2018 October Review and November goals

October had been a chaos. I felt that I lost control over all my routines. It is a good thing that I do a monthly review which helps me get back to my schedule in a month when I am not able to live up to my expectations.

Review of October

 
1.Meditation
 
When I did it with my teacher, I was able to do it in a calm way. But when I sat down to do it by myself, I was not able to go into the complete meditative state. Also, the disappointing part of the meditation practise was, I could not maintain the 31 day streak as I initially wanted to.
 
2.10,000 steps
 
On a few days, I could do as many as 15,000 steps and on few others I could hardly cross 6000. On a few others, I didn’t really track my steps. The average was close to 9000 if not 10,000. It was a good enough progress.
 
3.Books
 
a) First comes love, then comes money
 
It was just one chapter of the book which was relevant for me. I finished that in one evening and was insightful. I could connect the personality types mentioned in this book to the personality types I read in ‘Why him Why her’.
 
Also, this book helped me understand people in my real life on why they behave the way they do.
 
b) How to talk to anyone
This book doesn’t focus on conversations alone. It is more of an overall personality building book. I regret trying to read it all in one go instead of choosing one technique a day as the goal. The book is useless to read if I don’t apply the first technique before I read the second one.
 
4.Writing
 
I could not stick to my target and write everyday. I could pull off only 1000 words. That was still better than not writing anything at all.
 

Plans for November

 
I have analysed what went wrong last month and what can be done to get back to track. One of the biggest issues I was facing was productivity. It was not that I didn’t have time. I was not using the time I had productively. I was waiting to get into the mood to do things instead of using every short break available. Keeping that in mind, I designed my schedule for the month of November.
 
1.Thought tracker
 
My life became so chaotic that I stopped writing diary which is very disastrous for well-being. This is the first thing I need to get back to. This also helps me deal with my overthinking which I waste time on. Previously, whenever I did this activity, it helped me a great deal in improving my productivity.
 
Whenever I feel distracted, I will make a note of my thoughts.
 
2.Meditation
I have crossed a 200 day streak in photography. My friend challenged me to do a similar streak in Meditation. I won’t count the amount of time I spend on it. All I want to do is attempt to sit daily for meditation for the next 30 days.
 
3.Books
 
I have lost track of the number of books I read this year. I failed in posting the book reviews too. I need to find a way to track all the books I read to see if I reached my target to read 52 books this year.
 
Keeping the original target in mind, I want to read 5 books this month.
 
Psychology
 
Attached
 
As a part of my personality theories, this month, I am going to read on attachment. I have already read a great deal on attachment, this book is just for revision to fill any missing gaps.
 
The relationship cure
 
Even though the book name suggests that it is on relationsips, it is more about emotional intelligence. My last attempt at learning about emotional intelligence was a failure. Hoping that this will help me in getting the knowledge I am looking for.
 
I will read 2 chapters a week and finish the book in 4 weeks.
 
Fitness
 
I had been exercising but that doesn’t seem to bring any change in my metabolism. I want to understand the science behind the food and exercise to be more effective.
 
The 4 hour body
 
Even though it is a very fat book, I don’t really need to read it all. The section on losing fat is my main focus.
 
The sections I want to cover are 300 pages. 10 pages a day will help me finish it.
 
Deep Nutrition
 
Exercise alone won’t help in burning fat. The food you take also matters. This book is going to be my first attempt at cracking the science behind nutrition.
 
The book has around 400 pages. 13 pages a day will help me reach the target.
 
Creativity
 
I had been ignoring the other parts of self-improvement. So this month, I will bring in a little dose of it.
 
Imagine
 
I came across this book in one of the Quora sessions and I hope that it will give me some material to chew on. I don’t want to be over ambitious to finish the book. It consists of two parts and I am aiming at only one part of it which comes to 200 pages. I can read 7 pages a day and still finish that.
 
In order to stick to my schedule, I will put daily reminder and track how much of it I have been reading.
 
Reading books had been a part of my life. Not doing it daily makes me feel that a part of me is dying. This is an attempt to rejuvenate myself.
 
Overall, I might have to spend around an hour on reading daily which is definitely doable.
 
4.Language Learning
 
I moved to a different city and want to learn the local language here.
 
Even though learning sentences is important, I want to start off with learning one word a day and then building the grammar.
 
Target

• One word a day
• Listen to one song
• Watch one movie

 
Time required is 5 minutes a day.
 
5.Writing
 
In the past one month, I hardly wrote on Quora. To get good at a skill, you need to write at least a bit daily. I will write another 3000 words for my book. I wrote my first book in 15 days but with the current tight schedule I am not able to do that. If I can’t run, I should at least crawl. 100 words a day is the bare minimum I can do. This should not take me more than 20 minutes.
 
That’s all for November.
 
How was your October? What are your plans for November?
 
Happy November!