Mid Year Review

My half birthday falls on Christmas which also marks the mid-way point for my 29 Before 29 list. Below is a progress report for each of my goals

Health

1. Four Servings Vegetables: 104/200 days
2. 10 Cups of Water: 83/200 days
3. Four Servings Fruit: 102/200 days
4. Meditate: 91/200 days

I’ve eaten far more fruit and vegetables in the past 182 days than in any other stretch of my life. I used to go days without eating a serving of vegetables. For the second half of the year, I’d like to work on increasing the variety of vegetables consumed and also drinking water throughout the day, rather than binging at night to meet the quota.

Exercise

5. Cycling: 1,992/5,000 miles, 623 miles behind
6. Running: 338/1,000 miles, 185 miles behind
7. Swimming: 208,184/500,000 yards, 53,459 yards behind
8. Weight Training: 10/50 times, 16 times behind

I’ve been inconsistent with these fitness goals. I’ve dislocated my shoulder twice which has hampered exercise for several weeks each time. I will have shoulder surgery at the beginning of February which will again sideline me. Ultimately, though, it’s an excuse. If you held a gun to my head I would have been able to stay on track, finding alternative ways to get the exercise accomplished.

Lethal Engineering / Lethal Tri

11. Ultimate Computer Setup Video: Done

12. Solar Death Ray Video: Partially Completed, waiting for warmer weather
13. Halloween Video: Complete, upsetting my wife who specifically told me NOT to make napalm

15. Blog Posts: 10/20, if you count this one
17. Basement Workshop: Fully functional!

Creating Lethal Engineering videos is a true passion of mine. Each project and resulting video takes 30-40 hours to complete, but that time flies by. I’m working on several other projects outside the ones listed in my goals.

Business

18. 129/250 ‘units’ of work complete
19. Pursued 1 out of 2 railroad for additional business
20. 15 out of 30 hours of studying to increase railroad knowledge
21. Train one other person for checking responsibilities: going well!

Our employees have done a great job. We’ve had a little more focus on training and it has paid huge dividends.

Adventure

24. See a rocket launch in person: I’d like to see the maiden flight of the Falcon Heavy, which looks to be coming up this month. That shoulder surgery might get in the way though.

Other

26. Read 10 out of 20 books, I would only recommend four of them though.
27. Net worth: $89,000/$100,000
28. Track goals: 171/200 days
29. Review goals: 52/200 days

Not much to say on these ones. Good progress across the board.

No Progress

9. Flexibility: Be able to touch toes
10. Learn to do all bike maintenance
14. Quadcopter build video
16. One LethalTri video
22. Bike the entire Cowboy Trail
23. Learn song on piano and play in public
25. One MIT OpenCourseware course

Working on these goals was planned for the second part of the year.

Thoughts

I’ve made far more progress on my goals this time around than in any previous year, completing 3 out of the 29 goals so far and making good progress on the long term goals. That’s a result of my commitment contract. The threat of having to pay large sums of money motivates me to action and holds me accountable. I procrastinated severely on four of my goals that had intermediate deadlines of January 1st and have been working my ass of the last four days to complete them. The one benefit of that procrastination, however, is that it has shown me how quickly I can accomplish these goals with complete focus. With consistent effort, I believe that I’ll accomplish all 29 of my goals by June 25th, 2018.