Monthly report 2019-10-31

habits

This month I worked very hard on re-establishing some important habits, including habit-tracking, that had lapsed after some setbacks. The stats are a little odd because I didn’t start tracking everything until sometime well into the month.

Habits

Russian

In an effort to complete the 10,000 word Brown Russian vocabulary list by the end of May 2020, I need to do at least 15 words a day. This month, I logged 395 new Russian words in Anki. These words are often, but not always accompanied by example sentences that I study in a separate deck. This month, I added an additional 348 new sentences and 83 new grammar cards.

In my main vocabulary deck my 30 day true retention rate was 90.4%, while completing 9636 reviews for a total of 532 minutes.

Health and fitness

I lifted weights a total of 23 times over the month and worked out for 180 minutes. I logged having brushed my teeth 16 times and flossed 13 times. Again, I only started tracking things around the middle of the month.

Scholarship

In my habit tracker, I logged 108 pages read, but suspect it was much for than that. I have a hard time tracking pages read.

Music

I practiced the piano for a total of 200 minutes.

Time efficiency

Social media can be a time-sink. I logged having used Facebook only once, Instagram 13 times, and the latter for a total 31 minutes during the month.

Notables

It has taken a lot of energy to track and reboot these habits. It feels like a solid start.

Rules of Self-Governance

self-improvement
I’m a big fan of David Cain’s raptitude.com. A post from 2017 entitled Wise people have rules for themselves is one that a come back to frequently. In short, he makes the point that productive and consistent people don’t leave important (or even some trivial) aspects of their lives to chance. They create rules for themselves around certain behaviours and tasks. He also makes the point that others often attempt to undermine or discredit those who create rules for their own self-governance by labelling them as joyless, rigid, or overly competitive.
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Trust in Mind

zen
Sengcan, the Third Ancestor Listening to a series of excellent dharma talks from the San Francisco Zen Center, I first learned about the ancient poem “Trust in Mind”^[Full text of the poem, “Xinxinming”.] by the Third Ancestor of the Zen tradition, Jianzhi Sengcan (鑑智僧璨) It captures beautifully, even in translation, the essence of Zen. “The Perfect Way is only difficult for those who pick and choose;
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