)
• on the first saturday of every month:
  • clean my room
  • pay my bills
  • set up the new month in my bullet journal

words / writing / post-processing
300w / 20min / 1min