Personal Development

This is where I keep notes on the things I’m trying to figure out about myself. Self-awareness, goal-setting, habits that actually stick, the occasional crisis of direction — all of it.

It’s not a particularly polished collection. Some entries are finished thoughts, others are just fragments I’m sitting with. That’s fine by me.

Self-Awareness

Understanding yourself isn’t about grand revelations. It’s usually the small, inconvenient things you notice about yourself when you’re not paying attention — the way you react when someone interrupts you, the tasks you consistently avoid, the people who drain you without you realising it until later.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Everyone has a list of strengths they like to talk about and weaknesses they’d rather not mention. The trick is being honest about both without turning either into a story.

My strengths tend to show up when I’m left alone with a problem. I can sit with ambiguity longer than most people, and I’m reasonably good at connecting dots that don’t look connected. I’m also stubborn in a useful way — once I decide something is worth doing, I tend to keep going.

My weaknesses are more obvious if I pay attention. I procrastinate on things that feel vaguely threatening to my sense of competence. I avoid difficult conversations because I’d rather the tension resolve itself (it never does). And I have a habit of overcommitting because saying no feels like letting people down.

None of this is new. I’ve known about it for years. The difference now is that I’m actually doing something about it instead of just nodding sagely at my own flaws.

Boundaries

I used to think boundaries were about keeping people out. They’re not. They’re about letting the right people in — and making sure you know who they are.

Setting boundaries is uncomfortable at first. People notice when you stop saying yes to everything, and some of them aren’t happy about it. But the ones who matter understand. The ones who don’t were never going to respect you anyway, with or without boundaries.

I’ve been working on this for a while. The biggest shift has been realising that a boundary isn’t an attack on someone else — it’s a description of what I can and can’t sustain. “I can’t take on another project right now” isn’t a rejection of the person asking. It’s just a fact about my capacity.

Goal Setting

There are two kinds of goals: the ones you set because you think you should, and the ones you set because you actually want them. The first kind rarely survives contact with a Tuesday afternoon. The second kind tends to carry you through the boring bits.

SMART Goals

Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound. The framework is useful, but only if you fill it in honestly. A goal like “get fit” is not specific. “Run a 5k in under 30 minutes by October” is. The difference matters more than people admit.

I’ve found that the “Measurable” part is where most goal-setting falls apart. You need to know what success looks like before you start, otherwise you’ll never know when you’ve reached it.

Tracking Progress

I track a lot of things. Some of it is useful, some of it is just anxiety in spreadsheet form. The key is being honest about which is which.

Useful tracking looks like this: I set a target, I check in weekly, I adjust if I’m consistently missing it. Not useful tracking looks like: I log 47 data points about my day and then never look at any of them again.

What I’m Working On

Reading one book a month (fiction and non-fiction mixed)
Learning French — currently at a stubborn intermediate plateau
Building a morning routine that doesn’t involve my phone for the first hour
Practicing public speaking, which terrifies me
Writing regularly, even when it’s bad

Mindset

Growth vs Fixed

The growth mindset idea — that abilities can be developed through effort — isn’t groundbreaking anymore. But it’s still useful to remind yourself of, especially when you’re stuck.

I used to think I was just “not a creative person.” That changed when I started painting and realised the only reason my early attempts looked bad was that I’d never actually painted before. The same goes for cooking, coding, playing guitar — any skill I wrote off as “not for me” turned out to be “not yet for me.”

Resilience

Resilience isn’t about bouncing back. It’s about carrying forward what you learned while you were down. The people who seem most resilient aren’t the ones who never struggle — they’re the ones who keep going anyway and take something useful with them.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this after some rough patches recently. The pattern I keep noticing is that the things I thought would break me never actually did. They changed me, sure, but they didn’t break me. That’s worth remembering next time something feels insurmountable.

Self-Care

Self-care is one of those phrases that’s been stretched so thin it’s almost meaningless. It can mean anything from a face mask to therapy to setting a boundary with your mother. The common thread is that it’s whatever helps you function at your best — not whatever looks good on social media.

Physical

Sleep, food, movement. The usual suspects. I’m not going to write a comprehensive guide here because everyone’s different, but the basics are deceptively important:

Seven to eight hours of sleep, ideally at consistent times
Eating things that aren’t primarily processed
Moving your body in a way that feels good, not punishing

Mental and Emotional

This is the harder one. Mental self-care looks different for everyone, but for me it’s usually something that gives my brain a break from constant input — walking without headphones, sitting with a cup of tea and doing nothing for ten minutes, writing things down instead of just cycling through them in my head.

What Actually Helps Me

A proper morning routine (coffee, no phone for 30 minutes)
Weekly review of what I’ve done and what needs shifting
Saying no without over-explaining
Keeping my living space reasonably tidy — chaos outside my head is easier to manage when it’s not also in my flat
Regular contact with people who don’t make me perform

Quantified Self

I track quite a lot of things. Some of it is genuine curiosity, some of it is the kind of obsessive data-collecting that might need a gentle intervention. Either way, here’s what I keep tabs on:

Productivity and Time

Daily to-do list completion rate
Hours spent on deep work vs. shallow work
Procrastination episodes (yes, I log these)
Pomodoro sessions completed
Peak productivity hours (mine are morning, unfortunately not by choice)
Distractions encountered during work blocks
Break frequency and duration
Multitasking instances (I’m trying to reduce these)
Meetings attended vs. meetings that could have been emails
Emails sent and received
Inbox zero achievements (rare, but I try)
Goals set for the day/week/month
Goal progress tracked as percentages
Time spent commuting and what I do during it
Learning activities undertaken
Skills acquired or improved
Books read or audiobooks listened to
Screen time across devices
Social media usage (time and frequency)
Apps and websites visited, categorised as productivity or leisure
Screen-free time allocated
TV and movies watched (don’t judge)
News consumption — sources and frequency

Career and Professional Development

Work hours logged
Tasks completed at work
Meetings attended or led
Projects worked on
Deadlines met or missed
Feedback received from colleagues and supervisors
Professional skills developed
Training or courses taken
Networking events attended
Job applications submitted (when relevant)
Interviews completed
Career goals progress
Performance reviews
Salary negotiations (when they come up)
Job satisfaction levels (tracked roughly, not obsessively)
Career milestones reached
Work-life balance assessment
Side projects or freelance work
Mentoring or coaching sessions