Personal Curriculum
This page is the personal foundation beneath the academic curriculum. Progress is not only what you learn or build; it is also the quality of the life that supports the work.
Return to the main curriculum or the curated bookmarks.
The five principles
- Meet basic needs.
- Avoid cheap dopamine.
- Leave the past alone.
- Limit desires to those achievable at the edge of your capability.
- Find something beyond yourself — mission, children, God, community, or service.
1 — Meet basic needs
Treat the body and immediate environment as infrastructure, not as interruptions to meaningful work.
Daily baseline
- Sleep and wake at a sustainable time
- Eat, hydrate, and take necessary medication or supplements
- Move, stretch, or spend time outside
- Maintain hygiene and a usable living space
- Make space for at least one real human connection
- Address urgent health, safety, or financial needs before optional optimization
Question: What unmet basic need is making everything else harder today?
2 — Avoid cheap dopamine
Protect attention from rewards that are immediate, effortless, and difficult to stop. Entertainment is not the enemy; unconscious consumption is.
Attention rules
- Decide what the current session is for before opening a device
- Complete one meaningful block of work before algorithmic entertainment
- Keep notifications and distracting feeds away during focused work
- Consume deliberately: choose the video, article, game, or conversation in advance
- Stop when the planned time ends instead of waiting to feel finished
Question: Is this activity restoring me, connecting me, or merely helping me avoid discomfort?
3 — Leave the past alone
The past may contain information, responsibility, and grief, but it cannot become today’s workspace forever.
Processing rule
When something from the past returns, identify which response it requires:
- Repair: apologize, repay, correct, or have the necessary conversation
- Learn: write the lesson and the behavior that changes next time
- Grieve: allow the feeling without turning it into a permanent identity
- Release: stop rehearsing what no longer permits useful action
Question: Is there a concrete action available now? If not, what would releasing this look like for today?
4 — Work at the edge of capability
Choose desires that require growth but remain close enough to reality that consistent effort can reach them. Avoid both comfort-only goals and fantasies with no actionable path.
Goal filter
Before accepting a goal, ask:
- Can I describe the next physical action?
- Can I practice the relevant skill every week?
- Is the difficulty stretching me without depending on constant crisis?
- Will progress produce evidence within four to six weeks?
- Am I willing to accept the cost and tradeoffs?
Keep one major stretch goal active at a time. Break it into the smallest project that still tests the capability you want to develop.
Question: What is just beyond my present ability but reachable through the next cycle of deliberate practice?
5 — Find something beyond yourself
Let learning and achievement serve a commitment larger than status or self-image. This may be a mission, family, faith, community, craft, or responsibility to future people.
Practice
- Name the people or purpose your work is meant to serve
- Perform one act of service each week without optimizing it for recognition
- Keep one relationship that matters protected from productivity pressure
- Revisit whether your goals still express your values
- Make room for gratitude, prayer, reflection, or silence
Question: Who benefits if I become more capable, and how can they benefit this week rather than someday?
Daily check-in
- Body: What do I need physically?
- Attention: What deserves my best focus today?
- Past: What can I repair, learn from, or release?
- Edge: What is today’s deliberate stretch?
- Beyond self: Who or what does today’s work serve?
Weekly review
- Which basic need was neglected?
- Where did distraction become avoidance?
- What from the past still requires action—and what requires release?
- Did the week’s challenge sit at the edge of my capability?
- Did my work serve something beyond myself?
- What is the single adjustment for next week?
Standard
This is a compass, not a scorecard. Use it to notice drift and choose the next honest action, not to manufacture guilt.