Integrity Report 2019

Every summer James Clear publishes an Integrity Report.

It's not quite a yearly review, and not quite a planning exercise. It's a reflection, aiming to answer this question:

"Am I actually living like the type of person I claim to be?"

This year I'm publishing my Integrity Report for greater accountability.

There are 3 main questions that I will answer in this Integrity Report.

1. What are the core values that drive my life and work?
2. How am I living and working with integrity right now?
3. How can I set a higher standard in the future?

Thanks to James Clear for providing the framework. Huge shoutout to @herlifeinpixels for putting together a Notion workspace and generating accountability.

What are the core values that drive my life and work?

Strength

1. Am I mentally and physically strong?
2. Am I building the capacity to make things happen?
3. Am I spending my time where I am most effective, where I have the most leverage?

Playfulness

1. Am I spending enough time having fun?
2. Am I trying new things?
3. Do I bring joy to those around me?

Relationships

1. Am I deepening my closest relationships?
2. Am I building alliances with trustworthy people?
3. Am I fostering win/win situations with others?

Growth

1. Am I deepening my understanding of myself?
2. Am I discovering my limiting beliefs and working to overcome them?
3. How have I grown in these past 6 months?

How am I living and working with integrity right now?

How am I living with Strength?

My boring fundamentals are all humming along nicely

• Productivity Systems are up and running nicely after being demolished by travel.
• Nutrition is ~80% compliant, and I'm losing fat, even if it's at a slow clip.
• Sleeping 7-8 hours a night, generally maintaining similar sleep/wake times.

How am I living with Playfulness?

I'm Spending more time exploring intellectual pursuits

• "Pursue Interesting" is my new motto for choosing what to explore.
• I'm spending time reading what I want, and not finishing books just to finish.
• If I find something really interesting or useful, I'm consolidating my notes and creating small artifacts I can share with friends or on my blog. This usually leads to even more interesting conversation.

How am I living with Relationships?

I'm Strengthening existing relationships and forging new ones

• Weekly meetups with The Crew. I can't recommend regular hangouts enough.
• Reaching out to interesting people and building alliances, largely through Twitter.
• Strengthening alliances by working on projects together.

How am I living with Growth?

Completed the Write of Passage course

• Met some really driven people (more alliances!).
• Vastly improved my writing system.
• Re-built a regular cadence of writing — if anything I now have too much to write about.

I'm Incorporating More Introspection

• Trying to grow my self-awareness about my own self-limiting beliefs.
• Journaling 1-2 days a week.
• Started working with a therapist.

How can I set a higher standard in the future?

How can I set a higher standard for Strength?

Delegate more. I can spend more time on high leverage activities like writing, building systems, and alliance making. This means I need to spend less time on activities that are draining, can be done by someone else, or have low ROI.

Finish projects before starting new ones. This has been a hard one for me historically. It's exciting to start a new thing and finishing takes a disproportionate amount of work. Too many half-started projects slows down all of them.

Going forward, I'm capping the number of active projects I'm allowed to work on at any given time.

How can I set a higher standard for Playfulness?

Play more. I haven't taken time to photograph at all this year. Whether it's through photography or another medium, I'd like to spend more time exploring my creative side.

Bring more playfulness into my relationships. I default to serious talk with my closest relationships. I'm grateful to be able to talk about these things, but it's imbalanced. If I want to bring joy to those around me, I can bring more playfulness into our conversations.

How can I set a higher standard for Relationships?

Make more effort to hangout with old friends and family. It's too easy to let old friendships stagnate, reduced to clicking like on fb once a month. Instead of liking posts, I can reach out and organize get-togethers.

Schedule more long, one-on-one chats with friends. There's nothing more nourishing than a chat with a friend, even for an introvert like me.

Increasing numbers of men don't have a friend they can confide in; I can make sure that doesn't happen to me or to my friends by being proactive.

How can I set a higher standard for Growth?

Take action. I've got some long-held conflict avoidance fears that I'm working through. I can practice by re-framing fear, and taking action in uncomfortable situations.

Here's to the rest of the year

I turned 30 this week.

A few friends have asked me what I would change, if I could go back in time.

Maybe I could have avoided some mistakes. But without feeling the consequences, I would have eventually made the same bad decision.

If I could change anything, it'd be to take back any pain I inflicted on others, through ignorance, miscommunication, or actual ill-will on my part.

Here's to the rest of 2019.

Cheers.

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