giblets

I have seen Atomic Habits a few times, would you recommend buying it? I am trying to form stretching & meditation into my daily routine and I can't get it to stick. I've also succumbed to the snooze button ?

Happy to talk via PMs, but the main thing I can say right now is don't try to fight the emotions - it just makes it worse and they 'dig in'. They most likely feel quite strong now because you haven't been dealing with them, rather you have used escapism to pretend they are not there, and therefore not established the skills of emotion regulation. It may mean a lot of jargon type words, but the more you can work on your self awareness of them, the better you will get at recognising them, and steering the negative ones (frustration, anger, anxiety, depression) into directions that can be productive/less impactful. Don't dwell on how many hours you have spent - they are gone. What matters is how you'll spend your next hour.

So I'm suffering a post-degree crisis, not knowing what to study or whether I should study at all. I am concerned that I will end up not continuing any personal development this year without it. I have topped out in the industry I work in for the moment due to my grades, so I have been looking at languages - though there doesn't seem to be many offerings down under that I can do online/by distance. Feeling a little lost.

Salt tablets is an easy solution as they are compact - I have started taking BCAA during my training and flat coke before the long ones. Seems to be fighting off cramping for now!

I know them feels. I totally underestimated how much effort 2 kids would be - I thought after number 1 the routine is already established, so the hard part is done, right? Bzzzt, wrong! Some days are more challenging than others - you just need to find your outlet to reset. For me it's running a few miles, it's a great re-balancer. It can be a bit hard to do that though if you're the primary care giver and don't have someone who will be able to share the load at short notice. As for the masters - you can do this buddy. It will generally involve having less sleep though - which seems to be the main solution for anyone saying they don't have time to achieve everything they want to, they're not willing to give up their sleep.

Merry Christmas from Down Under!!! I know I haven't been very active on here lately, but I couldn't resist an obligatory Christmas/reflective post. Reasons I haven't been very active lately is because I have switched to journalling in a bullet/dot journal by hand, as its a bit more convenient to do it on the go. As a result I have been writing a lot more, but in shorter bursts about a wider variety of topics rather than one big hit. It kind of solves the issue of what I felt like spending far too much time in the morning in front of a computer when instead I wanted to focus upon establishing a good morning routine. Secondly is my focus has been elsewhere rather than personal development, mainly family and training. I do enjoy getting my daily email updates of the forum though and it looks like you are mainly doing relatively well. Anyway, I had a cracker of a day, and I hope those of you on the other side of the dateline have a great day tomorrow - I intend to be spending the majority of it watching the Boxing Day test!

15 minutes... thats 13 minutes longer than I ever did ?

Lucky you won't get hungry.

How is life in Canada eh now that marijuana is legalized?

Where the heck did you find time to game, man? Too much to do.

Lurk lurk.

3 hours... well I'm out. My PB is 4h11 which I got on the weekend. I think I could easily go sub 4h10 if I work out how to deal with cramping, which has been my crisis in the last two marathons. I'm going to try and try something new to combat it in the next two weeks and run a virtual marathon for the Chicago medal in the last weekend of October.

Powerful topic @stablish and one I reflect on a lot with my son and trying to set him up for the most success. I think we do have an element of influence on our children - and that is why you see cycles of poverty or success - trailer park rednecks having trailer park redneck kids and nobel prize winning laurets having phD earning kids. There is a large element of their own doing as well - you see the trailer park kid who succeeds in life as a doctor or the child of a billionaire that smokes pot all day. I have tried to take the approach of he is going to do what he is going to do, but it is my job to maximise his opportunities, or simply, creating the environment for him to succeed. Whether he grasps that environment or the opportunity is over to him, that's his job. In your case - your father set the environment of limited internet. You perhaps saw this as a different opportunity than he expected ?

GameQuitters Episode 14. Two handsome charismatic young men talk about how they got through the 90 day detox.

Can you put a price on happiness? I understand your frustration. I finished my university degree and promptly never entered the associated industry as the 9 to 5 office job did not appeal to me at all. I don't think you should focus on the wage part right now, I would focus on if you're miserable in your job you should not be there. We spend far too much time working for it to be making us unhappy. If you're going to be earning so little in your new job that you would be unhappy, you might find that you've jumped out of the pan and into the fire, though. If you're going to be doing a job you enjoy or love, you might find yourself energised at the end of the day to have a side hustle. It might give you the capacity or the compassion to start up a side project to earn some extra cash.

What do you have to do to qualify for the Boston Marathon? I thought it was a ballot? The Boston Marathon is on my to do list! I am about to line up for marathon #10 in Melbourne next weekend. Hoping I can get a personal best of 4 hours (the first one took me 5 hours). For your injuries etc - you're never going to have a "perfect" preparation or feel "perfect" before a run. If you wait until you have that perfect preparation, you're never going to do a marathon. So many of my mates keep putting off doing a marathon because they are waiting for the perfect time. It's never going to arrive. Don't be concerned if you carry a bit of soreness or tiredness in your training plan. Remember you want to wear out your legs anyway to get used to being tired. It's if you have sharp pains for a couple of runs in a row that you might have damaged something, go see a sports doctor rather than self-diagnosing and ask the question "if I keep running, will I do any damage?"

No. Initially it might help, as instead of smashing a 3-4 hour gaming session you might spend 30-60 minutes watching a video. Seems legit right? You've saved 2-3 hours! Next thing you know, you'll be watching 3-4 hours of gaming, so you have substituted one vice for another, which defeats the whole purpose of why you are here! It is better to address the underlying issue of why it is a problem for you. What is causing you to want to escape? It might be painful or difficult at first, but dig deep and work out what it is. By addressing the underlying issue you will get much better results than just dealing with the symptoms, ie the escapism. For me it was anxiety - there isn't any anxiety in gaming (well, apart from the 'what if I don't do everything?' synthetic anxiety), so that is what I would do when I would feel anxious or faced with a situation where I traditionally got anxious (I felt like that last time, so if I just avoid the issue, I will be ok, right?). While this made me feel great in the short term, it meant in the long term it got worse because I was not addressing it, and suddenly it was invading many aspects of my life. For sure mate! We have the accountability partner, which is the same thing (I think). My boy @Moe Smith got me through my detox and I like to think I helped him in some form. If you want to talk to someone on "the other side", them I'm (and many others) here for you. It will also be valuable to join forces (Voltron-style) with @PFMA. It will be beneficial to vent about what you're feeling with someone going through the same process, it will help you realise you're not alone and not unique in the stressors you are facing! You got this mate. All you need is intent and determination. By being here, you're 50% of the way.

I live my life one pomodoro at a time ? @Cam Adair there is a great merch opportunity

Yes. They generally get replaced with nostalgia; which is hard to tell the difference from cravings sometimes. When I get a wave come over me I just stop and think, yes those were some good times, it is fine to feel nostalgic about good times, but now back to the present where there is so much new potential that there is no time to go back.

Please excuse my ignorance if you have already covered this, but what is RSD?

Can't believe it's been 4 weeks since my last post. I have continued to lurk through the forums like the annoying cousin that outstays their welcome, however. I have not stopped writing, though. I have had a pseudo-break through, as I'm calling it. @Cam Adair told me a while back that I should be writing more during the day in shorter spurts rather than saving it all up for one post/entry. This should alleviate my concern that I was spending so much time doing my journal in the morning rather than reading, and should get some better entries as I can write what is bothering me in the moment. Well, I tried it, but it never caught on... until now. I feel like I could put it down to switching what journal/notebook I was using, the old one was too small so I felt compelled to write shorthand for some reason. But now I am using an A5 notebook that is leatherbound that I can jam into either jacket pockets or into my briefcase/organiser. Now the ideas and thoughts and entries are flowinggggg. I am averaging about 2-3 a day, ranging from 3-4 lines up to entire pages. I feel like I am having great progress doing it this way with personal development. One area that is had helped me realise I am doing is 'hitching my ego to decisions'. This is something that Colin Powell talks about in his autiobiography. I initially rejected this as 'something I wouldn't do because I am self aware and have high emotional intelligence....' yeah right. Well I might have more self awareness and emotional intelligence than the average, however I DO hitch my ego to decisions, and therefore seem to take some discussion about those decisions as personal attacks - which they aren't. I need to work more on this, so any tips I'm all ears. So I have been start-stopping the new productivity detox over the last four weeks, and I think only now has it started to take hold. The catalyst - I downshifted myself back to one computer again. I packed up my windows computer which I was only using for essentially timewasting, and discord. Now that is not so easily accessed, I am forcing myself to use the little 2 & 3 minutes in between tasks to do chores or write rather than watch a youtube clip or search for random things or scroll through chat rooms. This means I haven't replied to @stablish for a while, sorry mate, I'll see if I can workout Discord on my ubuntu install. Anyway, up to day 6 of pure productivity, and I am seeing great results already. Need about another 6 weeks of it to complete everything I want to this year, so lets keep this momentum.

Self awareness is the key to improvement @Cindpline, and it sounds like you are progressing with this! Don't beat yourself up about it, accept where you are in the process and keep moving forward. A step forward, no matter how small, is better than standing still.

Well I underestimated how hard this would be. I've done the detox before, I can be productive. Well I was wrong - timewasters fit themselves in every nook and cranny. The billionaire and the beggar have the same day. You cannot control an hour or a day, but you can control what you do with it. Lets start again, 0500, here we go.

First 5am run complete! BOOM.

The mountain won't know what hit it!