Day 6: Holding Myself Accountable
Alright - seven days of blogging (and vlog to come later this morning!) down in a row!
How about that.
Also, I forget that some people subscribe to this blog, so I'm probably spamming their inbox! (Sorry! Feel free to unsubscribe if you're not interested. I won't take it personally!)
Putting that aside, today's blog post is important. It's about being accountable to myself and others.
When it comes to being accountable to myself, I reduce it to two things: sleep and focus.
Sleep is straightforward. When you body and mind is working hard throughout the day, the resting during the night allows them to recover.
I haven't been sleeping properly since graduating over a year ago. I haven't been accountable to myself, and specifically, my body and mind, because I haven't been getting proper rest. The silly (but true) reason why is because I stay up late writing (turns out my best writing occurs during the next) or I'm mindlessly browsing Twitter or the broader Internet.
These are bad habits. I am stopping them.
These habits destroy my ability to focus during the day, especially outside of work when I'm working on creative pursuits. If you're wondering why I was not consistent with blogging or vlogging over the past months and years, this is why.
If I can't be accountable to myself, how can I be with others?
Like my thesis advisor. I'm not going to go into explicit detail, but I will admit that I promised my advisor something that I was supposed to deliver to them a long time ago.
I didn't do that because I wasn't responsible enough to get enough sleep and put aside the required amount of time to get it done for him. I instead spent too much time on my professional writing.
I didn't keep my word. I was not accountable. I want to make things right by finishing up the paper I promised I would, and hopefully still get it published. I don't know whether it will happen at this point, but I am going to draft it up like there's still a chance. If it doesn't happen, that's on me, and I accept that. I'll still apologize (profusely) and try and make amends.
I'll consider it a lesson of what happens when you don't keep your word.
I'm long overdue in correcting my behavior. From here on out, sleep is my number one priority. A year of full-time engineering work has shown me that your best work is a consequence of getting a full-night's sleep. If you want to work hard, you have to rest even harder.
So that's what I'm doing. I'm reducing my time spent writing for Forbes drastically going forward into the new year. No more full profiles for the foreseeable future.
If I'm going to be spending extensive time writing, it's going to be on my newsletter, Founder to Founder.
To sum up: sleep more, write for Forbes less, finish up research papers from Master's thesis.
That's it!
Soda