Tobbe and the Journey

[Tobbe]

 

I know this is a fitness forum. And most challenges on here are about exercise and nutrition. But I don't feel I have anything too challenging in those areas to tackle right now. It's all going pretty good. So I didn't create a challenge thread for this challenge. But I've been missing the journaling aspect of having my own challenge thread. So here I am. Creating a challenge thread when it's only two weeks to go on this challenge. But hey -- it seems I always start off strong on these challenges, but struggle to keep it up for the full five weeks. Maybe this can be the a challenge that I actually stick it to the end!

 

So I said I didn't struggle much with exercise at the moment. And largely that's thanks to the newish NF Journey App. I've been beta testing it since the end of June and I'm liking it more and more. I'm doing the bodyweight exercise routines in the app, and it's just so convenient! Also doing the community chin-up challenge, and that's also 100% integrated in the app. So I just put on some music, and then I do the chin-up exercises for the day, followed by the bodyweight exercises. I usually finish it off with the DailyDare challenge of the day, and boom! 60 minutes of exercise done. Easy, fun, convenient, consistent. For me, that just works. 

 

And nutrition? Well, right now it just seems to work great to just eat whatever I crave whenever I crave it. I'm not too hungry, not too full, I get a great variety of food that I like. A simple thing like not having to think about food all day long every day is pretty fantastic.

 

So, what do I struggle with? I struggle with getting enough sleep. I tried addressing that last challenge. But that was a major bust. And I'm not ready for another go at that right now. Another thing I'm struggling with though is getting enough done professionally. Both with my actual proper job, and with my side hustle. So that's what I'll focus on for the rest of this challenge. And what ties it all together with the title/title image for this thread is that I got a notification on my phone a few days ago about a new Adventure in the NF Journey app. It's called "Five Days of Focus". I hope that can help me focus more at work, which should lead to me getting more stuff done. I'll start the adventure tomorrow, Monday, and let you all know how it goes.

 

To keep the activity going in this thread I'll also update you all about the other adventures I've got going in the app: the bodyweight workout and the chin-ups. When the chin-up challenge started the first thing I got to do was a benchmark test. The results from the test was used to pick the right level of exercises for me. So when this challenge started I could do three chin-ups. It will be super interesting to see how many I can do by the end of the chin-up challenge. (I can't remember right now when it's supposed to end, but I think it's after this 5-week challenge. I'll have to look it up!)

[Tobbe]

Goals... I hear a challenge should have them 😛

 

1. Demo what I'm doing at work.

We're currently rebuilding our onboarding/signup process. We're making it multilingual, we're adding email verification, two-factor authentication (email and totp apps), collecting more user information, etc. I want to get the parts I'm working on to a state where I feel comfortable showing them off to the rest of the company.

 

2. Have a side hustle start-up meeting.

So far I've only made $500 from my side hustle, but there is potential to make much much more than that. And it's a fun gig. So I want to get that ball rolling again after this summer break that I've had. What I'm doing is I'm building a web shop for a local business. My goal is to have a meeting with the business owner and come to an agreement on how I'm going to be compensated for my work. 

 

Supporting goals:

 

Complete the Five Days of Focus adventure

As I said in my challenge introduction post the "Five Days of Focus" adventure was recently added to the NF Journey app. I don't know anything about it, other than the short description in the app Start developing mental fortitude over the next 5 days, and help protect your brain from a mind invasion! My hope is that I will get some tools to use to help me focus on my work.

 

Do at least one Focus@Will session per day

My problem focusing isn't news to me. And I've tried "fixing" it before. One thing I did a while back was I subscribed to the Focus@Will service/app. It's a music-playing app that plays music that's supposed to get you in "the zone". A mental state where you're super focused and highly productive. You answer a bunch of questions and then they tell you what kind of music they think would work for you to keep you focused. I did their trial and I liked it. So I subscribed for a year. You set a timer in the app and then the music starts. When the time is up the music stops and you're supposed to take a short break, and then you're ready for another session. So far I've only tried one session in a day. In addition to at least one f@w session every day I'm also going to try doing two sessions back-to-back one day.

 

Spend less time cooking/preparing food

I have something prepared for this, but it's worthy of a full post on its own. More details to come!

 

Write a pagination Redwood tutorial

When deciding on what tech-stack to use for the web shop I'm building I stumbled upon this new open source project called Redwood. Reading about it it sounded perfect for my needs so I went through their getting-started tutorial, and it was great! And, being a very new project, understandably there were some issues. I found one that was easy to fix and provided my code changes to the team behind the Redwood project. They were super welcoming and very nice to work with, so I provided more and more fixes for them. To the point where I spend most of my free time this summer vacation working on the Redwood project itself, instead of using Redwood for building the web shop... My contributions have been recognized, and I'm on the first row of their list of contributors, which is something I'm proud of  Peter, David, Tom and Rob are all core team members and they get payed to work on Redwood. Dom is the official docs guy, and Robert is in charge of testing. And then it's me.

I don't want to stop contributing, but I want to shift my focus to contributing stuff that'll more directly help me with building my web shop. One thing that I found lacking when I started using Redwood was that I couldn't figure out how to do pagination, i.e. split a long list of items over several pages. It's something I'll have to do all the time for all the products in the web shop. So writing a tutorial on how to do that will both help the Redwood project, and help my web shop project along. Win/win!

[Renate]

Love your approach Following.

 

It was fun reading about how you got absorbed with the project 💜 And are now refocusing.

[Tobbe]

2 minutes ago, Aθena said:

Following.

 

Thanks for being here ❤️ 

[Terah]

Nice to see you're getting so much out of the new app! I tried it too, but it wasn't for me (I didn't like the workout, and the potentially interesting nutrition quests where not yet released).

Following  

[Tobbe]

2 hours ago, Terah said:

Nice to see you're getting so much out of the new app! I tried it too, but it wasn't for me (I didn't like the workout, and the potentially interesting nutrition quests where not yet released).

 

When I had been using the app for a month or so I was like "meh, I'm not going to be paying for this". I see a lot of people in the NF Prime Facebook group get all excited about dressing up their little avatar paper doll in the app with the new stuff they find in the treasure chests. But I'm not feeling any of that excitement at all. Most of the time I don't even bother opening the chests when I get them. I just don't really care that much. But now I feel like I would be all lost if I didn't have the app to guide me through my workouts. And I'm also enjoying completing the daily win each day. Today I put my daughter on my shoulders and we went for a walk just her and me to complete today's "go for a five minute walk" daily quest. It was wonderful  

 

The chin-up challenge is also great, but I wish there was more community engagement capabilities in the app. Also looking forward to co-op adventures. They haven't said anything like that is coming, but I'm still hoping for it  

[Tobbe]

This is what today's schedule looks like in the app

 

''

 

As you can see there is still one item I haven't checked off. It's a journaling prompt, and I figured I'll do that right now.

 

What can I do today to keep the drama away?

One important thing to do every day is to make sure everyone is well fed. Hungry family members always means screaming and yelling. So today I planned home made pizza for dinner. And it was a great success! Another thing that helps with keeping the drama away is making sure the kids don't get bored. If they get bored they start fighting just to have something to do. Today they had to help with recycling and shopping. They also got to go to the library to get new books to read. All in all I'd say today has been a fairly drama-free day.

 

Main goal update (be more focused - get more stuff done):

Yesterday I got to bed at 2 am. Then I got up at 6 to get the kids ready for school. 4 hours of sleep is not enough. And it's really difficult to stay focused when you're super tired. So first day didn't go so great  I did get one focus@will session in though. And I think I got more done during that half an hour than I did in total over the rest of the day... Tomorrow is demo-day at work and no, I did not get enough done today to have enough to demo. But I did manage to send a few screenshots to the company chat, showing that I'm making progress. That'll have to do for now. And instead I'll focus on a longer and better demo on Tuesday next week instead. As for my side project with the web shop I just sent off an email to the business owner asking for a meeting on Thursday this week. I promised I'd have some new things to show. Which I don't yet. So now I have a deadline to meet, which is good. Deadlines always make me work more focused.

[Tobbe]

22 hours ago, Tobbe said:

So when this challenge started I could do three chin-ups. It will be super interesting to see how many I can do by the end of the chin-up challenge. (I can't remember right now when it's supposed to end, but I think it's after this 5-week challenge. I'll have to look it up!)

 

The chin-up challenge is 7 weeks in total. Today was the first exercise for week 5. So I was correct. It will end the week after this 5 week challenge is over.

[Tobbe]

Today's journaling prompt is "Where do I need help in my life? Who can I ask?" I read that prompt first thing in the morning, at 6 am. It's now 11:40 pm and I still haven't come up with a good answer... I have some practical things I need help with, like someone to look after the kids a couple of weekends from now when I want to go motorcycling with my brother. Or thing one thing at work I need help with. And I know who to ask for help with those things. But I feel the question is really about grander life things. And all I'm drawing is blanks. Whenever I have more difficult things to think about, I usually come here and ask all of you for help. That's been working pretty well.

 

Today is rest day from the exercises in the Journey app. But Tuesdays are usually indoor bouldering days, so I get some exercise in anyway. Today, however, the weather was super nice and the wind was perfect, so I went kitesurfing instead. And now I have my kite airing out/drying all over our kitchen table 😛 

 

 

Usually whenever I'm going anywhere I get all my stuff ready the very last minute, running around gathering everything all stressed out. Today, for some reason, I actually decided to load up the car and then get back in and get some more work done before leaving at 3 pm. And good thing I did! When I got out to the car I remembered I hadn't finished my car repair that I started two days ago. So I had to get in and switch over to my garage clothes and finish up the car before I could leave. Took almost an hour, and when I was done it was already past the time I had originally planed to leave. I'm super grateful I have a job where I can just leave whenever the weather is good. But it also means I now have to make up for that lost time some day...

 

Didn't tune in to any focus@will music today, but only because I needed to listen to a youtube tutorial. Wasn't actually very distracted today, so I'm still counting today as a win on that regard.

 

For my side project the business owner got back to me and we scheduled the meeting for 7:30 am on Thursday. That means I pretty much only have tomorrow to get something new ready to show off. 😰

 

[fitnessgurl]

2 hours ago, Tobbe said:

For my side project the business owner got back to me and we scheduled the meeting for 7:30 am on Thursday. That means I pretty much only have tomorrow to get something new ready to show off.

I believe in you.

[Tobbe]

6 hours ago, fitnessgurl said:

I believe in you.

 

Hi @fitnessgurl, nice of you to stop by 👋 I believe I can get something done too 🙂

[Tobbe]

For my journal entry today they want me to answer the question "How can I keep things simple today?". The way I did that was to buy frozen gyoza to just fry up in a pan for dinner, to keep it simple and save time. 

 

Today was workout day, so I did my chin-up workout, my regular bodyweight workout and the exercise for today's dailydare. I'm seeing some good progress with the chin-ups, which is encouraging  

 

As for my side project I only managed to implement paging   I wanted to do something fancier, but everything always takes longer I hope for... I even put on some f@w music. Set the timer for 30 minutes, and that half an hour passed super quickly. Went out to fetch something from the car for my wife, and then back in for another 30 minutes focus session. That one went by equally fast. So I had fun, and felt productive, which is nice. But wanted to get more done.

[juliebarkley]

5 hours ago, Tobbe said:

For my journal entry today they want me to answer the question "How can I keep things simple today?". The way I did that was to buy frozen gyoza to just fry up in a pan for dinner, to keep it simple and save time. 

Yum, dumplings! My stomach approves.

 

I did not know that NF had an app! Well, I'm not on the subscription, so there is probably a whole lot of stuff that I'm missing out on. I'm willing to be convinced though.

[Tobbe]

14 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

Yum, dumplings! My stomach approves.

 

It's funny, I've been trying to introduce more tofu in our diet here at home, but it's been a tough sell. So when I went to buy the gyoza and I found the "spicy tofu" filling I got one of those mainly for me, because I like spicy and I like tofu, but I also got a "pork, chicken, vegetables" filling to please the rest of the family. And what happens when we eat them? Everyone refuse to eat the meat dumplings and fight over the vegan dumplings because they're so good   So in my lunchbox I had only the pork/chicken dumplings. But they actually tasted better the day after, so, win!  

 

14 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

I did not know that NF had an app!

 

It's technically still in beta, but I think it's open for anyone (who's a Prime subscriber) to try it now. It's already good, and it's getting even better. But they do only have one developer working on it, so bugs do some times take a while to get fixed (also depending on the severity obviously). Ultimately I do think the workouts are fun enough for me to use the app right now. But there's nothing in there you can't find for free online, but then you're on your own finding it, modifying it to fit your needs, make a plan and stick to it.

[Tobbe]

Starting off with today's journaling prompt "What kind of person do I want to be?". I want to be the kind of person who leaves something in this world when I die that is/has been useful to other people or otherwise leaves a lasting and positive change to the world. That's a huge part of why I decided to get children. To keep my "legacy" alive after I've died. And I obviously hope I can bring them up to do good in the world and thus multiplying the positive changes. It's also a part of the reason why I decided to spend a lot of both time and money on extending our house. It's obviously something I'm doing for myself and my family right here and now and that we will get good use out of. But it's also something that will still be here long after I've died and hopefully be useful to future owners of this house. I find it much harder to get this feeling of "doing lasting good" with my job. It's much better now than with my previous job, and that was a contributing reason to why I quit my last job. At least now, what I build at work, will help people hopefully have a better future than what they would have had without our product. But it's nowhere near as evident in the good it's doing as if I was a doctor or something like that.

 

The big thing today for me was the meeting regarding the web shop I'm building. 

It was a great meeting, and I'm looking forward to continue working on it. I had hopes of being able to show off product search, and I kind of did, but not to the extend I had hoped. But I could show placing orders and paying for them, which I hadn't shown him earlier. So he was pleased with what he saw   We also talked about my compensation for my work. Normally I'd ask to be payed $100/hour, but I know that's not realistic for him to pay seeing how many hours this is going to take to build. Especially since he won't get anything out of it until after I'm done building it. So instead we agreed I'd get a cut of all the sales through the web shop. So the faster I get this done, the faster I'll start earning money. And the better I build it, the more he will sell through it, and the more I will earn. He already has a web shop up and running where he sells his own items. With the web shop I'm building for him we're transferring all those items over to the new one, but we're also adding about 10k new items that he will be a reseller for. He's already reselling those items, but only if you come to his shop and ask for them over the counter. Through that physical sales channel he resells those items to the tune of about $100k. Getting them out on his web shop he sees that figure growing to at least $200k, possibly $900k, but more realistically around $500k. And that's what I'm getting my cut from. If we can launch this year he thinks it'll take about two years to to reach those numbers. I'm getting 5% of that. So if we go from $200k to $500k during the second year that's an average of $350 for the year. 5% of that is $17,500 which would be a nice bonus on top of my regular salary. Unfortunately that's all before the state has taken its part of that. So in reality, after taxes and stuff, what's left for me is only $7000   I've already spent a lot of time on this project, and seeing how much fun I've had with it, it almost feels like I could easily have done this without getting payed at all   Hopefully that feeling of enjoyment stays around.

 

Now I need to get some sleep. Preparing for that meeting took until the early hours of the morning, and I only got 3 hours of sleep, so I have a lot of catching up to do. Checking back in tomorrow!

[Tobbe]

"What's ONE step I can take today to help Future Me?"  Meal prep! I cooked (baked?) a batch of my favorite flatbread today so I can make wraps for breakfast, lunch or dinner the coming week. Had one for (second) dinner today with spinach, chicken, sauerkraut, tomatoes and tahini. It's one of my favorite combos 😋 I've also exercised today, which they say is good for future you. 

 

With that journaling done, I'm done with the entire adventure.

 

 

It wasn't quite what I had expected. It was ten deep breaths and 60 seconds of journaling each day for five days. That's it. but there are many more mindset adventures to take on. Maybe future ones will teach me more.

 

Finished this weeks workouts in the app too. The chin-up workout felt really good! Two more weeks to go. Looking forward to the benchmark test at the end of it all. My son was bored, so we did the workout together. Win win! After that we had dinner and then movie night. Watched Extraction (imdb link) together and had some popcorn. The movie was a little bit too violent for him (he's 10) but I thought it was good. He asked if he could sleep next to me tonight, and of course he can!

 

I had a slow start at work today. Too much random internet browsing... But then, later, I got a few good Focus@Will sessions in and made good progress on my task at hand. But then I got really tired and fell asleep sitting in front of the computer...

[Renate]

On 8/29/2020 at 1:24 AM, Tobbe said:

I had a slow start at work today. Too much random internet browsing... But then, later, I got a few good Focus@Will sessions in and made good progress on my task at hand. But then I got really tired and fell asleep sitting in front of the computer...

 

That is interesting!! Have had that happen quite a few times too.

 

Maybe when you finally quiet down all the "noise" your mind registers you need rest. 

[Tobbe]

2 hours ago, Aθena said:

 

That is interesting!! Have had that happen quite a few times too.

 

Maybe when you finally quiet down all the "noise" your mind registers you need rest. 

 

This time the reason is very obvious. I've been getting too many 3 and 4 hours nights lately... I can do that for a while, but then my body/mind says enough is enough and I get extremely tired. Tired in a way where no amount of will power can keep me awake. 

[Tobbe]

These have been a life saver on the hotter days this summer 🍌 🍦

 

Three very ripe bananas and three spoons of peanut butter

 

Blend it all together. I put it in a bowl and use an immersion blender. I'm sure a regular blender, or a food processor would work just as well.

 

Pour it in to ice cream molds

 

Put it in the freezer for a few hours. Enjoy!

[Tobbe]

I made kimchi a while ago. But it didn't turn out very good, so it's just been sitting in my fridge for way too long. But thanks to @Arkania I've now used almost half of it by making kimchi pancakes! So good! Never tried, or even heard of, kimchi pancakes before, but they're bomb 😋

 

 

 

The day before yesterday I went kite surfing. It's my new favorite activity 😎 🏄‍♂️

 

If you ever get the chance to try - just do it! It's going to seem like a lot of money, but it's worth it! Tonight I went bouldering indoors with some of my coworkers. That's also fun, and a good workout. But not nearly as nice of a feeling as being out on the ocean with the kite and the board.

 

 

I'm missing the journaling points from the adventure in the NF Journey App. I don't want this thread to just turn in to a highlight reel... 

[Tobbe]

Today I committed to doing a demo of what I'm working on at work on Tuesday. So now it's 1 am and I'm still working because there's a lot to do! Plus I'll only be working half day tomorrow. Checked the weather forecast and it looks like it's going to be perfect winds for kiting tomorrow 🌬️We have a WhatsApp group for kite surfing, and we decided to meet up at 2 pm. And then I'm leaving with my family for a weekend trip at 5 pm.

 

Thursdays are usually rest days for me. But I was too tired yesterday to do my workouts, so I did them today instead. The plan was to do them in the morning. But I slept in today, and didn't get the first workout, my chin-up workout, done until lunch. And then I got swamped with work, and my regular bodyweight workout didn't happen until 10 pm. Next workout session is scheduled tomorrow, but I think I'll have to skip that one. Too many other things planed tomorrow already. And kitesurfing is kind of a workout as well... Definitely counts as "active time" at least.

 

And, also, this!  

 

 

I decided to go for the $99 one year Prime subscription. They gave every previous customer 4 months extra. So it's actually 16 months instead of a year. It works out to be just a bit over $6 per month. I think the app and everything else is worth it. Mostly looking forward to all the community challenges and also excited about what new features they bring to the app  

 

 

[Tobbe]

Kiting was awesome, as always! When you start learning how to kite surf there is always one leg you find easier having at the front of the board. For me that's my left leg, which means that for me it's much easier to stand/balance on the board when going to the left. So when I first started practicing sitting in the water and getting up on the board I always practiced getting up, and going to the left. A while ago I learned how to get up and keep my balance going to the right as well. The next step after that is learning how to go in one direction and then switch and start riding in the other direction without falling over or loosing too much speed so you start sinking down in the water. And today, for the first time, I managed to do just that! I got up, started riding to the left. Turned the kite around and started riding to the right instead. That was an awesome feeling   I only managed to do it once though. But next time I'm sure I'll do it more times.  It's all about practice, practice, practice!

 

But I had to skip out from work in order to have time to go kiting before we left for a mini vacation this weekend. So naturally I'm not quite as far along as I would have wanted at work for my demo on Tuesday. Hopefully we don't get back all too late on Sunday so I can get some work done in the evening. But I also have a workout to complete. I have only done two out of three workouts so far this week. Should have done the last today, but I didn't...

[Tobbe]

Ohh, also wanted to share this email from Isabel Foxen Duke I got today

 

Quote

Letting Go of "Day One" Mentality

 

Unlike starting (or restarting) a diet—Intuitive Eating doesn’t have a “Day One.”

 

While diets are usually easiest to make perfect on "Day One" ...and become harder and harder to replicate as our willpower wears down, Intuitive Eating is the exact opposite—it’s most difficult and messy in the first few months while we’re fumbling around trying to understand our bodies’ signals and dismantle years (or decades) of diet-mentality. 

 

Just like everyone struggles to speak French on the first day of class, pretty much everyone struggles with Intuitive Eating in the beginning; because, unlike diets, which are about following some pre-determined plan—plans that are inevitably incompatible with the mysteries and unfolding of real life in the long-term, Intuitive Eating is about learning and practicing skills—physical, mental and emotional skills—which may take time and practice to develop, but can never be unlearned.

 

When we mispronounce a word while trying to speak a new language, we don't say to ourselves "ugh I screwed up! I might as well speak English for the rest of the day and try speaking French perfectly tomorrow!" Instead, we commit to a practice of habitual learning, understanding that the language of our bodies (and hearts) cannot be mastered on Day One...and will arguably always be a work in progress. 

 

 I like how she compares it to learning a new language. And how it's a practice of habitual learning. Feels very much in line with a lot of the messaging I've gotten from NF lately. One small step at a time. Build the habits. Don't give up just because you made one single mistake.

[Renate]

On 9/5/2020 at 1:44 AM, Tobbe said:

Ohh, also wanted to share this email from Isabel Foxen Duke I got today

 

Thanks for sharing! That's indeed a bomb comparison!

 

I have recently discovered I am not as good in reading my body's signals etc./speaking its language as I thought I was.  I thought I was just checking out the IE thread etc. out of interest/to get advice from people adhering to a philosophy I respect a lot "and already know how practice" but "just have to apply"... Yet Actually thinking about it the last month and discussing it with @Mad Hatter and @Scaly Freak , I discovered I have more to learn!

[Tobbe]

It was actually @Mad Hatter who first introduced me to Isabel. And I'm glad she did!

 

Listening to your body is *hard* sometimes. I, for example, think it's difficult to know what to think when I read all the supposed benefits of doing intermittent fasting, but then when I try it my entire body and brain screams for food. So I have my logical sciency part of my brain telling me it's good for me to fast (autophagy etc). But then I have my body and my IE part of my brain telling me to eat... Needless to say, I've been following the IE school of thought lately. And I know that day-to-day I'm feeling much much better doing so. What the better option is long-term is anyone's guess.