Day 820

Day 820 Record Keeping
Day 792 Fixed Meditation (31 min)
Day 666 Writing (2 rounds intense, 30 min each)
Day 206 Rowing (30 min, 5000 m)
—–
Eating
Day 44 Pantry Check (73)
Day 42 Recording
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Great sleep, good wakeup. I’m trying to stretch out my writing/work. Normally I do whatever I need to do, but if it’s difficult my minimal is 30 minutes. If I’m working on my blog or doing work, it usually stretches out longer. But since I’m working on a difficult project that’s quite painful, and I want to complete it faster, I’m trying to stretch it out.

I’m pushing my rowing by introducing HIITS. Since I had holes in my schedule last week (only did one HIIT instead of two, cut a few things on Thursday, and completely skipped almost everything on Friday)  it clearly hasn’t stabilized.

My pantry check is almost buzzing along nicely, my food recording is a superhabit, so I’m hoping it won’t mess anything up to stretch out writing.

It seems so little, writing 30 minutes a day and stretching it out to an hour. Especially since I wrote so much in November for NaNoWriMo, and because I’ve written so much in the past. But I want to really zone in on my weaknesses, and I believe this is how you do it - otherwise it just collapses.

I wish there was a way to measure the strength of the rate of progress in a skill just like I measure the strength of a habit. That way I’d know exactly how long to do a skill push before pushing more.

Day 819

Day 819 Record Keeping
Day 791 Fixed Meditation (23 min)
Day 665 Writing
Day 205 Rowing (HIIT, 17 min, 30s:1min, 3300 m)
—–
Eating
Day 43 Pantry Check (72)
Day 41 Recording 
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Great sleep, good wakeup. Excellent meditation.  Experimented with different music for HIIT - I realize I tend to always listen to really high octane fighting the world type music to get me pumped. I’m curious if this affects my motivation to enjoy the pain periods of pushing any skill, so I tried listening to Enya during this instance of rowing, which was hilarious. I can’t say yet what the effect is. My performance from my last similar HIIT was lower, but I cracked up a couple of times in the middle of more relaxed stages of my workout. Will this continue to negatively affect my output? Will it help me start difficult practice? Idunno, we’ll see…

Day 818 & Food Recording Superhabit

Day 818 Record Keeping
Day 790 Fixed Meditation (12 min)
Day 664 Writing
Day 204 Rowing (30 min/ 5400 m)
—–
Eating
Day 42 Pantry Check (71)
Day 40 Recording (80) SUPERHABIT
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Good sleep, great wakeup. At 79 and 80 for 6 days, I’m going to call food recording a superhabit. Per my previous protocols as of tomorrow I will not be taking the SRHI for that behavior. Time to think about another habit to initiate.

Day 815, Total and Utter Depletion

Day 815 Record Keeping
Day 787 Fixed Meditation (did not do)
Day 661 Writing (did not do)
Day 201 Rowing (did not do )
—–
Eating
Day 39 Pantry Check (72)
Day 37 Recording (80)
—–
Good sleep, good but tired wakeup. 

Total and Utter Depletion
It’s been an exhausting day.

After about a week of depletion, I woke up today with absolutely no energy whatsoever. I did, however, automatically do a pantry check, which was good, and food recording. But writing, rowing, meditation…just didn’t happen. I slept a lot today.

From a willpower/endurance perspective, I can understand this depletion. I’ve been pushing rowing what with my HIIT program, I’ve been pushing writing by doing a project I consider incredibly difficult, and my meditation has been intense lately and I’ve been trying to extend the time. I’ve also added two eating habits.

From a pure carbohydrate/caloric perspective, my pantry check and food recording have both had me more attentive to food. According to MyNetDiary, the food recording program I’ve been using, I’ve been under my calorie goal since Monday May 9th. That’s under the amount I’ve inputted in order to make my goal weight by November (not a serious goal, just something the program had me input), which is itself a lower caloric threshold. And quite a few days I’ve been under a thousand calories.

Today Lydia suggested I take the day off. I nodded but secretly kept trying to get up the energy to just start to end the week on a high note. After flopping around a bit I realized there was no way I was going to get anything done, but I still have this odd fight in my head.

I still think that this game is about fighting the good fight, character flaws, and motivation rather than fuel in a tank. You don’t ask a car to magically summon up forward motion. If there’s no gas in the tank, you find some way to get gas in there rather than giving the car a stern lecture.

If I can sense a lack of energy, I shouldn’t be berating myself or summoning up anything. I have a list of things I can try. Eating more, since some experiments suggest that glucose can replete willpower. Watching funny videos to improve my mood or perhaps some types of meditation. Altering my schedule and the type of work I’m doing - perhaps by not pushing multiple skills at the same time. Or taking a three day weekend and letting stores replenish.

Emotional self flagellation is not the way out. God knows I’ve tried that enough in the past without any benefits. Since I’m not the type of person that just uses anything as an excuse to take time off, there must be a reason, and strategically combatting that reason is the way out.

So today I ate a lot, and finally had a high calorie and high carb day. I’m very curious how this affects me tomorrow, or if I’ll have to take other measures to insure a smoother allocation of energy throughout the week.

Day 814

Day 814 Record Keeping
Day 786 Fixed Meditation (did not do)
Day 660 Writing
Day 200 Rowing (did not do )
—–
Eating
Day 38 Pantry Check (69)
Day 36 Recording (80)
—–
Good sleep, good but tired wakeup. This was yet another day where I was utterly depleted. Did amazing amazing work in writing today despite dragging myself to my work desk and forcing myself to work. I feel like I’ve been working a lot on this particular project to no avail. But today I’m really close to finishing and it sounds worlds better than it did before. By my calculations I’ve honed roughly 10,000 words of brainstorming and writing down into 190 words. It’s the hardest bit of writing I’ve done, but I’ve managed to do it because I’ve sat at my desk and forced myself to work at it through this habit every day for only 30 minutes at a time.

There are times when I wonder if I’m making the right decision by this steady yet small approach. Today it feels vindicated.

Was super tired and Lydia suggested I take a day off from rowing. I think it was needed, but it also resulted in me not doing my meditation. 

I think it was a good decision. I definitely had more of a lighter day mentally and had the energy to do some intense cleaning and cooking. 

Very close to a superhabit with food recording. Will have to brainstorm what other habits it’s time to add.

Day 812

Day 812 Record Keeping
Day 784 Fixed Meditation (21 min)
Day 658 Writing
Day 198 Rowing (HIIT, 17 min, 30s:1min, 3500 m )
—–
Eating
Day 36 Pantry Check (71)
Day 34 Recording (78)
—–
Great sleep, good but slow wakeup. Changed up my HIIT, was really challenging! Really good meditation. Good bout of challenging writing. For a slow wakeup where I didn’t really feel that hit of energy, I did really good today. Had a high carb day yesterday, maybe that contributed? I should explore this later on, perhaps I can time this for more demanding days - I know athletes do this, would this work for general habits? Cycling carbs and syncing that with heavier output or pushing a skill more…

Day 811

Day 811 Record Keeping
Day 783 Fixed Meditation (23 min)
Day 657 Writing
Day 197 Rowing (30 min/ 5400 m)
—–
Eating
Day 35 Pantry Check (71)
Day 33 Recording (79)
—–
Horrible sleep, bad wakeup. I think I drank some coffee later in the day, resulting in horrible sleep. Also incredibly depleted - just feel exhausted today. But, I did everything! 

I’m hoping all this will normalize once my two eating habits are solid superhabits. It is usually what happens - a period of feeling exhausted, followed by a period of feeling energetic and chomping at the bit to do way too much. 

I also have to remember I’ve also been pushing rowing by adding in HIITs, and though that’s going well, it has to have an impact on the system as a whole.

Bit by bit!

Day 805

Day 805 Record Keeping
Day 777 Fixed Meditation (18 min)
Day 651 Writing
Day 191 Rowing (HIIT, 14 min, 15sec:1min, 2800m)
—–
Eating
Day 29 Pantry Check (72)
Day 27 Recording (76)
—–
Horrible sleep, horrible/slow wakeup. Oddly enough, my horrible wakeup got me to prove the automaticity of my pantry check - I stumbled out of the bedroom and automatically did it while half awake. This resulted in an increase in my SRHI.

Day 804

Day 804 Record Keeping
Day 776 Fixed Meditation (9 min)
Day 650 Writing 
Day 190 Rowing (30 min/5200 m)
—–
Eating
Day 28 Pantry Check (66)
Day 26 Recording (77)
—–
Great sleep, great wakeup. Low performance in meditation, don’t really know what happened other than I kept falling asleep. Better performance in rowing. Last night I finished doing a read of Angela Duckworth’s book, Grit. Have a bunch of bookmarks I want to go through before writing up my thoughts.

Day 801

Day 801 Record Keeping
Day 773 Fixed Meditation (Did not do)
Day 647 Writing (interrupted)
Day 187 Rowing (did not do)
—–
Eating
Day 25 Pantry Check (67)
Day 23 Recording (75)
—–
Good sleep, good wakeup. Lydia came back today and I had to pick her up, which interrupted my routine. Still, continued with writing and my eating habits even if I didn’t discharge my others. Will probably try to do some of them tomorrow.