Day 538 & Current Status (I’m Back!)

Day 538 Record Keeping (55) 
Day 507 Fixed Meditation (84)
Day 453 Bodyweight Exercise (3 typewriter pushups - 74)
Day 380 Writing (59)
Day 553 Eating (66)
Bad sleep, bad wakeup.

Current Status (I’m Back!)
In the last several weeks I moved to Spain. Dealt with finding an apartment. A week later, just when I was acclimatizing to the time difference, I left for India. Adjusted to the time zone there and after 10 days returned to Spain. Dealt with paperwork for residency. It’s been a week and I’m finally back!

Needless to say, this has recked havoc on my habits. I had very spotty internet in India, and somehow regularly got into a quadphasic sleep pattern, sleeping for four hours twice a day, which was incredibly discombobulating.

My record keeping is shot. Bodyweight writing, shot (the next article on my list was one I needed to do some heavy internet research for). Eating, shot - there really wasn’t much choice as to what to eat there. But surprisingly my basic bodyweight exercises have been pretty stable, AND my fixed meditation has been incredible. Made some real progress there, and got a perfect score on the SRHI today.

Not too shabby despite extreme circumstances.

I took stock today, and decided that what is best for me is to just nail my habits this week. I’m back to my basic minimums:

-2 typewriter pushups for bodyweight training
-basic meditation. I can regularly get to 3rd jhana, but I’ll settle for quality timed durations (starting with 20 minutes) of first.
-basic writing - that is 50 words on an article for work or any amount of editing

I’ll start pushing next week. On that note, today a few points came up:

-I can feel vortex forces ripping at me - I want to do everything NOW. One possible solution would be to push one habit and change what I push the next day on an alternating schedule. Lydia has done something like this and it seems to work by preventing those psychological forces from ripping apart her habits.

So, instead of selecting on thing, say writing, to push for a few weeks, I would push write on day 1, bodyweight exercises day 2, and repeat.

-Writing is a real problem right now - it’s always been tenuous - I think I went too far too fast. The step up from writing x amount of words to writing x amount of a work-related paper was too much. I didn’t sufficiently form a “ledge” like I did transitioning from pushups to typewriter pushups.

One way around this would be to treat doing x amount of work-related words as “pushing mastery”.

Also I can switch up my habit order, doing writing as soon as I get out of bed.

I’ve recently been doing meditation, which is great, but today I pushed it hard and was utterly exhausted. Depressing and frustrating in the moment, utterly forseeable in hindsight.

I think it’s really really important to make sure I know where I’m at, and what the next ledge is at all times (and I feel this should be emphasized when improving upon Timothy Ferriss’ DiSSS protocol). Having adequate metrics and a pathway to the next ledge prevents stagnation, and I feel that I’m having severe problems with that nowadays, even despite the chaotic moving/travel situations.

There’s a lot of talk on Reddit, Quora, and random online articles about all this. But what I have to remember is though the advice being given is good, it’s all about one habit. I’m now entering that intermediate stage of this project of dealing with the dissonant harmonics of trying to level up multiple habits to mastery, and that’s no easy task.

Day 510 & Writing Crispiness

Day 510 Record Keeping
Day 479 Fixed Meditation (83)
Day 425 Bodyweight Exercise (2 form picky typewriter pushups - 83)
Day 352 Writing (editing - 74)
Day 525 Eating (78)
Great sleep, good wakeup. 

Writing Crispiness
Noticed today that my writing “crispiness” isn’t solid. What exactly consists of a “win” for my writing habit has blurred - is it editing, is it writing, how much? Should I be doing my DiSSS protocol? It’s all vague and because my daily minimums are vague I don’t have a clear trajectory of improvement. 

This stems with my indecisiveness as to how to progress towards mastery. I want to lose weight, I enjoy progressing in everything, but as far as I can tell I can’t do this with everything.

I basically just need to choose and go for it. If it’s writing, it’s working up to mastery - mastery for me is being able to output a lot - pitches, following up on pitches, and completed, fully edited work, regularly. That’s hard, but a solid protocol will get me there - I know I have the capacity for it.

The protocol will also have to deal with my crazy travel schedule in the next few months. My schedule really is insane, so I should take this time to figure out ways around it.

I leave for Spain tomorrow, so I’m hoping to outline a good strategy once I’m there.

Delayed Onset Willpower/Endurance Drain

In the post entitled “Why Do Depletion Days Happen?” I asked the question - why do I have some low willpower/endurance days?

There must be a reason. And in the post entitled “Right on Schedule: Emotional Breakdowns a Week into New Habits” I talk about noticing a trend in emotional fluctuations (normally combined with low willpower/endurance) when exerting discipline to start a new habit.

Lydia has noticed that this also occurs the second week of really pushing a habit. In fact, a lot of my recent questions has to the efficacy of the entirety of the project could be laid at this door. After all, I had been roughly a week into the DiSSS protocol for writing when I essentially had a melt down.

But with my recent travel I’ve also noticed that in the past I’d often have the wherewithal to perform habits while traveling but would be exhausted the day or two after even when I had plenty of time to do them.

I’ll call this Delayed Endurance Drain. What is this? The theory is that if we use the engine metaphor, where forward momentum equals habits, and mastery, drag is caused by higher degrees of Endurance that overwork the system’s threshold. Too much, and drag forces (ego depletion, endurance depletion, negative emotions) come into play.

In this case the endurance load takes a while to settle. For a new habit, it may be week two, as it seems to be the case for pushing a new skill towards mastery. For travel, it’s the day after that the load settles, causing setbacks.

What’s this mean? Protocols should be enabled during these breaking points - lowered thresholds, or even a strategic planned “weekend” for those days to conserve strength.