AlexTheGrape

Positive Habit Streak – Day 0 Today has been wonderful in terms of quality, but average in terms of completing things. I got some of my positive habits done and have made a plan to quickly do all of them (not including what’s in my morning schedule) in two blocks, and includes an evening meditation and visualisation. Gratitude journal I am grateful for having a supermarket nearby. I am grateful for my second jar of awesome. I am grateful for my brothers having a sword fight with me today. One amazing thing that happened/I did today: This went into my jar of awesome! At the new house we’re moving to, my brothers and I used some toy swords and had a blast chasing each other and hiding in the space outside the house. Smiles were all around and I wish to do much more of this in future whilst I’m not too old. Workout/run A run with the dog. Again it wasn’t what I had planned, but it’s better than nothing. Daily task planning ahead of time Yup! Exercise planning I’m going to do week 6, day 3 of my plan. Again. Meditation Nope. Visualisation Nope. Daily affirmation No. Fully cold shower No. Reading + taking notes No. Getting to bed before 10:10pm No. Jar of Awesome Yup! Japanese learning Yup! Cook a meal Yup! I made a dish that we make in my family called ‘tuna surprise’. The irony is that there’s no surprises, it’s the same delicious meal every time! Daily application of self-development skills Meet my commitments today. The decisions I make one day will reflect what I do every day. I did alright with this one. I didn’t do my morning schedule, but I’ve done pretty damn well with everything else. Weekly Goal(s) Don’t fail a single day of my success streak! (Sadly failed). Get to know the neighbours in one house this week. Monthly Goal(s) (I have an extra weekly goal). Old 3 Month Goal (1 month left!) My three month goal is to develop my leadership skills enough to confidently coach a sports team or lead another form of community group. 3 Month Goal Expand my holiday programme to a running business/be running my own community group within my neighbourhood. Know my neighbours from at least 100 households/have them as contacts for my holiday programme. 12 Month Goal Be running my own community group, hosting public events (more detail needed) 48 Month Goal Have grown my holiday programme/community group to be accessible by at least half of the NZ population. Have the skills (namely leadership) to have my options open for being an entrepreneur or having a normal job. What went well today: Getting on with cooking to stick to my commitment. What didn’t go well today: Not getting up on time, staying up late last night. What I could have done to make my day better: Gotten more sleep, sticking to my morning routine. What I will do differently tomorrow: I will make sure to get to bed on time, follow through with my morning routine, and try to knock off as many of my tasks as I can! Photo Stream This is a yummy cake at that same birthday. With enough practice, I might be able to make ones of my own like this sometime!

Positive Habit Streak – Day 0 Today has been a great day in general. Another generally relaxed one, involving moving furniture to our new house and going food shopping. I’ve been having some ideas on how to spend my holidays, and it seems that I only ever truly enjoy myself without guilt when I’m doing my best in all the facets of life that I’m wanting to improve in. I like to organise my life, and so to take on board all the new things I’m wanting to do as well (learning Japanese, cooking etc) that are significant skills, I’d like to bring my organisational skills to the next level! More on that later. Since my university starting date is getting closer, I’ve been really pumped to get started and make the most of it. Part of this will be creating a university project/club for the Trump Zone equivalent, as turning it into a group effort would enable it to be built well, tested well, get proper traction, and be a wonderful leadership opportunity for myself. My past week has been relatively mixed with some days of hanging around at home and some days of going about or working. I’ve been keeping up a high standard of exercise almost every day, which has been surprising considering the inconsistency in which I’ve been meditating and not doing visualisations. Again I come back to the conclusion that journaling daily and reflecting often are very helpful and essential tools. I know I haven’t achieved all my weekly or monthly goals, which is a shame. I plan to revise my visualisations and such tomorrow (which I have procrastinated for a long time!), but for now my goals are to keep consistent with what I’m assigning myself, and to actually complete all these things (including new skills). Gratitude journal I am grateful for my desire to succeed and progress my skills. I am grateful for having a yearly planner. I am grateful for being fit. One amazing thing that happened/I did today: Realising that I’m not going to cook until I start organising to do it myself was a major stepping stone in what I believe to be my progression with this skill. I’m not going to learn to cook and make meals consistently without me being organised enough to plan them beforehand and, when needed, fetch the ingredients necessary. I’m going to try cooking every day now, that way I’ll be learning all the time to work consistently and have no excuse to not do this! Workout/run A run with the dog. Not intense, but somewhat satisfactory in duration. Daily task planning ahead of time Yup! Exercise planning I’m going to do week 6, day 3 of my plan. Meditation Nope. Visualisation Nope. Daily affirmation No. Fully cold shower No. Reading + taking notes No. Getting to bed before 10:10pm No. Jar of Awesome No. Japanese learning No. Cook a meal No. Daily application of self-development skills Meet my commitments today. The decisions I make one day will reflect what I do every day. Weekly Goal(s) Don’t fail a single day of my success streak! (Sadly failed). Get to know the neighbours in one house this week. Monthly Goal(s) (I have an extra weekly goal). Old 3 Month Goal (1 month left!) My three month goal is to develop my leadership skills enough to confidently coach a sports team or lead another form of community group. 3 Month Goal Expand my holiday programme to a running business/be running my own community group within my neighbourhood. Know my neighbours from at least 100 households/have them as contacts for my holiday programme. 12 Month Goal Be running my own community group, hosting public events (more detail needed) 48 Month Goal Have grown my holiday programme/community group to be accessible by at least half of the NZ population. Have the skills (namely leadership) to have my options open for being an entrepreneur or having a normal job. What went well today: Exercising, deciding to get back to journaling today. What didn’t go well today: A lot, simply being lazy. What I could have done to make my day better: Get on with my positive habits. What I will do differently tomorrow: Create new plans for doing all my positive habits. Photo Stream These are some photos I took of some delicious food at a relative’s birthday.

Yeah man! My exam results came out on the 17th so yeah it is coming along fast! Do you have to do compulsory military service in Finland because you border Russia? I'll be doing engineering this year, and next year I'll then specialize in mechatronics or software engineering. What are your plans for university?

Today has been another good one. I've created my timetable for my first semester at university, and have been using many online resources to prepare myself for what I need. I went to work in the evening. I'm grateful for: Online banking.Dinner from working.Drink bottles.

The past two days have gone really well: I've been exercising heaps, getting up on time, and generally doing great in terms of habits. Nothing much else to say other than all is going well. I've been working still, and I've taken the time to clean out my room and re-organise a few things. Otherwise everything is going great!

The past few days have been a bit of a blur: I've been back to work again, but have been accomplishing most of my positive habits. I haven't done that much cooking, but I cooked dinner pretty much by myself tonight for the family and that was really good. Yesterday I went out for a run and workout and I was asked by a bunch of adults to play soccer with them, it was a really fun spontaneous thing that I did for another 30 mins before I had to leave to get ready for work. I might be contacted later to play further soccer, so it was a great opportunity. Sleeping on time seems to be the thing I'm having the most difficulty with, and for some reason I keep consistently skipping my visualisation practice. I'll need to get better at that tomorrow. I have heaps of tasks queued for tomorrow, lets see how the day goes! Here's the dinner I made tonight for 3: Pork eye fillet, potato, and salad!

The place it was filmed was at a hired batch (I was staying there for a week) so sorry but I don't own the place. Were you planning on coming to NZ?

Yes I was thinking of a ranking system for when/if I make a software component for mobile. I see the connection, thanks for pointing that out. That is a good name! It might get confusing for some people but with some tweaking like the "Real Virtuality Challenge" for when I have a software component to the system, it could work well! Thanks for the feedback, I'll check it out

If you mean it's something on the forum in general, then yes. Otherwise I'm not sure what you're saying. I meant, how can we play the trump zone game ? It is in the initial stages so I didn't expect anyone in the forum to want to play. If you'd like some resources to set up the TZ system then I can send some resources your way. You'd basically just need to make some Trump Tokens from printed paper (with token images I send you) and cardboard, scrap paper, ice cream containers for boxes, scrap paper, pens, and your imagination. If you want to try it that'd be awesome, just let me know if you want any resources or ideas of previous challenges I've made.

Haha yeah chocolate is really healthy when you eat a whole zero grams of it I've never been part of a scout's club. What things seemed similar to what you know of them?

Thanks Cam

Thank you for your detailed advice, I really appreciate it! Yeah the name needs changing, but that should be easy in comparison to making this system work. Hmm yeah that is a very good point, what is easy for some will be difficult for others. The rating of pooled tasks by participants (I won't call them Trumpers anymore) would be a wonderful idea. This could solve quite a few issues, and may make it viable for teenagers and adults. I'll need to put in more processes for this but the idea is great. The issue then would be the collaboration side when people disagree on the difficulty of a task, but I guess a voting system should work for that. Yes the rotation idea is great, it would work with larger groups as well. I might try this with people more similar to my own age too, as they'd likely need and be more willing to try self-development. Thank you again for the advice, this will help a lot!

It sure is! What is funny to me certainly won't be funny for everyone, especially because this is politically charged. I'll need to come up with a better name and theme soon, so RIP to the different trump coin designs I made.

If you mean it's something on the forum in general, then yes. Otherwise I'm not sure what you're saying.

Positive Habit Streak – Day 0 Today has been yet another relaxing day, but I felt it was with time I don’t feel I’ve properly earned. I can’t seem to enjoy myself these holidays whilst doing very little, and it is as though I’ve built myself into a productivity machine that won’t be satisfied with not doing anything. Oh well, that’s what keeps me wanting to improve! I didn’t get to bed on time last night and that seemingly justified me to sleeping in and throwing off my schedule. Not a good start Alex! Gratitude journal I am grateful for help with cooking. I am grateful for tv time with family. I am grateful for eating healthy. One amazing thing that happened/I did today: Although it wasn’t much of a success, I decided to get a sandwich in the bakery when I took my brothers out to get some lunch. They got the more unhealthy options, but I’m glad that I overcame the temptation to buy the unhealthy foods. I am wanting to start a more healthy diet soon, so this is showing me that I can start making the right choices. Workout/run A really pathetic workout. Daily task planning ahead of time No. Exercise planning “I’m doing Forcefit week 5, day 2, because I am needing a step down to start me off.” I’m trying it again. I really just have to get started properly! Meditation Yup. Visualisation Nope. Daily affirmation No. Fully cold shower No. Reading + taking notes Yup. Getting to bed before 10:10pm No. Jar of Awesome Yup. Japanese learning I thought I’d add this one as I need to keep consistent with learning Japanese to make real progress. Cook a meal Yup. I made curry tonight! Daily application of self-development skills Progress over comfort. Progress over comfort. Progress over comfort. Weekly Goal(s) Don’t fail a single day of my success streak! (Sadly failed). Get to know the neighbours in one house this week. Monthly Goal(s) (I have an extra weekly goal). Old 3 Month Goal (1 month left!) My three month goal is to develop my leadership skills enough to confidently coach a sports team or lead another form of community group. 3 Month Goal Expand my holiday programme to a running business/be running my own community group within my neighbourhood. Know my neighbours from at least 100 households/have them as contacts for my holiday programme. 12 Month Goal Be running my own community group, hosting public events (more detail needed) 48 Month Goal Have grown my holiday programme/community group to be accessible by at least half of the NZ population. Have the skills (namely leadership) to have my options open for being an entrepreneur or having a normal job. What went well today: Being more aware. What didn’t go well today: Not getting up in time. What I could have done to make my day better: Get up quick! (Again?! I need to seriously make a better effort!) What I will do differently tomorrow: GET UP ON TIME! Photo Stream Here's the remains of my orange self-saucing pudding I made yesterday (which no longer exists )

Sorry, looks like I forgot to add it to my journal post. Here it is: http://forum.gamequitters.com/topic/3405-my-project-trump-zone/

The past few days have been a little out of sync because I went to a party (which I really enjoyed actually) but I’ve been relaxed and enjoying my holiday. I’m still on day 0 as I haven’t been sleeping at the proper time. Positive Habit Streak – Day 0 Today has been another relatively relaxed one, but I did some exercise and did most of my habits (with late visualisation). I’m setting up tomorrow to get through my next day of the habit streak! In the afternoon I made an orange self-saucing pudding with some help from my mother, it was really tasty! I’m thinking I’ll need to cook at least one meal a day to start learning properly how to cook, so for now I’m going to add that to my list! For days I am getting meals from work, I’ll make something smaller. Gratitude journal I am grateful for having all the resources I need to cook. I am grateful for grapes. I am grateful for days free of working. One amazing thing that happened/I did today: Making dessert was nice, the end result was much better than I expected! The process was really straightforward with a recipe. It felt good to have done that little bit more towards getting better at cooking. Workout/run Yup. Daily task planning ahead of time No. Exercise planning I’m doing Forcefit week 5, day 2, because I am needing a step down to start me off. Meditation Yup. Visualisation Yup. Daily affirmation No. Fully cold shower Yup. Reading + taking notes Yup. Getting to bed before 10:10pm No. Jar of Awesome No. Cook a meal Yup. Daily application of self-development skills Tomorrow I’ll make sure to make the right small choices. I need to choose progress over comfort. Weekly Goal(s) Don’t fail a single day of my success streak! (Sadly failed). Get to know the neighbours in one house this week Monthly Goal(s) (I have an extra weekly goal). Old 3 Month Goal (1 month left!) My three month goal is to develop my leadership skills enough to confidently coach a sports team or lead another form of community group. 3 Month Goal Expand my holiday programme to a running business/be running my own community group within my neighbourhood. Know my neighbours from at least 100 households/have them as contacts for my holiday programme. 12 Month Goal Be running my own community group, hosting public events (more detail needed) 48 Month Goal Have grown my holiday programme/community group to be accessible by at least half of the NZ population. Have the skills (namely leadership) to have my options open for being an entrepreneur or having a normal job. What went well today: Cooking. What didn’t go well today: Getting up late. What I could have done to make my day better: Get up quick! What I will do differently tomorrow: Carry through with my commitments. Photo Stream Here’s another one I took on top of the mountain. This drink bottle I think I'll start taking with me on trips everywhere, and take photos of it! See if you can spot the chicken/swan/bird

Positive Habit Streak – Day 0 Today has been a relatively relaxed day. In comparison to a few weeks ago, my day has been lazy because I didn’t achieve any of my previous positive habits. I spent time finishing the TrumpZone explanation and editing the video (check it out here). I’ve been thinking about my plan to use losing money as an incentive to get me into self-development properly again. The last time I did that I simply didn’t end up giving up my money because it was too valuable to me to give away. Furthermore it is a very artificial incentive – in real life I won’t have a threat to push me to better myself. I have to come to terms with doing self-development because it is what I want, not because it fulfils some outside pressure. If I rely on additional incentives to do difficult tasks I’ll never be able to keep consistent if that incentive is removed. I’ve decided to keep myself accountable for doing ALL the positive habits in my journal by turning my counter into a positive habit streak counter. That way I’ll have to reset it to 0 even if I forget one of these. That way I’ll be completely focused on completing them and if they’re not working for me then I can bin it. Gratitude journal I am grateful for having a view from my window. I am grateful for emailing. I am grateful for having the choice to improve myself in any area I choose. One amazing thing that happened/I did today: I moved my desk to the window so I can get a view. It makes for a great change! Workout/run No. Daily task planning ahead of time No. Exercise planning I’m doing ForceFit 2, week 6, day 2 (the day I failed to get started on). Meditation No. Visualisation No. Daily affirmation No. Fully cold shower No. Reading + taking notes Yup. Getting to bed before 10:10pm No. Jar of Awesome I’ve decided to add at least one entry into my Jar of Awesome, as I have consistently been ignoring it recently. Daily application of self-development skills Tomorrow I’ll make sure to make the right small choices. This is because the small difficult tasks I choose to ignore on one day will end up being the way I go about them every other day. Weekly Goal(s) NONE. Next week: Don’t fail a single day of my success streak! Monthly Goal(s) “Have at least one video of my holiday programme on YouTube with a dedicated channel. Have gotten to know the inhabitants of 10 neighbour households.” I only got up the video of Trump Zone today, which is pretty lousy! I also didn’t get started on getting to know my neighbours better, which is a real shame. I’m going to have to try that one again, but instead of making it a monthly goal I should try scheduling it with a more urgent deadline and with smaller starting expectations. I’ll try this starting Monday: Get to know the neighbours in one house this week (I haven’t managed to any, so I need to start small with one). Old 3 Month Goal (1 month left!) My three month goal is to develop my leadership skills enough to confidently coach a sports team or lead another form of community group. 3 Month Goal Expand my holiday programme to a running business/be running my own community group within my neighbourhood. Know my neighbours from at least 100 households/have them as contacts for my holiday programme. 12 Month Goal Be running my own community group, hosting public events (more detail needed) 48 Month Goal Have grown my holiday programme/community group to be accessible by at least half of the NZ population. Have the skills (namely leadership) to have my options open for being an entrepreneur or having a normal job. What went well today: Basically nothing other than taking the time to respond to some pen pals and writing here. What didn’t go well today: Procrastination an laziness everywhere. What I could have done to make my day better: A lot. What I will do differently tomorrow: Get on with all the habits. Photo Stream Here’s another photo from the day up the mountain and at the beach.

Trump Zone – Trump your boundaries! This is a system I have developed in an attempt to get people (kids/teenagers in particular) to try new challenging things and get outside their comfort zone. This is done through providing the challenges based on their desired areas of improvement (or generic ones if they don’t specify any) and incentives to pursue these. It could possibly be used for older people, but at this stage is unlikely. Please note that much of the system theme (of Donald Trump), intentional misspellings, and memes are part of the jokes of Trump Zone, intended to loosen the seriousness of self-development. Here is a video of myself and my little brother doing a ‘refresher activity’ (read about that below) and I hope to add more videos soon of us using the system further. If this is a successful system I plan to develop software for it as a personal/university project. I’d greatly appreciate any advice and support. Thanks for reading and I hope you find the idea interesting! Key: Trumper – A person who participates in Trump Zone that does not organize Trump Zone. Organizer – A person who organizes the challenges and rewards of local Trumper(s). TT – Trump Token. This is a physical item that can be exchanged for rewards. Here’s how it works: Setup There is one ‘organizer’ at a time (typically a parent or person older than the Trumper(s)) (this person may be swapped) who writes challenges for Trumpers of three difficulties: Ezy, Meh, and Waow difficulty (easy, medium, and hard respectively). These challenges are intended for a specific person when written, however multiple copies of the same challenge are sometimes used to give to multiple people. These challenges are classified by their difficulty and put in an appropriate box of challenges that difficulty, each box being for a unique person (no two people should draw out of the same box, so each person has their own three boxes of ezy, meh, and waow). Drawing challenges Near the start of each day when Trumper(s) and an organizer is ready, Trumper(s) draw a random challenge from a box of a difficulty of their choice. They can then complete the challenge within a time frame decided on a case-by-case basis by the organizer (by default it is the whole day however for urgency or incentive to get on with the challenge, the organizer can create a time frame). This challenge cannot be redrawn, and is unavailable to be completed after the day or the time frame set by the organizer. It will likely be unavailable to retry on later days (decided by the organizer). Completing challenges On the challenge paper slip drawn out of the box, it explains the challenge, a reference to any additional information needed, and the reward for completing the challenge. Typically the reward for completing an ezy challenge is 1 Trump Token (TT), 2TT for meh, and 3TT for waow difficulty. The completion of challenges is decided by an organizer. A Trumper may think they have completed a challenge through poor quality completion, and so it is important that a satisfactory quality of completion set by an organizer is met. Upon completing a challenge, the organizer awards a Trumper the predetermined number of TT according to what is written on their challenge slip. Rewards Rewards for cashing in TT are predetermined by the organizer, and the prices of these items (only the name needs to be shown and price) available for Trumpers to view. The prices of these are biased towards things that are helpful to the Trumpers, and biased against rewards that are potentially harmful (e.g. chocolates, unhealthy food, video games). Careful thought and planning may be needed to provide helpful rewards for Trumpers. These can typically be disguised as ‘mystery items’ that are relatively cheap in TT price but Trumpers don’t know what they’re getting until after they buy it. More challenges in a day If a Trumper has completed a challenge and would like to attempt another challenge, they need to do a ‘refresher task’ improvised or predetermined by the organizer. This will likely require exercise, but is aimed towards areas of improvement desired by the Trumper. After satisfactory completion of this refresher task (determined by the organizer) grants the Trumper another challenge. Note that an organizer may opt to not have a refresher task to encourage further use of Trump Zone by Trumpers.

Quick update: The past few days have been a blur of working at the restaurant, doing chores whilst my dad and co. are away, and driving up late. It was my step-father's birthday today and I drove far to see him. I wrote him a card, got him a present, and he made a surprise visit with my family to see myself and my brother working at the restaurant (my brother started working yesterday!). The Trump Zone explanation is now pretty much complete, I now need to edit some videos so that I have something to show for all this preparation. It seems to be taking a lot longer than planned due to things coming up unexpectedly these holidays. I haven't been doing too well with my daily habits, but I plan to get back into it tomorrow as my schedule will finally allow for it.

Hahaha, we've got the 4th player! Isn't it, @AlexTheGrape, @SpiNips ? Ah, and yea, @Cam Adair, IN PERSON ONLY You know it!

Thanks! Hang out soon? Does that mean you're coming to NZ soon? Please don't get my hopes up if that's not the case haha Definitely hoping next year. Think I'll be going to India in August/September for a tour, so hope to pop over to Aus/NZ after that. Awesome! I look forward to seeing you here

Hi Thomas! Thank you! I often put in pictures for better incentive for me to continue photography and to make it more interesting. Yeah journalling is important for reflection, but I find putting in the specific prompts help that even further. What I'm annoyed about is that I've done better before! I don't mean to boast but my best is 13.6, and so not making it back to that level can be annoying. Oh well I have all the more incentive to do better next time. The problem I had was that I simply gave up when it got to 12, even though I was able to go further. Anyhow it's not a big problem, you're right that I just need to keep trying.

Thanks! Hang out soon? Does that mean you're coming to NZ soon? Please don't get my hopes up if that's not the case haha

Thank you! I knew that I needed to get some long term goals for me to get some idea of where I'm heading, for a better sense of purpose. I'm pretty sure it'll change with time and it is currently very specific and based on that entrepreneurial stuff, but having that current goal should help me a lot. Yep, the deal I'm making is that I'll lose money if I don't complete them. This is forcing me to make both realistic goals, and acting on those goals in spite of discomfort. Stay tuned to see how it goes! Thanks again for dropping by