10.29.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:32 pm by khaled
- High Achievement at Work
- Independent Professional Development
- Creative Engineering Abilities
- Strong Leadership Skills
- Good Eating Habits
- Exercise Regularly
- Relationship Experience
- Personal Freedom
- Control Over my Finances
- High Level of Organization
- Active and Interesting Social Life
- An end to the Palestinian Tragedy
- Social and Economic Justice Around the World
- Wealth of Knowledge
- Excellent Writing Skill
- Excellent Speaking Skills
- Excellent Social Skills
- Fully Controlled Epilepsy
- Healthy, Disease-Free, and Problem Free Body
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10.18.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:38 pm by khaled
So I took the day off today with the intent of studying and relaxing from the daily routine that was starting to bore me. The experiment was a pretty pathetic experiment. I really didn’t do any serious studying not did I relax. The reasons for this failure is simple, I didn’t have a clear, challenging plan regarding what I wanted to accomplish and how I wanted to do it. The net result is that I spent a lot of time not focused on any specific task and seemed to just waste a lot of time. Additionally I didn’t manage to accomplish the goal of starting to eat healthy - although I did a bit better than usual.
The need to have all my tasks outlined is crucial. They have to be identified as very tangible actionable items. My list has to be extensive and should outline what I need to be doing next. Another crucial piece of the puzzle is that I need to commit to actual looking at my task lists and making them my point of reference for my actions.
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10.17.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:55 pm by khaled
Things have settled down a little bit for me know and it’s not unreasonable to look at the next set of projects that I want to tackle moving forward.
- Work is under control, I need to work out the wrinkles in my system, be more committed to the whole wiki tracking approach, and be more on top of things throughout the whole day.
- School is also under control, and despite the fact that it takes a lot of time, I am managing to get all the work done and I’m confident that I’m actually learning and getting the most out of my experience.
The challenge immediately to follow is the whole weight issue. As my lower back pain slowly wanes I’m going to be able to ease back into working out. I really don’t think the workouts are going to be the main challenge. The bigger problem is my approach to eating which lacks even the most modest dimensions of discipline. The truth is that’s not even a question of discipline anymore. There some sort of big psychological flaw that is causing these terrible decisions when it comes to what I eat. These choices are bordering on the absurd; I feel like a man slowly walking towards a cliff, not able to even ask the question of why he’s walking in that direction. The absurdity needs to end.
The next major project to be taken on seriously is my weightloss effort. To make the goal easier to accomplish I’m going to break it up into several phases:
- Move to a healthy food only diet - No restriction on caloric intake, as long as it’s natural and healthy
- Begin a 3 times a week exercise program in addition to daily walks
- Impose caloric restrictions
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10.09.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:36 pm by khaled
So I started my little experiment today to send myself little SMS reminders regularly through out the day to let me know that I should focus and not allow myself to be distracted. Out of the three messages that were sent I only saw the first one in the morning. The rest of the time I didn’t have my phone with me. So it is hard to tell whether this was a success or not and the fact is I will be unable to tell for weeks. The one positive thing is that today I focused more than any day in the past month which is great. Tomorrow will be a bigger test since I don’t have meetings and I’m going to have to work all day.
Another thing that helped was the fact that I wacked the netvibes page, and I didn’t check it all day. I think this helped tremendously. It is important to take inventory of the things that are effecting your life negatively on a regular basis and correct them.
The wiki is also playing a positive role in helping me keep track of the things that I need to do. i really need to stick with the regular updates, they are critical.
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10.08.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:24 pm by khaled
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a better system to use for tracking the different aspects of my life. With the overwhelming number of projects that I have, it is becoming more and more difficult to keep up with everything without a reliable system. I really believe the wiki is going to be an excellent way to do this and has been working well up to this point, but there is a long way to go in terms of how I interact with it and how much usefulness I can extract out of it.
In the middle of all of this I’ve been also faced with a number of challenges, the most pressing of which is my performance at work. I am having a great deal of trouble focusing on my work and getting anything done. This is primarily due to the fact that I am wasting an incredible amount of time surfing the web and doing other useless things. Dealing with this problem is of great concern and requires my immediate attention. This brings us to the question of how would I do that? This is basically the tie in to the wiki and what I’m developing there. Dealing with any problem, or trying to manage any change is not different than any project. It is a series of tasks that need to be enumerated, performed and assessed. This makes the wiki a logical place to put the management of this problem.
There is nothing special about the wiki, it just happens to be the platform that I’ve chosen to do a crucial function - project tracking. The more I think about how things are accomplished the more I realize the value of the natural process of “Do-Assess-Repeat”. This approach is very instinctual, and we do it all the time in almost everything we do. Learning to ride a bike, or to read, or to bowl all involve this process on an almost unconscious level. What I want to do is to bring this process to bear to all aspects of my life. From imporving the way that I work, to getting fit, everything else that I do I want to track it, figure out how well I’m doing and refine my work.
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