Day 1

Welcome to Make A Public Commitment.

This blog documents my progress toward achieving my goals.  The blog is premised on the idea that making a public commitment will increase the chance of me attaining those goals.

I’ll also be using the following principles to help me:

1. Starting with small goals, and working my way up.
2. Relating, repeating and reframing.
3. Making the goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely (SMART).

Because I’m starting small, I just have these goals for the rest of June:

1. Doing a powerlift (squat/deadlift/benchpress) at the gym on Saturday and Sunday.
2. Posting how much I lifted, and how much I weigh, every Saturday and Sunday.

I’ll be following the recommendations of powerlifters Pavel Tsatsouline and Alexander Faleev.

After June, if I keep with my goals throughout June, I’ll add more goals for July.  These goals will relate to other projects, such as:

1. Reading more books (about motivation, personal finance, entrepreneurship, philosophy, psychology, writing, and powerlifting, etc.)
2. Starting a business
3. Writing about the philosophy of free will

I’ll also post other things for fun: pictures, movie reviews, short essays, and interesting links.  But these are gravy.  The purpose of the blog is the goals.

In fact, I would love to start a software business that automates making public commitments, and I’m using myself and this blog as a test case.

I’m also starting a weekly mailing list to document my progress and remind readers of the blog.  I encourage you to follow the blog using an RSS subscriber such as Bloglines or Google Reader (which is a great way to catch up on all of your favorite blogs).

Hopefully, the blog and mailing list will (i) motivate me to achieve my goals and (ii) bring me and you, dear reader, a little closer.

Enjoy.