BD's in for Round Two

[bdwilson]

Hello Rebels!

 

My name is BD and I just finished my first 4-week challenge in June. My goals are kind of all over the map, so this seems like the best place to settle for challenge two

 

Carrying over my long-term goals:

• Increase muscle tone.
• Lose ~25 lbs and maintain it before my next birthday.
• Develop a meditation habit.
• Build up my savings, for peace of mind.

 

Quests for the July 1 - July 28 challenge:

• Do a 10-minutes trainer workout every day.
• Get at least 7.5 hours of sleep.
• Continue to meditate five minutes every morning, and try to up it to 10 or 15 minutes.
• Review current expenses and savings and see if there's an opportunity to move more into savings.

 

My workout time in the morning is pretty limited, more so lately (I'll touch on that in the next point), so to maintain it I want to establish a quick routine. I bought the 10MT workouts ages ago, did them for a while, but don't think I got through the recommended 30-day program. This time, my goal is to do that. With the warm-up and cool-downs I remember them being about 17 minutes, which fits in the space I have for them nicely.

 

Over the last two months, I shifted to getting up at 5 AM, which as a night owl was perhaps not the best plan. But I had things I wanted to do, that was a good time to do them, seemed like a great idea. Worked well while I was rigorously defending my bed time, not so well when I let that slip. Got to the point I was so tired and grumpy that I finally crashed, slept an extra four hours one morning, and decided I needed to rethink the whole thing. I've made some progress sorting that out over the last week or so, but at this point I need to make sleep the priority. Ideally I'll get 8 hours, but I'll be happy with around 7.5 a night. 

 

Schedule being what it is, five minutes of meditation in the morning might be what I can do, but I think I've got it worked out so I can get up to 10. Given the amount of wandering my mind has done in the five minutes, that might be tricky. Really, though, this one if maintaining the habit I spent last month establishing. I want to get to the place where I don't have to think about doing it, but just do.

 

After last month, I've got a good baseline budget. This month I'll be looking at expenses I can cut and see if I can tease out some more savings.

[Rookie]

Welcome to the dark side BD The Rebels are a great group of people! 

 

Those are some SMART goals you got there. 

 

Your meditation will get clearer and more focused (less focused?) the more you practice. So 5 minutes might not seem long enough now but with more practice you should get better at refocusing your mind. 

[bdwilson]

Thank you very much for the welcome 

 

I'm looking forward to getting that practice in!

[fleaball]

Welcome to the party! What are you using for meditation? I liked the Headspace app when I first started. ...and then I got lazy and haven't done anything in a while, but the Insight Timer app has a lot of good one-off guided meditations.

[bleubiirb]

3 hours ago, fleaball said:

I liked the Headspace app when I first started.

 

I did too, but his voice gets SUPER annoying for me after a while I'm afraid.
I use Insight Timer, it has loads of variety even in the free version, and you can set your own timing for meditations too.

[bdwilson]

22 hours ago, fleaball said:

Welcome to the party! What are you using for meditation? I liked the Headspace app when I first started. ...and then I got lazy and haven't done anything in a while, but the Insight Timer app has a lot of good one-off guided meditations.

 

19 hours ago, bleubiirb said:

 

I did too, but his voice gets SUPER annoying for me after a while I'm afraid.
I use Insight Timer, it has loads of variety even in the free version, and you can set your own timing for meditations too.

 

I'm using the free access for Simple Habit. It's got a long of variety for different topics, though you usually only get the first one or two of a longer program without the Pro account.

I think I've downloaded Insight Timer, because someone else recommended it. I'll have to actually open it and try it out!

 

 

So in my in-between week I've managed to keep up the meditation and get my sleep up to where I want it. Now that we're heading into the actual challenge, and since Camp NaNo is starting, I'm going to have to keep a strict eye on my bedtime *lol*

[bdwilson]

I forgot the first was a holiday. Almost threw off the whole thing by sleeping in, but decided to be stubborn and switch the morning workout to the afternoon.

 

Three days down now, which means I've gone through the main routines I'll be repeating over the month. I think I can do this, though I broke one of my resistance bands  And then, when the exercise switched the other other side I got to hear him say, "Don't do [the exact thing I did] because you're snap the band" so, uh, maybe that would have been better said on the first side? 

 

Ah well. I have another one, though I think it's a higher resistance. Also, I find them awkward to use for a couple of exercises, so I might switch in my little hand-weights instead, at least until I get used to it or get something better.

[fleaball]

On 7/3/2019 at 7:10 PM, bdwilson said:

And then, when the exercise switched the other other side I got to hear him say, "Don't do [the exact thing I did] because you're snap the band" so, uh, maybe that would have been better said on the first side? 

I've had this happen with a few yoga videos in the past. Hey guys, if there's important info to share let's not leave it til the end, mmkay?

[bdwilson]

15 hours ago, fleaball said:

I've had this happen with a few yoga videos in the past. Hey guys, if there's important info to share let's not leave it til the end, mmkay?

 

Exactly! That should be right up front, so it's not too late! I mean, I watched them beforehand, but clearly I missed that on the first go 

[Waanie]

On 7/5/2019 at 8:41 PM, bdwilson said:

 

Exactly! That should be right up front, so it's not too late! I mean, I watched them beforehand, but clearly I missed that on the first go 

Yes, this is so annoying. The only good thing is that when you repeat the exercise later, you now know it .

 

How did the first week turn out for you? I really like your goals .

[bdwilson]

7 hours ago, Waanie said:

How did the first week turn out for you? I really like your goals .

 

 Overall, pretty good.

 

Things that went well:

• I've been doing the exercise routines every morning. It helps that they're short, because then I can tell myself, "it's just 10 minutes, come on" rather than letting myself out of it if I don't wanna.
• Meditating every morning. Still just doing 5 minutes, but again, I've been doing that. I've signed up for a 21-day thing that starts next Monday, though, and in the past those are usually around 20 minutes. (Well, 10 minutes of talking and then 10 minutes of silent meditation.) I might have to schedule shift, but I'm hoping to get through the whole thing without falling behind this time.
• Identified savings. This one I'm actually pretty pleased with. I went through my last few weeks of expenses and discovered I've cut most of the frivolous stuff out already. But I decided I can do without buying my lunch once a week, and I put my Audible account on hold. I really only had the account to get a series of books I like, but I kept it active after getting all four. I expect to cancel it when the hold period runs out, but figured I'd see if there was anything I wanted enough to reactivate it in the next couple of months. Now I'm eyeing my Kindle Unlimited account and my Habitica subscriptions. I might see if I can pause the KU account, too, since I've borrowed a few books at the moment. If not, I might just bookmark them and leave it until they're higher on my to-read list.

Things that did not go well:

• Sleep. See, I made the unfortunate decision to take on this goal at the same time as I started playing TOR again, and, well, I'm just not good at shutting the game off at the appropriate hour  Anyway, after only managing three out of seven days last week, I'm not letting myself play it during the week, and might set FocusMe to shut it down on me during the weekends. We'll see. I might need to get warnings set-up properly first. 

So far this week sleep is still the issue, so I should make a note to look at FocusMe tonight. I think I have it set to start shutting things off at nine, but I should probably drag that a bit earlier.

[Waanie]

Nice! Do you exercise before or after breakfast? Either one gives me problems, which is why I never managed to make it into a habit... But yeah, doing the 10 minutes every day is awesome .

 

What is TOR?

[bdwilson]

6 hours ago, Waanie said:

Nice! Do you exercise before or after breakfast? Either one gives me problems, which is why I never managed to make it into a habit... But yeah, doing the 10 minutes every day is awesome .

 

What is TOR?

 

I exercise before breakfast at the moment, preferably as soon as I wake up. It's easier if I can to do it before I'm allowed to have my coffee  Last time I was consistent about it I exercised in the evenings, but I find it harder to motivate myself to use the time then. 

 

TOR is Star Wars: The Old Republic, which I tend to take years-long breaks from and then spontaneously start playing obsessively again. That and my alt-itis (so many characters) means even though I've been around since the start, my highest character is only just starting the first expansion. But I have fun with it when I do play.

[Waanie]

Fun is good . I agree that some timer might be useful if you have a tendency to entirely immerse yourself.

 

I have the same problem with evening workouts, maybe I should try doing yoga before breakfast every morning... I'll see if the lightheadedness goes away after a while.

[bdwilson]

5 hours ago, Waanie said:

I have the same problem with evening workouts, maybe I should try doing yoga before breakfast every morning... I'll see if the lightheadedness goes away after a while.

 

Eep, yeah, that would get in the way of the workout  I hope it goes away fast or you can find a way to get around it so it doesn't hit.

[bdwilson]

Right. I let myself get completely derailed this weekend

 

It started with my alarm not going off on Saturday. I had to meet friends for an early breakfast, which meant I had to skip the workout in the morning. I'd planned to do it in the afternoon, but didn't. Then I stayed up late and slept in on Sunday; no workout again. Then stayed up late, and slept in a little this morning to make up for it, so no morning workout again.

 

/headdesk

 

That's thrown my plan to do the entire program, since it's one workout today, so my focus there will have to shift to recovering when my schedule is thrown off. I'm going to see if I can fit a workout in tonight, but I suspect I'll be stopping this spiral tomorrow morning instead. Whee?

 

Edit: Schedule change for tomorrow means no morning workout then, either. Or Thursday. Hrm. I need to sort out alternatives.

[Waanie]

Can you do a set of something right now?

 

Don't worry about having missed a week of workouts, the important thing is to come up with alternatives. Ideally an afternoon (lunch?) or evening workout, but if you need to do sets throughout the day then that is fine too. You generally don't need to change for one set of push ups, unlike a full workout .

[bdwilson]

On 7/16/2019 at 1:48 AM, Waanie said:

Can you do a set of something right now?

 

I should have done that *lol*

 

I'll see if I can get some done today, but I did managed to squeak in a walk both yesterday and the day before, so I got in something! Tomorrow and Friday will also be off for scheduling reasons, and then I'll sort the rest out as it comes.

[Rookie]

I hate when schedule changes throw everything off. Good luck getting back on track!  You can do it.

[bdwilson]

Right. So, the past week has been wonderful at illuminating just how fragile my routine is. Something of a benefit in that, as I thought it was pretty sound, but turns out it's made of dominoes.

 

Anyway, my exercise plans have not recovered, so at this point I'm taking one active thing a day, even though that's not what I planned for the month. I might have to look at how high I'm prioritizing this for the next challenge, as it's clearly not my top priority, given what I've been intent on fitting in during my thrown off schedule. 

 

My sleep has also been thrown off by this, even more so than usual, so for the last week of the challenge I'm going to focus on getting that back on track and coming up with less fragile routine, or at least Schedules A, B, and C, so I still have a plan if real life intrudes.

 

Oddly, I'm keeping up with the meditation habit, though it was in the evening rather than the morning a few times. Given that's usually the first thing to go, this is something of a surprise. I'll take it!

[Waanie]

Good job on the meditation . It's hard to change many things at the same time, so it is actually nice that you manage to meditate and do something active now on most days. Even when we think we have small goals, they might still not represent our current state of life and ability. I like your idea to make schedules, have you managed to construct them yet? Are you planning from morning to evening, or from, say 6pm to 6pm?

[bdwilson]

2 hours ago, Waanie said:

I like your idea to make schedules, have you managed to construct them yet? Are you planning from morning to evening, or from, say 6pm to 6pm?

 

I haven't managed it yet. I'm still trying to figure out my approach. I want one schedule assuming I get things done in the morning, one where they have to be done at night, and then one if I have to shuffle them around my breaks at work, I think.

 

I'll probably have weekend and holiday variations, too, but mostly I want to be able to say, "Well, schedule A is out, guess that means it's schedule B today" so I don't have an excuse to let something fall 

[Waanie]

It's always good to have an option to drop something, especially if you have multiple goals. At least for me, if the choice is 3 things or nothing, then many days it will be nothing. If the choice is 3 things or 1 thing or nothing, then most of the time the 1 thing happens, and all 3 things will happen more often than in the "all or nothing" approach. Of course, this depends on the person, but I think this is the case for many people . Sometimes life just happens, and we have to show compassion to ourselves.

[bdwilson]

20 hours ago, Waanie said:

It's always good to have an option to drop something, especially if you have multiple goals. At least for me, if the choice is 3 things or nothing, then many days it will be nothing. If the choice is 3 things or 1 thing or nothing, then most of the time the 1 thing happens, and all 3 things will happen more often than in the "all or nothing" approach. Of course, this depends on the person, but I think this is the case for many people . Sometimes life just happens, and we have to show compassion to ourselves.

 

Yeah, I'm going to try that for the next challenge, even though I usually do better with "all or nothing." Right now, life and its related schedule adjustments is just making too many "nothing" days for that to be useful, unfortunately  

[bdwilson]

So, July 28th is coming to an end here. In the end, I pulled off the meditation and earlier in the month the financial goal, but not the exercise or the sleep.

 

Ah well. At least it gave me some ideas for next challenge