Theme for 2020: “Making the World Better” Also My Habit Tracker Quit on Me - Happy New Year
Building traditional garden wall, Sorrento, Italy. Courtesy BuildingBeauty.org
For some time now I’ve been experimenting with themes instead of New Year’s resolutions or even goals. A goal is pretty binary - either you accomplish it or you don’t. If you miss a goal then you’ve failed.
A theme, on the other hand, is more forgiving. For instance my theme last year was “Write Livelihood.” Looking back I can see how I could have done better - wish I’d made more progress on a novel I’ve been writing. But I’m doing this newsletter so it’s not a total waste.
The road to success is paved with small wins.
If you’re interested in the idea of using themes instead of goals, check out episode 87 of the Focused podcast.
Making the World Better - or Better Ways to Make a World?
For me this year’s theme is all about design, especially design that is centered on making our world a better place in which to live. I’m especially interested in the work of architecture theorist Christopher Alexander who blends traditional ways of building with a deep-centered spirituality.
Alexander’s principals, which he calls The Process of Creating Life, are based on a sort of fractal mathematics that can be seen across the spectrum of living processes. When an egg becomes an embryo or a seed becomes a plant these events both follow the same mathematical processes as a drop of milk making a splash or beads of water on a spider’s web.
When human world-making succeeds, whether it is in downtown Manhattan or a garden in Sorrento, it is because the architectural patterns unfold in the same living process as the egg or the seed or the spider’s web.
For more on this way of seeing the world read “Let Christopher Alexander Design Your Life” and discover why you really should put your sofa in the kitchen.
Illustration by Naomi Elliot courtesy Curbed.com
Speaking of Life Design…
On kind of a whim I Googled the term “life design” and expected some goopy Course in Miracles kind of nonsense.
Instead I got a very compelling TEDx talk featuring Bill Burnett of Stanford explaining a course at Stanford University where they apply the principals of design thinking to career exploration and have come up with a very practical and powerful way to reshape the course of your life.
Check it out here:
Forced to Switch Up My Habit Tracking
For the past year I’ve been using the habit-tracking app Productive to provide reinforcing feedback for certain habits I want to follow.
In particular I want to make sure I am working out on the rowing machine three times a week - not on any particular day or time - practicing ballroom dance five times a week and cutting down on my drinking.
Productiveuse to be great at tracking irregular habits and helping you visualize progress in the Jerry Seinfeld “Don’t break the chain!” fashion.
And then Productive stopped working. Apalon updated their habit tracking software a couple of weeks ago and now it doesn’t work at all. I can’t access any of my X-times a week habits, can’t complete them, can’t create new ones. I can create and track date-specific habits just fine.
I sent an email to Apalon about a week ago and got a reply that they are aware of the problem and are working on a fix. They really hope I will be patient. I haven’t heard anything since, can’t find a forum and have no idea what the problem really is. And this is a $14 per year subscription.
So I coughed up $4.99 and bought Streaks which also lets you set up and track X-times a week habits. So far I’ve found Streaks to be just as good, maybe even slightly less annoying than Productive.
What I like about Streaks is that it has an “automatic” setting for delivering reminders. I think it looks at when you tend to complete certain tasks and delivers a reminder when you seem to be lagging.
Streaks also integrates with your iOS health data, so if you complete a workout on your Apple watch it will automatically check off your exercise habit as being complete on Streaks. Weirdly though you can’t view your completion progress for these Health streaks in the same screen as your other habits.
You could undoubtedly accomplish the same thing with a wall calendar and a big red pen. But I like having a long-term record of trend data at my fingertips…until that app I rely on stops working. Apalon, I’m talking about you.
That’s all I’ve got for now. Happy New Year - and be sure to click the heart icon at the bottom of the page to get the Wilder I to a larger audience.