An exoself, as defined in Mind Performance Hacks (which itself bases the idea on some novels by Greg Egan) is basically a little stack of notecards and a timer reminding you to look at the top card every so often, with the intention of training yourself in certain ways (like little mental exercises). I’m going to play around with VoodooPad so i can have a tricked-out version on my computer and iPod.
At least a few of the ‘cards’/pages are going to be my major goals for the year, with the intent of reminding myself what i’m trying to do with my life and encourage myself to come up with new goals should i decide not to follow through – i accomplished remarkably little this past year, and it has nothing to do with lack of planning. I simply got sick of some stuff, or realised some things simply weren’t fitting in with any of my other goals and were only taking up time, energy, and finances without enough payoff to make them worth the effort. Things which seemed cool on their own were nothing more than an irritant when combined with other goals. And so i let everything die and didn’t replace any of it. Fail.
This year, i will stubbornly keep up with everything – even the stuff i technically quit. All of my planned goals are getting a little ‘why do i really want to do this?’ explanation to go with them. If i decide to replace something, i will focus on finding something to match the old ‘why’ while coming up with a new goal which matches better with current goals.
And all this gets crammed in the Exosherry, so i can always remember it.