Karabas's Journal: Part 2

[karabas]

Day 17/120 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) 
Sleep before 12am: 5 (longest previous streak: 4)
No phone in washroom 19/120
Umra resolutions: 4/90

Work Hours: 5:35 (13:05 this week)

Went to bed exactly at midnight and so rescued my early sleep streak. Sleep's been good so far - time for morning prayer ends late, past 8am (it's winter), so I get 7.5-8 hours of uninterrupted sleep in if I'm in bed by midnight and it's great. I haven't napped during the day and have been alert and motivated.

Less hours worked for the day, but it's not a problem since I was taking care of my wife who isn't feeling well and spent 90 minutes on the phone with my parents. Considering I talk to them like once a month (they're all so busy), I'm fine with losing some work hours over it.

Also, my goal for each day is 6:40 minutes, because that gets me to 40hrs in 6 days and gives me a free day to hang out and catch up on sleep. So thanks to my Monday's productivity, I'm only 15 minutes short of target so far.

Keep in mind, I'm also spending time with my wife AND I'm spending nearly two hours a day on prayers, going to the mosque, reading Qur'an, etc, which has helped me re-focus my life a good bit (at least so far). So I think I'm doing pretty well productivity-wise.

Let's hope I can maintain this at least for the next 3 weeks. Have to have a plan for what to do during my vacation time with family come Christmas...

[karabas]

Day 18/120 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) 
Sleep before 12am: 6 (longest previous streak: 4)
No phone in washroom 20/120
Umra resolutions: 5/90

Work Hours: 7:05 (20:10 this week)

Good day, got stuff done, so can't complain. Pretty much on target in terms of work hours. I'm thinking of taking Friday as my day off. I have Friday prayers anyway and that takes up at least 1-2 hours of my day as it is.

No cravings.

[karabas]

Day 19-20/120 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) 
Sleep before 12am: 8 (longest previous streak: 4)
No phone in washroom 22/120
Umra resolutions: 7/90

Work Hours: 4:20 (Thursday), 1:00 (Friday) (25:30 this week)

Thursday ended up being slightly less "productive" because I went to a study group. The group itself was 2 hours, but the friend picking me up was picking up a bunch of other people, so it ended up taking closer to 4 hours. So I think it's pretty good I managed to squeeze in 4+ hours as it was.

I decided to take Friday off and overall it worked out well. I managed to accomplish almost all tasks I set out for the day. However, I ended up not resting as much as I was hoping to and some stuff kept me up past midnight (even though I was ready for bed at that time), so today I ended up sleeping 3+ hours after morning prayer AND I'm still groggy and lazy.

I need to try to sleep a bit earlier today - even 11:30 instead of 12:00 should make a difference.

Anyway, it's salvageable: I've got less than 15 hours to go, so need to put in 7 hours or so today/tomorrow and I'll cap off yet another 40-hour week.

Also, I've put in a good amount of time into developing my business. I have a lot of the marketing collateral done, so I might even have time to work on generating some content. That way I'll be able to do some sales right away in the new year. Let's see.

[karabas]

By the way, my previous video detox streak was 25 days. I'm feeling fairly confident about going past that milestone this time, God willing. 

[Hmmge]

1 hour ago, karabas said:

Also, I've put in a good amount of time into developing my business. I have a lot of the marketing collateral done, so I might even have time to work on generating some content. That way I'll be able to do some sales right away in the new year. Let's see.

Nice. Is this the online course you were talking about earlier?

Also, your video detox means absolutely no videos, right? Pretty hardcore haha

[karabas]

1 hour ago, JustTom said:

Nice. Is this the online course you were talking about earlier?

Yep. I'm working on a basic email sequence + landing pages. Almost done, I think. After that I need to get some essential content recorded. I think the idea of doing that scares me, because it makes the whole thing real. And doing this whole thing is a risk. A risk of spending time, money, effort, on something that may or may not pan out. So I think I'm putting it off because of that. But I'm running out of excuses to do it, plus I really think it can unlock a lot of other goals I have in life, so I think that motivation is starting to outweigh the fear.

1 hour ago, JustTom said:

Also, your video detox means absolutely no videos, right? Pretty hardcore haha

It's mostly no videos. I watch stuff I have to for work and the like, obviously. Or a video a friend/relative sends me. And I watch SpaceX launch webcasts ? (because I"m a nerd and Elon Musk is a role model). Other than that, nothing. The easy workaround bug on BlockSite got fixed, so it's fairly annoying for me to watch something on this computer. But since the pilgrimage I haven't really wanted to watch anything. I don't know if this is permanent or not, but I'm using it while it lasts to get myself off of this nonsense.

[karabas]

Day 21/120 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) 
Sleep before 12am: 9 (longest previous streak: 4)
No phone in washroom 23/120
Umra resolutions: 8/90

Work Hours: 6:50 (32:20 this week)

Considering I was so tired that I slept until 12 and had some long conversations with the wife and still got all my umra resolutions done while going over the target 6:40 of work, I call this an awesome win.

Now I have to do 7:40 today, but I'm up and it's early and I'm motivated, so LET'S DO IT.

[karabas]

Day 22-23/120 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) 
Sleep before 12am: 11ish (longest previous streak: 4)
No phone in washroom 25/120
Umra resolutions: 10/90

Work Hours: 7:40 (40:00 last week), 4:40 Monday

Last few days have been a tad strained. I'm working, but with less focus. I'm not going to bed late, but I'm really pushing my own boundaries here. Yesterday I went to bed at 12:30. I'm still counting it, but I need to go to sleep actually before 12 to keep my streak.

I think the sleep is getting to me overall. I usually need a lot and I'm sleeping slightly under 8 hours every day and it's been accumulating. It's enough to stay up after morning prayer, but I feel a 3-hour crash fest coming up like last week. Problem is, I can't really afford it productivity-wise, but it might need to happen. Tomorrow, maybe? I don't think I'll hold out until Friday.

Yesterday I got only 4:40 of work in, but with good reason: we started our Islamic classes with a teacher again. So I had a 2-hour class and I spent time preparing for it (probably another 2 hours or so). So not too bad, but I do need to make that time up. And I have another class on Thursday. Oh boy.

Anyway, things are not so bad, but I'm feeling a dip in motivation coming up. My prayer has been a lot more distracted as of late as well and I'm not liking it. I'm hoping it's just a matter of rest.

[karabas]

Day 24/120 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) 
Sleep before 12am: 12 (longest previous streak: 4)
No phone in washroom 26/120
Umra resolutions: 11/90

Work Hours: 6:10 (10:50 this week)

Yeah, so that sleep I was talking about? Totally happened yesterday right after I posted. I was so sleepy and I went and crashed for 3+ hours. I'm still not feeling 100%, but I think I can wait it out until Friday to get some extra rest.

Clearly, my sleep schedule is not providing me sufficient rest (even though I'm sleeping close to 8 hours a night). I need to make changes.

I think after Friday, I'll aim to sleep before 11:30pm. I have a feeling that extra 30 minutes is all I need, but let's see.

The big challenge is going to be our upcoming trip to see my family. My family (especially my Mom) go to bed super late. But since I see them once/twice a year only, I really want to spend time with them, so I stay up too, but it totally destroys my sleep schedule. Over there, dawn is around 7:10am, so I have to be up ~6:45am at the latest. To get 8 hours of sleep, I need to be in bed by 10:45pm. That sounds highly unlikely, given my family lol.

[karabas]

Day 25-26/120 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) 
Sleep before 12am: 14 (longest previous streak: 4)
No phone in washroom 28/120
Umra resolutions: 13/90

Work Hours: 4:05 on Wednesday, 4:20 on Thursday (19:15 this week)

The last couple of days have been tough. I've discovered that we may or may not be in hot water tax-wise in this country and spent a lot of time figuring out next steps and just stressing out. Ended up going with my wife for an unscheduled date to de-stress. Hence the productivity drop on Wed. Thursday was better, but I had class that I spent the morning preparing for and then 2 hours during the day attending.

Overall this tax thing put the possibility of having to leave this country soon at the forefront (it looks like we should be OK and won't need to leave), and that made me realize that were we to leave today, I'd really kick myself for not spending more time studying and taking advantage of the fact that there are Islamic teachers here. 

I'm considering setting a new goal for 30 hours of work + 15 hours of study a week (I already do about 5 hours of study). Most likely no point in setting these goals right before the trip, but maybe I'll set that goal for when I return. Will pray on this.

Work hours this week are definitely not going to hit 40. I'd need to work 10 hours Sat & Sun both to make that happen. And yeah, that's not happening. But I'm OK with that considering the turbulence of the past couple of days.

Plus, I'm still not watching videos or playing games. I'm now past my previous record of video detox and I'm past 120 days of no gaming. Pretty awesome stuff!

[Hmmge]

3 minutes ago, karabas said:

Plus, I'm still not watching videos or playing games. I'm now past my previous record of video detox and I'm past 120 days of no gaming. Pretty awesome 

14 days sleep before midnight as well man that's epic. Your work hours don't add up to me though, if you sleep 8 hours per day and don't waste time on games or media. Do you spend all the rest on chores, family and religious study? I'm just curious, you don't have to answer of course. 

[karabas]

8 hours ago, JustTom said:

14 days sleep before midnight as well man that's epic

Yeah man! Last time I managed to have a streak that long was like 6 months ago, but I wasn't tracking it back the.

8 hours ago, JustTom said:

Your work hours don't add up to me though, if you sleep 8 hours per day and don't waste time on games or media. Do you spend all the rest on chores, family and religious study? I'm just curious, you don't have to answer of course. 

I still waste some time on reading stuff on twitter & news and the like, so it's not all productivity. But yeah, my wife and I are big talkers so we end up spending probably ~2 hours total a day over meals. My spiritual routine in the morning and evening + 5 daily prayers + going to the mosque for one of them is probably another 2.5-3 hrs. So add stuff like posting on the forums here, taking small breaks between work, the additional study I do, shower/brushing teeth, talking to friends on whatsapp and checking the news, and you've got a full day ?

[karabas]

Day 27/120 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) 
Sleep before 12am: NO!! (longest previous streak: 4)
No phone in washroom 29/120
Umra resolutions: 14/90

Work Hours: 0:40 (19:55 this week)

It was my day off and it went pretty well. Got through most of the goals I set for the day.

In particular, I'm excited about this meditation technique that I learnt about. There are a number of spiritual "paths" or "orders" or whatever you want to call them: basically they all have the same goal of entering a person into a state of continual "presence" with the Divine, where you're going through your day in constant awareness of Him. In the words of the Prophet (peace be upon him), to "worship God as if you see Him". The goal is one but the approaches are many (all going back centuries if not a whole millenium) There's a particular teacher of this discipline that I like (and even went to meet this year) and I've already been using the morning/evening spiritual routine that they do. However, their main practice is a form of meditation where you empty your thoughts and then imagine your heart calling on God.

It was something I knew about for a long time, but it seems like now I'm at a stage in my life where I'm actually willing to put in the time to do this - and I'm even looking forward to it. So I'm pretty excited to start that. I'll probably add it to my morning routine - it's usually a time when I don't have distractions or immediate obligations.

I did mess up my sleep routine last night. Stayed up talking to the wife after we had a late dinner. I knew it was late but I didn't push myself super hard to go to bed and ended up sleeping at 1am, sleeping through the morning prayer, and just having an all-around sleep fest.

However, I did assume when I started that it'll be impossible to sleep early every single night. Stuff comes up. So my idea was I get to keep my streak if I return back to it the next night (or the next possible night if something specific is keeping me up like travel). So I absolutely have to hit the sack before 12am today, otherwise I'm restarting my record-breaking 12-day streak.

Still no videos or games. I noticed myself falling into checking FB too often, so I signed myself out and didn't go back yesterday.

[karabas]

Day 28/120 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) 
Sleep before 12am: 15 (longest previous streak: 4)
No phone in washroom 30/120
Umra resolutions: 15/90

Work Hours: 3:35 (23:30 this week)

So yesterday turned into a sleep fest after I went to bed late the night before. Got up basically around 3pm... by the time I showered and did my "morning" routine, it was past 5pm. Add to that "breakfast" and dinner and I ended up barely working at all.

I did go to bed at midnight, but because I woke up so late, it took me over an hour to fall asleep. So I'm tired today and you know what happens when you're tired... *sigh*

Anyway, life has ups and downs. If this is a down, I can't complain because I remember how this used to be an "up" for me when I was gaming and managed to squeeze this much work in.

[karabas]

Day 29/120 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) 
Sleep before 12am: 16 (longest previous streak: 4)
No phone in washroom 31/120
Umra resolutions: 16/90

Work Hours: 5:45 (29:15 this week)

An OK day. I had some travel-related stuff come up that caused me to fall short on my hours. It looks like every day this week is likely to have delays via other responsibilities.

I'm doing a short trip to another city tomorrow to speak with an accountant about our tax situation here. I'll have ~6 hours on the train though, so if all goes well I should be able to put in some decent work hours (especially if I can charge my laptop in between trips).

Then I still have class on Thursday + a possible trip to the local immigration office concerning changing our status here. If all goes well with accountant, I have some other calls to make and some more trips to plan... then either Friday or Saturday we're heading out ahead of our flight (out of a different city) on Sunday to go see my folks. So... basically this entire week is looking like a reduced-hours week.

Overall, that's OK. My overall productivity in the past several months has really helped me financially, so I'm riding on that for the next little while.

[karabas]

Day 30/120 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) 
Sleep before 12am: 17 (longest previous streak: 4)
No phone in washroom 32/120
Umra resolutions: 17/90

Work Hours: 5:15

Packed day. Had to go out for a meeting, then prepare for & attend class, so work hours are somewhat reduced...

[karabas]

Day 31-2/120 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) 
Sleep before 12am: fail (longest streak: 17)
No phone in washroom 34/120
Umra resolutions: 19/90

Work Hours: 4 hours on Tuesday, 2:05 on Wednesday (11:20 this week)

It's been a bit nuts. I did a trip on Tuesday to see a tax person about our tax situation. She gave me some awesome ideas and it looks things will be OK. I had some time to work on the train and I kept up my Umra resolutions, which I'm feeling pretty good about (except praying at the mosque during the travel day... I wasn't really free during any of the prayer times. I'll try to make it up on Friday.)

However, I came home very late, went to bed even later, woke up late on Wednesday, had a lot of stuff on my mind and barely did any work. I ended up staying up late without any reasonable excuse (i was just researching this tax stuff) and thus broke my awesomest early-to-bed streak ever.

Today has been a crazy day as well, but I'll update about it tomorrow.

Overall these last few days before the trip are turning out to be insanely packed and stressful. Looking forward to time with family and putting all of this on the backburner (except my business, which I'm psyched to start).

[karabas]

Day 33-4/120 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) 
Sleep before 12am: fail (longest streak: 17)
No phone in washroom 36/120
Umra resolutions: 21/90

Work Hours: 1:20 Thursday, 3:10 Friday (15:50 this week)

Thursday was a bit of a disaster. We're traveling on Sunday and we couldn't find my wife's passport. So we spent half a day panicking and looking for it all over the house (thank God, it turned up eventually). We also had class and had to prepare for it, etc.

So basically I didn't get a lot of work in.

Friday was better. Took some time off to visit a friend's family in the countryside, which was wonderful. My ears always feel very strange because there's no background noise at all. Clean air and fresh olive oil on top of that... what else can you ask for?

I came back home and got some work in. Still headed to bed late, but a bit earlier than the past couple of days. I'm holding out for Saturday. I'm hoping we can check in to the hotel early-ish and be asleep before midnight. This should help get me back on track. I think my plan for when I'm spending time with my family is to stick to the 12am deadline. The prayer times are shifted there and I'd be better off sleeping at 11pm to get my 8 hours of sleep, but I just don't think that's feasible given that all my relatives have a predilection for staying up super late. Even 12 is going to be a challenge.

Overall I'm looking forward to taking a bit of time off work and just spending time with my family. I think I can be more present with them now that my detox is finally having an effect.

[karabas]

Day 37/120 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) 
Sleep before 12am: 1 (longest streak: 17)
No phone in washroom 39/120
Umra resolutions: 24/90

Work Hours: not counting (vacation)

The trip was long and tiring. But so far, so good. Nothing to update except that I'm still staying off of games and videos ?

[info-gatherer]

Hey. I read some of your last journal entries. I'll follow along ?

[karabas]

Day 43/120 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) 
Sleep before 12am: 0 (longest streak: 17)
No phone in washroom 46/120
Umra resolutions: 0/90

Work Hours: not counting (vacation)

It's been a bit hard following my umra resolutions since I've been on vacation with family. My sleep is a bit off - not terrible, mind you, but here going to bed at 12 means waking up at 6:30 for prayer and then going back to sleep... which means I'm always tired. And it also means when I get up, it's late and I need to go spend time with family, which leaves little time for my spiritual routines.

I've decided to decrease my goals while I'm traveling - halve everything, so it should take me 15 minutes in the morning and in the evening. Should be doable.

I'm not on my computer much since I'm not working - so videos aren't really a problem. I'm over 1/3 of the way to my goal, which is exciting.

Hope everyone had good, non-relapsing holidays ?

On 12/27/2018 at 7:19 AM, info-gatherer said:

Hey. I read some of your last journal entries. I'll follow along ?

Hey, thanks! I appreciate it ?

[karabas]

Day 58/120 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) 
Sleep before 12am: 0 (longest streak: 17)
No phone in washroom 5/120
Umra resolutions: 0/90

Work Hours: 6:20 (12:40 this week)

Vacation wrecked havoc on my habits. I even relapsed on using my phone in the washroom, which is seriously retarded. I wasn't able to keep up with my spiritual routines even when reducing them by half, but I think by the time I realized it was too hard while on vacation, I already burnt out. Lesson for the future.

My sleep is also way off, but I'm hoping I can restore it in the coming days. Same for the my spiritual routines... I'm doing most of them, just not all. So I'm hoping to get back into the swing of things over the next few days.

Work is going OK. I also registered my business, opened bank accounts, got a domain name. I'm trying to do the bare minimum for launch & then work my way through the rest once things are going. I have a few emails to finish up before I can launch + a couple of landing pages to make. Let's see. The biggest constraint is time right now. A lot of work piled up while I was on vacation, so I'm mostly busy with client stuff. Not much time for working on the business.

Obviously, the biggest win is that I'm still not watching vids. I'm almost 2 months into it now, which is huge. The only issue has been my partial return to facebook usage, but it's been fairly mild so far. I'll try to wind it back again.

[Hmmge]

19 hours ago, karabas said:

Obviously, the biggest win is that I'm still not watching vids. I'm almost 2 months into it now, which is huge. The only issue has been my partial return to facebook usage, but it's been fairly mild so far. I'll try to wind it back again.

This is like guiness world record worthy wow. 

Holidays always mess us up. Personally, I've come to dislike christmas for this reason. The association with video games is way too strong in my brain, because christmas was the first time I started playing online ever since my parents gifted me a copy of warcraft 3 as a kid. Let's get our habits back together!

[karabas]

Day 62/120 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) 
Sleep before 12am: 0 (longest streak: 17)
No phone in washroom 9/120
Umra resolutions: 0/90

Work Hours: 31:55 this week (so ~1:30 behind)

Still struggling with a couple of things. First of all: sleep. It's the never-ending vicious cycle: I get crap sleep -> I have less willpower & focus -> I'm not productive -> I stay up late to be more productive -> I get crap sleep.

This is not good, especially since it's winter time and morning prayer is so late, I need to be in bed by midnight and I can still get a full 8 hours of sleep. Sigh.

The second problem is that my willpower is eroding my habits. I've watched a couple of vids (it was a bit in a gray area of "I need to/I want to"). I also spend too much time on FB and the like. I'm gonna put my phones away in a different room starting from today: they've been my biggest distraction.

My spiritual routine's wrecked. I'm doing maybe a quarter of what I was doing before. Thankfully, I still go to the mosque once a day, which I feel good about. Hopefully I can maintain at least that and build back the rest of the habits.

[karabas]

Day 63/120 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) 
Sleep before 12am: 0 (longest streak: 17)
No phone in washroom 10/120
Umra resolutions: 1/90

Work Hours: 33:55 (6 hours short of goal)

Was going to skip doing my spiritual routine today, but just read some Qur'an because I haven't ready any in a few days and one of the first verses I read was "Oh you who believe, do not let your wealth or your children distract you from the remembrance of God". So I was like, OK, I get it ? And I went and I did my resolutions.

Ended up going to bed very late. Not being very productive still & there's tax stuff that's kinda taking over my time at the moment. But at least putting my phone away in another room helped with FB & getting back into videos.