welfvh's Beeminder Journal / Weekly Review

Hey everyone,

I’ve been wanting to get into a weekly review routine that’s actually weekly, so here’s /review and the first accompanying post.

Meta
This will not be beeminder by beeminder, but about the areas in my life.

General
This has been a phenomenal week. I somehow lucked into finally having a GTD system, in Things 3, and it’s fucking great. Outsourcing a lot of background cognition, and actually getting a lot done.

I also created a system for managing money that’s pretty satisfying, but already derailed from the principles that I set out to follow two weeks ago. Will review eom if this needs a beeminder.

I’m also back home right now after some weeks of travel, and just being back in an environment where I have space for my rituals and a desk to sit down and work without distractions is good for my productivity and soul.

Also, I’ve started listening to David Goggins Can’t Hurt Me, and it’s inspiring as fuck.

I also managed to have an honest, straightforward, existential conversation with my dad this week. It feels like I’m now finally able to consciously work through our relationship and face the demons that await.

Connected with some recent professional developments and breakthroughs I feel like I’m finally more of the person I’ve been wanting to be for a really long time. I’m much more centered and find an increasingly deep understanding of myself. I’m also owning my own standards much more than I did before.

Ironman 70.3
On August 1st it kind of struck me that a half Ironman actually doesn’t sound that hard. And the more I started thinking about it, the more motivation I found. A day later I went for a run, just to check out my condition, and ran 16km mostly uphill feeling pretty good. Went for a swim, and when continuing afterward my knee hurt, which happened before after longer runs. If it wasn’t for that, I feel like I could’ve done another 10-15km condition-wise. Which surprised me because this was the first run in the year. Working on my running technique to take the pressure off the joints, and take supplements to support them.

The major project, however, is /swim. I’m close to not being able to swim. A 70.3 includes about 2km of swimming in open water, and right now I’m able to swim about 100m before I need to hold onto something. This is a question of technique (basically non-existent, can’t crawl), practice and water confidence (I’m lowkey afraid to drown). Once I’m back in Berlin I’m hoping to get swim lessons from a friend and sign up to real training. For now (being on the countryside) I’ll make sure I get into the water at least 2x a week, watch crawling tutorials, practice, and work on my water confidence. (Listening to Goggins and his seals experiences is good fuel for that).

The closest swimming hall is about 15 km away, and I plan on biking both ways for the first time next week. I’ll report how that goes.

Shortcuts
I started playing around with shortcuts as a means of making my rituals and tracking easier. Still work in progress, but it’s already really helpful. Will make a post on that this coming week.

/Yoga
Continues to be at the core of my Good Morning™. It wakes me up and makes me feel lighter.

Workouts /legs /pushups /situps
I’ve been recovering from a cold, and now really happy to be back to my morning workouts. Made a really good shortcut for this that plays Smells Like Teen Spirit and more epic workout music, and opens a Things task with my workout routine and a link to a shortcut that logs data to Beeminder and Apple Health once I’m done. Check it out.

/Meditation
I’ll remove this beeminder. I feel like there’s a qualitative difference between challenging stuff like workouts and more soft / intrinsic / sacred stuff like meditation. I feel great logging a workout, weird logging meditation. Curious if this changes my routine. Will adapt as we go along.

That’s it for this week. Does anyone read these journals anyways? By the way I only told very few people about the Ironman 70.3 project. I guess I’m comfortable doing it here because I assume everyone here’s all for challenging your limitations, seeking discomfort and raising one’s standards. Keep doing that.

Onwards,
Welf

4 Likes

Weekly Review #2

  • I’m pissed off that I didn’t do this in the morning. Spent about 80 minutes on the bike and 90 minutes putting out in the gym today, probably burning something like 1500 cal, … so my brain is done and tired.
  • Also pissed off because I missed a call with one of my favorite people today.

This week started off slightly disoriented and unmotivated, but got tremendously better. Monday I faced some frustration because I was extremely uncomfortable on my new bike, and my knee hurt after running. Changed the saddle to a more comfy one. Have an orthopedic consulting session this wednesday about the knee.

Great: Been in the pool on two days, making progress, understanding my weaknesses and stress factors, and I’m becoming increasingly systematic in managing and tackling them.

Sold my old bike, so the financial aspect of the new bike is balanced out, which removes some of that stress.

My GTD system wasn’t working that smoothly this week. Too much procrastinating on things that I should’ve thrown out anyways.

Sleep… I’ll get up at 6.30 tomorrow, earlier then this weeks 7.30. I have a feeling that being up early and having space to meditate with noone around changes my baseline of mindfulness.

Goggins continues to be inspiring as fuck. I’ll head to bed. More detail and diligence next week. Promised.

1 Like

An early morning on a bus I entered last night. Fractal sleep experience. Sunrise and forests turn the german autobahn into a beautiful place to awake on. We’re about to arrive in Berlin. I always find energy in arrivals. Just like a new week feels like a fresh start, a new space does, too.

This week I awoke to some unfelt feelings and unrealized alienation I’ve been experiencing. I felt like I wasn’t in touch with myself and was thus quite distracted until was able to reconnect. Learning to feel through difficult emotions continues to be a project. Outer expectation and inner cowardice seem to be the enemies here. The question “What am I not allowing myself to feel, show, and say?” arose and seems to be invaluable. Just as “What’s the hardest question I could ask / thing I could acknowledge?”.

This process of writing down bad emotions naturally merged into writing down gratitude. The feeling of which followed the action of writing it down. I realized it’s called practicing gratitude for a reason. I realized paper makes better space for conversations like these than the digital does, so I plan on beginning and ending my day on paper every day for this coming week and see what that does.

It’s a much better place to create from.

Briefs:

  • I updated (deleted/reduced) many beeminders. I was getting really annoyed by the lack of flexibility. My new endurance workout regime needs to be taken into consideration when planning my other workouts. Meditation and breathwork feel like a chore when I put them on beeminder. I realized I want to develop the mindset, will to do these things, and I’m wondering how beeminder (and any tech sharing its purpose) is actually helping me / one do that.
  • Also @dreev it’d be great to have something like known causes for exception with which to trigger a break on multiple goals. When I pushed myself so hard that I need two days of recovery or feel a slight cold after a one hour swim in below optimal temperature, taking a 3 day break from workout and cold shower related goals would be handy. Previously unfamiliar with the breaks feature, I just put in data with an excuse.
  • I’m making progress on shortcuts design. Taking the MacSparky Field Guide course this coming week, and planning to publish some of my recent work this coming week.
  • Excited to be back in Berlin, live with beautiful people in a beautiful house for 17 days, share workouts and meals with friends.
  • I’m feeling good about myself. And I’m grateful for a new day, a fresh week, brimming with light and opportunity.
1 Like