When I turned 31, my birthday motto was “Double down.”

When I turned 32, my birthday motto was “No problem.”

Last year, my 33rd birthday coincided with my last day at the Robot Co-op and the beginning of Enjoymentland.  My motto for the year was “Frugal to the max.” I just did a little calculation and it looks like our spending over the last 12 months compared to the 12 months prior was 34% lower.  So, at least on the money front, I think we did pretty well on the frugality goal.

In the meantime, I spent the whole year working on my own projects, and managed to stay somewhat afloat finance-wise.  Also, we had a baby.  I guess that’s not very frugal on the DNA front.  But we did have the baby in fairly frugal way: without selling the house (not our choice), without buying a car, without doing all of the screening tests, and hospital visits, and without even requiring a hospital’s intervention.  I’m pretty proud about that, and think Kellianne’s more amazing than ever for having gone through the process with such grace, strength, and confidence.  And we were also very lucky, as there were a couple near misses on needing a hospital transfer, and I know that it’s entirely possible for someone who does everything right, and has the best intentions, to still have a high-risk pregnancy.  We are lucky that we never had to draw that straw.

My brain on this morning of my 34th birthday is highly rearranged from previous years (I think I say that every year though).  I’m not quite sure what this new arrangement is all about yet.  I’m definitely still thinking a lot about building things.  Over the last year, Locavore and 750 Words have been successful and highly enjoyable to work on, and I will continue to work on them, but I’m still looking for something.  There is another less public project that I’ve been working on for a good part of the year, and I hope to be able to talk more about it soon.  Its future is still in flux.

And I guess during this month that I’m taking off from working on anything, I am still thinking very much about what I’m going to want to work on, what I am working on, and what’s going to sustain us over then next 5 to 10 years.

At the same time, I’m rather obsessed with my 13 day-old son, Niko, Mr. Crane, and plan on putting a big chunk of my mental and physical energy into guiding his person and personality.  I feel like my work and home interests dovetail into a common goal of enjoying and appreciating the short confusing surprising life we’ve found ourselves in, and if everything can find inspiration in that tangle, everything should tie together pretty well.

Retweeted last night, and still appropriate this morning:

Human nature has a tendency to Admire Complexity and Reward Simplicity.

Another somehow related quote from page 37 of Hemingway’s Garden of Eden:

Be careful, he said to himself, it is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.

You know, only a few years ago I had such a different view of parenthood and baby-making.  I thought of it as a Plan B, something to do when you had struck out with your own personal ambitions.  A way to pass the buck to the next generation.  I interpret things differently now, of course, and think that building a family is a great foundation and source of strength to work with, for, and from.  We all need a core, and that core needs to grow.  A solid core will help make the right decisions and recover from mistakes and bad luck without sinking the ship.

It’s important to find the core, but it’s equally important to cultivate it.  Rotate the crops, bring in new soil, let it rest and recover.  It’s a living thing, and our deepest values and strongest convictions are going to ebb and flow and shift in the wind just like any other living thing.  The core is going to have moods, and get sick once in a while, and the only way to keep it going for the long haul is to feed it, challenge it, allow it to change.

I’ve had a core set of goals to live by for 3 years now, and it has been shifting every year or so, adapting to my life.  I post it on the front page of my homepage, busterbenson.com, as a reminder more to myself than anyone else.

Here they are, one more time, with a bit more temporarily added to each sentence.

1. You must not dilly-dally, so that the Resistance doesn’t trick you.
2. You must be your word, so that you trust yourself.
3. You must have good intentions, so that you do not betray yourself.
4. You must admit to being the maker of meaning, so that you know what you’re getting.
5. You must not feel sorry for yourself, so that you do not become a martyr.
6. You must have a vision that you are striving for, so that your work moves in a direction.
7. You must tie creativity and experimentation with survival, so that you don’t take your work lightly.
8. You must be the change you want to see, so that you don’t blame others.
9. You must rally others with your vision, so that your vision gains momentum.
10. You must stake your reputation on your better self, so that you become your better self.
11. You must be comfortable with the consequences of being who you are, so that you grow in responsibility.
12. You must share, so that your motivations remain clear.
13. You must make your own advice and take it, so that you trust your own instincts.
14. You must manage your stress, health, and clarity, so that your core stays in balance.
15. You must study your mistakes, so that you don’t make incorrect generalizations.
16. You must retry things you don’t like every once in a while, so that your tastes grow.
17. You must make time to enjoy things, so that you have time to enjoy things.

I want this year to be the year of cultivating the core.

I recently went back and cleaned up some of the data.  I used the Flickr, Twitter, Foursquare, and other apis to go back and store full XML data about all of my past Flickr, Twitter, and Foursquare posts.  I also went back and archived any geo-location data that any of these services attach to posts.  And I also archived all of the photo information so I can better manipulate it in the future should I ever want to.

The next version of the site will be inspired by a couple different things.  I do want to make my personal footstream visible.  I also want to distinguish between content that I make (my blog posts, tweets, and photos) and content that I “like” from others (faved tweets, favorited Flickr photos, shared Google Reader items, liked Tumblr posts, Delicious links, etc).

I also want to tell a better story about how I exist in this world.  How I choose what to work on, how to work on it, etc.  I want to tie in my life outline, as well as my rules for living, and my general outlook on life.

From there I started thinking about how there are certain big themes in my work that I am somewhat obsessed with and constantly return to.  So I made a list of interests that I had.  I rated each interest on my level of interest and also on my level of experience with that interest.  That created a really interesting picture of my interests that I hadn’t considered before.  How, some of my interests are brand new, and how some are decades old.  And yet, they somehow work together, and it almost seems like there’s a method to the interest evolution over time.

Common themes include: smaller-sized projects, quick development, highly interactive, somehow linked to passions, goals, and knowing the self, while building tools that make insight into the self and into my goals easier and more accessible to others.

It’s interesting enough that I think I’m going to flesh out the list of interests, rate them on experience, and then also rate them on my current commitment to the interest and my perceived availability to develop that interest in the future both for myself and as a service to others.

Who knows if it’ll go anywhere, but it clicks with my brain right now.

I would love to have a little map that can show me not only where I’ve been, but the order I went there, and the distance traveled, and the speed of travel, and the amount of time traveling.  Little personal footstreams.

Which days, weeks, or months did I cover the most ground?  Are there patterns of travel during a day, during a season, etc. What’s my personal weather history?  How does my stream of travel relate to the kinds of things I post, pictures I take, etc.

SimpleGeo might be able to help make this even more interesting.  For some reason I can’t quite wrap my head around them though.  I want all of my locations..  are they actually indexing this and can I query for it?  It would be great if I could just give them my Twitter account, Foursquare account, and Flickr account and get back amazing maps full of amazing data.  But I don’t think they’re quite there yet.  Or even going there.

All the data’s here, we just need to connect it.  Once I get a few minutes, one of these days, I’ll give it a try.  For now I am just curious if anyone else is working in this direction.  Thoughts?

I don’t know what my problem is. I get enough sleep, I wake up, I take my vitamins, I eat my breakfast, I stare into the blue light for 15 minutes, I write 750 word of morning braindump to try to clean out the neurons and get to the good stuff, I go on a walk, I have my own space free of distractions, I close down all the social networks, I make lists, I have projects that I like, both short term and long term, I exercise several times a week, I turn on calming thinking music, and yet.

I can’t concentrate. I don’t have the energy or the focus to do more than the mindless tasks of preparation and maintenance.

I try something new each day. A list of things I am grateful for, write out imaginary ideal futures that might plant hooks in me to pull me forward towards them.

I relax, I meditate, I go to yoga, I draw pictures.

What’s wrong with me?

My best guess is some kind of seasonal energy problem that my Vitamin D and blue light treatments haven’t kicked in yet. Crossing my fingers for some placebo effect as well.

Or maybe one of my last glasses of wine killed off the queen bee neuron of my creativity brain cluster.

What you should do today, originally uploaded by Buster Benson.

I didn’t realize how hard I was being on myself until I took a second to relax and give myself a break. So I wrote this out and have it on my desk until I can get it through my head that the only way to keep going for as long as I want to keep going is by giving ourselves a break and forgiving ourselves for not being 100% every waking moment.

Consider this a public service announcement to remember to relax.

The rules: They seem to be evolving still, but here are the basics. During your day, you take pictures of things that you notice (interesting things, things you might otherwise not notice about your environment, and they can’t be people), upload them to Flickr, and tag them with “noticings”. Once a day, at 3pm GMT (or 8am PST), they bring in all the pictures from Flickr and you will get points for each photo.  What’s interesting is that the scoring algorithm seems to change depending on the kind of thing you noticed, where you noticed it, etc.  For example:

• +10 for noticing something.
• +5 for noticing something near someone else’s noticing.
• +10 for being the first person to notice something in a certain neighborhood.
• +50 for noticing something during 12pm and 2pm every day for a week.
• +70 for noticing something every day for a week.
• x2 for noticing something that has been lost (until Nov 8th, when this rule will change)

Of course, I know that I have a particular fondness for this because of the point system.  And while I REALLY LOVE that there is some editorial process to this (someone has to be there to approve when something is lost, obviously), I worry about how this will scale.  What if the creators stop wanting to do this every day?  Will the game stop?

They also get points for referencing my favorite self-referencing game of all time, Nomic, in their post about rules.  Nomic is a game where each turn involves the players changing the rules of the game.  It’s one of the most mind-bending and interesting games ever invented.

There currently isn’t anyone playing in Seattle, but I hope to change that sometime today.

Here’s what I’m working on:

Locavore has continued to sell at a steady pace.  Nowhere near enough to be a living, but definitely a nice supplement to additional streams of income.  I have realized that in order to sell 200/day regularly, I’d have to be mentioned in the NYT or be featured in iTunes pretty regularly, and unfortunately my app doesn’t really have “news-worthy” things to report often enough.  That said, I have been working on a new release that integrates with the wonderful work of Foodista (so long, Epicurious!) to show related recipes.  I’m very excited about this and can’t wait to show you what we’ve built.

Mirror, Mirror is my little photobooth side project that I’m working on with a good friend.  I am building one for Vain (to be installed any day now!) and another to be rented out to local weddings and events.  It’s a fun project, but also not a business idea so much as a cool gadget to play around with.

The other thing I’m working on is actually a full-blown company with a good friend and a local business.  I’ve commited to working 40 hours a week for the next 9 months on it, so it’s gonna be a big chunk of my weekly work.  I’m super excited about it because it’s something that’s practical, has a good business plan, and caters to both my interests and my skill set.  I always scoff at people who withhold details about their projects for fear of being copied… I am withholding details because there’s a bit of an issue of protecting the company we’re working with.  Otherwise, I’d tell you all about it.

A thousand little projects also keep me pretty occupied.  I am helping the guys at Track Your Happiness to build better reporting and such for their data (I also just recently launched Twitter integration for getting your random notifications through the day… try it out!).  I’m helping a friend in California build a website for her new business.  I’m thinking constantly about moods, standards for meaningful work, and event planning, to mention a few of the bigger ones.

Keeping busy, and loving it.

August Spending, originally uploaded by Buster Benson.

Spent $20 less in August than July. Which is better than I was expecting due to the fact that we had to eat out every night for 2 weeks during the time that our windows were being replaced and our kitchen was out of commission.

Other interesting facts:

• $300 less on home stuff
• $550 more on restaurants
• $260 less on groceries
• $200 more on bars
• $140 less on yoga
• $260 less on ATM cash

Weird to watch how life events play out in categories of spending.

Still trying to hit that magical 50% reduction in spending from May.  About 13% to go.

Do this every week:

1. Upload week report screenshot
   1. Week’s points: 143 (all time best, due to attending all the neglected household duties that having our window replaced caused us to neglect)
   2. Week’s animal: hawk (high energy, high focus, low enjoyment, low stress).
2. Review my manifesto for enjoyable living
   1. Make your own meaning.
   2. Make your own advice, then take it.
   3. Have good intentions.
   4. Be your word.
   5. Do not dilly-dally.
   6. Do not feel sorry for yourself.
   7. Take time to make a vision worth striving for.
   8. Rally others with your vision.
   9. Tie creativity and experimentation with survival.
   10. Be the change you wish to see in the world.
   11. Stake your reputation on your better self.
   12. Take responsibility for the consequences of being who you are.
   13. Manage your stress, health, and clarity of mind.
   14. Enjoy things.
   15. Share.
   16. Study your mistakes.
   17. Retry things you don’t like or are afraid of every once in a while.
3. Review my projects, rate challenge versus skill
   1. TI (5 challenge, 5 skill: flow)
   2. Standards (4 challenge, 5 skill: control)
   3. Mirror Mirror (4 challenge, 3 skill: arousal)
   4. Locavore – neglected (5 challenge, 3 skill: arousal)
   5. AS – neglected (4 challenge, 2 skill: anxiety)
   6. Track Your Happiness (4 challenge, 4 skill: flow)
   7. 5 minute life stores – shelved for now
4. Review my goals
   1. Removed “plan something exciting for friends this summer”
   2. Added “finish Infinite Jest”
   3. Marked complete “start a fruit and vegetable garden”
5. Go through email to make sure I’m not forgetting anyone or anything – check
6. Review next week’s calendar – check

This week, I added my various work projects, requiring various frequencies of meaningful work to occur in them lest they start feeling neglected. Meaningful work is an important distinction for me, as there’s all kinds of work and most of it isn’t meaningful. But there’s a certain kind of work that, when done, feels like it was meaningful. It’s the kind of work that makes me feel like I was productive that day.

It generally also means that there’s a certain level of challenge matched with a certain level of skill put into the work. The interesting thing is that almost all kinds of work can be meaningful… it’s about finding that nugget of challenge (for example, to instill a level of attention to detail beyond what is called for) in the work you’re doing. Investing your interest and your eye for how it’s done. The difference between doing something and doing something with love.

Is this working?

This system is striking a chord in my brain.  I’m not sure if it would for anyone else’s brain yet.  At the very least I need to wait until the novelty wears off before I know if it really works in a novelty-free vacuum.  Then, I need to see if the use of it actually leads to more energy, focus, enjoyment, and calm in life.  But, after two weeks now I feel like I’ve been able to stay on top of things in a way that I rarely ever feel.  Especially when I’ve got so much freedom to do whatever I want and have a million little projects going on.

For me, I think there are three secret ingredients in this system:

1. Positive reinforcement only. By having more things than I could possibly do in a single day, I don’t feel pressured to do every single thing that is supposed to be done in a single day.  Some things will get neglected… it’s the nature of our busy lives.  But, by making neglected things rise in points over time, I feel good about attending to neglected things rather than guilty.  And feeling good about it makes me more likely to attend the neglected things.
2. Sort activities differently when I feel differently. This is a magical part that I think I will continue to tweak over time.  I think that our brains work by always shuffling our priorities around to best suit our current state of mind.  Only problem is that our brains can’t hold all of our tasks in our memory at once, and the sorting becomes a little sloppy past the first few items on the list.  And when you have too many things to do it adds a new stressed out state of mind on top of it that just doesn’t really help all the time.  By trying to imitate the sorting with giving certain tasks a boost when I’m feeling low energy, low focus, or low enjoyment I’m trying to mimic what my mind normally does but be more explicit about it.
3. Daily novelty leads to daily review. The system is different every day.  I get assigned to a new spirit animal, my tasks are in a different order, and I get different amounts of points for things done previously.  It’s complicated enough that becomes entertaining to check in and see what I get for a given day… and yet I also know that it’s trying to be smart about it.  The motivation to look daily and see scan all the things I should be doing is a great way to make sure that things don’t slip through the cracks without being aware of them.  They may still slip through the cracks and get neglected, but at least you’ll know that they’re there.  And if it turns out that something doesn’t need as much attention as the moodoscope thinks it does, I can change the importance right there, or remove it entirely.

Okay, that’s all I have to say about it for this week.  Here’s last week’s moodoscope.

I have been drawing little pictures to represent my various physical and mental states for a couple weeks now, trying to see if the process would lead me to better understanding what makes me feel productive, and what makes me feel happy.

I’ve learned a few things along the way. I think “stress” was the oddball metric, even though I think it’s a really important one. I decided over the weekend that I should flip it around and focus on being calm instead. By flipping it to be a positive metric instead of a negative one, it helps remind me what I’m striving for, rather than simply what I’m trying to avoid.

I built a quick reporting tool to capture my 4 emotional state dimensions, and also built a new kind of game that helps articulate the processes that my brain uses in order to manage my day. Here’s the output from last week’s data to give you an idea of what it looks like:

A few notes:

• Each item in the list of daily activities is given:
  • A level of importance
  • A flag designated whether it’s required or not
  • Optional days of the week that it should be done
  • A weekly frequency for tasks that don’t need to be done every month
  • Self-medicative benefits… for example, if something is good at increasing energy, it will be given an extra point for days when my energy is low.  This helps me connect my current state with the activities that are best done to help that state.
• For a given day, the points for a given activity are generated by seeing:
  • Add a point if it’s supposed to be done that day (or if its frequency requires that it be done soon)
  • Add points for its level of importance
  • Add in points if it has been neglected.
• Neglected activities, rather than being punished, increase in importance until they are done.  So it’s perfectly fine to neglect something for a while and then to come back to it.  In reality, I realized that we are required to neglect things until they become important enough to do… otherwise we’d be doing everything a little bit every day.  Instead, I wanted my system to mirror that natural feeling of things becoming more important over time, and encouraging you to do things that have been neglected for a while.  While it might appear that this would encourage me to neglect things in order to get more points for them, I think that getting some points today will always seem more rewarding than planning to get more points in the future, thanks to our cognitive biases for reward.
• I should mention that my chores are being sorely neglected at the moment because our house is under construction while a new window is installed.  I still need to test if it makes sense to put chores in this… but my sense is yes.

I think that by mimicking the way my brain actually works, I may have found a system that could work.  I plan on adding and removing things from the list as I find them to be useful or not.

Notes on the spirit animals

I love things like astrology, personality tests, etc that help create a very general profile of you and give you a reason to think about certain aspects of your personality or life.  I have created an algorithm that places me in one of 8 profiles based on my high vs low numbers in energy, focus, enjoyment, and calm.  Calmness hasn’t been added in yet (as I’m still trying to figure out how it plays in), so when it is added in there will be 16 profiles instead of 8.

I want to create a mood horoscope of sorts that tells you as much about yourself as it can, knowing as much as it can know about yourself.  As I tweak the system and add a layer or two of complexity to it (factoring in calmness, factoring in previous states, average states, etc) it may become smarter about nudging me in the right direction here and there when I need it.  Or, it might not.  In any case, it’s a fun little dimension to the project that I’m excited about.

What do you think?

Am I going further into the woods or finding my way out of it?  I can’t really tell at the moment by myself.

An interesting chart relating how we feel when confronted with difficult work in relation to how much skill and ability we have to meet it. Not sure exactly how it relates to what I’m thinking about, but it probably does somehow.

1. Temperance: Eat not to dullness and drink not to elevation.
2. Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself. Avoid trifling conversation.
3. Order: Let all your things have their places. Let each part of your business have its time.
4. Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve.
5. Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself: i.e. Waste nothing.
6. Industry: Lose no time. Be always employed in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. Sincerity: Use no hurtful deceit. Think innocently and justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. Justice: Wrong none, by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. Moderation: Avoid extremes. Forebear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanness in body, clothes or habitation.
11. Chastity: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring; Never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
12. Tranquility: Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
13. Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

While these virtues are “good”, they don’t really resonate with me very much.  They’re too bound in moderation and a mild temperament.

I’ve been working on my own list of “virtues” or general beliefs of self-conduct for a few years now.  I’ve tried expanding on them a few times, but always return to the simple sentences and limited number in the end.

Here’s what I have:

1. Make your own meaning.
2. Make your own advice, then take it.
3. Have good intentions.
4. Be your word.
5. Do not dilly-dally.
6. Do not feel sorry for yourself.
7. Take time to make a vision worth striving for.
8. Rally others with your vision.
9. Tie creativity and experimentation with survival.
10. Be the change you wish to see in the world.
11. Stake your reputation on your better self.
12. Take responsibility for the consequences of being who you are.
13. Manage your stress, health, and clarity of mind.
14. Enjoy things.
15. Share.
16. Study your mistakes.
17. Retry things you don’t like or are afraid of every once in a while.

Slightly different category of things than BF’s, and I don’t really see how I could create a journal that required me to make note of when I failed to follow these virtues.  So maybe I have some more work to do to simplify them, or rephrase them to be a bit more actionable.  I don’t know.

Okay, so.

Each of us has a bunch of roles that we play in life. Me, I’m a citizen, an worker, a friend, a husband, a son, a brother, and a private self to myself.

Each of these roles that I play have an ever-changing list of goals and responsibilities of varying importance.  Take my worker role.  I have a responsibility to commit a certain amount of time to that work.  In my case, I’ve found that committing myself to being in a state of “work” by 10am (that doesn’t necessarily mean that I need to be at my desk typing code, it just means that I have to be engaged in my work at that time).  On the other hand, simply being at a desk and “working” doesn’t necessarily fulfill the responsibility of the role.  My work needs to be meaningful, creative, and sustaining.  This means, in my case, that I should take a few minutes to ground myself by thinking about my energy, focus, enjoyment, and stress levels, my plan for the day, etc.

And then there’s the shifting importance of roles depending on the day.

In each of my roles, I live a day at a time, and every day those roles have different weights. For example, today is Friday, and it could be said that because I am working and because it is also Friday (where social pressure to go out is higher), I am 25% husband, 33% worker, 17% friend, and 8% citizen, son/brother, and private self. These percentages represent my dedication to fulfilling those roles, and while a work day might have a standard breakdown of commitment to roles, they could also shift slightly or drastically at times.

Some activities are responsibilities that have to be done, while others are goals that you would like to get done, and yet others still are things that might help improve the emotional, mental or physical state that you’re currently in.

Every day, then, there is my physical, mental, and emotional states to take into account.  Even though I come in to work and want to work, unless a few core vital signs are stable, a few of my loftier goals should necessarily give way to the more core responsibilities.  “Be in a state of work by 10am” is a responsibility I have to myself (I have to do it) while “writing down an aphorism” is a goal that, should my level of focus be too low, might move aside so that something more useful like “go on a walk” can take precedence.

Some activities are things that need to happen daily, others weekly or monthly.

Et cetera.

All of these factors can be handled in a couple different ways.  The default way is to handle them intuitively. I have a mechanism in my brain that keeps track of how long it has been since I showered.  I have to shower, pretty much daily, and when I don’t the importance of that activity goes up.  Same with doing the bills, or getting meaningful work done.  Then, there are the things we like to do when we’ve got extra time: catch up on a tv show, download a new iPhone game, get a drink.  Then, there are the things we do to help us control our mental states like exercising, eating a snack, taking a walk.

The default way of handling all of this, intuitively, is a pretty great system.  It works.  It’s a little rough around the edges, things fall through the cracks, etc.

Why would I try to replace this system with a complex algorithm?  One that was like:

All activities/goals/responsibilties in the system * day of week default role weights * optional changes to default role weights * current emotional/mental/physical state weights * any supplementary weights due to neglected responsibilities = ordered list of activities, goals, and responsibilities for the day with invisible point values that turn living life into an incredibly complex game.

Why indeed.  It’s difficult to write software that works better than intuition.  It’s why we all sometimes want to make a list of goals or to-dos for the day but most of the time we are perfectly fine simply remembering them.

I have to admit that I love the over-complicated nature of this system.  It reminds me of Leonardo da Vince’s drawing of the first helicopter.  Way wrong, totally impractical, but also sort of beautiful in its crudeness.

And, to be honest, I’m more interested in this system as a stunt than this system as a true improvement of the complexity of human motivation, emotions, and productivity.  I guess I like feeling like I can sort of take the system apart, see the pieces, etc, rather than worrying about trying to put it all back together.  But when I do put it back together, the Frankenstein’s monster-esque feel of it has a place in my aesthetic.

That felt good to get out. 

July increased about 11% over June, though was still 36% down from May. My goal of making my expenses drop by 50% is still significantly far off. This month, however, had a 14-year old staying with us for two weeks, as well as Kellianne’s mother, so we did try to go out and entertain a bit more than usual. I guess it’s one month at a time with this, so we’ll try harder this month to keep spending down.

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?