Another incredibly difficult pandemic year filled with a ton of frustration and set backs. But looking back I also ended up doing quite a bit.

HABITS

Became a morning person by formalizing two habits: a morning routine and a bedtime ritual
Started using a sitting desk thanks to the work of Mark Sisson of Mark’s Daily Apple. Mark believes this is a much better alternative to standing desks as it forces you to move through a series of “ancestral sitting postures” that might be a useful alternative to mobilizing, especially when it comes to hip opening.

PERSONAL RECORDS, CHALLENGES, & NEW HIGHS

Completed a major 5 month mental experiment where I tally clicked every single negative micro moment of my mind. I’m still mulling over the data.
Completed a massive, progressive 8 month food testing experiment. Despite high levels of adherence, my body fat seems highly resistant - my hope was to see if there was a specific version of primal eating that worked. This involved cycling months of vegetarianism, no dairy, fasting (One Meal a Day), portion control, and strict keto.
Completed a 40 hour fast using tally clicking to offload the urges.
Used tally clicking as a targeted therapy tool for specific, short events like weekends and trips I knew were going to be stressful. Tally clicking seems to have a lot of uses.

THEORIES & EXPERIMENTS

Updated the anatomy of a habit, building off the habit loops of Charles Duhigg and James Clear.
Created a Habit Equation by combining 3 habit graphs and plotting a line of best fit
Used a Jamar hand dynamometer for productivity and focus across the day.
Conducted another habit in a day experiment involving sleep - hopefully I’ll get around to writing that up. Essentially, sleep is vital to learning, and it’s been theorized that napping after learning something can boost the rate it gets consolidated into long term memories. My theory was that it might be used to shortcut the identity and length of perceived time aspects of the SRHI to create a faster habit.
Graphed the progress of granular concentration in samatha meditation. I don’t think this has been done before, and I think it marks a breakthrough method to quantify the progress of meditation.

PLANNING

Continued experimenting on the ultimate planning method - found and read David Kadavy’s book, Mind Management, Not Time Management. Kadavy seems to be the only other person talking about incorporating mental states into planning.
Updated the Eisenhower Matrix and created the Planning Cube to better incorporate behavioral states into planning.
Theorized a better method to train meditation by using running periodization

PUTTING MYSELF OUT THERE

Appeared on several podcasts
Started coaching people
Started a small Pinterest page
Attended my first in person Stoic meeting since the pandemic started
Reached almost 10 k followers on Instagram
Coursera referenced me on an article on motivation

WHAT DIDN’T WORK

Started a weight lifting habit but….tweaked my shoulder and my knee
Got fed up with finding an optimal eating pattern and gained 20 pounds
Got super burned out
Had almost all my habits die out from a lot of travel

MISCELLANEOUS & APPLICATIONS

Dabbled in tantric yoga - specifically dream and Tummo
Experimented with tantric drawing, inspired by work on aphantasia and creativity
Came up with a new form of “resilience mediation”
Came up with a meditation training method to counter social awkwardness
Continued experimenting with a method to fall in love with an action
Did another Finder’s Course - got into some really interesting states with meditations I never got anywhere with before
Published a checklist on the science of falling asleep more efficiently

TRAVEL

Visited San Antonio, Florida, Albuquerque, Texas Hill Country, Seattle, and San Francisco
Wrote a book on Houston with Lydia (Oldest Houston, Reedy Press), out in May

It’s unfortunate ending the year with so many low points, especially with respect to my habits. But that just means there’s more to learn and work on.