Day 793

Day 793 Record Keeping
Day 765 Fixed Meditation (24 min)
Day 639 Writing
Day 179 Rowing (30 min/ 5000 m)
—–
Eating
Day 17 Pantry Check (65)
Day 15 Recording (72)
—–
Bad sleep, ok wakeup. Woke up in the middle of the night, about 2:30 am, and had a freak out about how I’m not doing enough. I think this is a common occurrence. Whenever I’m doing well and everything in my project is firing off smoothly, I start thinking about the big picture. And I get to thinking - what if I just went all out? 

I calm myself down by thinking about what I’ve accomplished so far. I’ve been meditating for over two years - something I was never able to do with consistency before. I’ve written rough drafts of the last two novels during NaNoWriMo like it was nothing - and in record time. I’ve been rowing - a relatively new habit - for (and I just realized this) 6 months!

Every success I’ve had - from doing my first full bridge to finishing my first class in over a decade - has been because of regularity, because I’ve taken things slow but steady. And every time I’ve gone backwards or yo-yo’d, it’s been because I’ve followed that vortex - that emotional urge to do it all.

Once I got my head screwed on straight I went back to sleep at around 4:30 am. I over slept, but as Lydia reminds me, I’m not focusing on the sleep thing now. One thing at a time, one step at a time. It might seem slow, but a sure thing is always better - and often faster -  than wasting time perennially repeating a chance of success.

That’s just something I have to hold on to.

Day 546 & Theorizing on Springiness in Mastery Cycling

Day 546 Record Keeping (67)
Day 515 Fixed Meditation
Day 461 Bodyweight Exercise (5 rounds, bodyweight tabata - 62)
Day 388 Writing (60)
Day 561 Eating (71)
Bad sleep, bad wakeup. Feeling good. Changed up my schedule again so that I did writing first, then exercises, then the rest of it. I have some nervous energy in my system from writing anyways. Also started incorporating tabatas. Ideally I’d like to do a pushing exercise, a pulling exercise, and core exercises to my routine. I think that would be a really solid routine to get good progress - and I’d consider mastery of that sequence throughout the week as a solid shelf to rest my practice.

Theorizing on Springiness in Mastery Cycling
Yesterday I talked about the extremes of depletion and vortex forces. I was thinking - is there any way to capitalize on this?

After starting a new routine where I’m pushing a habit towards mastery I get depleted, stressed, and depressed. After about a week I get a burst of energy and want to do a lot (vortex forces). There is definitely a feeling of springiness, where the equilibrium of the system reacts to a new endurance load. It makes sense that this takes time, especially since in my theory, endurance is willpower across time.

So - When vortex forces kick in, is it possible to use that subtlety in the process to do more?

My initial reaction is to say no (though I think it’s important to mull it over). Doing more work isn’t the point, it’s doing more work over time that reaps the greatest rewards. My thoughts are that cultivating a sense of satisfaction - knowing that I’m done completely with the day might be more effective to stave off that feeling of needing to do more.

As Lydia said today, I’m the type of person who will get into a groove, then get depressed because I’m not doing enough. I might as well be working even though I’m not - and the end point in my mind just doesn’t end. She heavily suggests doing something - a relaxation routine, or a reward - to signify a relaxation point. 

But it brings up other issues - since I haven’t yet meticulously recorded a mastery cycle, at what point is right to start doing more? My hunch is that it’s never going to get to that point. There’s going to be less energy at first, then more, and then it’s going to level out. There isn’t a time to do more, per se, but there is a time to switch habits to work on, or continue on another growth cycle, once a shelf  - where a habit can safely rest - is reached.

For example, I haphazardly started bodyweight exercises long ago. At some point doing 2 pushups a day transitioned to doing two typewriter pushups - and that’s solid. I’m currently working on going from 50 words of anything to a bit of work related writing tasks - and that’s a hard transition. 

My hunch is that during this period automaticity goes down because you’ve essentially shifted what constitutes completion of a habit - and often enough you’re also switching the order of your daily regimentation. Completion of the growth cycle is marked when the SRHI scores stop dipping and go back up.

I really want to start focusing on these subtleties because I don’t believe anyone else is talking about them, and I believe it’s one of the keys to successful self mastery.

Day 545 & Between Scylla and Charybdis

Day 545 Record Keeping (63)
Day 514 Fixed Meditation 
Day 460 Bodyweight Exercise (7 typewriter pushups - 60)
Day 387 Writing (56)
Day 560 Eating (72)
Good sleep, good wakeup. Feeling good.

Per my previous protocol, I’ve dropped recording the SRHI for fixed meditation because I maintained an 80 or above in it for a week, giving it superhabit status. As an aside meditation has been going well. Last night I started meditating (I’ve been doing this  more and more often lately) vipassana style. I found myself getting into this solid groove of letting thoughts flow without clinging, and it started to feel really good. Just as though I was entering first jhana.

Lydia has been reading about this more than I have lately, and Daniel Ingram does mention that you can enter first jhana through vipassana. I’m liking how a lot of his book reflects my personal experience after the fact, for items I didn’t read clearly or just skimmed over. It makes me feel like I’m making solid progress.

When I meditate I often don’t really want to go through with it - but that first initial repulsion is overwhelmed by the solid habit of just getting into position. Once I start it starts happening. That’s exactly what I’ve been feeling the last couple of days with writing. Thinking about the nitty gritty I immediately don’t want to do it, but I find myself just walking to my chair sitting down, and setting up my next writing task. That’s exactly where I want habits to be, especially ones I’m pushing - I’m never going to like the pain involved, but I’m not thinking about that - I’m mechanically and habitually getting set up, and the rest flows. This has clearly resulted in a higher score in the SRHI which I think will continue.

Eating has been amazing - it really clicked this weekend, as  I had some old college friends visit. Despite going out and having dinner, I was on autopilot, ignoring the bad foods and eating the solid ones. That’s also resulted in a very high score on the SRHI, and that’s exactly where I want that habit to be.

Between Scylla and Charybdis

I feel a lot better about my habits. Last weeks depression has fallen away, as predictable. It feels like it regularly takes a week or two for that strain to fade. The opposite is what I’m feeling now - the urge to do more. 

Having more latent energy makes me want to expand my exercises, expand my writing, expand my meditation…This is dangerous. 

It’s like Scylla and Charybdis in Ulysses.  Scylla was a monster, Charybdis was a whirlpool, and ships had to figure out how to navigate the Strait of Messina without being torn to pieces. This metaphor is particularly apt because I’ve described this scenario before as a battle of two forces that threaten to rip a part progress in this project. Too much depletion, and you don’t want to do anything. Too much energy, and the internal urge to do more overextends your willpower/endurance/grit.

Ulysses survived with few losses by choosing Scylla, I can’t afford the losses and must choose to angle my ship precisely in between the two dangers.

Lydia said something interesting today. “Now that you have done what you need to do, your job is to be satisfied.”

There’s a lot of wisdom and skill in that statement. It means sacrificing sudden momentary swaths of gains for long term steady progress, which is the heart of this entire project, yet so difficult to remember when in the thrall of vortex forces.

It is very interesting how these emotional urges play out time wise….it’s something I need to pay closer attention to.

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.