The third of my ten core values is self-improvement. Where happiness and honesty were easy to define, I’ve found improvement to be difficult. Living up to these values is a form of self-improvement, so it’s hard to see where I can be specific enough to act.

Struggling with what to do, I turned back to the inspiration for my value, the 10 Buffer Values. Under Have a Focus on Self Improvement, they list:

1. You are conscious of your current level of productivity and happiness, and make continual changes to grow
2. You have a higher expectation of yourself than Buffer does of you
3. You regularly and deliberately do things that make you feel uncomfortable
4. You practice activities and develop habits that will improve your mind and body

Those four ideas seemed like a good place to start, but needed tweaking for my needs.

The first goal fits in to what I’m already doing, as happiness and efficiency are two of my core values. This can act as a reminder to continue to work on them.

The second is easy, I’m my biggest critic – so that will work fine.

Just thinking about the third makes me feel uncomfortable, that’s probably a sign I should do it. I have always wanted to be better at things like speaking in public, but am too nervous to do it. My reaction is to ignore this one, so I’m making a public commitment to target it.

The fourth seems key. I am already working on habits that help me reach my goals and meet my values. This can act as an overview, kind of a meta-habit. I’ll read up and work on things that help build good habits and actions. With my reading habits already defined, I don’t have the time to read full self-improvement books now, but I can read articles (and share them to help you!).

Measurement and Analysis

While this value is wide ranging, the steps to implement it in my life are small. They’re the daily habits I’m already trying to work on and I track these through an app called Momentum . I’m currently working on:

• Sleeping seven hours a night
• Eating a good breakfast
• Daily meditation
• Drinking enough water every day

Improvement Reporting

It would be great if Momentum had a public profile where I could share my efforts, but , for now, this will be a self-reporting value. I’ll revisit this value in a year and update you with my progress.

How do you work on self-improvement?

Today’s featured image is Blackboard by Mark Kaletka