I’ve been a little behind with this post. This has been the most turbulent year I’ve ever had, with immense amounts of travel, and a lot of setbacks. Nevertheless, the tests and experiments have yielded pure gold, techniques I can see myself using for the rest of my life. I'm including a few months of 2018 here (up until now) so i'm cheating a bit - but here are the highlights:

Habits
-Created a once-a-week habit and mapped it out using the SRHI
-Pushed meditation by successfully cross training it, adding gratitude, tantra, and metta training
-Created a social media habit

Personal Records
-Passed 4 years of daily recording
-Passed 1,000 days of daily writing
-Got back to my habits in record time (1 day off) after travel
-Improved the functional skill of my mental state through meditation

Publishing
-Wrote an article in Tricycle Magazine on behavioral change and meditation. This was subsequently shared by JSTOR, and listed as Tricycle's top list of articles in 2017
-Wrote quality Quora answers that garnered hundreds of views
-Connected with one of my favorite travel writers, one of my favorite meditation instructors, and got an offer to submit to Quartz
-Moved my website over to a new site

Theories and Experiments
-Experimented with Personal Kanban and used Trello to improve my workflow
-Had a breakthrough with the editing process of writing
-Experimented and succeeded with a new method of removing a negative habit using a tally clicker
-Conducted a sleep experiment using my own sleep scale
-Found a willpower scale
-Conducted another travel sandbagging experiment
-Progressively analyzed, read, and experimented with countering moments of ego-depletion and procrastination, and then came up with a protocol that seems to have cured me of these issues even with regards to difficult tasks.
-Used Cal Newport's concept of "deep work" to come up with a deep work protocol that works like a dream.

Learning
-Read: Cal Newport's Deep Work and So Good They Can't Ignore You
-The Weekend Effect by Katrina Onstad
-Peak Performance by Stulberg and Magness
-Personal Kanban by Barry and Benson
-Tools of Titans by Timothy Ferriss
-Lots of guides on the Getting Things Done method
-A lot of details regarding cross training meditation, specifically Dr. Jeffery Martin's Finder's Course
-Culadasa's The Mind Illuminated
-Started a Udemy course on the writing process
-Completed a Gotham Writer's course on querying agents for book publication and wrote and revised my own query letter

Attempts and Failures
-Phased out a Pantry Check and Food Recording Habit
-Attempted and failed to complete a 14-day mobility overhaul
-Attempted and failed to complete a Whole Life Challenge
-Attempted a 30 minute research and blogging session at the end of my writing to push the habit
-Attempted a skill push with planning meals
-Paused my social media habit

Travel
-Road trip through Southern France (Toulouse, Narbonnes, Nimes, Albi)
-Road trip through the Costa Brava
-Visited the Catalan town of Vic
-Visited Valencia
-Camped through the entirety of Iceland
-Visited Italy (Bologna and Florence)
-Attended my 20 year high school reunion
-Hosted 6 friends
-Attended a conference in Chicago
-Traveled through Hawaii (Honolulu, Kailua Kona, Hilo, Kawaii)
-Visited South Carolina
-Visited the States (Albuquerque and Houston) two or three times

I really thought I didn't do much this year, but looking back it really amazes me that I was able to do this much while traveling an incredible amount and being sick a record number of times (I think I got sick 4 or 5 times). Lydia and I also decided to move back to the States during this time, and went through the process of selling our stuff and moving everything (a bigger post on that later).

Seeing what I've done despite massive interruptions makes me feel secure in the process I've developed - there is no way I could've stayed the course before. I'm also really eager to see what a year of stability would result in. Here's to 2018!