Friday, May 31, 2013

Writing Week 4

After a break, I'm picking most things back up.  I never got back to writing.  It's disappointing, because I would like to be better at writing, and I think that I would like to start concretizing my ideas.  Maybe I'll swap out a future month for a Writing Take 2.

Although I enjoyed working on Meditation, I've given it up for now.  I like not having a lot of things to do in the morning (at least I do right now).  Maybe I'll try some long (30+ minutes) meditation sessions on the weekends.  I've also researched a few free guided meditation places which might be interesting.

I'm pure paleo again; so, I'm back on the healthy eating.  I've even dropped soda (trying again); so, I've started drinking black tea for the caffeine.

I haven't been doing the Procrastination stuff, because I just want to get to work and start working instead of doing some random real estate task that I don't really want to do.  I'd like to figure out how to be happy with how that all works, but I don't like delaying work or wasting my reserves and non-work stuff.

Next month is Simplify Your Day.  I think I'm pretty good at this already, but it basically consists of saying 'No' to some non-essential request/task each day.


For self-tracking, I'm back on everything I was doing before.  I've added water as well.  I want to add measuring range of motion, but I'm a bit stalled on that because I either need a trained partner and goniometer(s) or use an iPhone app that I'm not sure I can trust.

Saturday, May 25, 2013

CrossFit Open 2013 Take 2

Angela and have decided to take another crack at CrossFit Open 2013 approximately 6 months from the original dates.  That means we start in the beginning of September.  Our goals are to improve our scores on every workout.  The point is to prove to ourselves that we're improving at this CrossFit stuff.  We fully expect a side benefit to be better performance on CrossFit Open 2014, because it is unlikely that those workouts will be comprised of movements that aren't in previous Opens.

We don't expect improvement across the board to happen accidentally.  The plan is to work on a few key movements from now and until Take 2 that held us back in the original Open.
  • Snatch
  • Wall ball
  • Kipping pull-up, chest to bar, toes to bar
  • Double under
  • Jerk
I won't go into how these will improve all workouts.  The problem is that these only cover specific movements.  An additional limiting factor is conditioning.  We have no plan for that other than continuing to go to as many CrossFit classes as we can get to.

Because we're serious about committing to this, we've decided to publicly declare that we will shave our heads (Angela too) if we don't complete all of the CrossFit Open 2013 workouts.  There's no penalty for not improving.


Friday, May 24, 2013

Sea Change/Quantified Self

In short, I've stopped doing everything that isn't passive.  It was getting a little daunting tracking/doing all these things.  I'm taking some time off.  I'll get back on when I'm ready.


Before I start up again, I need to do a real deep evaluation of the level I'm willing to commit to.  Unfortunately, incrementally adding tasks isn't creating the no-brainer habits that I was looking for.  Everything took some bit of my willpower reserve (which I believe to be finite).

Friday, May 10, 2013

Writing Week 2


I've had a bit of a slow start with Writing.  It's the same crap that I did with the original Meditation month.  I'm not giving myself enough time/permission in the mornings to do the writing.  I've been fitting it in randomly.  I've also not thought about topics ahead of time at all.  Even more, I haven't read/watched any of the followup stuff Leo has put out about writing.  I'm slacking, but I got 4 of 7 days; so, it's not all bad.

I'm committed to doing better by means of hitting every day.  The other problem is that I write very little in 5 minutes.  I usually get like a paragraph.  Weak sauce.  I'd like to increase the time, but that'll probably kill the writing altogether.  Maybe I'll bump it up to 10 after being consistent for 7 days or something.

I'm still Meditating every day.  I've actually been very consistent on it.  I knocked it down to 5 minutes though.  I'm still not doing any better (probably worse) with staying focused on the breathing.  I hope I'm not falling into a just-want-to-check-it-off-mode.

Ooooo the Healthy Eating is not going well.  I need to get my shit together.

Procrastination… Back Off!  I'm trying to work over here!

Friday, May 3, 2013

Writing Week 1


I finished up the Meditation Habit month on Tuesday.  I've decided to keep it for another month to see how it goes.  I've dropped it to 10 minutes.  Maybe just brute force repetition will start to make it work.  I'll reevaluate next month.

I've been better on the healthy foods this week.  I've eaten avocado most days.  I still haven't really picked up the tea.  I think I drank it once this week.  I'll likely coordinate the tea when I finally get serious about giving up soda.

I've been hitting the MIPTs well, but that's probably because I'm giving myself easy ones.  Whatevs.

Writing

I started the Writing Habit month on Wednesday.  In typical form, I didn't actually do any writing on Wednesday.  I only have to commit to 5 minutes a day.  

I wanted to branch out and write fiction or something else completely different, but that added a barrier that I didn't want to deal with.  Instead, I just started writing about some general ideas I have about life or whatever.  

I'm not sure how all that's gonna play out.  I'm also going to miss the whole weekend for writing; so, I'm pretty much starting on Monday.