I like to run experiments. Indeed, I’ve written about this before. I had some time on my hands last week due to the Thanksgiving holiday and I decided to run some personal experiments of varying lengths during the next four months. The first month-long experiment is going to be writing in my journal every day in December. I usually write 40% to 50% of the days during a typical month.

During the middle of December, for ten days, I’m going to try and reach out daily to a friend of family member. This will be hard, because after a full day of interfacing with teenagers, I usually want quiet time to myself. However, as I get older I realize more and more that I need to make an effort to keep relationships going strong, or going at all. As the new year begins in January, I’m going to challenge myself to increase my daily meditation time above a certain threshold that will feel like I am stretching myself a bit.

Finally, once school is back in session after the winter break I am going to challenge myself to give a ‘Bronco Gram’ to a different one of my students for ten classes in a row, complimenting them for something very specific that they are doing well in class. That means Monday through Friday, a different student each day, two weeks in a row.

The direct impetus for challenging myself in the coming months came from author and blogger Scott Young’s ‘Foundations’ concept. Basically, Young came up with a list of what considers foundational elements of a good life and is offering classes around developing those foundations. I’m not taking his classes, but I loved the idea. I tweaked his list a bit and came up with 10 of my own that I want to keep top of mind in the coming year. My experiments around journaling and meditation stem from the foundation I am calling Spirit & Reflection. The challenge around contact with friend and family grow out my foundation of Connection. Finally, my challenge to dole out some written compliments to my students is connected to my foundation of Teaching & Work. I’ll occasionally give updates on how things are going.