Operation Unless

It's about that time for New Years resolution junkies (yours truly) to formulate grand plans for the coming year... only to watch plan adherence crumble by mid-January.  Here's how I'm tweaking my approach-

1.  Pick a theme for 2018:  Unless
2.  Pick a boulder-sized project that will not be competed out by simultaneously attempting other boulder-sized projects:  Write a book
3.  Pick some supporting month-level focus areas
4.  Forge a set of daily habits to keep me on track


1.  Pick a theme for 2018:  Unless

The Lorax is one of those deceptively simple books that have haunted me.  I think the ideas this book broached made me receptive to epic challenges like training for a permaculture design certificate or contemplating starting my own Riot 4 Austerity or Zero Waste project.  The Lorax made me ultra-sensitive to things like the bleaching MacGyver and I saw honeymooning on the Great Barrier Reef.  Thanks to the Lorax, a huge constellation of ideas about sustainability and conservation can be summarized by the single watch word: Unless.   


2a.  Pick a boulder-sized project:  Write a Book

They say everyone has a book in them; I have been procrastinating on mine for years.  I would come up with excuses like "I don't have enough experience in X to pretend to be an expert," or "the experiences I gain in X won't apply to a wide enough audience to justify writing a book."  But now I've seen colleagues and authors I respect share their self-publishing journey and help lay out stepping stones for my own.  Having been retired for a year and living comfortably, I feel I'm at a place now where I can scuttle a lot of the pressure I was putting on myself to churn out enough mass-appeal best selling stuff to replace the income I used to collect while working for Initech.  So yeah, let's write a book that *I* would use as a reference.  If in the fullness of time other people want to read it or pay for the pleasure of doing so, that's an unexpected bonus. 

2b.  ...that will not be competed out by simultaneously attempting other boulder-sized projects...

This is tricky because I already have some prior commitments.  It is more realistic to look at them all side by side, anticipate if there are obvious conflicts in the direction they will take me and be clear in advance which priority would "win" if it came down to a metaphorical knife fight between them...  Since last year was a very selfish year of training for an Ironman, I have promised to support MacGyver on his objectives for this year (which revolve around a target weight and an upgraded landscape).  I'm pretty sure many of the Unless-themed activities will support or at least not work at cross purposes with this prior commitment, but it would be unrealistic to deny that there may be some friction from time to time and if a compromise couldn't be found, MacG's needs would win the knife fight.  That said, I've come to believe that a recipe for spousal harmony (or good partnerships in general) is to not to get too personally invested in changing the other person.  What you see is what you get and chalk any positive change they make up as an unexpected bonus.  This is in keeping with the general idea that you should care more about stuff that's within your immediate sphere of control rather than worrying about stuff you have second to nth order degrees of control over.  So if hypothetically, achieving MacGyver's objectives *requires* that I ride him like the sadistic taskmaster that I am, you know, to the point where I can't juggle some side projects of my own, I would be in pretty flagrant violation of the spousal harmony covenant.  This morphs from a partner project to a me-wanting-to-change-my-partner project and it might be good for me to "get a hobby."  Also, let's bury this easter egg in the middle of a blog post in a wall o'text paragraph lest the scant portion of this blog's already scant readership that knows me in person reads it-- fascinating how touchy I am on this topic, this warrants a deeper reflection when I am more comfortable oversharing, but I digress-- since the biological clock is ticking and parenting seems like a challenging fun adventure, we're exploring that whole starting a family project as well.  It seems like the majority of the books I've been voyeuristically devouring on this topic warn that we should stay pretty flexible on the expectations we set for future selves who might roll "morning sickness," "preeclampsia," and other fun dot spells that could throw a wrench in otherwise well-laid plans on other fronts.  Oh, and finally, as sort of a concession if the year of family planning doesn't work out and because stuff books up stupid early, we signed up to attempt to hike rim to rim on the Grand Canyon next October.  My thoughts on that are pretty similar to my commitment to MacGyver.  So in the broadest of priority strokes, spawn>macgyver goals>unless book>canyoneering.

Now I can run around brazenly telling people my 2018 project is writing a book.  Full stop.  No more hemming and hawing about the numerous adventures I could choose now that I've finished the Ironman and returned from honeymoon (my prior commitment evasion excuses).

3.  Pick supporting month-level focus areas

Sweet.  This is mostly to scratch that itch I have to be continuously planning something and the paradoxical paralyzing overwhelm I feel when trying to build an entire plan for the year in one sitting.  The nice thing about sustainability is I can repurpose a lot of the structured categories outlined by Astyk when she drafted her Riot4Austerity game.  She had 7 categories, but since we are in socal where Heating Gas is not quite as focal of a thing, I'll combine Gas with Electric for 6 categories and cycle through focusing on each of them for two months of the year.  Calendar events set.

4.  Forge a set of daily habits to keep me on track

I love the web app Habitica that I downloaded on Google Play.  Unlike other to-do lists, this one has sections encouraging daily rituals and habits.  However, I've found I need to prune out those sections periodically because caffeinated past self thinks I can achieve a lot more in a day than current self actually manages and because some habits just stop making sense (i.e. measuring my heart rate in the morning to figure out if I'm overtrained and need to scale back today's workout now that I'm not training).  I've found it works better to be parsimonious and get some habits anchored down to the point where inertia is carrying them before trying to layer more habits in.  It is also helpful to sequence them together, for instance by adding a series of habits to do right after waking up or at a meal time.  It is harder to add an orphan habit if there aren't other established habits to group it with and remind you to work on it.

Another framework covered in a Tedx talk I want to experiment with is the concept that you have a couple "selfs" in control of your behavior.  You have an emotional self (some books call it Chimp or The Elephant) that usually runs the show and exerts the most control when you are upset or in some way dissatisfied.  This conceptually might be why it is hard to delay gratification and choose to deprive yourself now for future rewards when you're already feeling dissatisfied.  There is the logical part of your brain (some books call it Professor or The Rider) that you can use to make plans in the future or rationalize your past.  These plans are great but if there is upsetting adversity, the emotional part of your brain can instead pressure the logical part of your brain to justify procrastinating hard stuff for the future in favor of doing more pleasurable stuff in the present.  And then there is the third part of your brain which is The Robot of inertia, muscle memory reactions and interpretations to things.  Basically, the habits and rituals that acrete over time.  When emotion and logic are in agreement, programming can be written to the robot so you don't have to use so much self-discipline and arm twisting to get stuff done.  Cool, so I wanted to find a set of habits that furthered Operation Unless and it seemed like keeping all those parts of my brain happy was a crucial condition.

Daily tasks (over coffee + breakfast)

• Emotional:  create and visit a pinterest page of inspiring pictures of projects I can attempt related to Operation Unless.
• Logical:  read/research a bit about a topic related to Operation Unless daily.   
• Robot:  journal (medium TBD) daily about this journey celebrating observations and noble failures of any projects attempted.  Worst case scenario: at the end of the year you can publish that brain dump as a deliverable... but budgeting some time later on to edit and curate would be ideal.  

So here goes!