2022 Week 3/52: Sarah Jones & Synthesizing Happiness

Hi everyone! Time for Goal Check Sunday Week 3/52! 😃

Goal #1: Manage My Eating Disorder

✅(1) Goal accomplished in eating between 1200 to 1700 calories during the hours of 7:00 AM and 7:00 PM for Week 3/52.

When the temperature dips under 20ºF (-6.67°C), I feel compelled to eat all day long. In the past, this leads me to easily eat 4000 calories in one day. Knowing this is a weakness of mine, I was extra diligent this past week when there were a couple of days that dipped under 20ºF. Also, I had hot porridge or soup with every meal, which was a huge help. 😃

Goal #2: Become more organized starting Week 2/52

✅ (2) Goal accomplished in spending 15 to 30 minutes organizing every day using a timer for Week 3/52.

Playing this Instrumental Pop – Work Playlist | Productivity Music has helped me organize every day this past week! I’m incredibly happy and hopeful that I may one day become an organized person!

Goal #3: Write consistently

✅(3) Goal accomplished in writing between 2 to 8 hours every day for Week 3/52. My dedicated time blocks and listening to lo-fi music when writing has kept me on track!

In Week 3/52, I had pretty unproductive writing periods. It was discouraging and frustrating. I worked through it by reminding myself that I’m a slow learner but I’ve learned how to repeat a task until I reach a point where I’m happy with it.

I’ve wanted to become a writer since I was around 7 when I fell in love with reading. Even when I’ve been told repeatedly that my writing was terrible, I still aspired to become a writer. Going forward, I will continue writing until I feel I’m a great writer.

Goal #4: Read books to gain knowledge and new perspectives

✅(4a) Goal accomplished in reading 30 minutes a day for 5 days for Week 3/52. I read James Clear’s Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones.

“At some point, it comes down to who can handle the boredom of training every day…the only way to become excellent is to be endlessly fascinated by doing the same thing over and over. You have to fall in love with boredom.”

James Clear, Atomic Habits

This passage gives me hope to become great at something!

🚧(4b) Goal in progress: I will summarize/review 6 books in 2022 and post them on this blog. 1/6 completed for this week. I reviewed Maybe You Should Talk to Someone.

Goal #5: Improve my listening skills

✅(5a) Goal accomplished in listening to one Design Matters Podcast. This week, I listened to Debbie Millman interview Sarah Jones.

I listened to the podcast several times because I found Sarah Jones, who is an American playwright, actress, and poet who has written and performed four multi-character solo shows, fascinating!

I long to entertain in a substantive way. But humor is everything for me. The lubricant that helps all the other gears work. And I thought about where do you find the funny in talking about commercial sexual exploitation? It doesn’t sound like a knee-slapping good time…And as I hope you’ve experienced [in watching Sell By Date], I do manage to find the humor.

Sarah Jones, Design Matters with Debbie Millman

Sarah put into words the type of book I aspire to write. I yearn to write a substantive book on a serious topic in which there will be a lot of humor. Thank you Sarah for reminding me to include “the funny” in my future writing.

✅(5b) Every week, I will listen to one TED talk. This week I listened to Why are we happy? Why aren’t we happy | Dan Gilbert.

We synthesize happiness, but we think happiness is something to be found…Natural happiness is what we get when we get what we wanted. Synthetic happiness is what we make when we don’t get what we wanted.

Dan Gilbert, Ted Talk: Why are we happy? Why aren’t we happy?

Prior to 2017, I tried to find happiness by going on vacations, eating out regularly at Michelin-rated restaurants, and buying luxury products. The more I repeated those activities, the shorter the duration of the happiness and contentment. I didn’t understand why until I started rating all the experiences, activities, and tasks I was doing.

For example, I thought going on vacation was 5/5 happiness activity for me. However, after I analyzed all the parts of going on a vacation, I discovered it is at best 3/5 happiness activity. Mostly because it required me to do many 1/5 star happiness things like flying, driving, booking, organizing, packing, sleeping in an unfamiliar bed, going off my weekly schedule, and etc. That was why I was feeling approximately the same level of satisfaction with my life when I had them versus without them.

I learned that I prefer to synthesize happiness through creativity (usually 4/5 happiness, during and 5/5 happiness after), treating the people I care about by being gentle and loving (usually 4/5 happiness, during and after), and physical activity (usually 2/5 happiness during and 5/5 happiness after).

Goal #6: Emulate Krista Tippet’s (Winner of the National Humanities Medal, Peabody Awards, Webby Awards) way of speaking.

✅(6) Goal accomplished in emulating a sentence of Krista Tippet’s for Week 3/52 from this Design Matters Podcast.

Goal #7: Learn how to grow microgreens from Mark starting 6/1/2022 (Week 22/52)

🔜(7) Goal N/A for Week 1/52.

Goal #1: Maintain my mental and physical health

✅(1a) Goal accomplished in singing two positive songs and one song of my choice every day for Week 3/52.

✅(1b) Goal accomplished in meditating and practicing 25 minutes of yoga 5 to 7 days for Week 3/52.

🔜(1c) Goal N/A for lifting weights 3 to 5 days a week due to my strained neck.

✅(1d) Goal accomplished in doing a physical activity for Week 3/52.

❌Goals not met: 1 (1e) Goal not accomplished in sleeping before 11:30 PM every day for Week 3 of 52.

Not meeting this goal this week showed me that my willpower is not amazing. I have this habit of reading/browsing random Chinese web novels on my phone before sleeping. Most of the novels help put me to sleep within 10 minutes. But sometimes I come across novels like 流光之城 and I read it until 4 AM!

James Clear’s Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones tells me I need to structure a system for a goal to succeed. Going forward, I’m not going to read in bed. I will greatly miss it, but right now I want to wake up feeling refreshed every morning even more.

Goal #2: Work on my marriage

✅(2a) Goal accomplished in continuing my weekly marriage meetings (#181), financial checkups, and date nights with Mark.

✅(2b) Goal accomplished in helping Mark organize for 15-30 minutes every day this past week.

Goal #3: Encourage my mom to expand her worldview starting Week 4/52

🔜(3a) Goal N/A of teaching my mom English for Week 3/52.

🔜(3b) Goal N/A of practicing Senior Yoga with my mom teaching my mom English for Week 3/52.

🔜(3c) Goal N/A of teaching my mom how to become more proficient at using her iPhone for Week 3/52.

Goal #4: Prioritize friendships

🔜(4a) Goal N/A of meeting up with friend 1 to 3 times a month due to Covid.

✅(4b) Goal accomplished in chatting with 1 to 3 friends over the phone/zoom. Mulan and Ubongo for Week 3/52!

Goal #5: Remember my late father through cooking starting Week 9/52 on 3/3 (my father’s birthday).

🔜(5) Goal N/A of posting recipes on this site for Week 3/52.

Week 3/52 Goal Summary

✅Accomplished goals: 13

❌Goals not met: 1

🔜Goals N/A for Week 3/52: 7

🚧Goals in progress: 1

This week’s completion percentage: 92.8% (13/14)

Week 1/52 completion percentage: 91% (I missed the 5 to 7 days of mediation and practice 25 minutes of yoga goal)

Week 2/52 completion percentage: 100%

Week 3/52 completion percentage: 92.8% (I missed sleeping before 11:30 PM every day for Week 3 of 52 goal.)

2022 Average completion percentage: 94.6%

Dear readers, how was your progression towards your 2022 goals? 😃