This is a continuation of my previous post.
A brief summary of my goals for the year:
- Tyrant Mod – C
- Undisclosed personal goal – F
- Work goal – B
- Exercise goal – C
- Family and health goal – A
- Duolingo goal – A
Of my six goals, two I felt passed, so for the next year, I plan on removing the Duolingo goal. I recognize that it is a lost opportunity to fully learn Japanese, but I figured that I picked up most of the important basics of Hiragana recognition. I may do some touchup and refreshers here and there, but it shouldn’t be a primary goal going forward, as its utility to me is somewhat limited without expanding my vocabulary by a lot.
Instead, I plan on setting a goal of limiting my video gaming/non-goal oriented leisure time. I’ll expound more on this detail when I get into the deeper analysis on failure.
Let me actually start backwards, as I think goals 4 and 3 are easier to quantify and explain the status of.
For my exercise and weight loss goal, I failed partially because losing some forty pounds is extremely ambitious and requires a lot of willpower. To lose weight in that range, I will need to do something drastic, such as hardcore fasting for around three to four months. Particularly, since the seventeen or so pounds I have lost since I started were the easiest portion of the weight to lose. Going from here on out, it’s a rougher slope that will require more sacrifice.
At the core of it, I subscribe somewhat to Dr. K/HealthyGamerGG’s notion towards motivation. Simply put, I failed to build up a habit/regimen/target set to hit in order to attain my goals. Early in the year, when I was walking, the strolls to hit the six mile target would typically take me about two hours of time, with additional time set aside to dress and get ready in my workout gear/regimen.
Add to that, the sweltering heat where I live from about May until November, and that’s about half of the year where it felt unconducive for my goals.
Finally, there’s also the factor that forty pounds itself was probably a bridge too far from the get-go. It is a really aggressive target to hit within a year, and I also started lapsing on documenting my progress in fatsecret.com/keeping myself accountable.
This year, since I only have little over halfway to go, I think the goal may be more attainable, so long as I can muster that willpower to starve. I just really need to get the initial ball rolling on fasting, and then it should eventually be easier. Thus, it’s with that intent, that I am seeking to end this year with a fast. (I failed yesterday, but so far, today, I am succeeding).
There is also the fact that my parents visited for a significant part of the year. This has meant that their care/overfeeding of me, has sabotaged my efforts sometimes. Thus, the hangout with family goal was inherently at odds with my weight-loss/exercise goal.
So what can I do about it?
Perhaps, in January of this upcoming year, when my monthly budget resets, I will make a trip to Half-Price books, and buy a physical calendar. This calendar could serve as my motivation/reward center. I could add stickers to it, and if I can supplement my original Duolingo goal with checking in to the calendar/fatsecret weigh-in, perhaps I can build up a habit/reward cycle to reward myself.
I also need to start setting a timeline for ramping up to hitting the one punch man workout.
It constitutes 100 situps, 100 pushups, 100 squats, and a 10km run. If the goal is to not tire myself out, and I have 365 days to get it set, and I give myself the last 90 days of the year as a dedicated time period, when I will hope to have the regimen capable of being completed daily so as to make it a consistent pattern, this gives me the first 275 days to build up to the pattern.
So I should set up for myself a schedule such that I start off doing 1 situp, 1 pushup, 1 squat, and a tenth of a kilometer run, and escalate it by an increment of 1 situp, 1 pushup, 1 squat, and another tenth of a kilometer run every two and a half to three days. On days where I’m feeling the tiredness, perhaps I can elongate that cycle by one day, as the absolute average just needs to be 2.75 days for each increment. I think even at three day increments, it probably still leaves me about 60 days to form a consistent workout habit.
I believe the hardest part will be the initial period, where the workout ramp up will coincide with my fasting cycle.
I will also need to document this on the physical calendar so as to hit my goal. Another possible detriment is in considering the time this will take out from my other passions and goals. But perhaps I can think about/ruminate on the mod script while doing this work.
Also, by pouring in money, if I can document its usage, I may be able to justify the time and effort I spend exercising as a return on my initial investment.
On the topic of work goals, I think they will largely hold the same. My schedule for the next year is probably going to be somewhat light hopefully between January and May, leaving me with some time to work on personal development. June through August may be somewhat busier, but that works fine for me, as it coincides with the time period when the weather tends to get a bit too hot to go out.
I may also need to pace myself, with my new goal six, perhaps I would be able to schedule more time for the additional projects I have in mind. Hopefully I can come up with a roadmap on my annual calendar to spend some time each month looking at each of the projects.
For my personal goal that I’m not currently divulging, maybe I can set to hit a target of meeting it once a month on my calendar for this year as well, and if I can continue to stomach it, to ramp it up to more time each month.
It will compete with my competing desires in other areas, though, and will draw some of my free time away from me.
Finally, the big bad- the Tyrant Mod.
So, this year, as you all have joined me on my journey, I think I’ve made a lot of progress. I’ve found that my writing is lacking, but I’m working on it, and I hope as I continue to work on the project, it will improve with time.
That said, I also need to set a schedule/regimen in which I can write consistently. I’ll need to come up with a schedule between my exercise regimen and my writing regimen.
Maybe if I set a target for time spent writing each day, and a fixed number of renders to churn out, this goal could be meetable.
At the current pace I’m going, with a thousand + renders in animation and images for two versions of a scene, it’s taking a disproportionately long time.
A render takes typically between twenty minutes and forty five or so minutes on my current setup. So if I devote two to three hours a day to rendering, I can probably churn out nine renders a day optimistically.
Maybe if I set a goal of six renders a day, it’ll be a more attainable goal. That way, I can consistently make progress, and renders done during the night for long-running animations that are setup and being rendered/processed could count to my benefit as well. This could also set me up for a target at the very least that I could try hitting each month. That being 180 renders. It also makes for an easier progress report, and I can also start gathering stats to take stock and tweak/improve my efficiency.
Apologies again for the long post, and thanks for sticking with me through to the end. These are my goals and ambitions, and may 2025 prove to be a more fruitful year than 2024 was in my pursuit of these goals.
