I do stuff all the time, so what's this daily practice thing all about?

The Daily Practice is a tool to help you track some daily activities. These are core activities that allow you to "sharpen the saw" as the 7 habits people would say. In the original design, they fall into 4 categories: Emotional, Mental, Physical and Spiritual, but you aren’t limited in only using those categories.

Why call it a Practice?

It’s a practice because it's akin to how the buddhists would term meditation.. a practice is something you do, daily. Therefore it is a doingness, and not just ‘talking about it with your friends’.

You want to get good at freethrows, go out and throw a few freethrows... Don’t sit around thinking how nice it would be if you found tie to throw some freethrows.

There is a caveat about the thinkingness part though, you should be aware of. Or in other words, let’s not totally dismiss the mind off the get go… The caveat is visualization, which can actually help one improve.

Visualization is the mental act of using your mind’s eye and imagining doing something. This isn’t just imagining it in a static way… it’s going through the steps of something…. imagining doing it step by step, rather than physically doing it. But that's still more involved than just 'thinking about it'

There’s all kinds of performance improvement information on visualization in the area of sports-coaching, specifically around psycho-cybernetics

When you login, it gives you some ‘default’ options:

• Doing X pushups per day
• Reading one Wikipedia article a day
• Reading something spiritual
• That kind of thing

I’m doing this because I want to see how this whole whositawhatsit will modify my existence. Since I do much of this kind of daily activities to keep myself on my toes, tracking it is really what I need.

I don't believe anything does anything to you unless you let it, by the way. It’s really about the ‘you’ in the equation… But a 'system' that allows you to track how often you do the things that really matter to you is a win win imho

Administrivia 101

This blog is gonna be a place where I talk and post about The Daily Practice. For those wondering what that is, see James Altucher’s excellent blog post about making your life magical: How to be the luckiest guy on the planet.

“My ONLY Three Goals in Life
A)     I want to be happy.
B)      I want to eradicate unhappiness in my life.
C)      I want every day to be as smooth as possible. No hassles. 

That’s it. I’m not asking for much. I need simple goals else I can’t achieve them.
There’s been at least ten times in my life that everything seemed so low I felt like I would never achieve the above three things and the world would be better off without me. Other times I felt like I was stuck at a crossroads and would never figure out which road to take. Each time I bounced back. 

When I look back at these times now I realize there was a common thread. Each time there were four things, and only four things, that were always in place in order for me to bounce back. Now I try to incorporate these four things into a daily practice so I never dip low again.”

It's not that I haven't seen this stuff before. Way back when, when I was all about process and efficiency.. I saw variations of the 4 step process. They can also be seen in the 7Habits material..

“Sharpen the Saw means preserving and enhancing the greatest asset you have--you. It means having a balanced program for self-renewal in the four areas of your life: physical, social/emotional, mental, and spiritual.”

Just to give it purpose other than another to do list, I’ve decided to add a bucket list component to the blog. Something I wanted to have as a blog at some point. And unless I live to be over 90, I’m right smack in the middle of my life. So it's time to start bucket listing that shit!

One of the problems with being in the middle years is that I’ve always sort of done what I wanted to anyway: I live in a cool neighbourhood, do urban things, go to burning man when I can, hang with artist and poets, like tattoos, listen to punk rawk, have done pretty much all the drugs I could ever want to, drank heavily. You know, that kind of shit.

I haven’t felt like I’ve wasted my life. Sure, I haven’t focused enough on any one things to be successful like a Jobs or Gates or anything like that, but it's been a pretty good ride. It’s karate one year and St John Ambulance the next. Know what I mean? Poor Impulse Control…

So having a ‘mid-life crisis’ would have to consist of something crazy like becoming born again, moving to the suburbs, and raising goats.

Anyhoooo, I'm having fun with the Daily Practice, and want to share. so there it is...

My Progress