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Reflections at the Two Year Mark Last challenge held a lot of NF milestones for me: One year soda free, 100 days of SISU, and my second Nerdthday. I've spent quite a bit of time reflecting on what I've accomplished so far and where I want to go next on my Epic Quest. From that, I have identified a number of things that I want to address and distilled a few lessons from the last two years that I want to emphasize in this challenge. The "wisdom of experience" is gained from being too stupid/stubborn/impatient/arrogant to listen to good advice! What I know now - from such experience - is that I need to focus on small, simple, steady and slow. My biggest mistakes in getting fitter have centered on trying to do too much, too soon. Inevitably, I would end up injured. My will was strong, but my body was weak. The SISU experiment of the last three challenges has taught me to go slower to move ahead faster, to listen more closely to my wise body and pay less attention to my impatient mind. This challenge will be quite challenging in that I will need to apply my experience and not fall back into old habits now that I am returning to a more usual structure of goals and activities. What Works for Me In reviewing my fourteen (!) challenges thus far, what has worked best for me has been: Gamification (Oh, NerdHammer, how I miss thee...and Hello, HabitRPG!) for motivation and building habitsAcronyms as easy reminders, keeping me focused and aware of opportunities to improveAn overarching vision that each challenge fit into, providing more motivation and contextBeing social, something that has suffered some the last few challengesHard limits on things like bedtime; consistent logging of things like food and exercise. So, this challenge, ShadowLIon SWEATS the "small stuff." Study Writing Eating Art of Relaxization Training Startup Grind The following areas continue to address my SISU goals, but change up the time expectations and the absolute "daily" requirement as needed for the next phase of my plan. They also include some remedial work needed on eating habits and sleep. The "Daily" Show - ShadowLion's Six Days a Week, No Double Misses, Moderation in All Things Plan I've sorted my goal activities into daily, weekly, bi-weekly, and midpoint/end of challenge categories to better allocate my time and energy. Dailies - 6x per week, with no double misses at the rollover. Weeklies - one or more times per week with a minimum time quota. Other Checkpoints - I have a number of project milestones set at the 2, 3, 4, and 6 week marks. I am limiting myself to those goals, even though there are a lot of other things I want to accomplish. If I get things done early, then I can dip into my Grab Bag of extra things to do, but not before. This may seem really restrictive (it is!) but it is a necessary curb on my Ranger Do All the Things! mentality. THE PROGRAM Study (CHA - 2) Weekly - 3x per week, 10 hours weekly total, minimum. If I am smart, I will make those sessions shorter and more frequent than that. This is to move forward on my programming knowledge and skills for my startup. Other checkpoints - Course deadlines and portfolio project completions will be added to the "Project Portfolio" post below as they occur. Writing (CHA - 2) Daily - 15+ minutes of morning pages or blogging. Weekly - Novel quota - Minimum 2,500 words. Mid-challenge checkpoint - At least 10,000 words. End of challenge checkpoint - At least 20,000 words. Eating (CON - 2) Daily - Food log. Maximum 1800 calories on non-cheat days. Weekly - Three cheat meals allowed. Batch cook, 1x per week. Art of Relaxization (CON - 2, WIS - 2) Daily - 7+ hours of sleep, with a strict 1:00 AM curfew. (Bonus - HabitRPG points/reward for getting to bed by midnight.) At least 20 minutes of leisure time for hobbies, fun, general relaxation. Meditate a minimum of 9 minutes per day for greater self-awareness and realization of what makes me tick. End of challenge checkpoint - Get out of Dodge! At least 1 day trip and one longer trip out of town. Preferably to the mountains where it is cooler... Phoenix, AZ. Summer. Insert gratuitous cute kitten here: Training (STR - 1, STA - 1, DEX - 1) Fire Fit has not been forgotten. It was strategically delayed while I dealt with my disappointment of not meeting my goal last fall and decided how to move forward. As above, I determined that I needed to move slower. Smaller, sImpler, steadier, slower. I don't know if I will make it to AZ Wildfire Academy next spring (fall app deadline) or not, but I am going to move in that direction and see where my habits take me. Daily - 15 minutes of stretching, prehab, rehab, and stabilization a la Kelly Starett. Body tuneup and maintenance. Weekly - Gradual ramp up to regular strength workouts and cardio within the bounds of what joints and connective tissue will handle. This is a moving target with a lot of unknowns right now. My main criteria is that I do something in each category 2-3 times per week at my current level, whatever that is. Logging is a must. My current expectation is that I will be doing modified pushups, ring rows, grip hangs, isometric strength work, some kettlebell and dumbbell work, along with brisk walking and exercise biking for now. I will keep my expectations and efforts in check and be cautious. In this area at this point, less in more. Startup Grind (WIS - 2) Move Existing Sites to Cloud Hosting Weekly checkpoints End of Week 1 - Complete research on cloud hosting solutions for SAS and have plan in place to move the site. End of Week 2 - Testing of development site. Complete final transfer to production by middle of the following week. End of Week 3 - Have checklist and plan of how transfer remaining sites. End of Week 6 - Have all site transfers done. Creating CS & AS/C3SG sites Weekly checkpoints End of week 1 - Define requirements, user stories, site structure. Detailed project schedule in place. End of week 2 - Card sort of information architecture, outlining of text, color palette generation and mood board, thumbnails and roughs of graphic elements. End of week 3 - First major round of user testing of several rough prototypes using basic graphical elements and text. End of Week 4 - Production of final versions of artwork and text. Refine prototype. End of week 5 - Ready for beta testing - User results incorporated into a fully functional prototype. End of Week 6 - Final testing and debugging. Deployment. Grading of my goals will be judged by my percentages of days, words, and times completed as outlined above, using the standard letter grade system. Additional ungraded goals: Spend an average of at least 20 minutes per day on Nerd Fitness following fellow rangers and potential rangers threads and commenting, more than that when I can. In addition to the 20 minutes of MANDATORY recreation per day, I want to make having fun and enjoying life a priority this time. There were too many days last challenge where I worked very long days and about the only thing that got done outside of work was my SISU "MEWS", basic cat care, and to take a shower! Oh, and get a little bit of sleep. I basically broke all of my good sleep habits from previous challenges... The pace of my life last challenge was pretty brutal and it is ultimately unsustainable and counterproductive to keep that going for very long. I figure I've earned a little break, though am not sure how to achieve it except in small chunks spaced throughout the six weeks. For now, my solution will be to take more breaks throughout the day, especially ones that involve the "exercise cubicle" we have in the back room, plus to be more aware of when I enter into "diminishing returns" and to do something about that. Experiment to find the optimal time spent or number of "Toads" to tackle per day or week. See the "Grab Bag" post below. "Tackling Toads" is aimed at creating less stress and more freedom in my life by taking decisive action on things I don't like to do, as opposed to procrastinating, wasting time, and prolonging the misery. If I finish early on a project, or otherwise carve out some extra time, I can visit the Grab Bag and do something from that list just for fun. I may also experiment with rewarding toad tackling with an equal measure of fun. TL:DR; All of the above is just a plan to get stronger, be BOLDER, and accomplish my life goal of being a Belly-dancing Amazon Pirate (who codes and fights fires!)