Solski's monthly updates

[solski]

Original post date: April 30

 

Okay, I think it's time to set things straight.

 

TL;DR:

I try to make my life better and this is my plan on how I want to achieve this goal:

1. Fitness/health

     - Bodyweight workout three times a week

     - Leveling up on nerd fitness dietary guide every month or two (sweet spot is being on level 7 consistently)

     - I'd like to create a habit of taking vitamin C + D and ashwaghanda regularly. I'll set up and alarm on my phone to remind myself about it at 9 P.M. every day.

 

2. Professional development:

     - Coding/learning for one hour every weekday (that's the goal, the progression looks like this):

         - level 1 - 30 minutes every non-workout day (ideally that's tuesday and thursday)

         - level 2 - 30 minutes every weekday

         - level 3 - building the learning time to one hour

         - level x - staying consistent with one hour, maybe trying 90 minutes, I want to experiment with how much time is perfect without losing focus and efficiency.

 

3. Productivity/concentration:

     - Blocking sites that are draining my time every day and are not helpful to me:

         - YouTube - I'm allowed to watch YouTube only on the weekends when it's time to relax and rest after a whole week

         - Sites with memes - I want to get rid of it entirely. It doesn't serve me any purpose except wasting time.

         - Facebook & LinkedIn (but it comes to all social media really) - I'm allowed to check them only on weekends, but I don't want to spend more than half an hour a day there.

         - Nerd fitness - well, unfortunately I realized that I tend to check the forums and articles at work, so I have to block nerd fitness on my work hours (but I'll keep posting my every workout on this journal anyway! :))

         - As a bonus, I blocked all electronics retailers sites (I'm a laptop nerd, I spend too much time watching reviews and checking out what's new. I'm not even planing on buying a new notebook soon...I know, that's weird :D). I don't think it's harmful, but I spend time watching reviews instead of working, so this has to go.

 

4. Time management:

     - For now I'll look for some materials on how to organize everyday tasks with Todoist app and try out new ways of doing it (my old system was very overwhelming for me to maintain).

 

5. Finances:

    - Keeping a spreadsheet with monthly calculations of all my bank account and assets (I'll do my best to keep the trend "bullish"        :)).

     - I'm considering trying out the minimalism philosophy. That's just something to consider for me - maybe I'll look through my stuff, decide what to throw away, what to sell, and ask my self "do I really need this/does this make my life better?" every time I want to buy something new.

 

6. Mental health:

     - I'll work on creating a habit of meditation. 10 minutes every morning. I give myself two moths to do it, after that I'll try to extend this to 15 minutes and see how I feel about that. Last time I was stressing out that I don't have time in the morning to do 20 minutes of meditation even if I woke up earlier than usual. I tried to progress too fast.

     - I'll wait for three month doing meditation, taking ashwaghanda and try to stress out about everything a little less, and if it won't help, I'll go see a therapist. I was stressing out about how expensive it is, so this time I won't see it as a cost. I'll see it as an investment + "self-negligence tax".

 

Monitoring progress: I'll post a monthly update on this thread starting from tomorrow (1st of May, 2018). It won't always be the first day of the month, but I'll try to make it first weekend of the month ;). If anyone reads it - please hold me accountable on that! 

 

Longer story here:

As for now, despite all my personal successes, I feel like my life's a mess.

 

I'm 26, I live in Poland, I work as a web developer (although my dream goal is to become a blockchain developer, preferably in a project that would make some aspect of our lives fair). Since my mom died three years ago, I have a feeling that I cannot recover mentally. Any minor obstacle can turn my mood upside down. I tried to see a specialist, but it has put a lot of financial stress on me, which I didn't feel comfortable with at that time, so I quit.

 

I think that some part of my personality is very prone to addictions. I was addicted to cigarettes since I was 16 (I fortunately quit when I was 21), I think I was very close to become an alcoholic when I was at college, in a toxic relationship (based on fights and alcohol) and at the same time finding out that my mom has cancer. Theese were the hardest times for me.

 

Right now it's better, I've made a little detox from Facebook, because it's been killing my productivity and ability to focus and learn, but I'm very prone to binge on YouTube for example, so there's always something to distract me when I need to get the job done. That leads me to frustration, because I have plenty of goals I would like to accomplish, but some part of me is holding me back and I don't know how to figure my life out.

 

I know for certain that one part of it must be exercise (that's why I'm here), but when it comes to other aspects, I cannot think of any logical plan and estimate how long would it take to make something out of it.

 

I have a few friends, but I feel really awkward and uncomfortable around new people. That's really bothering me, because I was really open and popular kid in high school. I feel like college time has destroyed my confidence and ability to meet new people, be comfortable and enjoy being around them. Also, I noticed a tendency that my older friends tend to just float away from my life. Contacts are just disappearing and I have no idea why (I think there's something wrong with me but I really cannot tell what it is).

 

So here are the things that I would like to improve in, let's say, next year:

1. Fitness

This one is going well for now. I'm pretty consistent when it comes to exercise. My diet isn't on point, but it's not tragic either. I'm at level  5 on nerd fitness nutrition scale, but I want to step up and remove grains and legumes from my diet. I'll try to level up on that scale every month or two (depends on how I'll feel on higher levels with less carbs). I train three days a week, basically all bodyweight exercises. I'd like to progress to more advanced calisthenics, but my main goal is to build muscle mass. I'm considering weighted calisthenics in the future, when pistol squats, one arm pushups/pullups od handstand pushups won't be demanding enough (but that's a long road before it happens I think).

 

2. Professional development:

I need to start coding in my spare time regularly. Without it I won't be able to work towards my blockchain career. It's hard, because at the sime time I need to stay on track on my work-related skills, but I hope I can manage it on the go.

The plan: I'll start with 30 minutes a day every non-workout day except weekends. I'll let myself rest in the weekends (that's what I struggle with as well - I'm not able to rest on saturday and sunday, I always worry about something). When I'll get comfortable with that, I'll try to go 30 minutes every weekday. That'll give me 2,5 hours of practice outside of work per week, so that's 10 hours per month. Not so impressive, but 10 hours/month is better than 0. Ultimately I would like to have one hour of coding every monday thru friday, but I need to build some foundations first. I have to decide what I will be working on, because deciding on the fly doesn't seem to work to be honest. So...I think I'll start with finishing a Java tutorial I started and then proceed to Princeton University blockchain course which requires java knowledge to complete its programming assignments.

Side note: I really admire engineers who are able to really focus and work hard on complicated subjects without distraction. It's a skill I would love to acquire, so I think that regular coding sessions are a way that I could cultivate this type of mental workouts.

 

3. Productivity/concentration: 

There are some things that I would like to STOP doing in order to increase my ability to focus on things that are actually important to me. My main distractors are:

 - YouTube (there are a lot of awesome materials there, but I think that most of the time I'm watching meaningless videos or use the good stuff as an excuse to procrastinate, so I need to find a way to moderate that) - I will limit youtube just to weekends (I don't need anything from it on weekdays, so I'll have more time for other things that are important to me). I already feel that it will be tough, because my morning habit is to drink coffee and watch stuff on youtube. I know I'm gonna miss it  This also ioncludes disabling the YouTube app on my phone

- A particular polish side with funny pictures and memes (no need to visit that crap at all...) - I'll just block it everywhere I can

- Facebook and LinkedIn (I already limited that, but I want to restrict myself from visiting those sites even more) - I think that's the same as youtube. I don't really need it, but I enjoy a occasional check. So - I'll allow myself to login to theese only on weekends, it's gonna be blocked on weekdays.

- I'm sorry to say this, but I constantly find myself scrolling through this forum's content at work  So I think I'll have to block nerd fitness from 9 to 5 (I still need access to log my progress and interact with all you awesome people :D).

Obviously, I'm not able to block any site that can serve as a way to procrastinate at work. I realized that more often than not it's kinda subconscious. I'll have to rely on my willpower - I don't like that because I know myself well enough to know that I will fail fast, and I will fail often. But...well..I don't really know any other strategy, so if anyone here have any suggestions I am open to try it out! 

 

4. Time management:

I used to use Todoist app to manage my daily todo lists. I still use it to this day, but not so regularly as I used to. I would like to get back to planning my days and stick to the plan, but it seemed a bit overwhelming last time I tried it. I think I need to come up with a better plan this time, so for now I'll look for some materials on time management and how to organize my stuff to go forward, and not just be busy.

 

5. Financial health

When it comes to money, I fell like I have a strong need to feel secure, so I save the majority of my salary. Warning, moment of honesty ahead: Polish government isn't the friendliest country when it comes to supporting it's people. The retirement system is collapsing, so, personally, I believe that my generation has to take care of itself, because otherwise there won't be any retirement money for us. That's why I save so much money every month - I think about my future and, honestly, I'm afraid. Second thing is - I invest in cryptocurrency and blockchain projects. Theese are risky investments, but I've managed to make some good money out of it anyway. As you may or may not know, Poland isn't a crypto friendly place. We have very restrictive tax policy when it comes to cryptocurrencies (just look up "Polish crypto tax" on youtube), and our exchanges are forced to emigrate elsewhere by forbiding access to bank accounts, rejecting transactions by banks and so on. It makes me sad and dissapointed, because I'm really passionate about the subject, and my own country is holding me back. People like me are portrayed as scammers or just stupid people investing in ponzi scheme. We have a heavy anti-crypto propaganda going on in the news, and even our central bank secretly payed a few youtubers for special campaign to scare people away from cryptocurrencies. I really can't think about any logical reasons behind theese actions. Polish developers are really talented force that could speed up the economy if taxes were humane. It's really hard to predict what the government mood will be about crypto investors. This year, our Ministry of Finances woke up three weeks before tax reports due date and said something like "Well, from now on, every crypto-crypto transaction is taxed 18% PLUS you have to pay additional 1% from EVERY transaction that involves cryptocurrency in it". That's just absurd, and personally, I feel terrified to do anything with my money and crypto assets, because I have no idea how my governent is going to react. But that's a subject for a whole post and I don't want to bother you with the details any longer. It's just...I feel really helpless here. Helpless, sad and dissapointed. I have nothing against paying fair taxes, but that's not the case here. I was considering moving away from here, but I guess I'm scared, I don't know. One thing is that my girlfriend's mother is suffering from leukemia, so she's not very keen on moving out to another country. I fell a little trapped in Poland, because I don't feel like I would find myself in a new place and I don't think that I'm good enough yet to work as a developer somewhere else and make a decent amount of money.

 

The plan: Well...i don't really know how can I plan this. I'm pretty much set with my savings, I'm starting new job soon with better pay, I tracked my expenses regularly, but it became too much work and I have some strong (good) spending habits, so I don't think it's necessary for me anymore. I do a monthly check of all my assets and keep it in a spreadsheet and I think that's sufficient for now. Maybe I'll think more about emigration to some other place. I'd love to see Thailand, but it would be really hard to set things up to live there longer.

 

6. Mental health

I think this one is a mix of all the points above. In other words, a mess in those areas makes a mess in my mental health and my mood. Ofcourse I think there are other factors that come into play, like trauma after my mom's death, unresolved things from the past, my increasingly introverted and neurotic personality. One part of me wants to be open and friendly towards other people, but other just don't want to interact with anyone sometimes. Every time I go to some blockchain or dev meetup I feel like I'm somewhat inferior to other people that are there. I'm unable to start a conversation with a stranger. I feel that I'm ignored when I try to ask a question, which only deepens my loneliness. That's really crippling, because this way I will never be able to build, let's say, a prosperous business or find a group of people with the same interests as me to lift each other up in our skills, maybe collaborate on some awesome project. I fell disconnected from other people. It's really depressing and I find myself crying myself to sleep sometimes when I realize in what a mental hole I'm in. It's pathetic. The worst thing is that I really cannot point to a reason why I feel mistreated by some people. What's wrong with me that I seem to push people away. I noticed that every time I go to my favorite pub (well, I used to work there, so I know everyone that works there also) and I get a little drunk, I start to say what I REALLY think, or I just say some stupid things just to goof around, the next morning I feel guilty about it. I don't know if that's more like "That wasn't really me" or "That WAS the real me, my true personality which I hide everyday to look more professional/calm/mature etc.". I don't really know myself.

 

The plan: Well...I said that I think that it's mostly a mix of previous points, so I'll see if fixing those will improve my situation in this aspect. Also, I will get back to daily meditation. I think it helped me when I did it consistently. I'll start from 10 minutes every weekday. I have to think about the time that I'll do it. I'm considering waking up early to do my meditation session and coding practice as the first things in the morning. I did that for almost a year and it worked kinda well, but I've put too much on my shoulders and finally my whole schedule has collapsed. This time I would like to plan everything smarter, with small steps, and build up from strong foundations. I'll give myself three months, and if nothing changes, I'll try to see a therapist again. Maybe that will help me to sort myself out.

 

I'm open to modify those goals as I progress, but I'll post any update on my monthly progress updates.

[solski]

Here's my first plan's progress report:

1. Fitness/health

     - Bodyweight workout three times a week - I did good for the first two weeks of May, but last two weeks were totally off. I usually did a couple of pushups and pullups before going to work, but I didn't manage to do a full workout. Life got in the way. I know that souldn't be an excuse, but that's what happened. I feel really demotivated by that fact, but I need to break through it and get back to my workout routine.

The plan: Keep working out three times a week. Mondays, wednesdays and fridays would be ideal. Additionally - I tried to set and appointment with a dietician to measure my body fat percentage, muscle mass, hydrations levels etc., but she's always had something else in the way and kept delaying the meeting. I kept agreeing because her office is the nearest (I'm a lazy bastard :P), but that's too much - I want to keep track of my progress, so one of my goals for June is to visit a dietician.

 

     - Leveling up on nerd fitness dietary guide every month or two (sweet spot is being on level 7 consistently) - The biggest surprise for me is how hard it is for me to give up bread  My diet wasn't perfect also, I had pizza, KFC, and other types of junk food. It's definetely too much.

The plan:  I will allow myself to eat junk food once a month. I'll also try to give up bread this month for good. In order to do that, I have to find an alternative to my favorite breakfast - srambled eggs with bread.

 

     - I'd like to create a habit of taking vitamin C + D and ashwaghanda regularly. I'll set up and alarm on my phone to remind myself about it at 9 P.M. every day. - that's going really good actually. I think I'm starting to form a habbit - I feel uncomfortable without taking those vitamins before going to sleep.

 

2. Professional development:

     - Coding/learning for one hour every weekday - that went good for the first two weeks, but after I switches jobs I realized that there's so much new stuff to learn, that I will have to give up Java and blockchain tutorial in favor of my professional skillset. I don't really know what to think about that.

The plan: I think that the solution for now is to learn the things that I need in my day-to-day work for at least 30 minutes every workday and learn about blockchain technologies on the weekends. But then again - I planned for not having any responsibilities for the weekends - that's why I failed the last time - I didn't have the time to relax and always had the feeling that I need to do something. I think I'll put the blockchain aside for now, concentrate on my work project to become fluent in it, and then try to incorporate blockchain into my daily routine.

 

3. Productivity/concentration:

     - Blocking sites that are draining my time every day and are not helpful to me:

         - YouTube - I slipped on this, but the good part is that I don't use youtube during my work hours at all.

         - Sites with memes - I'm not visiting theese at all

         - Facebook & LinkedIn (but it comes to all social media really) - That's the same as YouTube (although I don't use facebook that often, I don't feel the need to. But I have to admit that I didn't really follow the set schedule and been disabling the blocking app. I need to be more strict about it.

         - Nerd fitness - I don't browse the forums on my work hours.

 The plan: Being more strict about my allowed times to browse those sites.

 

4. Time management:

     I'm using Todois to organize my everyday tasks. It feels good to have it under control again, but sometimes all of the different things tend to add up and overwhelm me. 

The plan: My idea is to set an upper limit of tasks that I'll be able to do every day. Let's start from 3 for this month and build up from there. That way I'll learn to prioritize, which is non existent at the moment (I tend to cram all the things that I can think of to today's todo list and then put most of them to someday in the future. That's a bad habit, and I think that limiting my daily amount of tasks is actually a good way to get rid of it.

 

5. Finances:

    - Keeping a spreadsheet with monthly calculations of all my bank account and assets (I'll do my best to keep the trend "bullish" :)). - well...the thing is, that I have the dual-boot  PC (I have Linux as well as Windows 10 operating systems on the same machine), and latest Windows update made my linux partition disappear, which means that my spreadsheets are gone. There's still some hope, because I found a thread on the forum, where one guy had the same problem and managed to recover the data. I'll try his solution, but if it won't work, I'll have to format the whole machine and install only linux. Either way, there's a valuable lesson learned - always backup important data  I'm considering going back to YNAB (You Need A Budget) - it's a personal budgeting app. It's pretty convenient and has all the features I need, but I don't feel comfortable storing my financial data in the cloud. 

    - I have a plan to sell the things I'm not using - for example an airsoft gun and all the clothes for it that I bought and literally used once.

 

6. Mental health:

     - I'll work on creating a habit of meditation. 10 minutes every morning. I give myself two moths to do it, after that I'll try to extend this to 15 minutes and see how I feel about that. Last time I was stressing out that I don't have time in the morning to do 20 minutes of meditation even if I woke up earlier than usual. I tried to progress too fast. - I haven't been meditating even once in May. I feel a strong resistance to do it, I don't know why. I feel anxious even thinking about meditating. That may be the sign that I'll have to put it off for now, or that that's the best thing that I can do for myself. I think I have to modify my morning routine in order to be able to sit for couple of minutes and do nothing. I still spend a lot of time on YouTube in the morning and drinking coffee. That's my thing - I know it's unproductive and I'm wasting time doing that, but I feel really bad and irritated (damn, is that and addiction?). The first thing that I can do and that won't be too hard on me is to stop watching YouTube in the morning. I'll just sit and drink the coffee. I'll do that for the whole month and then proceed to give up my morning coffee (I can always have one in the office).

 

     - I'll wait for three month doing meditation, taking ashwaghanda and try to stress out about everything a little less, and if it won't help, I'll go see a therapist. I was stressing out about how expensive it is, so this time I won't see it as a cost. I'll see it as an investment + "self-negligence tax". - For now I'm still considering visiting therapist, because there can be much more to my mood than just the things I mentioned above.

 

Monitoring progress: I think I'll create another thread on this forum for those monthly updates. It'll be more convenient to see the big picture undisrupted by the training logs. 

[solski]

Well, this month wasn't perfect, but I feel like I'm making some small progress in my life overall:

1. Fitness/health

     - Bodyweight workout three times a week - Most of the time I've managed to do 2-3 full workouts. That's not ideal, but I developed a habit to do 8-15 wide pullups + 20-40 push ups  in two sets every morning before going to work, so that's always something ;) It gets me pumped up for the day, and that's always a good thing :) 

 

    - I finally managed to visit a dietician! :D You can check my stats in my signature below (I'll update it every month after a visit).

 

    - In other news - I started to experiment with intermittent fasting - I eat my first meal at 11:30 AM and I don't eat or drink anything besides water, tea and black coffee after 7:30 PM. I was afraid that I won't be able to concentrate at work because of the hunger, but it turned out to be a lot easier than i thought. Right now I eat 3 meals, but ultimately I want to cut it down to one big meal and then fast for 24 hours. It sounds crazy, but I did some digging into the topic of fasting, and I think that for now it would be quite beneficial for me (it's beneficial anyway, but my short-term goal is to cut down to 12% body fat and intermittent fasting is a pretty efficient tool to make that happen). Intermittent fasting + new breakfast (egg muffins - pure gold) has helped me to eat a lot less bread

 

     - Leveling up on nerd fitness dietary guide every month or two (sweet spot is being on level 7 consistently) - For now, my main meal is 100g of rice/barley with boiled broccoli and cauliflower + fried chicken breasts. For the next month (July), I'll experiment with replacing rice with a big salad and see if it'll be sufficient for my intermittent fasting schedule. I'll also try to cut down my meals to two a day (I'll propably eat more egg muffins in the morning and throw in some healthy fats like avocado and nuts into my salad. I'm also thinking about replacing chicken breasts with chicken thighs, because it's more fatty type of chicken meat).

 

    - We (me and my girlfriend) set a "junk food schedule". Last month I wrote about eating one portion of junk food (be it pizza, kebab, KFC or any other type of meal/snack you can consider junk food). Unfortunately it seems too hard for us at the moment, so we decided to allow ourselves to eat junk food twice a month for now, and we'll progress from there.

  

   - I'd like to create a habit of taking vitamin C + D and ashwaghanda regularly. I'll set up and alarm on my phone to remind myself about it at 9 P.M. every day. - This one did cause me some trouble this month. I have to get back to supplement those regularly.

 

2. Professional development:

     - Coding/learning for one hour every weekday - I'm finally starting to get in touch with reality in my new workplace, and it seems that it'll be a lot less stresfull environment to work in. Recently I started to gain interest in machine learning and artificial intelligence, so in my spare time I try to grasp the basics of the topic and learn new programming language to be able to write some real world projects. Unfortunately it's not scheduled, so my main goal for July is to get back on track with scheduled coding sessions and learn more about machine learning and python.

 

3. Productivity/concentration:

     - I'm more liberal about my consumption of sites like youtube and facebook (actually, I've discovered two awesome youtube channels: Kurzgesagt and What I've Learned. I especially recommend the second one, as it talks touches the topic of nutrition and it effects on human brain very often. They're both awesome and very informative.

 

Despite my more tolerant approach to internet use, I have and idea of restricting my overal internet use (after work hours) and playing video games to minimum, but that's something that I need to deconstruct to smaller steps. There's actually some evidence that those things can limit you brain capacity to learn, focus and creative thinking. I feel that I might be hooked and would love to be able to find some time to read a book instead of surfing through youtube videos. So, in a nutshell: I'd like to treat my computer as a tool to learn and work, and stop using it as an entertainment tool. I'll leave it for now, and try to break in to some kind of plan nex month.

 

4. Time management:

     I'm still using todoist to manage my daily tasks. This month I'll expand my limit to four tasks per day and see what happens ;) I'd also like to clear out my weekends from any obligations, so I can just relax and not think about things I need to do. 

 

5. Finances:

    - I've successfully recovered my linux partition, so my spreadsheet data is saved! :D I did get back to YNAB, so I think I'll have to decide if I want to rely solely on it or if I want to keep a monthly finance log alongside in spreadsheet. 

 

    - Today I've made pictures of my airsoft stuff to sell, tomorrow I'll create an offer and try to sell it. I also got rid of clothes that I don't wear. It feels kinda good, I think I need to look around, find stuff I don't need/use and get rid of it.

 

    - I'm also thinking about closing majority of my savings accouts. As of today, situation looks like this: I have about 7 different bank accounts for different saving goals (for example, one for holidays, one for irregular expenses - car repairs, irregular bills etc., one for fitness equipment and so on). With YNAB, I don't need those as long as I stick to my budget, because the job of a dollar (in my case - złoty) is not dependend of it's location. In other word - it doesn't matter if I keep my holiday money on my regular account that I use every day as long as I stick to the budget. But then again - this solution can make me more dependend on using YNAB, wchich is cool - it comes with cool features and creates a history of my spending and earning patterns, but I don't like to be dependend on third party software to be able to manage my finances. That's another decision to make :)

 

6. Mental health:

     - I gave up on meditation. My morning routine is comfortable for me and I feel really bad whenever I try to force myself to change it. I started seeing a therapist instead. It's going good so far, it's feels really good to be able to talk about your problems out loud and be able to analyse it with a proffessional. I think I won't regret this decission ;)

[solski]

I felt like this month's been almost perfect

1. Fitness/health

     - Bodyweight workout three times a week - I still continue the habit of doing some pushups and pullups in the morning, although I think I'll have to give it up, because I'm planning on bulking soon. When it comes to consistent workouts - that sucked this month. I usually did two workouts a week. I've been experimenting on shifting my workout days, but I guess it didn't work, so I'll have to stick to the old pattern (it didn't work because I tried to fool myself into thinking that I would want to do a full workout on saturdays when I should rest after a whole week of working, learning, training, attending psychotherapy and just living everyday life. I haven't got any spare time on two weekends in a row already and I feel terrible. This weekend's gonna be third

 

    - I've updated my stats in signature - second visit in dietician's office was pretty succesfull - I've lost 3.5kg (almost 8 lbs), in wchich 0.5kg (1.1 lbs) was unofrtunately muscle, but I guess that's something you have to roll with when you're losing weight. Everything is going in the right direction so far.

 

    - My intermittent fasting schedule is going pretty ok, except for this week, when nothing is going ok basically

 

     - Leveling up on nerd fitness dietary guide every month or two (sweet spot is being on level 7 consistently) - For the last 4 weeks I've been going hard on ketogenic diet, but I've come to a point where I cannot stare at the keto foods anymore, so I'll introduce more carbs into my diet again, but I'll stick to intermittent fasting anyway for that keto advantages anyway

  

   - I'd like to create a habit of taking vitamin C + D and ashwaghanda regularly. I'll set up and alarm on my phone to remind myself about it at 9 P.M. every day. - I've totally neglected this one

 

2. Professional development:

     - Coding/learning for one hour every weekday - I've come up with a set routine which manages to schedule time for 45 minutes to 1.5 hour of coding practice and a full workout the same day. That's a big leg up for me, because it was very hard for me to find time for those two activities in one day. That gives me more peace of mind, because I know that I don't have to sacrifice my workouts for my coding session and vice versa. All I need to manage is the time that I go to sleep and when I wake up (I sleep for about 7 hours everyday, maybe I should try to sleep that one hour extra...). It basically works, but this week's a disaster. I'll write more about it later in this post.

 

3. Productivity/concentration:

     - I wrote about it pretty much in the point above.

 

I've stopped treating my computer as an entertainment device. It's a tool to work and learn instead. I'll still play some video games occasionally on the weekends, but not as often and not as long as I used to.

 

4. Time management:

     I'm still using todoist to manage my daily tasks. Restricting amount of tasks per day didn't work, but I feel like I can do a lot more during the day when I wake up and accomplish the most important tasks for me the first thing in the morning. It gives me the sense of accomplishment everyday, and later I'm more driven to do the smaller tasks after work and not litter my mind with worries about my personal priorities when I'm at work. Well, I still have to work out after work 2-3 times a week, but I don't have any clever idea how to do 1.5 hours of coding and then a full workout from 5 AM to 8 AM and still manage to get myself ready to work without an unpleasant sence of hurry.

 

5. Finances:

    - I'm budgeting with YNAB, but I've come to conclusion, that I might be saving too much. I don't have any buffer to cover some unpredicted expenses and barely any money for entertainment (be it cinema, eating out with my girlfriend etc.). I've lowered the amount of money that I save every month to have more elasticity. And that feels good

 

6. Mental health:

     - I don't know why, but for the last week I've been feeling very crappy and unmotivated. The worst thing is that I can only guess why I feel like this. I've been on my friends birthday where I drank a little too much. I got back home on the next morning and slept untill 3PM, which for me is basically a day wasted. That's not relaxing for me. Add the amount of alcohol I drank and the tired organism and you get a temporary depression - I didn't go to work on monday, I just wasn't capable to function among other people. This state of sadness and unease is still following me. Another thing is that I got bit by a tick and I'm afraid of getting the Lyme disease. I already bought some blood test which I'm going to do soon, but none of them are 100% accurate unfortunately  The mood swings I experience, lack of energy and motivation to do anything can be symptoms of this.