2024-05-01
in
7 min read
April was supposed to be an easier month for me. That turned out to be kind of true. Goal Accountability grades definitely reflect that. I’m happy with the performance.
Methodology
This is a quick refresher of how this works. The “Goal Accountability” method is to give myself five focus areas each day which help contribute to longevity. Technically it can be any five things but for me these have historically always fallen into the categories of: diet, sleep, cardio movement, strength movement, and mind exercises. For each day one is given a numerical grade like in school from 0.0 (F) to 4.0 (A). By keeping track of those things we can see how we do by week and over the year. To give myself opportunities for feeling the “new years resolution” type psychological prodding more than just once a year the whole year is broken up into four week “phases”. Therefore I can see how things are going over the year and at an approximately one month interval have an opportunity to start with a clean slate and “get a good grade”.
March Closeout
As I wrote in March/April’s closeout/kickoff a lot of the travel and personal stressors of March were supposed to abate in April. Therefore a lot of the downward pressure on diet and sleep should as well. As it turns out it was no where near as quiescent as I had hoped. I ended up needing to be on travel longer than I original anticipated. The life stressors were definitely lower but much higher than I expected them to be. I also ended up getting COVID for the last week of the month. Overall though I did have substantial improvement in my weakest area (Diet) and held steady state in others. To recap, the five goals for this month were:
- Goal 1 (Diet): Eat a plant dominant Mediterranean diet averaging at least 100 grams of protein a day
- Goal 2 (Sleep): Get 7-8 hours of sleep a night
- Goal 3 (Cardio Health): 30 minutes of focused cardio exercise (indoor cycling, running, swimming, etc), with one hard session per week minimum and a stretch goal of two hard sessions per week
- Goal 4 (Non-Cardio Health): 20-30 minutes of weight training, calisthenics, or yoga
- Goal 5 (Brain Health): 15-20 minutes of meditation, stretch goal of 2x 15-20 minutes of meditation; increase reading time by decreasing TV/YouTube/Social Media time
This is the strongest graph I have yet for the year. Yes, there are some dips but none as deep as previous months. More broadly this is the first month where the running average curve stayed above the 3.7 (A-) range the whole time. I am very much going to take the big win on that. This happened because my consistentlny weakest area, diet, really got dialed in compared to the last three months. It was the sleep score that continued to be a bit more challenging for me.
| January | February | March | April | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Goal 1 (Diet) | 2.89 (B-) | 3.43 (B+) | 3.30 (B) | 3.76 (A-) |
| Goal 2 (Sleep) | 3.52 (B+) | 3.65 (B+) | 3.53 (B+) | 3.54 (B+) |
| Goal 3 (Cardio Fitness) | 3.74 (A-) | 3.86 (A-) | 3.91 (A-) | 4.00 (A) |
| Goal 4 (Non-Cardio Fitness) | 3.74 (A-) | 3.86 (A-) | 3.93 (A-) | 4.00 (A) |
| Goal 5 (Brain Health) | 3.39 (B+) | 3.79 (A-) | 3.76 (A-) | 3.98 (A-) |
| Total GPA | 3.46 (B+) | 3.72 (A-) | 3.69 (B+) | 3.86 (A-) |
Goal #1 (Diet) which was the weakest category in previous months is still technicall second weakest but in the A- range which is fine with me. This month I decided to really focus in on dialing in my eating. I had been nudging up in body fat ever so slightly in March. I wanted to get that back to my target levels. Eating out wasn’t as consistent so I was able to exercise more restraint naturally. When I did eat out I was much better about not getting desserts and appetizers unnecessarily. I also did much less stress eating than previously. There were also no special occasions where I would have a guilt free super indulgence day. There was supposed to be one, but COVID got in the way of that. Lastly, because I had a half marathon in this mix I also was really trying to stay as cleaned up as possible. Overall that drove my score to the A range for the first time ever, finishing up at 3.76 (A-).
Goal #2 (Sleep) has been an uneven category for me and it remains so. Because my diet got dialed in and this did not it is now my weakest category. In this case I really didn’t have as much of a problem with sabotaging my sleep by staying up late when I shouldn’t have. I also didn’t have a lot of schedule drivers forcing me to wake up much earlier to catch flights etc. I did have two of those sorts of days: the day of the half marathon and a day of the flights. However in both of those cases I was able to get to bed early enough not to have a bombed out grade for the day. These were simply my brain not wanting to turn off when it was time to go to bed, turning on in the middle of the night, or doing so in the morning. There were a few days where I couldn’t settle my brain through the night as life things weighed on me. Thus some days I got less than three hours of sleep even. Meditation in the moment and in general didn’t help, nor any other tricks. I just have to keep plodding through to figure out what can the next time these things happen.
The exercise goals Goal #3 (Cardio) and Goal #4(Non-Cardio) were perfect scores. There is one caveat to that. When I got COVID my doctor explicitly told me to cut back on exercise for a week until recovered. So the first day when I was feeling the worst, which still wasn’t that bad but who knew how it would play out, I did nothing. The next day I did just some very light yoga which made me loopy. The next day I did just some light walking which didn’t feel too bad. I slowly ramped back up to my normal work out routine. I could have graded it two ways: on the absolute scale of the goal’s minimum durations or on doctor’s orders. I chose the latter.
Goal #5 (Brain health) was nearly perfect as well. I will say that I have been dialing it in on the meditation front though. I’ve been at the minimally sufficient level for yet another month. I want to get above that minimum level eventually. With other things locked in maybe I could try focusing on that more now. I’m not feeling it though.
All in I was able to bump my total GPA back up to the A- zone with a 3.86. I am very happy with that.
April Kickoff
May is going to be a lot like April on all fronts. The life stressors are reducing a bit more but may flare up. I have a bit more travel than in April and more functions where I would be more than happy to have a diet score dinged for indulgences. I imagine that will mean a lower diet score than April. I’m hoping that I can bring the sleep score up a bunch though while holding all the others steady.
Therefore the goals for April’s Goal Accountability is:
- Goal 1 (Diet): Eat a plant dominant Mediterranean diet averaging at least 100 grams of protein a day
- Goal 2 (Sleep): Get 7-8 hours of sleep a night
- Goal 3 (Cardio Health): 30 minutes of focused cardio exercise (indoor cycling, running, swimming, etc), with one hard session per week minimum and a stretch goal of two hard sessions per week
- Goal 4 (Non-Cardio Health): 20-30 minutes of weight training, calisthenics, or yoga
- Goal 5 (Brain Health): 15-20 minutes of meditation, stretch goal of 2x 15-20 minutes of meditation; increase reading time by decreasing TV/YouTube/Social Media time