Missions – Apr 2018 – Complete
For the last 5 months I’ve been tackling a set of personal ‘missions’ each month. They’re mostly focused around health, productivity & growth.
At the start of April I created this month’s set of ‘missions’ to complete every single day.
Here’s how I did.
The Missions
In April I set out to achieve these 8 things every single day:
Wake up at 5:41am. Done
Go for a long walk after getting up. Done
Do 60 push-ups. Done
Do 30 squats. Negative :(
Complete all 3 activity rings on my Apple Watch. Done
Read a physical book for at least 30mins. Done
Write in a logbook about the previous day. Done
Don’t read any email or social media before 10am. Done(ish).
The Results
I tripped up on one particular mission this month which doesn’t feel great. First mission that I’ve failed so far. Here’s what happened in some more detail:
Wake up at 5:41am. Done. How do people sleep in after after 6am anyway? :)
Go for a long walk after getting up. Done. We were away travelling for the start of the month but still got this done and enjoyed exploring some new scenery on my morning walks. Back home now though and still grinding out the same route at the same time.
Do 60 push-ups. Done. Typically completed with 5 sets of 12 which I can now do comfortably. Feels great! (Fun fact…60 push-ups a day = 1800 total push-ups during the month…not too shabby).
Do 50 squats. Negative. Failed a mission completely for the first time. I’ve previously mentioned that I have a ‘clicky’ right knee and it started becoming more uncomfortable while squatting around the middle of the month. A little Googling and it looks like it’s not something I should just push myself through. So I’ve now got to find another way to work on my scrawny, pin-like legs…
Complete all 3 rings on my Apple Watch. Done.
Read a physical book for at least 30mins. Done. This month I got through some really good books but less than previous months, mainly because ‘12 Rules for Life’ was such a beast.
Discipline Equals Freedom – Jocko Willink. (Read for the fourth time).
12 Rules for Life – Jordan Peterson.
A Million Miles in a Thousand Years – Donald Miller.
Peak Performance – Brad Sulberg & Steve Magness.
My top two this month…12 Rules for Life and The 10X Rule.
Write in a logbook about the previous day. Done. This month I felt that my journaling slipped a little bit (in content) which isn’t ideal. Too many times I think I rushed through it because the day might have been fairly mundane or average. Having tried a few different approaches these last few months I might have to look back and see how else I can improve this practice during May.
Don’t read any email or social media before 10am. Done(ish). I say ‘ish’ because on a number of days I got sucked into checking email before 10am. I managed to stay away from Twitter until after that time but for some reason email was that bit harder. Will work on some different strategies for next month as generally I feel it’s a positive thing to keep up.
The Future
In May I’ll be queuing up another set of missions to get stuck into. Building a routine around these good habits and sticking to them is very satisfying.
While these practices have had really positive effects, I have this nagging feeling that I need to do more. Bigger maybe. Let’s see what May brings!
Let’s go.
‘Missions is a special project I started in December 2017. Little daily challenges, completed every month.
