Counting Coup

A few people have asked about the post title, and why it’s not “The Milestone Reminder Habit.” I have to admit, I chose the title because I felt this is more a post about the bravery it takes to live a great life through your actions and accomplishments, proving it to yourself, and your personal oral tradition. So, Counting Coup .

When people ask me about my goals, I’ll quip I’m “optimizing for an interesting life.” The question they’re really asking is about how I get what I set ou to do, done.

The truth is though (and people don’t want to hear this when they ask the goals question) is it’s hard work. Everything worth doing is. So, you have to try it make it easier: to get started, to keep at it, to not throw in the towel on the dark days or when the long-time grinding seems to not be translating into any forward progress.

But, you can make it easier. This is one thing you can do.

It’s simple. Requires a bit of discpline and effort. But the whole habit comes down to this:

Record your life’s milestones and accomplishments.

Explicitly. Deliberately. And with purpose.

Not the ones you get for free simply for staying alive, but ones you needed to strive, plan, and work for. Those accomplishments are different for everyone, but the key thing is they’re important and meaningful to you.

For me, they act as reminders and prompts to bring me back on path to the life I want to be leading. Ones I’m proud of, inspire, and remind me of the disatnce I’ve travelled in life. At first, they were solely reminders of when events had happened, but as time has gone on, I was surprised at what an effective and supporting habit it became.

How It Works

The idea is dead simple.

Think about all the awesome things you’ve done and accomplished
Write them down explcitly in a tracking file, then
Make sure they show up for you in some fashion on their anniversaries

Why is this important? There’s four big reasons really:

Planning and coordination
While clichéd: A dream without a plan is just a wish..
All worthwhile goals require hard work and planning. If you’re not prompted, sometimes, you just don’t do the work. Reminders help.
Savouring, gratitude, and celebrating
There is a large body of evidence that being grateful and savouring graces is criticl to mental wellness and the impression of a well-lived life. For me, this is one of the nicest things about seeing them pop up. I get to relive and enjoy them again.
Inspiration and Motivation
Personally, seeing these things pop up makes me reflect on them and how great they made me feel. They’re an n incentive to move my life more towards those kinds of things. And they are proof that you can be successful in what you set out to do, which… let’s face it… can need some bigging up and reminding depending on how any particular week happens to be going. On some longer arc goals, there can be some dark teatimes of the soul when you think you may not make it, so I can attest seeing your past victories helps.
The Years Run Like Rabbits
Auden wasn’t kidding . A reminder popping up the other day made me realize it had been 30 years since a seminal event catapulted me onto this whole life trajectory I’v been on (and for which I’m very grateful). It’s humbling and a bit shocking and reminded me of an important lesson I’d forgotten (and needed to apply with ruthliessness.). This habit helps keep you grounded and reminded.

1. Make a Durable List

I strongly recommend having a separate note with dates in whatever your app of choice is, There’s something edifying about seeing a list of things you are really excited and proud about having done.

The more durable the note taking app the better. You want this to be something that carries across decades, so make it something that autoatically backs up, syncs between devices, and is portable and easily exportable to new OSes, apps, and formats. I also find pinning it or otherwise surfacing it permanently near the top of your most important notes also helps keeping it somewhat top of mind.

So, think something like Notes or Keep or, if you’re a plain-text, markdown kinda person, Obsidian or org-mode (which does the dates and recurrence for you if you make them agenda entries).

Review it monthly or quarterly. Or whenever the jerks of the world are getting you down. You’ll be surprised at the entries you’ll prompt yourself into adding to it over time.

2. Get it Into Your GTD, Calendar, and/or ToDos System

I feel the bare minimum here is merely having the recurring annual dates in your calendar, but I feel it makes things more deliberate by adding just slightly more friction and making them into ToDos you need to tick off after year. Even better, ones that raise up notifications or that you can see in forward planning views. For some reason, I find the deliberate need to explicitly tick them off makes them more impactful as they require consideraton (which is the point) rather than something merely noted on your calendar.

What It Can Look Like

Agenda views is still one of the reasons, I like org-mode despite the other shortfalls of emacs.

It’s ability to flag forward warnings to an upcoming deadline lets me kinda control when something pops up in my agenda.

In fact, this entire blog post was actually triggered because of how great, despite a very tough week of setbacks and uphill slogging, having a bunch of reminders of things I’d done in the past popping up made me feel. Instant, Second. Wind.

The other thing that is sorta amazing about having your list as a time series, is you can take a look at this like awesomeness data. Get it into a spreadsheet or run it through an AI and ask it questions about rates of change, how much you’ve travelled, and different categories of accomplishments. It’s shickingly illuminating linking things to other things rhat may be going on in your life or reminding youreld of the fact there is nothing in the travel graph between 2020 and 2022 is because the world was locked down in the pandemic. You can also get cool, little interactive timelines that let you scroll trhough and reminice about the things you’ve done.

Fin

The idea is simple. Keep track of your awesome, in a form that makes dates visible and surfaceable to you as annual reminders. Much like other habits which are surprisingly simple and effective (and good for you).

Try it. Even if you don’t go for the annual reminders, just piling your life data into one place is surprisingly edifying and shockingly actionable when you ask some simple questions of it.

I hope you found this useful. If this post was, and you do end up adopting the habit or riffing on it, lemme know via mail or elephant below. Feel free to mention or ping me on @awws on mastodon or email me at hola@wakatara.com .