2008 Grind list

I’ve established a grind list based on some of my aspirations which will eventually turn into the 2008 resolutions list. However, unlike the resolution’s list, the grind list deals with genera areas of my life. It has been tested and refined to materialize in its final usage form. Since it took me a while to design and refine the whole process as well as the reward/compensation program. I feel like some explanation is needed, otherwise you’ll just end up with some big ???

The time limit rues are as follows: X Days, Y inactive.

Variable X means the amount of days I have left to perform the said task. It also acts as a point system. So a 4 day task will have 4 points if I complete it right away. However, if I decide to put it off till next day to complete, I only get 3 points. The points keep decreasing and goes into the negative if need be. This system gives me an incentive to not let things slide into the negative while focusing on tasks that score more points. The 1 point per day decrease gives me some slack so that the system is not too rigid. This is crafted because human’s natural tendency to give up if the task is impossible. By giving some slack (but not too much), there’s more of an incentive to judge which task is more important while allowing some flexibility on how I schedule the day.

Variable Y is the amount of time that has to pass before I can attempt the same activity again. This is a safety measure against my own natural tendency to go 100% all the way on one particular activity.

The activities in each categories are listed as: Name, condition for completion

The name is self explanatory. I try to stick to one word for the sake of simplicity and expediency of logging

Every Condition for completion varies based on the activity. How I determine them is based on data taken from when I performed the tasks. Basically, the average time I spend in a task before I start losing too much focus. It is also balanced against the importance of the skill it helps to improve.

Here’s a sample of one of my recent week from google calendar. I spend about 10 min each morning to mark each task as completed and create another one after the cool off period. I also log the points into a spread sheet so I can track my progress.