Well, February weather has been as crazy as January weather. There have been two ice days, and then an early close & late opening for work. Then it looks like March is going to start with a winter bang as well this coming weekend (maybe, but we’ll have to see—at times the weather people aren’t the greatest at predicting how the storm is going to be moving). We’re a sixth of the way through the year, and again it’s time to reflect back on the goals that were set for February, and see how I did with each, how I could improve, and then set some goals for the coming month.
So I decided that to start the year, I was going to start a little slower in terms of goals (not have quite as many as I’d been having) to see if I could get at least 80% on each of them. So what did my goals for January include?
They were:
At least 392,000 steps (again this breaks down to at least 14K/day; and will keep me on track for my other step goals).
Continue trying to interact more on linkedin.
Read at least one article on fiercepharma or fiercebiotech each day (maybe make notes for a small weekly recap blog post).
Continue with the photography challenge
Continue working through various e-courses/groups and the transition plan (pick specific cities, and have an idea of what my superpower trifecta is).
Continue trying to workout daily.
Aim for a week of no spend days (start money log)
Read (or finish) at least three non-fiction books
Start really trying to work on science posts for the blog (and potentially on linkedin as well).
Figure out the best way (still) of trying to have my shakeology daily.
So how did I do with each goal?
At least 392,000 steps (again this breaks down to at least 14K/day; and will keep me on track for my other step goals).
I managed to get 386,629 steps this month. I fell short of my goal (by just a little over 5K), but I’ve noticed that the weekends, and any days off of work I’m still having trouble motivating myself to get my steps in. Hopefully as the weather gets nicer, and the sun come up a little earlier—I can get my steps in on the weekends (walking up at Boomer Lake), and there should also be fewer days off of work (weather related) until I decide to take a mini vacation/networking trip somewhere.
Continue trying to interact more on linkedin.
So this is a little slow going—I do scroll through linkedin daily (usually), and I am trying to add value to connections. I know that there are several different ways of adding value on linkedin—it is something that just takes quite a bit of time, especially when you have a large network.
Read at least one article on fiercepharma or fiercebiotech each day (maybe make notes for a small weekly recap blog post).
I managed to read at least one article a week, which is a start to making it to reading an article an day. I have taken some notes for a blog post, but I haven’t polished any of them up to where they could be actually published as a blog post (so something to continue working on).
Continue with the photography challenge
I’ve restarted the challenge at least twice this month. One issue has mainly been trying to find something that strikes my fancy in terms of taking the photography. I hope that as the weather gets nicer, I will be outside more and that there will be times when the mood strikes me in terms of taking photos. So far my restart last week is still going, I have decided that if necessary I can use older pictures that I’ve taken (and hopefully not shared on the blog), that way they’re still “new” in a way.
Continue working through various e-courses/groups and the transition plan (pick specific cities, and have an idea of what my superpower trifecta is).
This is still a work in progress (as usual). I think I’ve managed to figure out the professional lifestyle that I want to have, and am still looking at different cities (though I know that Boston will probably be on the list). I’m also still working through the different e-courses, and group work at a slow pace. In terms of the e-courses I think that some of the shorter ones that I’d manage to finish last year, I may go back through and do again (plus take better notes so that I can do a small blog post on the subject).
In terms of my superpower trifecta, I’m still trying to figure out what the third point is (I have a general idea of the first two), so I’m two-thirds of the way there on this aspect.
Continue trying to workout daily.
So I’m still bouncing between workouts and trying to figure out what to do each evening. Though during the last week of the month, I decided that I’d make note of the different weight training exercises and start doing different ones on my own (making my own “program” as it was) and on other days doing cardio. In terms of the cardio I’m still going between different Beachbody workouts that I have on DVD (since I don’t always want to turn on the laptop right away to get to the online workouts).
Aim for a week of no spend days (start money log)
I’ve managed to have at least two to three days of not spending any money on campus. Sometimes the best way to do this would to actually be leaving my wallet at home (that way there is literally no way for me to spend money (unless I want to charge something to my bursar account)).
Read (or finish) at least three non-fiction books.
So I managed to finish at least four books this month, and I realized that the four books that I finished all had basically one central theme: a month at a time. Two of the books dealt with discussing a bad habit a day and what you could do to improve and break that bad habit. The other two books were books with numerous different types of challenges in them (again with the theme of completing a challenge a month). Some of the challenges are covered in both challenge books (and can be considered the goals of some of the challenges of the two productivity books), and the titles of the books are:
The 30-Day Productivity Plan: Break the 30 Bad Habits that are sabotaging your time management one day at a time by Damon Zahariades
The 30-Day Productivity Plan Volume II: 30 More Bad Habits that are sabotaging your time management & how to overcome them one day at a time by Damon Zahariades
The Big book of 30-Day Challenges: 60 Habit Forming Programs to live an Infinitely Better Life by Rosanna Casper
The 30-Day Challenge Book: 500 Ideas to Inspire your life by Clare Hudson.
Start really trying to work on science posts for the blog (and potentially on linkedin as well).
I managed to get at least one new science post/page posted this month on the blog. It was the introduction to the central dogma of biology. It was very basic in explanation and scope. I’m hoping over the next few months to get at least one post/page a week done. Some of the figure will be done using chembiodraw (which helps in trying to draw the more complex aspects of biology [such as DNA and RNA structures]), but there will also be several figures that I will attempt to draw by hand and then add on to using either photoshop or potentially within powerpoint as well.
Figure out the best way (still) of trying to have my shakeology daily
Since the weather is still cool, having my shake daily is still an issue. I’ve become more accustom to having something more solid for breakfast both during the week and on the weekend. The shakeology is looking like it will probably be more of a snack, though I’d have to then figure out if it would be better as a snack in the morning or in the afternoon. But this is something that hopefully I can slowly start easing back into come March.
Goals for March will include:
At least 434,000 steps (again this breaks down to a minimum of 14K/day), though I would like to maybe aim for 475,000 steps (which would break down to a little over 15K a day).
Continue with the photography challenge
Workout daily (continue to alternate between weight training & cardio)
Read (or finish) at least three non-fiction books
Try to get at least one more science post up on the blog (maybe two if possible)
Aim for a week of no spending (keep a money log)
Continue interacting on linkedin
Continue working through the various e-courses/groups and transition plan (making notes, narrowing down on cities, looking into companies, and figuring out my superpower trifecta)
Read at least one article on FiercePharma and/or FierceBiotech (weekly and work up to daily) and make notes so that I can do a blog post (or weekly recap of what I’ve read).
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