Tuesday, October 25, 2011

The Week of the Blue T-Shirt: Day One

Monday is in the books and I scored 40 achievements points today. I promised I'd post the whole list, so here is what I've got so far for Monday through Friday.

Daily Achievements:
Attend all classes: 10 pts
Workout: 10 pts
Program something: 10 pts
Talk to a stranger on campus: 15 pts

Weekly:
Go on a date: 15 pts
Run a mile under 7 minutes: 15 pts
Go home teaching: 15 pts
Complete all workout achievements: 20 pts
Complete all attendance achievements plus all homework: 20 pts
View 5 online lectures: 10 pts
Conquer C++ day 8: 15 pts
Finish programming Pirate Dice: 15 pts

The total is 350 achievement points.

Monday Recap (40/350)
  • I was late to institute, but I made it (mostly because I wanted the achievement points) and I'm glad that I did. I attended all the rest of my classes and learned a lot. Apparently I've been using definite articles in Spanish wrong for the past 2.25 years. D'oh! (+10 points for class attendance)
  • For the first time since the mission I opened my mouth and talked to a random girl as I walked home from school. Her name is Maddie and she was pretty nice. (I would like to point out that this attempt at talking to a girl on campus went a trillion times better than the last attempt to talk to a girl. That was almost 3 years ago and it was a complete and utter failure. That's a story for another day...) (+15 points for talking to a stranger (read:girl))
  • I ran to the field house and then ran a mile on the track. Apparently I'm out of shape because I nearly hurled my lunch after running it. I wasn't racing, by the way, that was just jogging. Not a great sign. I went upstairs to look at the weight machines but they intimidated me so I went outside and did some lunges. Success! The last mile I clocked was 7:21 (about 3 months ago) so my goal this week is to beat 7:00. I made progress today. (+10 points for working out)
  • We discussed a math problem about how many different regions we could cut into a pizza using a certain number of straight cuts from crust to crust today at length in Discrete Math. Dr. Brown said that somebody should go ahead and program a recursive solver in C++ just for kicks- so I did. Well, first I read half of day 8 of my C++ book to learn about pointers (which are awesome, by the way) and then programmed it using some pointer action. Not too shabby. (+10 points for programming something today)
I don't get bonus points for this or anything, but I wore a blue T-shirt today. You can expect that the rest of the week.

All in all I feel like I had a great day. My behavior was definitely different because I was gunning for the achievement points, I'll be honest. There's no way I would have talked to that girl walking home from campus without a goal to do so. I'm motivated. I've been having a blast with the system and hope that y'all are too. More fun coming tomorrow, I promise. The invitation is still on the table to anybody who wants to start achievement pointing this week with me. One million bonus points are on the line- you know this is going to be good. Oh, and an additional million bonus points to cool suggestions for achievements. aloeiy gets points for suggesting a cool service project and tennis. (By the way, who the devil are you aloeiy? I've been trying to use all my powers of investigation and deduction to figure out who you are, but I'm still clueless. At least give me a hint, because I've got no idea).

Anywhom, it is late, gotta run off. Catch y'all later. This is day one of The Week of the Blue T-Shirt. Consider this box checked.

2 comments:

Kim said...

I accept your challenge. I've made myself many a to-do list and I even made a chart where I can check things off each week but I like the idea of adding achievement points to the things I already hope to accomplish. So here it is:

Daily Achievements

Study Scriptures (20 pts)
Make Nate Lunch (10 pts)
Clean up dishes after lunch (10 pts)
Make dinner (10 pts)
Clean up kitchen after dinner (10 pts)


At least 3 times a week Achievements

Exercise (10 pts)
Practice the Piano (10 pts)

Weekly Achievements

Vacuum (10 pts)
"Deep" clean kitchen (including sweep & mop) (10 pts)
Clean Bathrooms (10 pts)
Do Laundry (Wash & Dry) (10 pts)
Fold & put away Laundry (10 pts)
Make Menu (10 pts)
Go grocery shopping (10 pts)

special for this week:

Learn how to utilize the warranties and maintenance package we purchased with our new car (20 pts)
Make Halloween Costumes (20 pts)
Plan Activity Days for next week (20 pts)

Total Possible Points: 640


And summary for yesterday:
Studied Leviticus 22 (20 pts)
Got up too late to make Nate lunch but met him for lunch after the gym which was great to spend time with him :)
Made Alfredo and steamed veggies for dinner but didn't clean up after (10 pts)
Did Water Aerobics with my mom (10 pts)
Called Honda, took car in, got carpets cleaned, learned that we can just wait until our car tells us the oil is low and then take it in for maintenance (20 pts)
Bought a black shirt and pants for me so making progress on Halloween costume making but not done yet

Total for Monday: 60 pts

Valerie said...

You've used all your powers of investigation and deduction? Well, I'll give you a hint. I went to high school with you. Great hint, huh?

Anyway, about the achievement points. I'm glad that having achievements to accomplish helps you do the things that you want to do. I do like Kim said and make to do lists. But I just recently made myself a chart where I check off things after I do them. So, in points, each thing is worth one point. Then when I get to the end, I always total up each area to see how many points I got out of how many were possible. The things are based on a weekly basis, but if I do extra one week, it can make up for a different week.

I think it really helps me get things done that I want to get done.