Day 840 & More Syncing and Eating Problems

Day 840 Record Keeping
Day 812 Fixed Meditation (30 min)
Day 686 Writing (4 rounds of 30 min)
Day 226 Rowing (30 min/ 5600 min - Personal Record)
—–
Eating
Day 64 Pantry Check (81)
Day 62 Recording
—
good sleep, good wakeup.

More Syncing and Eating Problems

Today I started working and Lydia really wanted to get some food. I don’t constantly want to be a slave to my routine and say no all the time. I also didn’t want to mess up our syncing with eating later in the day. So I said yes. 

I decided I’d go out with her, get something to bring back, do another round of writing but not do a full 4 rounds because today is my HIIT day, and this one is the start of a particularly difficult one (for me). By doing another round, I’m still maintaining my if-then - writing then rowing - albeit with a pause before. It’s in the joints of the day that solidity in habits exist. I’d do that, then eat after rowing, because afterwards I usually shower.

On the way Lydia was excited to watch an episode of a show, and I did that because I wanted to watch something and I wanted to eat my meal hot. Then I ended up doing two more rounds of work for the full complement of 4 because I got too full and I didn’t want to do a HIIT after that.

I was still full, so there was no way I was doing a HIIT. I ended up doing my meditation next after taking a break because all these pauses and changes to my schedule (as well as my full stomach) messed up my rhythm, and it left feeling quite grumpy.  

Talking to Lydia after I got my head screwed on straight was interesting. She pointed out how much improved I was in all of this. Sure my schedule was off. But I ate clean. I did 4 rounds of writing. I did 30 minutes of meditation. I may not have done a HIIT, but I rowed 200 meters further at this time than I’ve ever done. 

I think I can take better care of timing and eating. I should make global changes - perhaps plan eating on Sundays, definitely get up earlier and make sure that my schedule is really hard to break. But there is no question that I’ve improved significantly since starting this project. Today I did everything and more despite messing up my regimentation - and isn’t that the hallmark of really strong habits?

Day 834 & Meal Prep Sundays and the Hangry Blues

Day 834 Record Keeping
Day 806 Fixed Meditation (30 min)
Day 680 Writing (3 rounds of 30 min)
Day 220 Rowing (30 min, 5300 m)
—–
Eating
Day 58 Pantry Check (79)
Day 56 Recording
—
ok sleep, good wakeup. Despite waking up and not being able to go back to sleep and dragging, I did really well today. Really unfocused meditation.

Meal Prep Sundays and The Hangry Blues
In a previous post -  “Syncing with Significant Others” - I talked about problems Lydia and I have with syncing our eating plans. This came to a head again today. I haven’t started my “early to rise” plan and since I still wake up later, our schedules don’t always match up.

She wants to eat early when she’s at a breaking point in her day and she wants to at least sync up for dinner so we can eat together. She’s fine taking care of her own lunches without me, but worries that since I don’t get hungry until later in the day I won’t be hungry when she will be for dinner.

I am pushing and extending several of my habits. Writing/work in particular is being extended, and there’s a certain rhythm I get into after I start. It’s gotten to the point where I either am being forced into a wake up habit (which is something I want to do eventually) or I gotta break my rhythm. 

I have no problem starting multiple chains now. I know I can do this; my tea and food recording habit before bed has proven I can start new chains (perhaps with the aid of a ritual). 

I don’t however want to start a new habit of eating then working more. Mainly because it requires a more global change in my food habits. I need to plan at least my lunches. The last several days it hasn’t been a problem because I usually cook the day before and have those leftovers during lunch. It doesn’t really interrupt anything that much in that there’s no leaving the apartment or cooking anything from scratch.

Our solution, other than starting a wakeup habit, is to start planning meals. As Lydia mentioned, I’m extending more and more, of my habits so there’s going to be an inevitable point where I have to deal with those habits abutting against the need to eat whether or not I wake up early. 

We discussed a Sunday morning meal prep, a happy coincidence because I just stumbled upon a SubReddit for that - Meal Prep Sunday (and Lydia was reading about it on http://meljoulwan.com/) . The how of it all is still in the air. We’ve got a few ideas, and it will be my first foray into a once a week habit. This also has been inevitable - there are too many planning things I feel like I need to incorporate once a week. I’m thinking a ritual of perhaps gathering metrics and stats, course adjusting, meal prep, and later a social/leisure planning session might be just the thing I need for Sundays. 

After I grumped about having my work interrupted and grumped some more because I was getting hungry, we ordered in some Indian food with no naan (Naan is one of my kryptonites) - just curries, which are (mostly) clean. I don’t like planning the entirety of my life, but it is amazing how much needless stress I run into by not planning. We’ll see how it works.

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.