This is the 3rd post of my continued brainstorm on the idea of building a set of standards to run your life with (inspired by Jake Lodwick’s similar pursuit).  By designing, executing, reviewing and revising these standards, the goal would be to eventually end up with a workable and, importantly, custom, plan for long-term happiness. Forgive me if it’s long-winded while I continue to figure out what I’m trying to say.

As of right now, I think this is the scale and the dimensions that I want to track of my emotional state as it relates to productivity, happiness, and living a life that I feel in some amount of control over.

Energy refers to my physical state. Feeling healthy, rested, strong, etc all contribute to a sense of having energy. I think it captures both the long term and short term benefits of daily living and such. Big fluctuations in energy could mean that I’m over-self-medicating. Long periods of low energy could pinpoint bad habits. And long periods of high energy can be appreciated for what they are.

Focus refers to my mental state. Being able to control my attention seems to be the best indicator (and an easy thing to introspect about myself) of having not let myself be taken on every whimsical distraction that the day produces. It allows me to know what I want, why I want it, and how I can go about getting it. It provides direction, while energy provides the motivation.

Enjoyment refers to my general state of happiness and ability to appreciate the moment. Knowing what I want and having the energy to get it is useless unless I also have the ability to appreciate and enjoy what I do have. But simply enjoying what I have would slowly become more difficult unless I stayed on track with focus and energy so that I could continue to pursue the rewards of life.

Stress is different from the other three.  Unlike the others, you aren’t necessarily trying to optimize it to be high.  On the other hand, you don’t want it to be low either.  I think stress is best when it’s got a good amount of up and down–it should be like a well-oiled lever that you can ratchet up when you are doing something important, and then pull back down when you’re done.  Stress isn’t all bad–there’s a term for good stress: eustress.  It’s what happens when you play a good game of poker, or watch a suspenseful movie, or have a big presentation coming up.  It means that there are things that matter in your life and you care about them, and you’re doing things that challenge you.  Stress is only bad when it stays high for too long, or when it is coming from sources that you can’t control, and therefore that you can’t make go away.  That said, I still think it’s a really important factor in our own pursuits of happiness, and so I want to be aware of it.

The next step

I am going to record my own emotional vitality signs for a while, and also make note of a couple things: whenever one of the signs fluctuates two points or more in a single day, I want to record what caused the sudden up or down movement (to the best of my knowledge).  Secondarily, I will give myself assignments that try to take on the weakest vital sign and improve it during the day… hoping that I’ll find the most effective ways of managing my energy, focus, enjoyment, and stress.

Only good things can come of this, right?

This entry was posted by Buster on Sunday, August 2nd, 2009 at 8:03 pm. It is filed under Standards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.