{"id":1806,"date":"2017-05-02T21:22:46","date_gmt":"2017-05-03T04:22:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/?p=1806"},"modified":"2017-05-02T21:22:46","modified_gmt":"2017-05-03T04:22:46","slug":"the-personal-operating-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/2017\/05\/02\/the-personal-operating-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Personal Operating System"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Building on <a href=http:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/2017\/05\/01\/peak-by-anders-ericsson\/>my post yesterday about deliberate practice<\/a>, I&#8217;ve been using a technique over the past year to practice certain behaviors, which is called a &#8220;personal operating system&#8221;. I learned of this technique from Maria Andersen last year, and she later <a href=http:\/\/busynessgirl.com\/write-your-own-personal-operating-system\/>wrote it up as a blog post<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>The idea is to come up with a set of precepts I want to guide my life, and reflect on them on a daily basis. I have mine posted on the bathroom mirror for consideration as I brush my teeth; in the morning, I load them into my brain before starting my day, and in the evening, I reflect on how I did in living up to those precepts that day.<\/p>\n<p>I also extended Maria&#8217;s idea to include a journaling component, where I go through each precept each week and write down how I demonstrated that precept that past week, and what opportunities I missed to live up to that precept. The journaling has proved remarkably useful in three ways:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Letting me celebrate small achievements and small steps forward\n<li>Reflecting on why I missed opportunities to live my precepts that week\n<li>Tracking my progress over time so I can see how my outlook is changing<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been doing this for almost a year now, and it&#8217;s really cool to feel how these precepts have infiltrated my brain. I can feel them speaking to me when I&#8217;m facing a decision, and those little voices bias me towards the decision that is in line with my precepts. For instance, one of my precepts is &#8220;If something scares you, try it&#8221;. In my first coaching class this spring, we were practicing coaching each other, and the guy I was paired with gave me a choice of coaching him on a career dilemma or an issue with his marriage. I was about to say the career dilemma, because I know nothing about marriage and was uncomfortable with that choice, but then I heard the precept echo in my head, and chose &#8220;marriage&#8221;. I&#8217;m not sure I did a good job, but I learned more than I would have in working with him on the career question where I felt more comfortable.<\/p>\n<p>Picking good precepts is the key to making this work. The trick is to pick ones that are a desired behavior, but not part of your current habits. This is how I think it ties into deliberate practice &#8211; the personal operating system allows me to deliberately practice behaviors that are a reach for me. And doing this sort of deliberate practice over the past year has begun to slowly alter my outlook and behavior, which is a little weird but neat to observe by looking back over my journal. Seeing the progress, even in small increments, is very satisfying.<\/p>\n<p>For those that are curious, this is my current set of precepts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You are enough!\n<li>Be generous to myself and others.\n<li>Look for surprise. Be curious.\n<li>Be thankful and appreciative.\n<li>If something scares you, try it.\n<li>Failure resume &#8211; how have I failed this week, and what have i learned?\n<li>Be mindful, be present now, just this.\n<li>Ask for help.\n<li>Make time for reading.<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Building on my post yesterday about deliberate practice, I&#8217;ve been using a technique over the past year to practice certain behaviors, which is called a &#8220;personal operating system&#8221;. I learned of this technique from Maria Andersen last year, and she later wrote it up as a blog post. The idea is to come up with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coaching","category-selfdesign"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1806"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1808,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806\/revisions\/1808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}