Thirty-day-Lifestyle-Challenge: Fixed schedule
Short intro: name’s Chris. I’ve been lurking around here for awhile, and what should I say.. I kind of started to like the cozy, whorey family feel of this little community here.
I have been dabbling with pickup on and off, and I’m doing decent. But nothing fancy. And it’s time to up the ante. But I need to fucking free some time for that, as I’m really focused on finishing my studies right now. And I want to finish them well.
This is why my first post is at best indirectly related to pickup (thus more about that another time). It is about self-accountability and lifestyle. Something I always struggled with but which is preliminary to live the kind of life that I want to live. I actually started this challenge for the first time in January, but after one week got sick and then fell off. So I decided now it’s time to fucking do it, and to up the stakes a little by posting it here as a challenge. I figured some of you might be interested in it. Mainly it is to keep myself accountable, though.
I'm in the second year of my master in philosophy now, and while there is not too much of coursework, there is a lot of reading, thinking and writing to be done at home. This means a lot of freedom, which at least in my case sadly also means a lot of procrastination, where I don't even do anything halfway useful as writing songs, macking on chicks or sports. It's wasting life basically. It also means I go through long periods of being completely absorbed in work from eight am to twelve pm, where I do little else, but eat and shit in order to make stuff happen on time. If I didn't share a flat with some cool dudes, I would probably unlearn how to even talk in such times. And while I'm interestingly more content in the high intensity work periods, because I get so much shit done and become so fast at it, I also periodically ruin my social life. It is not sustainable. No balance. Now I will try to find a more sustainable work-life balance by doing this particular lifestyle challenge for thirty days at first.
I got this from Cal Newport's blog Studyhacks. Here’s a link: http://calnewport.com/blog/2008/02/15/fixed-schedule-productivity-how-i-accomplish-a-large-amount-of-work-in-a-small-number-of-work-hours/
I def recommend his site The idea is fairly simple (and also not particularly new either, I wager):
assign fixed time slots for recurring tasks every week like writing reviews, readings for certain classes, or for working on long-term projects, and then fucking stick to it, no matter what! I repeat: fucking stick to it no matter what!
And that’s what I'm going to do for the next thirty days. If I manage to pull this off, it will be the single biggest accomplishment of 2014. The next best thing after starting to meditate daily two years ago. Greatness will follow, like sunshine after rain.
So here is picture of my ical-plan for the next week: As you can see I didn't make it too ambitious. But If can do this I can also do more. I scheduled six hours of strict work on university projects for the workweek (the violet fields, the green ones are my few left obligatory courses) every day. I also scheduled meditation and Crossfit. No need schedule fun stuff like making music etc. Blue schedulations are appointments. In the long run I want to have one day, preferably Monday, on which I will schedule all the appointments, shopping and other organisational stuff for the week in order to have an undisrupted flow on the other days. For now I just scheduled one hour of organisational work on Monday for making appointments, calls, urgent mails. I will adapt the whole plan during the process. Weekend stays free for fun times, and necessary stuff like housekeeping, repairs, and then sometime for other time intensive projects.
The rules for the 30 days are as follows:
1. Stick to the plan no matter what. (In unavoidable cases reschedule, but no impulse decisions allowed)
5. Cross out every day here on the forum, modify as needed.
6. Play hard!
comments, questions, jeering or cheering, all very much appreciated
greetz
Chris
ya ist gut.
Yeah, I fully encourage you. It's crazy how once you start building momentum in your daily life, it becomes hard to stop... and yes, it is very cozy here. Very, very cozy.
Get a white board they're absolutely essential. I'm in my home "office" right now I've got two large ones and a small one. It keeps you immersed in your "plan" and allows you to plan things farther out, which is necessary for larger projects. It also gives you a sense of where you're going and what progress you've made in terms of getting there.
Your jpg didn't work.
You want to plan the day the night before. Morning doesn't really work as well.
I go in and I'm crisp, clean and my vocals are fucking coming out like music. - Anonymous MW student
- Autismus Terminus Finis (Root Cause/Cure of Autism Epidemic)
- Called Off My Wedding & Other Turn Tail Signs Of The American Male
In my experience, I started to manage my time better when I internalized the fact that procrastination WILL ALWAYS lead to some sort of compensation behavior (infinity's post helped me).
like look at it objectively and accept that procrastination is gonna lead to a serious cram session. If your cool with that and you really think you got better things to do then face the situation.
The biggest thing that's helped me was a Jeffy video where he mentions a book about this subject.
Basically, think about all the things you're procrastinating on doing. The one you feel the most resistance towards doing, START DOING IT RIGHT NOW.
It's amazing how many bullshit rationalizations the human mind can come up with in order to not get anything done.
^^That sounds like The War of Art.
In my experience, I started to manage my time better when I internalized the fact that procrastination WILL ALWAYS lead to some sort of compensation behavior (infinity's post helped me).
Be careful Meow. Did you read Part 2? I'm not sure you fully understand. This was why I was afraid of sharing all that. You don't even need to worry about falling into "compensation behavior." You're a better class of person than that.
A compensation behavior is something that someone with low self-esteem does to make themselves feel better IE "fill their self-esteem cup." Like your friend tooling on you. Or being charitable so people tell them what a nice person they are, or going to church because "they're broken and need fixing," or being "nice" in order to get something, or picking up girls to impress their social circle. CB's are basically manipulations.
Actually that's a very good point from Meow.
I go in and I'm crisp, clean and my vocals are fucking coming out like music. - Anonymous MW student
- Autismus Terminus Finis (Root Cause/Cure of Autism Epidemic)
- Called Off My Wedding & Other Turn Tail Signs Of The American Male
All I'm saying is be careful. Take it with a grain of salt and measure it against your own experience. If it helped, I'm really glad, that's why I put it up. I almost didn't post that idea, because I don't want to be the one to put bad notions into people's heads.
Infinity don't take yourself so seriously dude. It's a pretty good post on inner game. But it's just labeling things that have been around for years just a slightly different way.
I go in and I'm crisp, clean and my vocals are fucking coming out like music. - Anonymous MW student
- Autismus Terminus Finis (Root Cause/Cure of Autism Epidemic)
- Called Off My Wedding & Other Turn Tail Signs Of The American Male
Meow wrote:
In my experience, I started to manage my time better when I internalized the fact that procrastination WILL ALWAYS lead to some sort of compensation behavior (infinity's post helped me).Be careful Meow. Did you read Part 2? I'm not sure you fully understand. This was why I was afraid of sharing all that. You don't even need to worry about falling into "compensation behavior." You're a better class of person than that.
A compensation behavior is something that someone with low self-esteem does to make themselves feel better IE "fill their self-esteem cup." Like your friend tooling on you. Or being charitable so people tell them what a nice person they are, or going to church because "they're broken and need fixing," or being "nice" in order to get something, or picking up girls to impress their social circle. CB's are basically manipulations.
lol no I get that. I just further applied it. Procastination is in a way an inadequate behavior. In my experience I procrastinate when I feel that I can't handle the task in front of me, that i'm not adequate enough to be successful.
but yes I can see how those ideas could potentially be dangerous
haha, you guys are great. Didn't expect that much response to be honest. But all the better, sure as hell cheers me up.Thx
Second day done. Feeling just damn fine.
@ MW: a whiteboard is definetely something I'm gonna get. Sofar I have different Project-lists for university and private projects in my reminder app. But these are pretty easy to ignore, now that I think of it.
Will think about the evening planning thing, too. You got a point there, but I'm not sure whether I can consistently implement it. In any way the morning planning is mostly meant as a fine tuning of what is already in place. Might still convert..
- about the jpeg. I converted it from .tiff to jpeg, not sure why it doesn't work. Will try .pdf next.
@ MEOW. true dat! procrastination,or any other sort of pussying around will lead to compensating with some kind of bullshit. Whenever we deviate from our path, we will need some quickfix to obliterate the shame. Choose your poison. David DeAngelo used to call that medication.
BTW. I'm also used to lots of serious cram session, in way the stress makes me work best. So I never bitch around about it, cause I know chose it. But what pisses me off that kind of makes me weak the rest of the time. Whatever cool else shit is going on, there is always some nagging little downward pull in the background. But this also the reasons why on the days that I live my life optimally according to my own standards, I don't need anything. haha.
@ G.Money: I'm with you, too, here. that's how I find out, where I need to go in the bigger scheme of things. Resitance is some kind of fear. 'Do what you fear' is a pretty good compass. However on the smaller scale, I'm just way too good at getting lost in in some menial tasks, or rationalize further procrastination with former procrastination. lol. Thus above plan! BTW. And yes it does sound like the war of art. jeffy sure read that.
@ Infinitity: I get you man. I do think Meow's got a point though.To me both are compensatory behaviors in a technical sense. It does differ though in what you compensate for, and how. You might want say to you can compensate for core self-esteem issues,but we can also compensate for more local, situational self-steem lows. Latter might definitely be due to procrastination.Big difference, of course between them in the output. But it seems mosty a matter of scale. You can also probably explain a lot of the kind of deeper compensatory behaviors you listed as the result of accumulated procrastination over diverse areas. I mean who didn't ever try to pick up girls to impress his friends, or looked for solace in the arm of a beautiful strangers to compensate for his lack of balls, or productivity in other areas of his life? At that time one needn't necessarily frame it like that.. but its certainly explainable like that.
definitely will have to procrastinate from writing here soon, lol,
Good job guys. Nobody really commented on my post except Jack, and I wasn't sure whether it made any sense to anyone or I sounded like a crazy person.
The thing is, you guys need to focus on your "adequacy beliefs" or "badassery beliefs" or whatever you want to call it. Not the negative pole of, "how am I in inadequacy and compensation." I wrote that part of the post because I wanted to make you aware of that so you could make a comparison.
For example, Chris... Do your 30 day challenge, with the belief that you're a glorious fuckin badass. Not because you're unhappy with being depressed, but because you know you're so much better than that and you need to start giving expression to it. Write out your daily goals like they come from a true badass. Your actions will strive to live up to that belief. Write your papers like they come from a badass. From my experience in undergrad, either your professor is going to be coming from their own "adequacy belief" and even if you're making mistakes they'll see that you are pushing yourself, being original and gently correct you, or they could be coming from "inadequacy belief" and they will be threatened by you and give you a bad mark. If so... fuck 'em. You were living up to your own standards.
Day three done!
Actually I think we are pretty much on the same line, Infinity. Only it to me that self-reflection doesn't mean you you are beating your self up. It just finding out what is going well in you life and what isn't (Ie. living up to you own standards. Allthough, obviously, lots people mistake one for the other. Insofar I understand your concern. All the above is just reflection. It is important to know why one doesn't feel good or as good as one could. That allows for conscious change. For instance, by working on your self talk.. ^^
BTW do I come across like I'm depressed above?! That would be rather nuts.. lol 'headscratch'
Anyway, keep up the good work, my friend.
Fourth day done.
Getting into the groove.
Also uploaded Ical-pic as a pdf. again. Now that works jus.
fifth day done. Sofar this is running way more smoothly than I thought it would. Killer shit
So I have been doing this thing for seven days. And I'm surprised how smooth I run like this. Should have done that years before. Then again, I didn't have the self-discipline by then.
I have been somewhat lenient on the no-texting rule. Sending some here and there. But sofar that hasn't been too distracting. So I let that slide, as long it doesn't become a problem.
HAs been the most focused work week for me in month.
Last two days were easy. As there wasn't much scheduled, and I could also get some extra stuff done. Perfect.
What's this no-texting rule?
I go in and I'm crisp, clean and my vocals are fucking coming out like music. - Anonymous MW student
- Autismus Terminus Finis (Root Cause/Cure of Autism Epidemic)
- Called Off My Wedding & Other Turn Tail Signs Of The American Male
day 8 done. been writing 13 hours today, more a less straight. no probs. I also look fucking good
@ MW: no texting, was part of rule three above. 'treat work like meditation'. Otherwise I have been straight edge to that rule. improves focus like a charm.
Day 9 done!
Was on fire today.
Got up at half past seven and stitched together a power point presentation for a talk I had to give today in todays lecture. Content wise the talk was no big deal. Literally I just had to sum up last lecture in ten minutes max. And people will usually just read out their written summary,which sucks big time. Challenge was rather talking to roughly more then 250 persons for the first time. A full lecture hall with people sitting on the ground, because they don't fit the ranks.lol adventure time. and what I should I say, in all due humbleness, I kicked ass.
I had talked myself though my presentation two times before the actual talk, which is crucial. First time, took me 20 minutes, second around 15. In the end I did it in 12. I had done my vocal practice before, I knew the structure and was excited. Best conditions. During the talk I was super calm and on point. Managed to find a good mixture of wit and clear focused arguement. Lets just say, audience was pretty apreciative of my delivery. And so was my prof.
Also did all my other scheduled stuff later during the day, and went out with a cute yoga girl I had met on my way home from crossfit. Didn't close the deal here though. Just some making out before I sent her on the way. Couldn't be bothered to push.
Anyways, bragging finished. A man needs some sleep.
day 10.. Done!!
do you feel different than when you started?
Well, definitely yes and no:
on the yes side:
I'm pretty pleased with myself, I have to say. Just as one always is, when one tries something challenging succesfully (as so far I have been). Thus I do have a little bit of that feeling after every day.
Also in general, because it is super important piece in terms getting my life together, and having a handle on myself. I just know this ones going to be one of the big gamechangers for me. And it is one I have been pussying out doing for month, for reasons that seem completely nuts right now. lol
Work is flowing better, routine does me good.
Arguably my focus for other things is also getting better, because I'm only doing one thing at a time. a few times I was surprised how fast I zoomed into something, like making music, or sports etc. But might just be placebo.
On the no side:
All this might mean relatively little, yet. I wouldn't say that they my internals have changed dramatically. But they were pretty good already the last months, as I have done a lot of stuff this year that I have chickened out doing forever. So this kind of 'just' the next logical little step.
But ask me again two months from now, I think by then stuff I have tell will be more legit. After all its just day 11, done. Way too early to pop the corks lol
Well you are doing super well then. emotional shifts ocurr on their own time just keep on path
thx, mate,
day 12 done.
day thirteen done.
putting in some extra hours to finish another paper till tomorrow. will be a close call. will see
day 14 done. Didn't manage to finish that essay. Fuck, lol, and although I let cross fit go for that. Stupid decision, although it was preplanned. Kind of just didn't want to admit that, I wouldn't be able to pull it off.
day 15. half way through, so far so good.
As I realized, this weekend, when I do work outside of my nicely balanced little schedule, I have a tendency to do all the very fucking, stupid procastinating shit, that made me even start this challenge. Its just as if only because 'officially' I'm on free time, I can just let my self go.
Makes sense, of course, psychologically, because I take away my playtime, and there is no real finish line in sight for the day, and then I start to sabotage myself.
But obviously there are times, when stuff just needs to get done, and there is little time. And now's such times for me, will be at least until mid next week.
So basically, what I am saying is that I fucked by not re-planning this weekend according to circumstances, and by not executing according to principles above. This is something I need to take in account.
There is second thing I fucked up, and this one bothers me way more then non-planning thing, but its kind of related. I had ask for more time for that essay. I got it granted no problem. But its first time I had to ask for more time for a paper since two years. And this fucking hurts. I thought I was done with such funky shit. Funny enough, it was a deadline I had given myself and told to the prof., because I thought that would me make stick to this. But I didn't. Well, I tried, somehow, but I know I half assed this. Obviously I knew it would be a tight thing, and so did the prof., but I have finished quite many tight things just in time before. Only this time I didn't really do it. To make this clear, it is not as if I had been poking my nose all day. I'm three third done with the fucker. But I did enough of the poking, to be pissed right now. I think that maybe I could have.
Bottomline. I acted like a fool, by giving a deadline I didn't really mean. Right now writing this, I'm just scratching my head and asking myself. why the fuck? lol Doesn't even matter why so much. Sure as hell I didn't play to win. One reason was certainly, because I knew I would get more time. But thats a fucking pathetic reason.
This just like half assing it with a girl. it hurts, and so it should. I wrote it down here for that very reason. Way to go. This will not happen to me again. At least not without having given any thing reasonable to make it happen. baaaaaaaah,
day 16. done.
DAy 17 dadone
18 done
Yo mang I am starting one of these up too!
day 19 done.
"Yo mang I am starting one of these up too!"
great man, let me know how this works for you!
day 19 done.
"Yo mang I am starting one of these up too!"
great man, let me know how this works for you!
day 20, and 21 done.
finished my fucking essay finally. should be a good starting point for my thesis.
Also killed it in training. also training killed me. hehe
And I talked to the hottest girl I have seen on the streets in months.Felt pretty much out of my depth, to say the truth. went direct, pretty chodey from then on, shit my legs were trembling, lol, not sure if that was an after effect of the training or her, probs both. only when she mentioned her boyfriend she was waiting for, I kind of got more ballsy. Told her to leave the cunt, and steal a boat with me and spent the rest of our lifes practicing tantra at some lonely beach. That did make her laugh for the first time. Went on a bit in that direction, but I was about as relaxed as fish thrown on land, and we both knew I wasn't the real deal there, she left me standing there for the third time I let it be.
Felt pretty good anyway. Also she was a good motivation to keep moving. That's the kind of girls I want to have begging for my cock. Ha. next challenge upcoming...
Well, 22 and 23 down.
Somehow, forgot to cross out yesterday, but I'm still full on and feelign dang good. Way more relaxed, because I don't have to work extra hours right now.
jup, day 24.
just coming home from the future islands concert. That dude' s fucking intense. great perfomance.
25 done. nothing much to add.
day 26 done.
also went to romanian party on a roof top last night. didn't pull, but had shit tons of fun (in hindsight should have though). lots of cuties in skimpy dresses. Its funny how much resistance I have to going out, although I always end up having a hillarious night.
Thinking of starting a thirty-day challenge going out to gain some momentum, now that the work side ^^is kind of handled. But I'm kind of hesitating lol. fearing it will mess my other plans. Probably just have to be reasonable about it. I'll work something out.
day 26 done.
also went to romanian party on a roof top last night. didn't pull, but had shit tons of fun (in hindsight should have though). lots of cuties in skimpy dresses. Its funny how much resistance I have to going out, although I always end up having a hillarious night.
Thinking of starting a thirty-day challenge going out to gain some momentum, now that the work side ^^is kind of handled. But I'm kind of hesitating lol. fearing it will mess my other plans. Probably just have to be reasonable about it. I'll work something out.
27 done
28 done, on course
one more to go.