The best guys
One of the thrills of the Atlanta Pen Show was FINALLY meeting Myke Hurley. I’ve been a fan since his 70decibels days, and love seeing his hard work pay off with the success of relay.fm. I religiously listen to The Pen Addict, Analogue, and Cortex podcasts, bumping each new episode to the top of my bloated queue. I think he’s great.
Knowing that I’d be meeting him, I pictured myself waxing eloquent when it came time to tell him how much I admire his work. Instead, I sputtered out some jumbled praise, never really getting traction with my words. But Myke was gracious and kind as I garbled my compliments.
One point I did manage to successfully express was how I’ve taken to copying his latest foray into journaling. On Cortex, he’s talked about answering a series of daily questions in a journal, using different pens every day. I gave that approach a shot, but, so far, I’m having trouble making it stick. My evenings tend to be a crapshoot, with available time magically evaporating. But I haven’t given up on this. Morning journaling is now an ingrained habit, and I think I can make this evening journaling work as well. I’m going to keep trying.
The other day, on another episode of Cortex, Myke talked about using the monthly pages in his Hobonichi to track a handful of goals on a daily basis. This idea REALLY appeals to me, especially because my monthly pages are just sitting there waiting to be filled with something.
I love the idea of a quick way to track daily habits and goals. But which ones? Obviously Myke’s goals are not mine, so I had a little thinking to do.
After doing some brainstorming during my daily walks, I came up with a list of five goals (I guess you’d call them that) to track.
- Eat well
- Exercise & movement
- Connect with/support others
- Write/create/blog
- Fun/laughter
These may change on a monthly basis, though I know that good nutrition and exercise will remain as constants. I set a scale of 0-3 for the daily score in each category, with the highest possible daily score being 15 (math whiz here).
I also added a mood tracker—a simple hand drawn emoji—to document my overall mood for the day.
And today I decided to also track the weather with a very quick sketch. I might as well use some of the colored pencils I have laying around. A tiny sketch is better than no sketch.
I have no idea what all of this will tell me, but I’m curious to find out. Will my mood affect how successful I am with my goals, or vice versa? Does the weather affect my mood and my daily success? Will I be able to extract anything of value from this data? Will I ever score the elusive 15? That’s all yet to be determined.
If nothing else, I’m finally using those empty monthly pages. I’ve documented what I want to focus my attention on, which means that I have a better shot at success. I may discover something about myself, but even if I don’t, this is a quick and easy way to look back at my day and think about how I used my time and energy. How do I feel? What did I accomplish? What needs improvement? How can I make tomorrow better?
So Myke, keep doing what you love and trying new things (that I can copy). I’ll always be a fan of your work ethic, humor, honesty, and podcasts. And with this daily tracking, I’m thinking…
#mykeisprobablyright
From the Pen Cup 