I'm ready to give this another try. I'm going to return to the basic five point rating system; however, instead of 1 through 5, I'm going to use zero as my median value. So the lower two points will designate two degrees of decline, the middle value (zero) will mean motion neither up nor down, and the higher two points will designate two degrees of virtue. In addition to a daily score, I'm going to keep a running tally of my points. It will be like a quantitative climb up a mountain of virtue. This way I can record overall progress in addition to momentary movement.
Today's score: 1
Total score: 1
I earned money by working in my neighbor's yard this morning, I worked out for half an hour (in addition to the exercise I got working), I ate three regular meals that were at least somewhat healthy, I had a lovely conversation with Eva, I worked on my book for an hour, I compiled a list of people that I want to stay in contact with along with their information and a column tracking the most recent correspondence with them--I want to do a better job of keeping up with people, I went grocery shopping for the house, I helped take care of the dogs, I practised good hygiene, I started moving forward on some lingering administrative crap, I did half an hour of French, I'm going to look again at my speed reading book to possibly work it into my schedule, and with any luck I'll get in some reading on Crime and Punishment tonight.
There were two immediately obvious flaws in my performance today, and they are both recurring problems. One is that I started getting panicked about the work I had to do and I was unable to remain calm like a stoic. To solve this I just need to control myself psychologically, and meditate on cultivating good attitudes. The other probablem was that my transitions were sloppy. I probably lost over an hour today by not crisply finishing one task and making a definitive and determined start on the next one. This is a psychological problem as well, but the solution is not strictly psychological. Good scheduling will help this problem, which partially means having a clear idea of what I want to accomplish, what each of those tasks will be like, and how I want them to go down.
Come on Dan, and Kyle if you want, we should jump back on this.