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Enough Excuses

Today I'm starting something a little different, I'm keeping track of my excuses.

There are so many times that I've tried to create new habits or start new things and fail for one reason or another. I almost always start this process by looking at my available free time, trying to optimize my schedule where I can, and then putting that schedule into a calendar with notifications. All this effort put forth and then when the rubber hits the road I just ignore the calendar and swipe away its notifications.

I'm starting the same way I always do but I'm adding one more thing to it. I want to make myself write down why I didn't do a thing that I've scheduled for myself; I'm trying to outsmart my future self. I'm adding to this a list of things that I want to make sure I do like running a few times a week, writing (like this blog), connecting with friends, and yoga almost every day. To help me keep track of these excuse, I've set up a Google form that asks what activity I was planning on doing and then why I didn't do it and added this link to each calendar item so that I can just click the link without much effort.

What do I plan to do with these excuses? Well, I thought about posting them on Facebook or Twitter but realized that would just keep me from writing them in the first place. So, at the moment, I just plan to look at them periodically and try to figure out if they're real or fake. Ideally, if they're real, then I might just find new times for the activities. I suspect most of them are actually fake though and I want to get that realistic view of who I am so that I can be better.

If I had to take a guess why this would fail it's because I'm going to not want to spend the time writing the "why" but only time will tell.

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