On using Lights

I have been keeping a Google Sheet (their spreadsheet program) that Sebastian Marshall started to help his followers and himself to develop and track habits. It is called Lights. My second full month of lights has been kept and I have added a few new habits to the list. I have also had a 70% or better keeping of the habit since my start. Most of them were things I wasn't particularly good at keeping.

This is last weeks results. It uses a simple "yes/no/halfway" logic and gives a readout of the percentage of times you kept the habit (in the top left portion. . . this was a crazy and lower counted week for me.

Anyway, this has increased the number of times I brushed my teeth, stretched, and edged up slightly the taking of my medicine.

Here is Sebastian's link to the spreadsheet (http://ultraworking.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=dd9f93652172603345875726307ef417&i=108A126A15A1575) and a guide to Lights (http://ultraworking.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=dd9f93652172603345875726307ef417&i=108A126A15A1576).

Ethics in studies

I plan on going out to recruit for my dissertation study tomorrow. It is difficult.

Here's why? Recruiting can be seen as leading to bias. Especially if I actually meet the people I will by studying. The Institutional Review Board at my university sees that as a bad idea, forcing their answers.

If I meet them, I can recruit them and make them more likely to complete the study. If I don't, I can keep out bias.

They won't answer emails without introduction, so my idea is to try to pass out a flyer to the church secretaries. It would be easier if I had large churches to work with, but I have already recruited the largest in the association I am attempting to study.

I could change my sample and population, but that leads to a change in the prospectus and proposal. Since I already have a third of the sample, I am not giving up at this time on my current subjects.

Ethics is good, but sometimes makes it impossible to run into people.

Pomodoro work

I have done a lot this morning, by working with the Pomodoro Technique. I have read about it, yet I find it motivating to practice. I find myself chomping at the bit to get back to work. I also find that I take more breaks than I normally do, while monitoring excess work.

I am also using RescueTime starting today to keep track of what type of sites I visit. I'll regulate them better after getting a good picture of what I'll use by setting up budgets for each type of productivity or distraction.

Thanks for reading. If you have a productivity tip for me, or an app I have not mentioned thus far, let me know in the comments.

On being the worst

As a hirer, hire those better than you. You want to be the dumbest in the room. That goes doubly if you consider yourself smart. The smarter will help you to be the best.

As a subordinate, accept that your job is to get credit for those higher than you. If you are working for the right people, you are going to get either credit or some other benefit. If you are not working for the right person, you'll soon know it when credit does not trickle down.

Finally, in the words of Mattis, "Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet."

Expansive and Contractive feelings

I recently heard of expansive vs. contractive feelings. I heard this on James Altucher's interview of Jewel.

The way I understand it, expansive feelings cause on to think of others. Contractive feelings cause on to close in on oneself.

From the scant sources that weren't from wild New Age-y sites, Love is expansive. Jewel said that excitement, on the other hand, is contractive.

I have not bought into all the premises, but think that this is excellent way of gauging feelings. One may temper feelings with meditation, by letting feelings simply pass without a reaction.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, in mind own experience, is noting a feeling cycle (thought, mood, actions=> which all impact each other in turn). It differs from traditional meditation, which seeks to separate feelings from action, by attempting to keep certain feelings over others.

I think CBT/ DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy) and meditation both build upon each other. Yet meditation is better.

WoW raid yesterday

My brother-in-law led a raid in World of Warcraft yesterday. We did okay, considering the gear level of most of the raid. I think my healing numbers were greatly improved to normal.

I am working on school work when I am not spending time with family, such as the raid yesterday. It was mostly family at around 830 Average ilvl.

I am also trying to keep productive. I fell back on my tracking yesterday due to a terrible headache, which I still have.

I also set up a bundle of subreddits on Reddit. I set it up for all the productivity and philosophy subreddits. I get tired of having to wade through standard subreddits that are always on the front page. This will cut down on time spent on reddit, since I mostly only read.

Habits being added too fast

I discovered that my new productivity habit of tracking various things is moving along too fast. I am tapering back a bit. For example, I was putting too many habits in a day where I would be bringing my daughter out. This made it difficult to keep everything completed.

I am slowly adding things, but was not careful of what I was tracking. I'll keep tracking, but it was necessary to slow down in order to keep a completed list. I need to keep the progress going in order to feel pressure, but as habits pass incomplete I will need to be more careful for what I allocate for each day.

Right now, I am have been keeping about two weeks with a day skipped. I should get closer to a month before I add extra tasks, but change habits from day to day.

I am experimenting with my tasks of adding some of Sebastian Marshall's great tasks. I will look over his site in the next few days to prepare for the next couple of weeks, when I add more items to my tracking list.

Habits are daily items that need to be done, to me. By tasks, I mean things on the tracking list.

By habits, I will change daily. By tasks, I will add monthly things to be tracked.

I currently track health, wealth, relationships, fitness, and productivity, yet some of these items are dual-tracked as habits under the tasks.

Response.

Work is going steady. I am in my third week out of my ten-week (this term happens to have ten classes out of a normal 11-week term) term. My students and I normally grab more rapport over time.

I am having a very busy day. I have laundry, some shopping, homeschooling, blogging, and cooking all to do and most of it is done. I like busy. It gets hard if I hit snags, but I love to have a full schedule.

I am listening to Mike Cernovich's Thinking Big podcast (check out his excellent Gorilla Mindset). I have done some reading on Lt. Col. Poole's Afrique: A Warning for America. I am feeling like re-reading Taleb's Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Incerto) as a response to the Orlando incident.

I try always to have a response to big events. Most of the time, it is double down on productivity or re-reading a book. What do you do to react to real events? I would recommend self-defense training. I would recommend more frequent exercise. Only your body can respond to events faster than you know they are happening.

Falling behind

I am busy preparing for an upcoming doctoral residency. I'll still try to post, but it has been hard to keep up like I had before.

There is a lot of editing to do. It is harder to find time to cook, so I am at the point of quickly grabbing a meal and then back to work. Keeping on track has been difficult.

I am not sure what is different except for mindset. I need to think tougher.

One book that is relevant to that which I have not read in a while is Mike Cernovich's Gorilla Mindset.

I need to read it again. It is not Kindle Unlimited eligible.

What are some strategies you readers use to or books you read to get motivated?

I guess, besides diet, productivity is at an all time high for me.

Busy yesterday, blogging today

I committed to four blog posts a week when I made this blog active again. I have kept to that. I didn't post yesterday which makes me responsible for four solid days of blogging.

I had an interview yesterday. I am hoping to hear back today or tomorrow. That is one reason why I didn't post yesterday. On top of that, I finished the first draft of my Prospectus. It is only about six pages, but I pulled the data from a few places and it made the work arduous.

I cannot wait until I have worked out enough that I am not sore after every time. I took a weight training class in high school and never got sore after a point, but those were controlled conditions and I am getting older. #Yourenot16anymore.

How can I make myself more valuable to you readers? Let me know if you read regularly. More book reviews? Less?
I'd be glad to hear back from you.

Review for Ikigai

I wanted to recommend a book. I am not posting it on my Kindle page because I was not exactly sure the best way to recommend this.

Ikigai is an amazing book by Sebastian Marshall. He blogs at sebastianmarshall.com.

It takes history, strategy, and philosophy and blends it into a personal improvement site. At the time I was looking for it, it was not on Kindle Unlimited. Yes, that means you'll have to put up the money for it.

It was an amazing book telling how to begin setting up a personal ethical system and improve yourself. I was recommended to it by Tynan, who blogs at tynan.com. Tynan was "Herbal" in the Neil Strauss book, The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists.


I especially liked some of the recommendations in it. I'll be checking out some more of them myself. I'll let you know if any are especially illuminating.

Let me know if you decide to pick it up and exaclty what you think. Cheers.

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