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Lampshade

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2 hours ago, Lampshade said:

Day 49

@BooksandTrees@codepants@TheNewMe2.0@BryanJaz @dasviraand anyone else reading this. If you have time could I get some feedback on the below graphs? No pressure. A description is below.

Spent some time working with Loop, my habit tracking app. Below is my cumulative number of times I've completed certain habits during the last two weeks of November. First is just a count, following that is a graph of loops 'Score' metric, which is a kinda like a running average but also accounts for the fact that some of the habits I have set for only 3 times/week rather than daily. I'm not sure the score metric leads to a very nice looking graph. Actually both of the graphs are a little ugly but I just did them with a pivot table in Excel as a trial. Next month I'll do it in R so I can prettify it a little better.

I'm going to try to do something like this every month. There's some interesting trends to explore. One that I had a feeling about that is nice to see confirmed, is my tendency to either be really high or really low. Some weeks I get everything done, other weeks I get nothing done. Obviously I do other things than what's on here, but I've identified these 10-or-so habits to be things that, if taken care of, put me on a good productivity track. It's also worth mentioning that I don't consider self-improvement to be solely about productivity, so it'll be interesting to put some thought into how I can incorporate how I'm feeling into the graph. Maybe a daily 1-10 'how you doing today?' type of question. Or a weekly set of ten more specific questions? In the meantime I can look back at my journal dates the correspond to the declines in habit check-off accumulations to see if I see anything. One thing I'm interested in is whether my mood declines before the habits, or if the habits decline before the mood.

 

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I can take a look this weekend after work. 

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12 hours ago, Lampshade said:

Day 49

@BooksandTrees@codepants@TheNewMe2.0@BryanJaz @dasviraand anyone else reading this. If you have time could I get some feedback on the below graphs? No pressure. A description is below.

Spent some time working with Loop, my habit tracking app. Below is my cumulative number of times I've completed certain habits during the last two weeks of November. First is just a count, following that is a graph of loops 'Score' metric, which is a kinda like a running average but also accounts for the fact that some of the habits I have set for only 3 times/week rather than daily. I'm not sure the score metric leads to a very nice looking graph. Actually both of the graphs are a little ugly but I just did them with a pivot table in Excel as a trial. Next month I'll do it in R so I can prettify it a little better.

I'm going to try to do something like this every month. There's some interesting trends to explore. One that I had a feeling about that is nice to see confirmed, is my tendency to either be really high or really low. Some weeks I get everything done, other weeks I get nothing done. Obviously I do other things than what's on here, but I've identified these 10-or-so habits to be things that, if taken care of, put me on a good productivity track. It's also worth mentioning that I don't consider self-improvement to be solely about productivity, so it'll be interesting to put some thought into how I can incorporate how I'm feeling into the graph. Maybe a daily 1-10 'how you doing today?' type of question. Or a weekly set of ten more specific questions? In the meantime I can look back at my journal dates the correspond to the declines in habit check-off accumulations to see if I see anything. One thing I'm interested in is whether my mood declines before the habits, or if the habits decline before the mood.

 

image.thumb.png.ebca58e921bd9d3cc0678d4bdd37cd86.png

 

 

image.thumb.png.e6fb7c987f8ee4ca5fd05bf893e9188b.png

 

Honestly, after looking at both graphs. You seem tired. The activities you've been doing most seem to be meditation, journaling, waking up early, and some strength and stretching. You're not doing critical thinking activities compared to physical and mental restoration activities. This makes me think you're tired and looking to be more restorative.

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Day 52 - Relapse1

Well it was never going to be perfect. In a way I'm kind of glad for the relapse because it took some of the pressure off and served as a reminder.

Went to visit my friend on Friday night. He's my only friend, and we've known each other for nearly 20 years now. Gaming is one of the main things we did together. He was the one who got me back into WoW. I went over a couple weeks ago and we ended up just playing crib with his roommate and I had a great time. This time we ended up smoking weed and playing NBA2k. We also reminisced about WoW and he told me he would play again if he had an external HD for his laptop. WoW is absolutely the line for me. I will not go back to that game. I'm still subbed to r/wow and it's the same old shit. Same old grind and frustrations, year after year.

He's doing his undergrad and I think he's at the point in the term where things get crazy so he games and he is not looking to quit as hard as I am. I was looking for a way to get out of the house and he made himself available, but I think that all he does in the evenings when not doing school work is smoke and game. That's where he's at so I don't blame him for exposing me to it when I went over to his place. However, it threw my weekend into a funk

I was up until 3am Friday night. Saturday was spent pretty much in bed all day with my laptop playing MTG:online. Sunday I don't really remember but I did some chores and housework. This morning (Monday) I didn't do shit. However, I got myself together around noon and grinded my way through my productive habits list. It's now 11:45pm and I just finished.

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One thing I did a while ago was make my own Google Form that I would submit every night instead of using a habit tracker. You could have "Yes/No" for the habits and scales for how you're feeling. You could even put the habits under a checkbox multiple-select since that might be a bit faster. Google Forms has a lot of flexibility.

Downsides:

- Have to submit a form so "unsubmitting" would require going into the spreadsheet of results and manually editing the result. On Loop you just uncheck a box.

- Would probably require some finagling in R or Google Sheets (which the results can be auto-exported to) but I'm sure you or I or someone here can figure it out. We're all tech-inclined, right?

- - -

Relapses happen. You'll come back stronger. 👊

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Hey Lampshade, hope you are feeling better by the time you read this! I just relapsed a few days ago too, I also think it's a good mistake to learn from, rather than a shameful failure bleh. What has helped not relapse anymore since though is thinking about all the triggers when I relapsed(I was stressed out, I was tired, it was late at night...) and trying to avoid getting in similar situations; or, if I do, trying to react differently to those triggers. 

Dunno if you needed any of this advice at all, you're actually pretty cool and seem to know what you are doing haha.

I hope good things happen for the rest of the week,

Po

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Thanks @Pochatok. I've found removing triggers to help a bunch for the day-to-day cravings. The longer term, more sporadic and sudden ones are new to me. Like this one came from visiting my friend. This is going to be one of the biggest challenges for me I think. I'm not willing to cut out my only friend, and may just have to accept that once every month or so I'm going to end up playing a game for an evening.

Day 53

I'm grateful that I have my list of productivity habits. Whenever I'm feeling lost, frustrated, apathetic, or whatever I know that I can just anger-grind my way through that list and I will continue being an effective person.

The downside is that people see that and think that I have my shit under control. I can tell people that I meditate, work out, work, etc. nearly every day and they praise me. In reality I'm jealous of the person who can enjoy their life without doing all that stuff. I do it because if I'm not continuously moving I'm left alone with my depression and anxiety.

Anyways, went for a run today in the snow for the first time. That was cool, and not as bad as I thought it would be. I ran 4k, walked back, and got some good thinking done on the walk. I feel much better after than I did before.

To keep my habits from getting too boring I assigned myself a challenge for each of them for December. Running is to do another 10k. Meditation is to do 2x 20 min/day over 3 days. Yoga is to do the 1.5 hour ashtanga primary sequence. There are more but you get the idea. It's helping motivate me to keep doing them so that I am good to hit the challenges over the holiday break.

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6 hours ago, Lampshade said:

I'm not willing to cut out my only friend, and may just have to accept that once every month or so I'm going to end up playing a game for an evening.

FWIW this is why I defined "quitting gaming" (for myself) as not gaming except with friends, with a time limit. So I can't spend Friday night through Monday morning gaming because it's "with friends," but if I friend and I play for a few hours to catch up, I don't count that as a relapse.

Something to consider. It sounds like you then went home and played alone which of course would count as a relapse.

Could you and this friend maybe play board games instead?

6 hours ago, Lampshade said:

The downside is that people see that and think that I have my shit under control. I can tell people that I meditate, work out, work, etc. nearly every day and they praise me. In reality I'm jealous of the person who can enjoy their life without doing all that stuff.

I don't think this is real. I strongly suspect that in the same way people "see that and think that [you] have [your] shit under control," you see them without those things and think they have their shit under control, when under the surface they have just as much stuff going on as you.

That's been my experience anyway.

Except for people who are devoutly religious. Not to dig on religion, to each their own, but it's been my experience and there is also substantive evidence to indicate that being religious makes people happier. (you? and) I get depressed, and have to maintain habits to keep (ourselves?) myself sane. Religious people go to church, pray, and read the bible.

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7 hours ago, Lampshade said:

Thanks @Pochatok. I've found removing triggers to help a bunch for the day-to-day cravings. The longer term, more sporadic and sudden ones are new to me. Like this one came from visiting my friend. This is going to be one of the biggest challenges for me I think. I'm not willing to cut out my only friend, and may just have to accept that once every month or so I'm going to end up playing a game for an evening.

...

The downside is that people see that and think that I have my shit under control. I can tell people that I meditate, work out, work, etc. nearly every day and they praise me. In reality I'm jealous of the person who can enjoy their life without doing all that stuff. I do it because if I'm not continuously moving I'm left alone with my depression and anxiety.

Please don't cut your friend if you don't have to. I believe that connection with other people helps immensely with resolving addictions, anxiety, and depression. A lot of those things can stem from a lack of connection. Look up the "Rat Park" experiments by Bruce Alexander if you haven't heard of it already. Neat stuff.

On a practical note, like what @codepantssaid, it's how you define it. If I'm playing at a friend's house, no big deal. Playing alone at my house, goodbye 16 hours of my life. I lack self-control when I'm alone. I have one friend in particular with whom I "play" videogames every week, and by "play" I mean he streams himself playing on Discord and I tell him what to do. When it's over, it's over. It's weird but it works.

That last sentence is so key! When you have too much time to think, that's when the bad thoughts come back. Games are a great drug if you need it to be. I feel the same. For me, it stems from a belief from when I was a kid that I couldn't fix anything and that everything was hopeless. I don't think that now. If you keep doing what you are with your habits, you'll probably alleviate a lot of those issues even when you aren't moving around. 

 

 

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Day 55

Wife is having a hard time at work. Friend is having a hard time at school. I'm having a hard time just getting through days. Because my problems are more internal I find I usually end up playing the supportive role. It's hard.

Slacked off today. I keep feeling like 'tomorrow is the day!' but I start off the morning with coffee to get myself going, and then I end up just chasing one distraction after another.

My sleep schedule is also all over the place. Bed times last little bit were 3am, 9pm, midnight, 2am, 10pm. I'd like to be a midnight to about 7am for sleep, I think. I've felt best when I pull off the 5-530am wakeups but I just don't think that's a realistic goal for me at this point.

Another thing I need to keep in mind is that I usually get depressed in the winter so if I can maintain myself than that really is progress over previous years. So hard to not latch onto those moments during odd days where I feel good and set goals that the other 80% of the time I would've admitted were too hard.

Admitting something is too hard is challenging. Especially when it's shit that I'm told over and over 'do this to be successful!'

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3 hours ago, Lampshade said:

Wife is having a hard time at work. Friend is having a hard time at school. I'm having a hard time just getting through days. Because my problems are more internal I find I usually end up playing the supportive role. It's hard.

Slacked off today. I keep feeling like 'tomorrow is the day!' but I start off the morning with coffee to get myself going, and then I end up just chasing one distraction after another.

My sleep schedule is also all over the place. Bed times last little bit were 3am, 9pm, midnight, 2am, 10pm. I'd like to be a midnight to about 7am for sleep, I think. I've felt best when I pull off the 5-530am wakeups but I just don't think that's a realistic goal for me at this point.

Another thing I need to keep in mind is that I usually get depressed in the winter so if I can maintain myself than that really is progress over previous years. So hard to not latch onto those moments during odd days where I feel good and set goals that the other 80% of the time I would've admitted were too hard.

I'm sorry today wasn't that good. I don't have a lot of tips besides meditate to destress/clear your thoughts at the end of the day, but other than that, I hope things get better for you and know that I'm rooting for you. You got this.

 

Jason

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4 hours ago, Lampshade said:

Especially when it's shit that I'm told over and over 'do this to be successful!'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHmlieesUxw

It's really frustrating to be told that, akin to: "Have you tried... not being depressed?"

It's easier said than done, but those people are haters, and haters are to be ignored.

- - -

I know you've talked about coffee before so apologies if this is a repeat, but it sounds like you might want to detox. The first few days, sometimes the first few weeks suck, but if you can get up at whatever time you get up, and make it to 10 PM without coffee or a nap, I find sleep comes much easier.

Edited by codepants
coffee
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On 12/7/2020 at 10:45 PM, Lampshade said:

Went to visit my friend on Friday night. He's my only friend, and we've known each other for nearly 20 years now. Gaming is one of the main things we did together. He was the one who got me back into WoW. I went over a couple weeks ago and we ended up just playing crib with his roommate and I had a great time. This time we ended up smoking weed and playing NBA2k. We also reminisced about WoW and he told me he would play again if he had an external HD for his laptop. WoW is absolutely the line for me. I will not go back to that game. I'm still subbed to r/wow and it's the same old shit. Same old grind and frustrations, year after year.

I feel like I am a bit more cut-throat and cold with this type of situation. I have cut out entire groups of friends because the major basis of our friendship was gaming which I view as a superficial/weak connection...especially because I no longer want to game at all. I didn't see these people as true friends, even though I still considered them friends. It's really my fault for not trying to grow the friendship beyond video games but I knew that at the time I wouldn't be able to really change if I kept people around me who constantly associated our time together with video game like super smash bros. 

In regards to my best friend of 20 years, he is the one who got me into WoW. Any time I really "went against his wishes" in the game he would become super toxic. We haven't been on the best of terms for years now because I started to really do what I want/need to do for myself and he just wants to run around in circles with me a few feet behind. I've invited him to try different things with me like hiking and jiu-jitsu and he always agrees until the morning of where he'll flake out because of some random excuse. I still hang out with him from time to time but I try to have a third party there or to have it be somewhere other than his house because it generally leads back to something that involves video games even if it's just reminiscing. My brother has a similar situation with his best friend from middle/high school except the bonding activity is drinking. For my journey out of video game addiction, I feel like my best friend is partially an obstacle. It's a really shitty feeling to admit that. I've still hung out with him during this time but we've had enough space to grow in other directions that when we meet up, however infrequently, it's not pulling me back to games.

I am not recommending that you stop being friends with your best friend. But I feel like you should really reflect on the situation as a whole. Space from friends to grow yourself is not something that should make/break a real friendship. It doesn't sound like that is the situation you're in but if you really are trying a 90 day detox than it would probably be in your best interest to commit totally to that gaming with friends included. If you hang out with them try to be firm with not playing games and have alternatives available. Once you're done the 90 days, then you can say that "okay, if I am around friends and we want to play then that is fine." You've shown yourself that you can do it, so if you feel up to it then you can decide how much or how little (if at all) you want games to be a part of your life. You have to remember that this is addiction, and it's not to be taken lightly. It doesn't mean beat yourself up when you fall, it's part of the process. But those small exceptions you make along the way of a 90 day detox and the repercussions of them will show you how far you have truly come. If it crushed your weekend, it's pretty safe to say that making an exception with friends is not something that should be part of your 90 days. But again to each their own...it's your journey.

Also, I am not trying to attack you or anything of the sort. I am quite blunt with what I say because sometimes it feels like being supportive means pointing out things that don't want to acknowledged. You are doing incredible things for yourself and are in the process of change as am I, as are the rest of the people on this forum. Everyone wants to see each other succeed. I know that you can. 

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In regards to your habit graphs, I feel like that is a nice tool to track them. Like you said, I would experiment with them to make them look a bit better but it seems like a great way to measure progress. I feel like I need something similar because I have started a lot of habits and have been relatively consistent with them, but it would be nice to just be able to reference how much time I have put into each. I guess that's just my analytical self speaking, though.

For the habits themselves, it's ironic how similar we are even with the Bird ID 🤣. I just bought an encyclopedia-like book about North American birds to learn to ID them and I am always on the lookout for spotting birds everywhere I go. I agree with some others who have posted, you do a lot. It's great to see that you are so invested in self-improvement but it's almost like you can't catch up to yourself. You do so much and have such high standards but you have a self-deprecating attitude and it feels like you're not aware about how much you do. I know you're an all or nothing person like myself so it is difficult to not push towards constant improvement but at the same time it causes such upheavals when you aren't "doing the things you need to do to be successful", that these habits don't necessarily lead to contentedness. My advice, which you already suggested for yourself, add a portion that deals with how you feel about everything. Seriously, work towards understanding yourself on a deeper level which involves a lot of self-analysis and honesty with how you feel. Also, I obviously don't know your relationship but include your wife in the nitty-gritty parts of the process. My gf supports me through everything but also calls me out on my shit. It's refreshing...in a humbling sort of way.

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10 hours ago, BryanJaz said:

I know you're an all or nothing person like myself so it is difficult to not push towards constant improvement but at the same time it causes such upheavals when you aren't "doing the things you need to do to be successful", that these habits don't necessarily lead to contentedness.

This reminded me of that age-old question (or at least there are versions that are ages old): would you rather work endless hours at a job you hate but have boatloads of money, or work reasonable hours at a job you love and make only enough to buy what you need?

In this case, I guess, swap "job" for "habits," and "money" for... I don't know, what is it that you get from checking all those boxes? (I intend this to be curious and non-judgmental; I apologize if it presents as critical)

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@BryanJaz With friendships I think that you're right, but the consequences are tough to deal with. Especially as an adult. I needed a change after high school and traveled for a year, basically cutting out all my friends because I didn't try to reconnect when I got back. It felt good, and helped me become a new person, but man friendships are hard to grow fresh as an adult. I reconnected with that one guy I was talking about because I needed a witness for my courthouse marriage.

Honestly it's been nice having someone besides the wife to talk about stuff with. And we do share other interests beyond gaming. I think that having a more concrete 'what we're doing tonight besides gaming' plan would help. It just sucks because I would like a friend who I could just sit around and shoot the shit with. Maybe I just need to admit that that isn't him.

But let's talk about BirdID sometime! My work is literally using bird sounds to make ecological conclusions (and I still suck at ID'ing them lol). This is my favorite site for learning them. You can set the region, type of song, whether you want photos or video, and quiz yourself. Here is a more user-friendly but less customizable one. And here is a big set of ID'd sounds. Limit it to nearby species, throw it on shuffle, and away you go.

Sorry for the info splurge, I get excited about stuff like this lol

@codepants From checking all those boxes I get a feeling, objective evidence, that I am progressing towards all the goals that I feel should matter: physical health, mental health, job progress, self-help, skill development, and personal development. Might be more to it though, I wrote about it some in the gigantic post below. No pressure to read it though, I'm mostly just venting.

 

Day 57

I had a really interesting therapy session yesterday that made a lot of sense to me. We were talking about general anxiety levels and a 1-10 scale, and as they were describing it I was thinking to myself "Yeah, I'm probably at an 8-9 most times". Before I said anything, they went on to talk about how people who are at an 8-9 for a long time can enter a new level beyond 10 where they go beyond the 'fight-of-flight' reactions. Often they have a system of coping strategies to keep them high functioning while they are at that level and to distract themselves from the fact that anything is wrong. To come back down, however, they have to go back through the stages of high anxiety where the fight-or-flight instinct kicks in. I figured it was something like building a tolerance to cortisol levels.

This so perfectly described what I feel like I'm going through that it was kind of shocking. Thinking back, I've been at high stress levels for probably a decade or more. In my early 20's I worked 60-80 hours/week at a job I was not trained to do well at, with no support. Mid 20's was undergrad while working 20 hours/week and not being used to school after 5 years of labour jobs. Then was my Msc and the only way I could get funding for the MSc. that I wanted to do was to do it in 1-year instead of 2, I was also working 20-hours during that. Then all the Covid stuff.

I had some time off during Covid where I suspect I started to come back down, but that was where I got hit with the anxiety of ...I don't know what to call it, stress from relaxing? I remember talking about it with a friend before learning all this. I'd say how the weekends and vacation times were actually my hardest times because I felt stressed. During the week I had a system to keep me going; any breaks meant that I was left alone with my uncomfortable mind. We joked about how I could be the only person who gets stressed trying to relax, but I remember during those jokes thinking "Man, this is my life though, and it sucks".

I expect that's one of the reasons I went back so hard into gaming. To avoid that stress of coming back down when I had fewer expectations on me during the first Covid quarantine.

Once I quit gaming that's where I came up with this list of 12 things that I try to do most days. Everybody who looks at it says it's a lot. My counter-point is  that these are the things that always come up when I research how to be a happy, whole person. The things I've got on there are to address physical health, mental health, self-improvement, career progress, relationship health. I've got smart goals for them all. Truth is though, everybody is right. Whenever I look at that list of things to do in a day I am instantly overwhelmed and just want to stop existing. I think I've been using it as a way to keep myself at an 11 for anxiety.

Then, as I've started slacking on it a bit, I've been left with my mind. Fight-or-flight has kicked in, it's an uncomfortable feeling and difficult for those around me (tense, impatient, angry, snappy, unfocused, uncompassionate) and I went for a way to escape it. This week I've played MTGO for hours every day. I spent like $50 that I don't have entering day tournaments. It got to the classic point where I wasn't even having fun. Just trying to avoid the fact that I have a giant list of things to do that I don't want to, and no freedom. Sad thing is that it's entirely self-imposed.

So my two states are either stupidly high anxiety levels but high functioning with lots of productive distractions, or decreasing anxiety levels that are perceived at a higher level that makes them feel worse.

I don't know how to fix this problem. It's a shame because the quality of the work I was producing at the '11 state' as I'm calling it is just much better than anything I've done before. I'm also the most athletic I've probably ever been and hit new streaks for meditation. It's just not sustainably healthy though.

I'm thinking I'm just going to have to work my way back down through the stress levels. 1.) Cut back on the things I expect myself to do in a day 2.) Understand and expect that this is going to cause its own form of stress 3.) ???? 4.) Profit.

Probably just a time thing. I've got a stay-cation planned for the week after next that I'm terrified for

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10 hours ago, Lampshade said:

From checking all those boxes I get a feeling, objective evidence, that I am progressing towards all the goals that I feel should matter.

My feelings about this slide perfectly into what you wrote in that paragraph... if the need for progress is compulsive, what are you avoiding? Why is it so difficult to acceptable yourself for who you are today? Why is progress necessary?

Of course, you already answered:

10 hours ago, Lampshade said:

I'd say how the weekends and vacation times were actually my hardest times because I felt stressed. During the week I had a system to keep me going; any breaks meant that I was left alone with my uncomfortable mind. We joked about how I could be the only person who gets stressed trying to relax, but I remember during those jokes thinking "Man, this is my life though, and it sucks".

Good news is, you've also got the solution:

10 hours ago, Lampshade said:

1.) Cut back on the things I expect myself to do in a day

2.) Understand and expect that this is going to cause its own form of stress

3.) ????

4.) Profit.

I think 3 might be something like: feel the shitty, horrible feelings that you have been avoiding all your life.

Allow yourself to feel them, because you are safe now. You don't have to avoid them, like you did back then, when it wasn't safe to do so.

And once your body has released everything it's been holding on to, then, yes... profit. :)

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7 hours ago, championeal said:

What are these 12 things?

Don't have my phone with me so let's see how many I can remember:

Care for my dogs, strength work or run, stretch, shower and shave, journal, work reading session, work writing session, work data collection/analysis, Bird ID (work skill), Coding (work/personal skill development), French lesson (personal skill development)

If I got through most of those things in a day for a consistent time, my productivity was way higher than if I went into a day with less of a plan. Downsides are that it leaves less room for deep work or spontaneous creativity. After this vacation I'm going to try to find a better balance.

@codepants I've actually been thinking about what you wrote for a couple days now because it's the same conclusion I came to. Sometimes I feel like our 'figuring out stuff' conversations are lopsided cause of your professional skills but I'm grateful for the help. Let me know if you ever need to design an environmental monitoring program lol.

Day 60

Haven't been playing any games since the last time I wrote. Pretty much just been thinking about that giant entry I wrote on Friday. Decided that, as uncomfortable as it is, I need to just somehow get myself to a point where I can relax.

This puts me in direct conflict with the idea of 'finding something to replace gaming'. Here's the thing, gaming for me was a form of escapism and when I needed it the length of time that I needed it for cannot be replaced by other hobbies. I understand that part of the point is that you can do the other hobbies for less time and then get back to real life. This plan, however, does not address the underlying mental issues that lead to my addiction. I was gaming because I felt like I couldn't do anything else.

Going forward, for at least the next couple weeks or so, I'm going to focus less on filling my time and more on getting to a point where I can comfortably do nothing. This is going to involve a much less rigorous schedule and dropping most of my habits. I'm proud of that routine I developed but I don't need to put myself under that much stress right now. I'm sure there will be times in the future where life will get crazy and I'll need to kick my productivity up again, and it's good to know that I have a schedule already developed that I can implement when that time comes.

For now, though, I'm going to do the bare minimum for work and lower my standards on the stuff that I do do. I'm going to keep working out, meditating, and doing yoga regularly. Same with taking care of the dogs. And if something comes up for work that needs to be done I'm not going to ignore it. The time and energy saved from working less hard will be spent trying to get myself into a more relaxed state of mind. From the sounds of it, things are going to get uncomfortable for a bit. My plan is to just live in that uncomfort for a while in the hopes that it is just the barrier to transition into a more stable state-of-mind. Trust the Process.

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3 hours ago, Lampshade said:

 

@codepants I've actually been thinking about what you wrote for a couple days now because it's the same conclusion I came to. Sometimes I feel like our 'figuring out stuff' conversations are lopsided cause of your professional skills but I'm grateful for the help. Let me know if you ever need to design an environmental monitoring program lol.

 

Haha, fair enough, I appreciate that observation. I hope you'll let me know if you ever feel like it's too much and/or you need something else from me.

3 hours ago, Lampshade said:

Going forward, for at least the next couple weeks or so, I'm going to focus less on filling my time and more on getting to a point where I can comfortably do nothing.

Yessssssssss proud of you mate. Good luck and keep us posted.

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6 hours ago, Lampshade said:

comfortably do nothing. This is going to involve a much less rigorous schedule and dropping most of my habits

I'm happy for you Lampshade, that you figured this out. An easy schedule is way more productive in the long run. The temptation to do too much is a tricky devil who whispers the best of intentions that pave the way to hell.

Once a habit has solidified and grown roots and is now a normal part of everyday life that you don't even notice is there, that is when its time to add new habits.

Maintaining and solidifying habits, as well as terminating ones that used to be good but suck now, is all part of lifestyle flow. Take it easy buddy.

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Day 61

Big thanks to everybody for the support. You guys/girls are great.

Did some good yoga this morning. I've been doing a lot of yoga lately and have been struggling with choosing an outfit lol. Shorts are too chilly first thing in the am. Sweats don't have enough stretch and baggy ones get caught. I haven't found a good pair of mens 3/4 compression shorts that aren't made out of a rough synthetic that is uncomfortable with leg hair. Went for a pair of yoga pants and ...apparently it's impossible to get them for men without spending like $100. I get it, things are visible, but I'm mostly doing it around the house and I've got short shorts I can wear over top if I have to. So I said eff it and got a pair of women's yoga pants with a soft fuzzy interior. They're comfy af, warm, and fantastic for yoga. The length is maybe a couple inches off but otherwise fit fine. Game changers.

Zero regrets 🍑

 

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