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Holy s*^%, I can't believe I just completed [....]

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Nicky

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With all the general threads asking about how to improve on a personal level, I would like to suggest a thread where members can post examples of actual achievements.

As in, holy s*^%, I can't believe I just lost 50 pounds, or holy s*^%, I can't believe I just finished an online course in XYZ, or holy s*^%, I can't believe I just got a job in the profession I always wanted to become (feel free to skip the "holy s*^%" part, in fact, please do - I already regret using it).

That sort of thing: medium and medium-large achievements, not smaller things like "I just walked home instead of taking the bus", or "I just aced a test at school", and not life spanning achievements like "I built up Microsoft from the ground up" (looking at you, Bill Gates). Things that took at least a month of sustained effort to complete, but aren't big enough to make bragging about them unnecessary (took no longer than let's say 4-5 years).

Let's try to stick to things we completed in the past six months or so. Not much point to patting yourself on the back a year late.

Edited by Nicky
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Well I have only had my current Job for a year and a half. It is just a part time job but I cater and cook for people at a golf course. I used to be bad at it, not understanding asthetics or really much anything. Now I get complimented on my cooking (catering and orders) by customers and staff frequently. My boss (an actual chef) even lets me handle certain caterng events without management. The job is really fun now where it used to be a nightmare.

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I love this thread idea.

Recently, I just amassed a 3.3 semester GPA at Texas A&M, while remaining in good standing with the Corps and making time to compete in the Ranger Challenge competition in Fort Knox this October. I was a team-lead on our Ranger Challenge team, meaning not that I led the entire team, but that I was assigned two new guys to teach them our tactics and the skills they would need at competition. We took fourth place out of twenty-something teams from ROTC units across the nation. This is especially meaningful to me because last year I was a newcomer to the team, and we took seventh. This year I got a chance to pass down what my team-lead had taught me, and my kids did awesome at the competition, which made me proud.

Oh and also I finally got the contract spot I have been working to earn since I came to A&M in Fall 2011, so I am now officially a cadet employed with the United States Army. I draw real grown-up pay, too!

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  • 6 months later...

I wrote a play in May 2013, one in June 2013, and will have one done this month, as well. So three, one act plays, in three months. They are me at my very best, in regards to writing. They are all based upon Greek myths. I will be publishing them soon. I selected a couple of people to read the final drafts of my first two plays, the one's that have read them, all were favorable reviews. I'll be finished with the final draft of my third play, probably as early as this weekend. Then send it out to the same readers as my other two, then decide what to do in regards to publishing them. This is an unexpected unbelievable holy-fucking-shit-I-have-something-to-show-for-all-those-years, moment in my life. It's an incredible feeling to have actually accomplished something with my writing. I am reworking the ones I mentioned in this thread earlier into a collection of plays of my own not based on Greek myths.

Edited by intellectualammo
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I earned a 4.0 last semester while working ~30 hours a week.

 

Also, I recently ran 4 miles in <28 minutes. That is a big accomplishment because I could barely run a mile in 8-9 min at the start of spring. That will go away though because I am starting to bulk up this week.

 

And this is my 400th post :smartass: .

Edited by thenelli01
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I put a math proof (1, 2) together for a three-hundred year old conjecture learning how to do it from scratch by my own research aided with some postive and negative feedback. If there is an error in it, it has not yet been brought to my attention.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Holy Shit I can't believe I completed ... the publication of my first play!

My first play has now been published and is available for purchase.

Here is a link to it on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Untold-Story-Narcissus-Echo-ebook/dp/B00E6FYV6O/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374951591&sr=1-1

The play involves the myth of Narcissus and Echo.

It's a dramatic contemporary telling of the old told Ovidian tale in the form of a one act play, written in verse interspersed with prose.

It's estimated to be 79 pages in length.

It's price: $1.99

Here are the first four verse lines of the play:

 

ECHO: (speaking what she is writing on a scroll)

"Oh, Narcissus, my heart beats ink for you

a pulse in every line

it's your heart they seek to find

to circulate my feelings throughout you"

Anyone know an appropriate place on the forum that I can post a thread about it in?

Edited by intellectualammo
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  • 3 weeks later...

I just finished the beginning of the preliminary "Done Stage" of something I've been working on since February. The (mobile and desktop) site is:

http://putit.co

After buying some leather with the idea to cut out a shadow for my new iPhone to rest on so it wouldn't scratch, and then using it a couple of days, I figured other people might also have a use for it.

That small "thought" translated into tons of time planning and working -- close to half a year now. My guess is that I could have knocked it out in a few weeks if I hadn't had a full time job to cover also -- but, that's the magic of tiny business. Definitely I have come to more robustly appreciate the power of delegating than before (and I thought I had had a pretty good idea), realized through the negative, as nothing I did had a budget so delegating wasn't optional. As an already ultra time-aware person, I somehow became even more aware of the consequences of choosing to do one activity over another. Wax the car also/really meant a guaranteed week delay of the next tiny-business-related task that needed done.

The numerous tasks weren't themselves particularly challenging, though of course there were things I didn't enjoy, like taking pictures and editing (so tedious!). It was the time management that was most challenging. Even an hour's difference sleep developed a very real identity for me as, say, "no decisions will be possible on anything for the following 24 hours due to the 1 hour sleep deficiency."

I decided to create a standalone site instead of using amazon or eBay because those markets are trolled by copycats, and it would be nothing for someone to copy this idea. I wanted my chances to be as good as possible for my site to get credit. As such, I also tried to make things memorable with an off-beat name, and with design that didn't look like a total hack-job. And finally, in the event that I receive an amount of luck, I can better control a site I own if expansion and growth become possible. A site can also serve as a way to provide a customer with information in the event that I wind up selling another way.

While these first major pieces have finally been finished and organized, work is probably far from over. With basically any level of sales, I am looking at the problem producing more of them myself (especially with the release of a new iPhone) -- the next round will still have no budget for delegating, even with money made from sales of existing quantities. So, more time and money will be required. Also, I will likely be producing one kind of advertisement or another fairly soon here, meaning more pictures and editing (argh!).

Still, I am proud of what's done so far -- especially of having followed through with an idea.

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Nice going happiness. I like Peter. I wish he were an objectivist rather than a libertarian. And I think his economic advice and investment strategy would be better served by objectivism. But I really like the guy and the work that he's done. I'd love to hear more about how working for him goes.

Edited by secondhander
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Realized a lingering deontological premise in my own thinking; the dichotomy between survival and happiness.

 

Resolved contradiction.  Subsequently resolved to quit smoking.  Started a new book; resolved to finish this one.

 

Probably post again here when I finish both.

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  • 3 months later...
  • 1 year later...

www.putit.co ain't dead yet. After my last post, I had the site up for a little while and received zero sales. I tried Ad Words and failed, and soon became depressed about the whole idea. As it usually goes, I would have picked it back up after a couple downer weeks, but I got distracted with another business idea, which took my attention for the entirety of 2014. In the meantime, my friends and relatives have all still been using their little leather/cork pads for their phones -- and yes, they do call them by the awkward name, "Put Its" (!) -- so I figured I may as well pick up from where I left off, since it looks like there's still interest/potential money.

 

I wrote before that my major issue was time management and the thing I didn't like most was editing photos, since I wasn't good at it. Last year, while doing the other business idea, I became a time management Super Master. I drive for my day job, and I now know exactly which kinds of activities I can fit in between driving ie. which activities primarily require thinking, and which require after-work doing, how much energy and time everything will take, and how long overall it's going to take to get things done. I almost can't believe I wrote in the last post that I couldn't handle my time well.

 

But then, the photo editing. Part of what turned me off was that I never considered myself to be a very creative person. To continue with Put Its, I figured I'd need something more than just "leather shadows." I considered how much time it would take to guide a freelance artist to do what I was looking for, and decided that it would be the same time to learn and do everything myself -- then, it would be "free"!  :rolleyes: I just had to get over my aversion to "creative work."

 

...Which brings me to this post. There have been a lot of points in the last year where I thought I'd accomplished something ridiculous, in the spirit of this thread. But, all of that activity had been new and unplanned, changing every other week. They weren't things I'd previously considered outside the scope of my ability. So, this post could be headlined, "Holy s*^%, I can't believe I was legit creative!" During lull time for the 2nd business idea where I was waiting on someone else, I joined a stock photo site, sifted through tons of images, and then spent about 8 weekends editing these images into designs than can be cut/etched with a laser. I did everything myself, all creative choices. Tonight, I finally finished the last one. Then, I lined them all up to admire (and catch design problems), which is when I remembered this thread again. I'm a pretty harsh critic of myself, and maybe someday I'll look at this work and think it's crap. But at this moment, I really can't believe I came up with all these ideas by myself, and then made them, from start to finish.

 

(I will be using a freelancer to turn them into the vector files required by the laser cutting company, by the way. But, since the designs are set, that should be a pretty straightforward task to outsource.)

 

post-2512-0-41100800-1425254442_thumb.pn

 

As I said in the last post, so much more work remains. But unlike my last post, I'm looking forward to it.

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Since I've started the thread, I've been studying Japanese. Or rather, I've been learning Japanese. There was studying involved, but only in short bursts (a month of sustained effort here, a couple of weeks there, with long periods of nothing in between). Most of the learning came just from watching and listening to stuff in Japanese. And it's been working, at the moment I can watch pretty much anything on Japanese television and understand what's being said.

Reading is trickier. I can read basic stuff (comic books, blogs), but for the news and most websites, I still need a browser add-on that provides the reading of more difficult words on hover. And I can't write at all. I don't think I ever will, it's just too much work for not enough reward, to learn to write thousands of Chinese characters properly. I'll just use a printer if something really needs to be on paper.

Edited by Nicky
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It been 105 days since I quit smoking. I had been tracking this using ever-note app on my phone. Below is how I did it motivating myself every now and then.

 

------

02-03-2015
Its 105 days. And I am glad to share this up on Objectivismonline.

18-02-2015
93 days.

08-02-2015
83 days.

27-01-2015

71 days. 6 months is still far away.

 

18-01-2015

62 days.

 

02-01-2015
A New year ! Awesome. 46 days without smoke. Great control ! Keep going you cannot lose. Next big thing is 6 months to qualify as non smoker and then forever !

 

19-12-2014
Great going. It's 33 days now ! Over a month !! But remember its 6 months to qualify as a non-smoker. Also remember the reason why you started this.

 

11-12-2014
3 more days now and its 25. Always Remember why you started this. Remember to slow down and step back when you make hasty decisions. One tends to act quickly or hastily to escape from thinking. You don't want to regret later. There will be no point anyway but what you will then face is a net loss of something that you reasoned to keep or maintain. Don't evade thinking. Be strong. It will take you 6 months or 180 days to qualify as Non smoker.

 

08-12-2014
22 days now.. Shortly.. It will be a month..

 

03-12-2014
17 days. Good. But not good enough. Remember, good enough is entire life. You never want to put the number back to zero.

 

23-11-2014
Its been a week, since I have stopped. Which is good. But not good enough. Good enough will only be till end of life.!! This is just a remainder that if started again 7 days would mean to nothing. The number would then start again from 0.

 

16-11-2014
I quit today.

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