A System ver0

I originally had the intent to create this system in a super design-y way, and write the post like an ESP report. But alas that intention fizzled out. Instead I based version zero on what I knew already worked. Is it a lazy approach? yes. Is it likely to work? I believe so.

I also intended to have the system on a single platform for maximum integration and elegance. But after looking into a couple of platforms / trying to tinker things, it became obvious that it would be too much of a compromise. Since the purpose of each reflection interval (instantaneous, daily, weekly, monthly, and annually) are different, they would be better served by different medium.

Currently, I've chosen:


Trello desktop app for instantaneous reflection (captain's log)

I was really stuck on picking a medium for the captains log because I wanted it to sync between desktop and mobile, while also autofilling the current date/time. I could've followed Malcom (and others) and used workflowy, except I didn't want to spend money on another software that enables a keyboard shortcut to insert the current date/time. After some time of frustration, I realized I'm not micromanaging my day to need to see the timestamp of my logged thoughts, so I threw out the time/date requirement. Picking Trello was purely based on (relative) familiarity with the platform (I'm far from a power-user). The desktop app is quite nice as there is a keyboard shortcut to bring up card-creation, which is seamless enough for me to log thoughts as they come. My captain's log is a list within my "mission control" board. 

Trello for daily morning planning

The second list is "daily priorities". I'll add ~3 items every morning to give some focus to my day.
Typeform for daily reflectional night: 

I chose typeform since its pretty aesthetically pleasing. My questionnaire is H&C themed to be extra motivating :D There's a set of questions, mostly qualitative, about how my day went. The questions I gathered from the daily journals that people recommended in the GCI workshop, along with some YNCN practices. One pitfall, or at least I consider it a pitfall, that I wanted to avoid was excessive quantitative data collection. The advantage of quantitative data is that its easy to automate its processing and analysis, but at the trade-off of a rather restive field of view (arguable I suppose, I could always pick better metrics to track). But more importantly to me, automation is the literal opposite of being mindful, and thus defeats the point of reflecting.

Google Docs for weekly reflections

I'd like for this to be on Typeform as well, but their free plan is limited to 10 questions and the paid plan of $30USD/month is not worth its prettiness. The doc opens with the questions of "what was my most profound experience of this week", again to focus more on the experiential rather than quantitative data. I had a really hard time coming up with good effective questions, and ended up with 3 sections of "how I spent the week", "did I plan this week well", and "looking forward to next week". Who knows if I've actually picked good questions, will reassess after Q1.

Blog post for monthly reflections

Hurray public accountability! Blog posts are also convenient to retrieve for the annual review. Monthly reflections have 2 foci: stoplight progress tracking of goals, and prompting questions about how I spent the month. Also quite unsure about the effectiveness of these questions, but we'll see. My desired outcomes for this is to reassess the relevancy of a) this system, b) my goals, be critical of my progress and then realign my actions as necessary. 

??? for annual reflections

To be honest I haven't thought much about this. There'll be reviewing my performance on this year's goals. Setting & planning for new goals are also definitely a part of it. I also want it to be more of a discussion with other people. I also like to pick a theme for the year. Evidently, this paragraph is much more of free-flowing thoughts. 

To get side tracked even more, I have no clue how good my critical thinking skills are. The instances where I put in explicit effort to be critical in my thinking are my theses, but both of them didn't get much feedback on how critical I was. I got good marks...so that's reassuring but is that really a good measure?

Anyways going to cook dinner instead.