2017 Phase 1 Goal Accountability: A Dud

When I wrote about kicking off 2017 (link ) with a new push for goal accountability I specifically stated that it wasn’t a new years resolution and that those don’t work for me anyway.  If my performance in the first phase isn’t a pointed tail of that I don’t know what is.

I’m actually writing this at the end of February not the end of January.  That’s how much I actually fell off my goals.  I won’t give you a preview of how Phase 2 went because it’s going to get posted shortly after this thing hits the site, but needless to say my performance for Phase 1 was abysmal.  To recap, the five goals I’m actively grading myself against are:

  • Goal 1: Dial in the diet to be ~80/20 rule plant based whole foods diet.  Think “Eat-to-Live” mainstream diet method.
  • Goal 2: Get 7-8 hours of sleep a night
  • Goal 3: Physical activity levels such that either get 10K or more steps in a day or burn more than 2800 calories. This translates into either moving more or working out or both.
  • Goal 4: Daily calisthenics or yoga in order to increase agility, muscle balance, and strength.
  • Goal 5: Meditation or yoga in order to increase mental acuity and relaxation

For each day I give myself a grade on a standard school-like four point A through F system for each category.  The grade for the day is the average of those five grades.

I started off the year doing not great, but not horrible.  In the first half of the month I had a couple of A days, a couple of B days, and mostly C to C+ days. After the half way mark however things went totally off the rails with my highest grade being a D+  and on some days getting a zero (F).  When I look at my category things obviously don’t look pretty:

  • Goal 1: Average grade  was 2.62 (C+).  If it wasn’t for the fact that nearly a week of this was a vacation where my eating regiment is allowed to go out the window I would have scored even lower than this.  Those A days really hide the fact I at best half-assed sticking to it and in the last half I totally reverted to eating like crap.
  • Goal 2: Average grade was 3.11 (B).  This was supposed to be my easiest category so I was hoping this would have been nearly aced, but work got in the way a bit and I didn’t get to bed as early as I should have.
  • Goal 3: Average grade was a 2.69 (C+).  Again the vacation really saved me on this grade otherwise I totally half-assed it.  In this case it wasn’t that the vacation gave me a pass it was that our vacation was visiting amusement parks which entails many miles of walking each day.  So unlike Goal 1 where I think it is a little over-inflated this one is squarely correct I just didn’t get my butt moving as much as I was supposed to outside of those days.
  • Goal 4: Average grade 0.43 (F). No two ways about it, I blew this one.  Rarely was there a day where I actually exercised.  Again, this was just five minutes of calisthenics or 15 minutes of yoga a day.  You can practically do that in your sleep, yet nearly every day I rationalized why I couldn’t do it that day.
  • Goal 5: Average grade 0.75 (F). Again, barely a day went by that I actually got my 15 or more minutes of meditation or light yoga in.  Ironically with my hectic schedule it should have made it more important to settle my mind but I just slacked off on this one entirely.

So the sum average grade for Phase 1 of 2017’s Goal Accountability Project was 1.92 (C-).  Again, if this was a new year’s resolution it’d be pretty much a done deal now.  I’d have to wait until the beginning of 2018 to try another attempt that would most probably fail.  However because this is about daily accountability this is neither the beginning nor the end of anything.