Self Improvement - Broad vs Focused

Raemon

Lately I've been identifying a lot of things about myself that need improvement and thinking about ways to fix them. This post is intended to A) talk about some overall strategies for self-improvement/goal-focusing, and B) if anyone's having similar problems, or wants to talk about additional problems they face, discuss specific strategies for dealing with those problems.

Those issues I'm facing include but are not limited to:

Getting more exercise (I work at a computer for 9 hours a day, and spend about 3 hours commuting on a train). Maintaining good posture while working at said computer might be considered a related goal.
Spending a higher percentage of the time working at a computer actually getting stuff done, instead of getting distracted by the internet.
Get a new apartment, so I don't have to commute so much.
Getting some manner of social life. More specifically, finding some recurring activity where I'll probably meet the same people over and over to improve the odds of making longterm friends.
Improving my diet, which mostly means eating less cheese. I really like cheese, so this is difficult.
Stop making so many off-color jokes. Somewhere there is a line between doing it ironically and actually contributing to overall weight of prejudice, and I think I've crossed that line.
Somehow stop losing things so much, and/or being generally careless/clumsy. I lost my wallet and dropped my lap top in the space of a month, and manage to lose a wide array of smaller things on a regular basis. It ends up costing me a lot of money.

Of those things, three of them are things that require me to actively dedicate more time (finding an apartment, getting exercise, social life), and the others mostly consist of NOT doing things (eating cheese, making bad jokes, losing things, getting distracted by the internet), unless I can find some proactive thing to make it easier to not do them.

I *feel* like I have enough time that I should be able to address all of them at once. But looking at the whole list at once is intimidating. And when it comes to the "not doing bad thing X" items, remembering and following up on all of them is difficult. The worst one is "don't lose things." There's no particular recurring theme in how I lose stuff, or they type of stuff I Iose. I'm more careful with my wallet and computer now, but spending my entire life being super attentive and careful about *everything* seems way too stressful and impractical.

I guess my main question is: when faced with a list of things that don't necessarily require separate time to accomplish, how many does it make sense to attempt at once? Just one? All of them? I know you're not supposed to quit drinking and smoking at the same time because you'll probably accomplish neither, but I'm not sure if the same principle applies here.

There probably isn't a universal answer to this, but knowing what other people have tried and accomplished would be helpful.

Later on I'm going to discuss some of the problems in more detail (I know that the brief blurbs are lacking a lot of information necessary for any kind of informed response, but a gigantic post that about my own problems seemed... not exactly narcissistic... but not appropriate as an initial post for some reason)

Those issues I'm facing include but are not limited to:

Getting more exercise (I work at a computer for 9 hours a day, and spend about 3 hours commuting on a train). Maintaining good posture while working at said computer might be considered a related goal.
Spending a higher percentage of the time working at a computer actually getting stuff done, instead of getting distracted by the internet.
Get a new apartment, so I don't have to commute so much.
Getting some manner of social life. More specifically, finding some recurring activity where I'll probably meet the same people over and over to improve the odds of making longterm friends.
Improving my diet, which mostly means eating less cheese. I really like cheese, so this is difficult.
Stop making so many off-color jokes. Somewhere there is a line between doing it ironically and actually contributing to overall weight of prejudice, and I think I've crossed that line.
Somehow stop losing things so much, and/or being generally careless/clumsy. I lost my wallet and dropped my lap top in the space of a month, and manage to lose a wide array of smaller things on a regular basis. It ends up costing me a lot of money.

There probably isn't a universal answer to this, but knowing what other people have tried and accomplished would be helpful.

Thought I'd check in and let people now how their advice has paid off so far:

Just wanted to followup on how these suggestions have actually worked out for me:

1) I installed "Stay Focused" (Leechblock for chrome). It has definitely helped, although I'm not sure how much. At the very least it makes me aware of how much time i'm spending. An issue is that approximately every few minutes, the programs I work with take 30 - 200 seconds to save or open a file (I do computer animation), so a substantial fraction of the day is spent waiting, during which I could be surfing (or doing something) and after the 10 minutes of surf-time I gave myself expired, I started finding new sites that I hadn't blocked yet. Today I tried the "nuclear option" which just blocks all internet except a few sites that I specify, and I think that worked better.

2) I've been making an effort to jog instead of walk whenever I need to go somewhere and occasionally just did it because. I haven't reached my goal of "20 minutes of solid exercise," but if I were able to maintain the amount I've been doing over the past week I'd be less worried about my health.

3) Someone gave me a bunch of cheese for Christmas, but despite that I think I've actually been doing okay. Again, if I actually maintained the amount I ate this week I'd be less worried about health. I'm under no illusions that'll actually happen without making some additional effort to find a replacement food for the cheese niche.

4) Today I got on the bus, took my hat off, and then left it on my seat. I only remembered it because some lady said "hey, you forgot your hat!" So… the "losing things" issue is still looking pretty not-good. I guess I should try to put everything "detachable" in my backpack as soon as I sit down, but in some situations that's not feasible. (Either I don't have a backpack or the item doesn't fit).

5) Going to a crazy top hat party this weekend, which isn't a recurring activity but will make me feel good enough that I can postpone finding one for another week before I start feeling guilty again. Yay?