Yeah, it's harder than it sounds. I've made a simple list like that years ago, and I'm still struggling to stay on top of all items. Sometimes I succeed and I'm happy, but I keep failing regularly, it's a bummer.
Here's my list:
- Eat properly(no junk food, no coffee, no nootropics)
- Information diet(only "healthy" information during the day, 20:00-22:00 I can do whatever I want. Basically it means no hn/reddit/youtube/movies, reading and learning is fine)
- Daily exercise
- Daily fiction writing(250 words at least)
- Daily coding(or studying anying related to Computer Science.)
I will keep struggling to incorporate all these things into my habits, because that is what perfect and healthy life for me would be like, it's just it's surprisingly difficult for me.
By the way, if you have such list - can you share it?
Can you re-frame "failed" to "practiced" or similar?
If I picked up a violin for the first time in my life I'd have no idea how to play it and I'd make a hell of a noise. But with lessons and practice I could, eventually, produce a tune.
The same thing happens with your reboot - you're used to something; you've changed that thing; change is tricky; you sometimes slip back.
I gave up coffee and sodas and feel so much better. My energy during the day is more level and I don't get headaches much anymore. I do drink green tea mostly and maybe 2 cups of black tea a week. I have had 3 cups of coffee in 4 months when I just needed to drive to the airport at 3 am and similar. My concentration is better but I still like a good nap mid day. At 62 years old, a nap is a great thing.
I recommend giving up coffee. I tracked my habit and when I gave up it took me only about 10 days to completely stop drinking coffee. Soda as easier. I drink carbonated water now.
I was drinking 100+ oz of coffee a day most days. I had it easy giving up but I have heard that others with heavy habits get a lot of withdrawal symptoms. I had a few headaches and I quelled them with tea.
I started drinking green tea and black tea in the morning in high school. Then I ran out. Cue a few days of headaches, bad moods, falling asleep and cold-like symptoms.
Then a few years later I started drinking coffee regularly. Same thing happened when I quit.
Now, I drink green tea in the mornings occasionally and have had no problems with stopping.
If you don't have a need consume caffeine, don't start. It seems to follow the tolerance/withdrawal pattern at even small doses.
I've been drinking only water for years and I don't feel any different from when I drank sugared soda and coffee and everything else. Absolutely no different. I quit smoking and also don't feel different albeit my endurance and lung capacity is much better. Maybe I should go on a month long binge just to remind myself of this mystical awful feeling that people always mention when they've given up sugar.
Two months ago I also evicted anything that's not water during 101 days, meaning no soda, no coffee, no tea, no fruit juice, only plain water. At the end of these 101 days I wasn't feeling better, not that I was feeling bad before but it didn't changed anything during the day, I didn't felt more energy or anything else. Admittedly, it was tough to quit during the first two weeks.
The most interesting thing that occurred was my now intolerance to sweet drinks. Every so often I'll treat (barf) myself to nostalgic trip down high school lane, which consists of a mexican pizza and mountain dew from Taco Bell. I take one sip of the mountain dew (my drink all through my childhood) and throw it out as soon as I get to a trash can. I can't even drink zoke ceros or anything along those lines because they make me feel so bloated.
It's awesome.
There's a bowl of starbursts in my office that I'm currently fighting against. It's new. It's refilled every Monday. It's evil. I actually grabbed a handful on Friday to sneak home, luckily karma kicked in and all of the bags were missing the pink flavor so I didn't eat any.
>I've been drinking only water for years and I don't feel any different from when I drank sugared soda and coffee and everything else.
Did you drank a LOT of them? Because if you were just drinking some in moderation (as opposed to 1 or even 2 bottles of Pepsi a day like I did), it probably didn't matter anyway.
Also were you younger? Because if you did that "break" at, say 25, it's not like you'll see much difference. Your body can still tolerate a whole lot of abuse at that age.
I'm an American who grew up in the 90s, so I drank more soda than water for sure. In fact I don't think I drank water my entire middle school-high school career. Jugs and jugs of mt dew. Thankfully I had an insane metabolism back then.
I stopped drinking soda around 21 or so, I'm 31 now.
I'm doing my 2nd round this year of "30 days without coffee & tea" now (7 days into it). I primarily do it because I feel my more frequent heartburns were because of that, and because after a while coffee gives me the jitters and makes me very impatient, instead of energize me.
Looking at all the comments, and thinking about the effects I feel during this 7 days (and the experience of the previous 30 days), I will definitely want to keep that coffee low, no matter how much I like cafes, the drinking, the flavour...
By the way, for me it took about 3 weeks after quitting coffee cold turkey to stop thinking like "I'm a grown-up goddamnit, I can have a coffee whenever I want!". The 4th week then was really-really good.
Tea is works a lot better, and I'm lucky here in Taiwan for the awesome teas available. But have to be careful about that, a strong oolong (that I like a lot) just as a hammer-hit to the head as a cup of coffee sometimes....
My plan is very similar. Nootropics and caffeine are an integral part of my success, though! Haha Have you tried ytracking your success with each of these items? I have been doing so for the past few months and it is definitely helping me pinpoint where I need to redouble my efforts. I also set a theme for each month (either Health, Wealth or Social, cycling through those three). The thing is to focus on mastering one are at a time, plateauing in that area with solid habit formation and then tackling the next area. Can you share what practical steps you have taken to achieve any successes? ie schedules, habits, plans, etc.
Setting a theme for each month is an awesome idea!
Yes, I track these habits. There's an awesome app called TracknShare, super convenient. Here's how my list looks like:
http://imgur.com/I9qK9iu
I measure writing by the number of words I write each day, and I measure CS in "Pomodoros"(from pomodoro technique, 20-minute-sized chunks of uninterrupted time).
Participating in /r/WritingPrompts really helps with daily writing. Prompts are a great place to start, and provide instant gratification, also it's really fun.
When I have an interesting and exciting project to work on - I can easily stay on top of CS, but if not it becomes super hard.
The main thing about healthy food - is just throwing away everything unhealthy, and replacing it wih a lot of delicious healthy alternatives. If I get hungry and I don't have some nuts/berries to chew on immediately - I know I will go and buy chocolate/pizza. So it's mostly about controlling my environment. If everything around me is healthy - it's not that hard to keep it up.
When it comes to coffee and reddit - I still haven't found a good solution, I'm addicted to that stuff.
Exercising isn't that hard to keep up, just set a goal that is easy enough to not be intimidating, and spend several days paying attention to it, because when I don't I simply forget.
Awesome, so you're tracking daily streaks then? That helped me form my meditation habit pretty solidly. I also measure productivity in pomodoros! It's dope to meet other people as excited about this stuff as me. Since you shared I'll go ahead and show you how I have my ratings system set up. I'm using Google Sheets, tracking each metric daily and then at the end of each week I enter the average of the values or the sum, depending on what I'm measuring. I then turn that into graphs, which give my brain some nice feedback about its behavior haha hope you find this cool!
@rayalez I couldn't reply directly to your last comment, the thread looks like it's too deep now. The biggest challenge is definitely the size and amount of things to track. If I slack on one day it's hard to pick up the pieces the next. The patterns are still hard to discern, but I'm definitely seeing that the biggest factor in my success day-to-day is amount and time of sleep. It's literally the biggest leverage point, so I'm investing more resources in perfecting that as well. The amount of projects that arise from this list of metrics can be overwhelming, so the ethos of "keep it simple" is the best way for me to make any headway.
If you ever want to continue this convo feel free to email me, it's my HN username at gmail. Maybe you could use an accountability partner or someone to bounce ideas off of? Either way, good luck with your project!
I've tried to simplify my list as much as possible, because many details are hard for me to keep in mind, and when I have too many things to track it's hard for me to focus. Now the list of things Im tracking doubles as my daily goal list.
But I'm sure your way creates a lot of interesting results. Did you notice some interesting patterns?
I also used to use Emacs org mode for that sort of thing, it was pretty convenient. It has a neat todo list function, so you can track things and have a list of daily goals separately. (though it won't create charts).
Also yeah, once I keep up with all my habits for like 30-60 days, I will add "Social" and maybe meditation. It's great that you're doing this, I found it very helpful.
A coffee in the morning is OK if you like coffee. Once a week I either have two 8oz coffees or skip entirely, subjectively. Most days I have one or two teas in the afternoon, but none after 4pm. Food wise I never eat after 7pm, and usually dinner is light fare like a sandwich or soup and a salad. Lunch is the bigger meal, but I usually eat that after biking/running because eating before exercise gives me cramps. On days I don't exercise I don't eat anything before noon and just have lunch and a light dinner. No exercise, no breakfast calories are justifiable.
Sometimes when I was in the process of losing weight this way, that I would be a little bit hungry when it was time for bed. But this is ignored. If it's more distracting then I have ~150g yogurt, usually skyr, but sometimes plain greek and sometimes that I'll mix in a teaspoon of honey or jam. Most U.S. yogurt is a massive sugar bomb.
Often this has more to do with discipline (do the exercise, don't eat everything on the plate or don't fill it up to begin with, or don't eat out often) rather than motivation. Needing motiviation is understandable but it's a weakness to rely on it; having discipline is more powerful.
Technically nootropics are drugs with no negative side effects that increase a person's capacity for memory retention, focus and analytic ability. Various noots have different properties, so a person can pick and choose what to take and combine depending on what abilities they want to reinforce.
Right now my daily stack is a caffeine & creatine preworkout supplement (hot coffee took way too long to consume, giving me time to get lost in the internet abyss), theacrine (chemical structurally similar to caffeine), adrafinil (modafinil prodrug), noopept + choline, lion's mane mushroom extract, centrophenoxine and occasionally forskolin extract. I built this stack to sharpen focus and motivation, which are my biggest "psychic" areas of opportunity.
Really? I still feel like a mid-level supplementer, if not a straight out noob, compared to other nootropics users out there. You should see some of the more extreme stacks, they take into account neurotransmitter balance, metabolism, diet, antioxidative properties etc. Those can swell up to 15-20 different substances being ingested daily!
This is the key point, honestly. Hacker News and other online forums are fun and all, but ultimately they waste so much time.
About film: If you have Hulu, watch the Criterion Collection films on it. Criterion is a company that releases and remasters some of the best films of all time (from all countries!), and about 600 of them are on Hulu[1].
Here's what I have discovered recently about the way I read & pay attention after habitual use of Reddit/HN:
I have "trained my brain" to scan headlines very quickly to see if they are relevant or of interest to me. Consequently, I have developed a troubling trait of reading most things only to "cognitively dump" immediately thereafter. I now find that I cannot hold concentration to read larger tracts of writing. Or that I will read something but fail to recall only moments later.
Having gone through a "reboot" myself, I've run into quite a few people in the tech industry seeking some kind of change in life. I don't see the same trend with friends and acquaintances working in other industries. I think this is very telling. Hell, I did a Crater Lake circumnavigation trip early this year with a group of 7. Coincidentally, all-in-all we had 4 software engineers and 1 mechanical engineer in the group and all confessed that they felt like they got off course somewhere. (2 of the 5 were prepping to through-hike the PCT!)
Being an engineer myself, I've always loved what i do, but I found that I felt infinitely better when i was disconnected from the tech. It's almost like being blindly in love with someone who hurts you. So for my "reboot" i quit my job, sold everything and started doing things that are completely out of my comfort zone like long distance backpacking trips, going into the nature, camping, paragliding, kayaking. As a consequence, I've dropped weight and become healthier by simply being outside more. Things like healthy diet and exercise didn't seem like impossible chores but very natural habits to transitions to.
So take this with a grain of salt, but when someone who tries to change their life is telling me that they want to sit in 4 walls and watch Netflix more, or get an android app that monitors their sleep, or that they want to try and do more daily coding, i realize that they have no idea what they're doing.
IMO, the problem still remains even after reboot or reset. You are still hamster on a wheel. You might decide that you are drifting off course and course correct through reboot/reset sooner and later you will drift again, course correct again, and keep repeating the cycle.
You can't keep doing the same things and expect results to be different. You need to look inward and see what is causing the drift.
Last night, I watched an interesting talk by Guy Spier, a value investor. I was expecting the talk to be focus on value investing, it turned out be much more on making life choices, changes and gaining wisdom.
"> You need to look inward and see what is causing the drift."
I'm rather dismayed that the post, every single comment on this thread (as of my writing this, et least) as well as what appears to be the gist of Guy Spier's book is about "me, me and me".
I'm all for finding oneself and personal improvement. Please, please do take better care of yourself, both mentally and physically. But if that does not lead you to realizing the best path to improving your lot is to improve the lot of others, then that makes me and the whole world quite sad.
I've been working on rebooting my life, it's hard, especially trying to get out of a long rut. Eating better, exercising, all of that is fucking tough.
I've had a gym membership for behind my apartment for 2 months now. Tomorrow will be my first day going. I got the membership to remind myself that I have to do it. It's working.
Other people have mentioned you should try HIIT. This is an exceptionally good piece of advice.
By devoting 10 min 3 times a week doing some high intensity intervals you can achieve a very good level of fitness. Even better, it won't require a monumental amount of mental effort (like e.g. long distance running does).
I recommend you do this on a machine whose exercise is low impact for your joints (either a Concept2 or an Airdyne). These can be found very cheap on Craigslist if on a budget.
Add in some free weight exercises (dumbbells or kettlebells will do, a pull up bar also recommended), some abs and some dynamic stretches to have a really sound training plan.
@killswitch Keep trying. My wife and I had to get our weight under control and we started going to the gym. We try to go M-F for an hour and probably average like 4.5 days over the year. We had to change our sleep patterns some (go to bed earlier) so that we can be out of the house at 5:15 am and to the gym. Some days we just don't want to go but we go anyway. We always feel better when we are done. I've lost 30 lbs now and my wife has lost 50 lbs+ (she started much longer ago than I did).
Yeah paying for a gym membership is cheaper on the pocketbook, I've got more important things to pay for than a personal trainer. Like supporting my two daughters and fiancee. Sorry.
I'm starting with the 7-minute hiit workout. Going to the gym seems like it would demotivate me almost immediately. It'd be like joining a conversation about closures when I've barely begun understanding how to utilize functions correctly
A cursory study of the greats of literature of the last few centuries, and beyond, reveals that rebooting is essential, and one must be prepared to do it a few times in ones life, I feel. We need to be prepared to abandon all cultural and social precepts, and re-componse oneself in the face of the abyss, at a near-infinite degree of potential.
I think rebooting should be required of a lot of your average (and not-so-average) typologies. Breaking the mold is essential to the progress of the species, and doing it on a personal, familial, or social level. Perhaps this is what drives the primordial desire to see the world burn?
Some people aren't going to be able to maintain lots of change all at once. And inability to maintain it all creates feelings of hopelessness or despair or similar.
It's important to remember that you don't have to change everything now. Just do one thing this month, and stick at it. When you've got that one thing working and maintainable you can change something else.
There are some nice motivational subReddits.
There's probably a niche in the market for a service that pairs or groups people who want to achieve change so that they can motivate each other - virtual motivational cards and voice messages etc.
We intentionally limit the number of daily tasks to six. And if you're continually nailing or failing a task, the app suggests you tweak your target.
I've managed to go from staying up late (working on projects when I'm fading) to knocking off tasks from 5-7am before the family wakes up (when I'm fresh and motivated). I leave less-essential tasks like watching movies for late at night when I'm getting distracted or tired.
When we started beta testing, I kept failing to find 30 minutes/day to read a book. I changed to 10 minutes which felt paltry, but it was something I managed to stick with and started making progress on my pile of unfinished books.
I'm going to go with the opposite in many respects to change consumption patterns - movies can be the same kind of mental junk food as tabloid magazines. But keeping yourself inspired and positive however you may do it is the goal that matters for creative professionals and avoiding burnout. But it's also important to keep trying something new and getting out of your comfort zone sometimes, and this doesn't mean trying some fancy new restaurant especially when you already eat out a lot.
Most of the mentally exhausting problems I have is most of the problems are outside my control and are how I start my day. I'm woken up either randomly by my cats or by my phone due to a production outage I have little power over. Each of these attempts to "reset" are quickly squashed due to the choices others made (I never wanted pets but I inherited them in a way, prod goes out due to services I have no control over and monitoring other people's services is both infeasible and encourages others to sit back while I do what should have been their basic duties).
So for some people, I reckon simply quitting work and purposefully not looking to work until you're ready and itching to do so again is worth trying. Much easier said than done for those not earning handsome salaries, but there are degrees to a full-blown resignation possible for most jobs I believe.
Something I found with these life reboots that is really, really bad for my personally is the guilt that you lay on yourself when you fail at "rebooting," completely. I'd go out and socialize with friends and have a good time, but beat myself up the next day because it was my day to do XYZ (budget, clean the fridge, whatever) and I didn't do it because I went out. I had to, and am still struggling with that, with being a human and forgiving myself. Oh perfectionism..
Try building one habit at a time. Do it for 60 days in a row (but don't beat yourself up if you miss a few days). Then start building the next habit...
I had a breakdown a few years and tried to change a lot of things at once — it didn't really work! You can read some more of my thoughts about this at https://gumroad.com/l/reset-your-brain
Central to my approach has been thinking what I want to achieve (quality), in what areas I want to achieve it and how.
For me rebooting has been mostly about decluttering and focussing. So I've ended up with a list of very few areas where I want to excel, and some tools I will use to achieve my goals. Everything else I have got rid of.
The problem with itemizing specific things to avoid or cut down, is they are too specific and end up becoming habits. Instead it is more suitable to form an over-arching doctrine. So instead of "Drink less beer", it should become "Avoid mood changing substances".
The reason for a more general approach is because the moment things are calcified like this, they are very difficult to uproot and change. Think of this as a recipe where the ingredients can be swapped out. The recipe doesn't change, but the ingredients do, and not so drastically that the recipe is destroyed.
I'm not convinced it is a bad thing. Why would it be a problem for "avoid mood changing substances" to become a habit, calcified and very difficult to uproot and change?
So it's back to the concept of a recipe where the ingredients change, but the recipe sort of stays intact. Change too many ingredients and we have an entirely different dish. I like this analogy because it's less formal and more forgiving. Just make sure to stick to it in an informal manner and not abuse the leniency provided, and you shall be fine. Technically every substance is mood altering (sugar for example), but there are some that have a marked increase on judgement and mood that it is safe to treat them as suspect. When I refer to "recipe" I mean a loose guide to run with in times of crisis.
The real hard part comes after the initial novelty and the quick progress fade away: Staying motivated to do regular workouts without getting faster or lifting more weights every week.
This also applies to healthy eating habits. Once you've reached your target weight and the novelty wears off, it's much harder to eat clean. Personally, I like pizza once per week, usually on Friday, as celebration and reward that it's finally weekend.
For exercise it boils down to discipline. At least for me. Plus, I feel really, really bad and get in a terrible mood if I cannot physically exert myself every day.
Seconded. There is a lot of noise on what diet is superior and which one works best. Intuitively a person knows when they've over indulged just as when we pull back when putting our hand in a flame. We just don't do it anymore, and design our lives around not ever having it happen again.
My only problem with this is the victim-hood that happens when this high carb crap clamours for our attention in ADs and the media. Invariably you will get victim-hood and people gorging and gulping their way to negate such imagery. I know I don't look at a McBigMac the same way when I've had one.
It's weird, but I get it. I don't know if this is what the author meant, but I started watching more films to get exposed to more culture and explore films of different countries and genres. To me a good film is just as enriching as a good book.
Like I said, I am not sure if the author meant this, but making the choice of watching better films has paid off for me.
Here's my list:
- Eat properly(no junk food, no coffee, no nootropics)
- Information diet(only "healthy" information during the day, 20:00-22:00 I can do whatever I want. Basically it means no hn/reddit/youtube/movies, reading and learning is fine)
- Daily exercise
- Daily fiction writing(250 words at least)
- Daily coding(or studying anying related to Computer Science.)
I will keep struggling to incorporate all these things into my habits, because that is what perfect and healthy life for me would be like, it's just it's surprisingly difficult for me.
By the way, if you have such list - can you share it?