My yearly theme is Intensity/Simplicity. I want to do intense things but I want to do them simply. I’m not interested in getting intense about details at the margins. I’m much more interested in marrying intensity with the essence of a thing.
As part of this intention I’ve decided to take my four Anchor Habits (daily writing, reading, exercise, and meditating) and focus on each of them for a month at a time. With four habits and twelve months in a year, I’ll have an opportunity to go deep with each of them three times in 2020 (yay math!)
The idea is that I’ll continue to do my three other daily habits at a consistent, yet minimal, basis while I use whatever extra attention/energy/motivation I might have to really go deep with the chosen habit. I have a couple ill-formed hypotheses I’m pretty sure I’m testing:
Focusing on one intention for a month will help me uncover new levels of appreciation for it.
The more interesting experiences lay below the surface (i.e. after you focus on it for longer than a day or even a week)
Limiting the number of personal development decisions I need to make will leave more time and energy for actual personal development.
Doing one thing for a month will mean I’m tired of that thing by the end of the month and will have lots of motivation and excitement to do the next thing.
That’s the plan.
January — The Month of Move
I decided to kick this experiment off by focusing on my daily exercise habit (or as I tend to call it, my Move habit). The basic idea was that I would try to run, walk, or otherwise exercise as much as I reasonably could throughout the month of January. I had a couple guardrails in place:
Speed doesn’t matter.
Walking counts.
Consistency even over session-level intensity.
Listen to your body — don’t get hurt you idiot.
So, what did I actually do?
Walked or ran 52.79 miles
Did an hour and 42 minutes of strength workouts
Did just over an hour of yoga and foam rolling
Played in 3 hockey games
Had 7 “zero days” (where I did nothing)
In the middle of the month I got sick for a couple days, but surprisingly (stupidly?) still managed to go for a walk on each of those days. I only really got waylaid in my plans to workout consistently in the last week of the month when I had some really intense responsibilities at work. It wasn’t ideal to string together a series zero days right at the end of the month but if we consider February 1st to be an honorary member of January then I actually ended pretty strong.
Overall, I feel pretty good about this first foray into what I’ve now decided I’m going to call Focus Months.
Other than the work week from hell I was able to keep a pretty high level of consistency all month. Perhaps most surprisingly, I actually saw myself improve my running (objectively and subjectively) even across the relatively short timeframe of a month. I started looking forward to my runs and even managed to go for significant stretches where I wasn’t hating every step.
One of the things I’m keeping an eye on during these Focus Months is whether focusing on one specific habit or area of personal development might have impacts on other parts of the complex system that is me and my life. I noticed I had an easier time being more mindful of my eating (in both food choice, portion size, and consistency of tracking) than usual. Knowing that I wanted to workout more than I normally do made it easier to put somewhat better fuel in my body on a consistent basis. I’m guessing each type of focus will have somewhat unexpected spillover effects with other parts of my life.
I’m going to chalk up this month as a success and put my focus toward my next Focus Month, writing.
I’m Sam. I write about attention at The Deliberate and I help organizations at The Ready. I help nobody on Twitter.