{"id":2979,"date":"2011-07-01T23:20:26","date_gmt":"2011-07-01T15:20:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/?p=2979"},"modified":"2025-03-13T09:29:42","modified_gmt":"2025-03-13T09:29:42","slug":"90weeks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/2011\/07\/01\/90weeks\/","title":{"rendered":"The 90 Week Project"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 90 Week Project is my personal experiment to challenge myself to grow and learn as much as possible within a fixed timeframe. <\/strong>I chose 90 weeks because that was roughly the amount of time I had left until the completion of my National Service (2 years, or 106 weeks) at the point when I had decided to do it. The fundamental principle is simple- “What gets measured, gets managed.” (Peter Drucker.)<\/p>\n

My first semi-serious attempt at tracking my life began in the lead-up to my GCE “A” levels.It culminated in a failed attempt at a blog, which you can witness (like walking through the ancient ruins of a deserted civilization) at\u00a0A Levels In 80 Days<\/a>. It wasn’t just the blog that failed, but the attempt.<\/p>\n

My next attempt at tracking my life was borne (like many epic failures) out of a new year’s resolution. \u00a0At least, that’s what I think it was. I’m not sure if the main idea was to track my life- I just wanted to keep a notebook for the sake of it, and scribbled random things in it. It was rather disorderly. There were some sketches, and it meandered with no clear purpose. I did write down some of my plans, thoughts and goals, and I do think the early stages were necessary, however primitive.<\/p>\n

I enlisted into the military on April 19th 2010. It was quite a turning-point for me- I stopped taking money from my parents, and became substantially more self-sufficient. I began to keep track of my finances, partially out of necessity. I wasn’t completely free as I was in the months before enlistment- those months I spent frivolously, playing video games, staying up too late, accomplishing nothing. Now, I was to spend many hours every single day isolated in the storeroom that I was in charge of. It was unlike anything else I had ever experienced before- for the first time, without the usual distractions to occupy me,\u00a0I was really forced to come face to face with the reality of the sheer amount of time I had on my hands. The memory of my mediocre adolescent years was still fresh in my mind- I was disappointed with my A level results, and had been rejected by the the university that I thought I’d be easily admitted to. I felt like I’d hit rock bottom, and was overwhelmed by the realization that I could no longer sustain or tolerate a lifestyle that embraced mediocrity. I began reading books again- a habit that was a huge part of my early childhood, which I had partially abandoned in my teenage years.<\/p>\n

In the first 45 weeks, I have:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Developed a fairly robust fitness habit<\/li>\n
  2. Joined a new band, grown as a musician and rekindled my passion for music<\/li>\n
  3. Completed a 21km half-marathon<\/li>\n
  4. Created a sustainable community on Facebook (n_n)\/<\/li>\n
  5. Launched visakanv.com<\/li>\n
  6. Started work on Legion of Heroes<\/li>\n
  7. Gotten to know myself better and have grown more self-aware than ever before<\/li>\n
  8. Improved the quality of the relationships in my life<\/li>\n
  9. Become more disciplined and execute my plans more decisively<\/li>\n
  10. Fall ill a lot less, having noticed patterns and avoided the trigger factors<\/li>\n
  11. Resolved my existential crisis once and for all (mar2025: I would note that I had another different sort of crisis in 2015, but this resolution helped make that one less bad, and interestingly I would say I actually did do a good job of it overall!)<\/em><\/li>\n
  12. Developed a more systematic and effective method of reading and assimilating information<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    And more awesome things that I can’t think of at the moment. Easily the best decision\/pursuit of my life so far.<\/p>\n

    Links:<\/p>\n