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Not sure what this challenge holds for me, so I'm coming in with an open heart. Stay tuned, because this is the mindset that usually means the doors get blown off. ❤️

Respawning 5 years his after last post, with starting stats 50 pounds heavier than his last character, Stag looks to the sky and finds inspiration in the form of a technicolor nebula: 18 constellations, 18 skills to level up. He picks a few stars to follow for 4 weeks, and sets off on a journey toward holistic vitality. Goal 1: Bike Across Connecticut. Go to the gym and stationary bike for 6 miles 3 times a week. Gain ~6 EXP Hours toward Biking. Goal 2: Day to Savor the Flavor. Mindfully eat for 24 hours: Mindfully savor 2 meals a day for at least 25 minutes each. Gain ~20 EXP Hours in Nutrition. Goal 3: Counseling Apprentice. Complete 14 hours of course work and career development outside of class each week. Gain ~50 EXP Hours in Research and Counseling. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ How Does This System Work? Why Are You Doing This? Rational: When I used to use the use the forum, it was cool to role play 6 week challenges with D&D'esque RPG stats. I enjoyed the role playing and leveling up, but I never really played D&D, so it always felt a little detached for me. I also didn't like how stats leveled so quickly with each challenge, and how these inflated stats felt very arbitrary. My 20 STR could like very different than your 20 STR. I resolved to make my own system based on the RPG I know best: Skyrim. This was a blast to design, tapping both into my digital art and spread sheeting interest. I enjoy emphasizing the Nerd in Nerd Fitness. Why these skills?: These are just skills that I enjoy perfecting and/or are important to maintaining my vitality and health. If someone else were inspired by the system and wanted to try it, they would pick there most important 18 skills. Starting Stats: In Skyrim there are 18 skill trees. The dragonborn always starts with twelve level 15 skills, five level 20 skills, and one level 25 skill. Although I have some experience in all the skills with my skills nebula, I allotted the twelve level 15 skills, five level 20 skills, and one level 25 skill based on my relative past time investment in each skill. Skill Leveling: Skill leveling is set up such that a skill begun at level 15 will take at least 10,000 hours of effort to reach level 100. The 10,000 hours is based off of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 Hour Rule, a proposed number of hours of deliberate practice required to reach "expert level." It is an oversimplification of what it takes to master a skill, but it still provides an aspiration rule of thumb. Every time I invest time honing or engaging in a skill, I earn EXP Hours. However now all skill practice is created equal. I created a formula to account for this: F = Level of Focus. It is measured on a scale of 1 - 10, with 10 being perfect, absolute focus, and 1 being no focus. D = Level of Deliberate Practice. It is measured on a scale of 1- 10, with 10 being highly conscientious and deliberate skill building and practice, and 1 being engaging with improving not even on the radar. R = Relevance of activity to the given skill tree. It is measured on a scale of 1 - 10, with 10 being extremely relevant, and 1 being only the slightest smidgen relevant. P = Percentage of the time spent engaging in the activity. It is measured on a scale of 1 - 10, with 10 being 100% engaged in the activity, and a 5 meaning only actually engaged in the activity 1/2 of the time. T = Time spent engaged in the activity in minutes. EXP Hours = F * D * R * P * T / 10,000 / 60 True to Skyrim skill leveling, skills level on an exponential curve. It takes significantly fewer EXP Hours to level a skill from 20 to 21 (13 EXP Hours) than 86 to 87 (224 EXP Hours). The formula for skill leveling is the same used in Skyrim's leveling system, but with an additional divider so it takes exactly 10,000 EXP Hours to level from 15 to 100, rather than 528804.0234 EXP Points: L = Current skill level. EXP Hours Required to Level Up a Skill = 2 * ( L ^ 1.95) / 52.915 Outputs from this formula are rounded to the nearest whole integer. Character Leveling: Character leveling is set up such that by leveling 13 skills to level 100, the character will reach level 100. 13 skills is kind of arbitrary, but it makes the XP Character math easy, and the 13,000 hours required is ~1.5 years worth of cumulative skills practice: An impressive feat. Just as in Skyrim, a character levels up in the Nebula Skill System by accumulating enough XP Character to cross a level up threshold. XP Character is gained every time a character levels up a skills. It is a simple formula: S = Skill level the player has just leveled up from. XP Character = S * 2 The formula for amount of cumulative XP Character required to level is unaltered from Skyrim: C = Current character level. Amount of cumulative XP Character required to level up = (12.5 * ( C ^ 2 ) + (62.5 * C )) - 75 Whoa, This Seems Pretty Complicated: It is definitely a lot, but this spreadsheet will make keeping tabs all the maths easier. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Quick About Me Hey! I'm Nathan. I'm a 26 year old counseling graduate student from CT, USA. I'm hoping to lose about 60 pounds, develop an enjoyable relationship with eating wholesome foods and moving my body, and generally improve at the things I enjoy doing. It's nice to be back. Thanks for reading!

First challenge! Woooo! I'm going to be theming my challenges around the Japanese abstract strategy game, shogi. I've being playing a lot of shogi recently because I have too much time on my hands and I thought it'd be cool to centre my challenges around the attributes of the pieces. Anybody interested in the rules of shogi can learn more about the game here. The pawn (歩) The pawn in shogi appears to be the weakest piece. It can only move one space forward and it doesn't possess any of the special moves granted to pawns in western chess (rather, it has more limitations than the other pieces). However, as captured shogi pieces can be dropped onto the board, the weak pawn becomes a mobile adversary at the head of a variety of devastating tactics. Additionally with the prospect of promotion in the enemy camp, the pawn can become formidable in a moments notice. This challenge is going to be fairly straightforward. I'm not going to centre it around any of my activities; that'll be coming up in further challenges. Rather, this challenge is about building habits and small changes to my lifestyle. Habits are just like shogi pawns; they may not have special jumping abilities or cover many of squares, but they're foundational to the success of any attack or defence. Now, I'm heading to Crete in two weeks for a holiday. Given that I won't really have much time to spend at gyms and the like, I've designed my challenge with this in mind. 1. FOUNDATIONAL TRAINING (BODY) There are two skills I want to get better at that'll help me a lot in rock-climbing, weightlifting and gymnastics. That is: Hand-balancing Grip strength A long time ago, I was able to hold my handstand for around 30 seconds freestanding. At the moment, I can only muster around 5-10 seconds. When it comes to grip, I'm currently training to close the No.2 Captains of Crush gripper. I'll be practising my handstand every day, at least ten attempts. Grip training is more demanding, so I'll be doing that three times a week. My ultimate goal when it comes to hand-balancing and grip training is to hold a one-armed handstand and close the No.3 CoC gripper. This are incredibly difficult skills to achieve! I'll hopefully be able to tackle them when I reach Level 20 or something. Stay tuned! One day!!! 2. FLEXIBILITY I hate stretching. It's painful and it takes a lot of time to see the benefits. I'm fairly mobile as it is, but I want to be as limber as my cat! This part of my challenge will build upon three main movements. I will be stretching every day. Front splits Bridge Shoulder splits 3. DIET I have a confession. Food is my greatest weakness. This is my face whenever I contemplate giving up chocolate: (Yes, that is an anime character in a shogi pawn outfit. I do not know where it is from.) For the four weeks of the challenge, I will eat NO junk food. No crisps, no chocolate, no bonbons, nothing. I'll be keeping a food log on this thread, where I'll track every piece of junk food I've eaten. This is by far the hardest part of my challenge. Every fibre of my willpower will be tested here. Wish me luck. 4. (bonus) ART OF (CHESS) PROBLEM SOLVING I study mathematics and theoretical physics at university and spend a huge amount of time learning about these topics. I want to go onto graduate study, so I need to be the best I can be. I need to develop my general problem solving capabilities until they are absolutely razor sharp. I'm already engaged in some pretty rigorous self-study in advanced topics in maths and physics, but I simultaneously want to develop my expertise in problem solving; that is, to become more imaginative and efficient when I solve problems. Therefore, I'm going to be digging through the internet in search of difficult mathematics/physics problems to solve. This'll be a great way to improve my foundational mathematics and intuition at the same time. I'll be solving three independent Olympiad-style problems daily. For example: (...any tips?) Change of plans: I want to play in a national chess league next year and I need to train for it. Instead of maths problems (which I do anyway), I'm going to be focusing on tactical study in chess: 20 tactics daily. ADDITIONALLY: I'm going to make 05:30 - 06:30 the hour in which I attempt these problems. I'll need to wake up early! Therefore, I'll be waking up at 05:00 every day. I'll be scoring myself daily for my challenge and adding up my score as I go along. My level-up criterion is 70% as an overall score. And there you have it! A fairly easy to deal with challenge (apart from the chocolate ) that'll ease me in. Looking forward to training with you all!