@career
This might be something to work on iteratively, it’s fairly general and the ideas in it would be good to explore, take a yearly horizon for looking at this though, or at least, it’s not immediate
Skim through and pick the area that would make the biggest difference in your life for the least effort, then focus on it until you can nail it down. We typically pick one or two areas to work on each year.
- Take Care of yourself: Research (although slim) seems to show that taking care of yourself increases your energy. In terms of maintain relationships, getting sleep etc. Being overly sacrificial is not the most effective ways to be good at what you do and maximising usefulness in that job.
- Deal with mental health: I’m not sure if I’ve mental health problems to be honest.
- Deal with physical health: Lower back pain specifically as statistically it’s likely you’ll deal with it at some point in your life. It seems to be an awfully common form of people not being able to work. So have good ergonomics is important.
- Apply Science to Happiness: There’s a list of things to do here. Specifically, tracking your mood, gratitude journalling and CBT. My initial feeling is that I couldn’t be bothered but it seems like something I could tip away at over the coming months. As stated in the opening one can focus on one or two things, I don’t have to do them all.
I think one of the most useful things I’m picking up on this read through is having a daily review. I try this myself with retros but having a daily review (5-10 mins) would be good for the mood tracking gratitude level stuff.
Another good resource could be Learning How to Learn
Cal Newport about sketching a plan for your week * I like this idea, it gives you a bit more freedom to plan your day and the general goals in mind. * I also like how he puts the criticality of a task. Like try and find three hours to do this, it’s very important to get it done. It can put a time limit on what you need to focus on so it’s easier switch off.