sarakingdom

PRETTY SHINY SWORDS I WANT. Ahem. Carry on.

Week 1: Day 2 Fitness Points 7 hours of sleep5 Move Like a Snake: Rowing Interval Workout (5 points available)0 Move Like a Snake: Workout Extras 2.5 Merckle & Stingbat's Very Famous Brown Sauce: liters of water0 Merckle & Stingbat's Very Famous Brown Sauce: Bonus (2 points for 3 liters of water, the odd extra point for some sort of effort)Life Points 5 All Control Starts With the Self: Meditation (5 points available)1 All Control Starts With the Self: Desk Habit Trigger (1 point available)0 All Control Starts With the Self: Bedtime Habit Trigger (1 point available)1 If You Can Stand the Excitement: Make a Detailed Daily Schedule (1 point available)1 Know What's Going to Happen: Five minutes planning on Task A (1 point available)0 Know What's Going to Happen: Five minutes planning on Task B (1 point available)1 Learn the Words: Duolinguo (1 point available)10 Productivity Bonus0 Adulting Bonus 0 Writing Goal Bonus​Total Points: 33.5 points What with yesterday's unplanned rest day, today's workout was great. Barely noticed it going past, and broke some average 500m times on my sprints that I've never broken before. Also, I think it did my head a world of good. The focus hasn't kicked in yet, but I'm a lot less grouchy.

Cheer up, grumpy Phoenix. First, your challenge is not lame, it's a lot of stuff to work on and they're big things. Two, shut the fuck up and get to work.

Three Rs = Ranking, Running, and Resting?

Awesome challenge. Sometimes it's good just to use it as some extra structure to keep you on track.

BRB, running away to Portland to join the Moroccan Circus.

I dream of a Drumknott. I'm still cleaning up after ridding myself of my Wonse.

Week 1: Day 1 "You have not always taken such a relaxed approach, Havelock," said Hughnon. The Patrician gave him a cool stare that went on for a couple of seconds beyond the comfort barrier. "Flexibility and understanding have always been my watchwords," he said. "My god, have they?" Fitness Points 8 hours of sleep2 Move Like a Snake: Rowing Interval Workout (5 points available)0 Move Like a Snake: Workout Extras 2 Merckle & Stingbat's Very Famous Brown Sauce: liters of water0 Merckle & Stingbat's Very Famous Brown Sauce: Bonus (2 points for 3 liters of water, the odd extra point for some sort of effort)Life Points 0 All Control Starts With the Self: Meditation (5 points available)0 All Control Starts With the Self: Desk Habit Trigger (1 point available)0 All Control Starts With the Self: Bedtime Habit Trigger (1 point available)1 If You Can Stand the Excitement: Make a Detailed Daily Schedule (1 point available)0 Know What's Going to Happen: Five minutes planning on Task A (1 point available)0 Know What's Going to Happen: Five minutes planning on Task B (1 point available)1 Learn the Words: Duolinguo (1 point available)1 Productivity Bonus5 Adulting Bonus 0 Writing Goal Bonus​Total Points: 20 points Very rough start in the morning. I did not kill anyone. That is worth a million adulting points, but I gave myself five.

Week 4: Day 7 Going out as we came in... Fitness Points 5 hours of sleep0 Move Like a Snake: Workout (5 points available)0 Move Like a Snake: Workout Extras15 Move Like a Snake: Weekly Bonus1 Merckle & Stingbat's Very Famous Brown Sauce: liters of water5 Merckle & Stingbat's Very Famous Brown Sauce: Diet Macros (5 points available)0 Merckle & Stingbat's Very Famous Brown Sauce: Diet Effort BonusLife Points 0 All Control Starts With the Self: Meditation (5 points available)0 All Control Starts With the Self: Waking Up Habit Trigger (1 point available)0 All Control Starts With the Self: Shower Habit Trigger (1 point available)0 All Control Starts With the Self: bonus for remembering If You Can Stand the Excitement: Make a Detailed Daily Schedule (1 point available)0 Know What's Going to Happen: Five minutes planning on Task A (1 point available)0 Know What's Going to Happen: Five minutes planning on Task B (1 point available)1 Learn the Words: Duolinguo (1 point available)3 Productivity Bonus0 Adulting Bonus 0 Writing Goal BonusTotal Points: 30 points Weekly Bonuses: Move Like a Snake - 0/3 bodyweight workouts, 1/1 endurance workouts, 1/1 sprints, 1/1 misc (5 bonus points per workout if 3 or more are done) There's room today for another workout, but I think it's going to be a rest day, or maybe some light yoga and stretching. I did two days in a row that are a bit tough on that ankle tendon, so maybe I'll let it off lightly. My quads are super-tight, though, so a stretch wouldn't be bad. We'll see if it gets to real workout-level stuff.

Yeah, I gotta think a lot of the interval training common wisdom is based on Tabatas, which is not the interval training most people do. They're designed to make you puke and fall over, and then generally die. But most intervals are not, they're more like Fartlek training. Which is not really high intensity, just regular old interval training, I suppose, but IT is not a recognizable acronym, so everyone goes with the slightly inaccurate HIIT. The average interval workout is not high-volume, and not tougher to recover from than an alternative slightly-longer-regular-workout. So if you can do five cardio days of the same thing in a week, I don't think five days of intervals is any harder. Then it just becomes a question of whether the joints and everything recovers from daily use like that. That pushes the common wisdom of "don't use the same muscle groups every day in a row, to allow for recovery" a bit, but at a low volume, the risk seems a lot lower. It's not like an hour-long workout. It's 20-25 minutes, depending how badly I cheat at warmup/cooldown. Yeah, not a bad challenge! It's nice to get a fresh start every four weeks, I was petering out on a couple of my goals this week. (Well, mostly, my groceries had a lot of rice pasta this week, so I think I'm easing off my carb goal for this coming challenge. Not sure I was seeing the benefit of it, or perhaps it's just time for a week off that one.)

Ooh, a spring cleaning challenge... very tempting. Maybe I will turn my reluctant challenge goal into a project based challenge. Also, yay for more Pratchett!

Oh man, a circus gym sounds incredible.

The Vetinari coat of arms, a solid field of black and the words "If it's not broke, don't fix it". A fine motto for this challenge, in fact, which is going to look highly like the last challenge. Move Like a Snake II "And how come the --ing zombie never told us the guy was so --ing fast? If he hadn't been staring at the geek, he'd have --ing got me!" Mr. Pin shrugged. But he'd made a note of that... Mr. Slant had failed to tell the New Firm quite a lot of things, and one of them was that Vetinari moved like a snake. The good news: the ankle tendon's pretty happy. It's still a little sore and a little tight when I use it a lot, but nothing that lingers. (In fact, I did two hard days on it in a row, and it seems pretty good.) So I'm at the "everything out of shape, but I can use it" stage. My rowing HIIT was a bit of a revelation. I mean, maybe coincidence, but it does seem to make my brain and my body very happy. Which I knew, but I'd forgotten. So my current plan is: work up to 5 days a week of rowing HIIT in the mornings plus one day of work-related activity and one rest day, at least until my body tells me it's not getting enough recovery time. I think it shouldn't be a huge deal, but I've been having a lot of recovery failures the past few years. This is not best practices at all, but it's sort of a "we're going to try it for a month" kind of thing. I need my brain working better, and I have some fitness to rebuild, so I'm just going with the simple thing that does well at both. Plus I want to have a good data point for how starting my day with a workout like that affects my ability to focus. And right now I just need the simplest possible thing I can do, to free up my attention for other things. Merckle and Stingbat's Very Famous Brown Sauce II There was a clink over by the drain. Half a dozen rats appeared, dragging something wrapped in a cloth. They rathandled it past the grille and, with great effort, hauled it to the Patrician's feet. He leaned down and undid the knot. "We seem to have cheese, chicken legs, celery, a piece of rather stale bread and a nice bottle, oh, a nice bottle apparently of Merckle and Stingbat's Very Famous Brown Sauce. Beer, I said, Skrp." The leading rat twitched its nose at him. "Sorry about this, Vimes. They can't read, you see. They don't seem to get the hang of the concept. But they're very good at listening. They bring me all the news." "I see you're very comfortable here," said Vimes weakly. I'm doing fairly well on the diet front. Not quite as low on the carb end as I'd like, but it's pretty decent. What I'd like to work on this challenge is hydration. Three liters a day is my goal. Points for every liter. Bonus two points for hitting three. All Control Starts With the Self III And then you realized that power was a bauble. Any thug had power. The true prize was control. Lord Vetinari knew that. When heavy weights were balanced on the scales, the trick was to know where to place your thumb. And all control started with the self. My meditation habit triggers are the wrong ones. So I'm going to switch to "when I sit down to work and get going on my schedule". It'll be one of those little startup tasks. And once more when I go to bed. If You Can Stand the Excitement III It was exasperating. He appeared to have no vice that anyone could discover. You'd have thought, with that pale, equine face, that he'd incline towards stuff with whips, needles and young women in dungeons. The other lords could have accepted that. Nothing wrong with whips and needles, in moderation. But the Patrician apparently spent his evenings studying reports and, on special occasions, if he could stand the excitement, playing chess. Make a formal written schedule for the day every morning. (I should find another time management habit to add on here, but I haven't thought of it yet, so we'll see. The reminder is still helping me get this done, so no harm in keeping it.) Know What's Going to Happen II A great many rulers, good and bad and quite often dead, know what happened; a rare few actually manage, by dint of much effort, to know what's happening. Lord Vetinari considered both types to lack ambition. I have two long-term tasks to plan for. Minimum of five minutes a day on each, even if it's just sitting down and making notes. (The secret is, five minutes will probably lead to more. But the minimum is "don't lose sight of it".) I have been sucking badly at this one, partly because I still don't have a great sense of scoring it when I do it. Partly also because I'm not doing it reliably. I don't like repeating a failing challenge as is, but I have no new ideas yet. So at least until I come up with a better twist on doing this, we'll repeat this one. Learn the Words III It was said that he would tolerate absolutely anything apart from anything that threatened the city (And mime artists. It was a strange aversion, but there you are. Anyone in baggy trousers and a white face who tried to ply their art anywhere within Ankh's crumbling walls would very quickly find themselves in a scorpion pit, on one wall of which was painted the advice: Learn The Words.) Duolingo. German. Learn the words. It's quick and it's fun.

Walking is a little time-consuming if it doesn't slot into your day easily. Podcasts, audiobooks, or class notes help a lot, then it's not wasted time. Figuring out how many public transportation stops you can walk about as fast as the transport also helps. (A lot of my walking, I get in because the walking time isn't a lot different from the train time, maybe five more minutes, and I'm tired of sitting. Or I have a book I need to read, and I got it in audiobook form.)

Week 4: Day 6 He turned at the sound of a coach pulling up and looked up at a door which had a crest consisting mainly of a black shield. And above that, looking out of the window, was the face of Lord Vetinari. "Ah, none other than Corporal Nobbs," said Lord Vetinari. At this point Nobby would have given quite a lot to be anyone other than corporal Nobbs. He wasn't sure whether, as a striker, he should salute. He saluted anyway, on the basis that a salute was seldom out of place. "I gather you have withdrawn your labour," Lord Vetinari went on. "In your case, I am sure this presented a good deal of difficulty." Nobby wasn't certain about that sentence, but the Patrician seemed quite amiable. Fitness Points 9 hours of sleep5 Move Like a Snake: Workout (5 points available)0 Move Like a Snake: Workout Extras 1 Merckle & Stingbat's Very Famous Brown Sauce: liters of water3 Merckle & Stingbat's Very Famous Brown Sauce: Diet Macros (5 points available)0 Merckle & Stingbat's Very Famous Brown Sauce: Diet Effort BonusLife Points 0 All Control Starts With the Self: Meditation (5 points available)0 All Control Starts With the Self: Waking Up Habit Trigger (1 point available)0 All Control Starts With the Self: Shower Habit Trigger (1 point available)0 All Control Starts With the Self: bonus for remembering 1 If You Can Stand the Excitement: Make a Detailed Daily Schedule (1 point available)0 Know What's Going to Happen: Five minutes planning on Task A (1 point available)0 Know What's Going to Happen: Five minutes planning on Task B (1 point available)1 Learn the Words: Duolinguo (1 point available)2 Productivity Bonus1 Adulting Bonus 0 Writing Goal BonusTotal Points: 23 points Weekly Bonuses: Move Like a Snake - 0/3 bodyweight workouts, 1/1 endurance workouts, 1/1 sprints, 1/1 misc (5 bonus points per workout if 3 or more are done)

Everything about this challenge is awesome.

Week 4: Day 5 A figure had apparently stepped out of the wall. It was human, but only by default. Thin, pale, and clad all in dusty black, the Patrician always put Ridcully in mind of a predatory flamingo, if you could find a flamingo that was black and had the patience of a rock. Fitness Points 5 hours of sleep5 Move Like a Snake: Workout (5 points available)0 Move Like a Snake: Workout Extras 2 Merckle & Stingbat's Very Famous Brown Sauce: liters of water3 Merckle & Stingbat's Very Famous Brown Sauce: Diet Macros (5 points available)1 Merckle & Stingbat's Very Famous Brown Sauce: Diet Effort BonusLife Points 5 All Control Starts With the Self: Meditation (5 points available)0.5 All Control Starts With the Self: Waking Up Habit Trigger (1 point available)0.5 All Control Starts With the Self: Shower Habit Trigger (1 point available)0 All Control Starts With the Self: bonus for remembering 1 If You Can Stand the Excitement: Make a Detailed Daily Schedule (1 point available)0 Know What's Going to Happen: Five minutes planning on Task A (1 point available)0 Know What's Going to Happen: Five minutes planning on Task B (1 point available)1 Learn the Words: Duolinguo (1 point available)0 Productivity Bonus13 Adulting Bonus 5 Writing Goal BonusTotal Points: 42 points Weekly Bonuses: Move Like a Snake - 0/3 bodyweight workouts, 1/1 endurance workouts, 1/1 sprints (5 bonus points per workout if 3 or more are done)

I'm finally beginning to deal with my ADHD properly, inspired by Quothy and generally being unable to put it off any longer. As an interesting data point, yesterday was quite a good focus day, until about 3pm. Really unusually mentally sharp. I did have a reasonably good start, but I think the rowing HIIT (just Steve's beginner's HIIT workout, with a slightly lazy warmup/cooldown) helped a lot. Of all the types of exercise I do, that's the only one that seems to have real mental effects. I wonder about the practicality of doing that daily. It's not a big workout, so it doesn't seem like it'd be overkill on the cardio. I know they say you shouldn't be able to do HIIT every day, but... it's not that demanding a variation on HIIT. I mean, it's not Tabata. I row with heavy enough resistance that there's probably some muscle recovery, but I think it'd be feasible to work up to 6-7 days a week, maybe staggering the difficulty of the sprint-to-rest ratio or the resistance level, so not every day is equally hard. I guess my only worry is that I've hit some recovery walls in the past year or so, from lack of sleep and diet and probably just being older, and I don't know about the wisdom of flying in the face of good recovery practice when I already have some issues there. But 20 minutes of cardio intervals with a little resistance is just a few steps away from a short 20 minute jog, you know? That should be quite a reasonable background level of activity. I mean, I'm all behind Mark Sisson's "sprint once, lift three times, and move slowly the rest of the time," and the reasoning behind staggering your activities, but this doesn't seem like it should be a big deal, and every sign I get is that my body loves it better than anything else. So I'm really tempted to throw out a lot of the good advice and just treat this like a baseline, until I hit a point where I can see I'm not recovering well, and then scale back.

Yes, the encroachers owe us tributes now.

Still reading Pratchett, and still hammering away at these goals, so it'll be pretty similar when I get around to posting my challenge this weekend.

Weeks like that happen. Not fun. Best thing to do about them is reset, so you're on it. Don't even feel bad, a week off is sometimes necessary.

East Coast Monks who aren't getting to bed on time, how many of you are aiming for the 10:30 to 11pm range?

Week 4: Day 4 Lord Vetinari seldom had balls. There was a popular song about it, in fact. Because if you're going to come back from a dry spell, do it with innuendo. Fitness Points 7 hours of sleep5 Move Like a Snake: Workout (5 points available)0 Move Like a Snake: Workout Extras 2 Merckle & Stingbat's Very Famous Brown Sauce: liters of water5 Merckle & Stingbat's Very Famous Brown Sauce: Diet Macros (5 points available)0 Merckle & Stingbat's Very Famous Brown Sauce: Diet Effort BonusLife Points 5 All Control Starts With the Self: Meditation (5 points available)0.5 All Control Starts With the Self: Waking Up Habit Trigger (1 point available)0.5 All Control Starts With the Self: Shower Habit Trigger (1 point available)0 All Control Starts With the Self: bonus for remembering 1 If You Can Stand the Excitement: Make a Detailed Daily Schedule (1 point available)0 Know What's Going to Happen: Five minutes planning on Task A (1 point available)0 Know What's Going to Happen: Five minutes planning on Task B (1 point available)1 Learn the Words: Duolinguo (1 point available)8 Productivity Bonus1 Adulting Bonus 5 Writing Goal BonusTotal Points: 51 points Weekly Bonuses: Move Like a Snake - 0/3 bodyweight workouts, 0/1 endurance workouts, 1/1 sprints (5 bonus points per workout if 3 or more are done) Rowing sprints! Excellent way to start the morning. And the Clash. I should do that more often, it makes me want to swear creatively at life for the fun of it, and that's always good times. So let's see. I need more sleep. I need more schedule structure. Other than that, okay. I'll give myself Monday as a mental health day, because clearly something was going on, but it took me two and a half days to pull out of that mental focus nosedive, and both sleep and schedule structure would help. Let's see what I can do about that.

You could try running double-length challenges, eight weeks instead of four. No reason not to do a part 1 the first month and a part 2 the second.

I'm docking myself the past three days of points for large-scale disorganization. WTF, me, no. But tomorrow, yes.