Things I did today

Chapter 8, Reimagine Your Temperament I don't quite agree with this chapter - perhaps the author and I are not defining terms in the same way. One of the things I disagree with is the notion that willpower is limitless. I know that as I get to the end of the day, I don't do the best decisions due to tiredness. I can't force myself to play hours of piano. Or am I confusing willpower with mental clarity or endurance? The definition of willpower is " control exerted to do something or restrain impulses. " It definitely is more difficult to avoid bad choices earlier in the day, or when you are having a good day. Or is willpower more like a muscle? People who have a lot of innate willpower, or get a lot of practice using their willpower seemingly have no problem at all saying no to things they know is bad for them but has short term pleasure, like ice cream. The author read books by Carol Dweck, a Stanford psychologist, who argued that signs of ego depletion were

I went to bed last night rather early - about 9, and I'm sure I fell asleep soon after 9:30. Woke up at 4:30am. I didn't feel to tired, but I didn't want to get up at 4:30, as that would mean I would want to go to bed tonight around 8pm, and that's too early. I happened to wake up due to the dream I was having. I was in my second apartment in Ohio, and opened my bedroom closet to find three cats sitting on my suitcase. One looked like the adult version of my first cat, the second looked like the kitten version of my first cat, and the third looked like a kitten version of my third cat, who now lives with my parents. I wondered how I hadn't noticed them before, and saw they had a litter box next to them. I wondered why I hadn't smelled that, either, as it looked it needed to be cleaned. They were calm while I talked to them, apologizing for not noticing them as I moved things around to pull out the litter box and clean it out. I had no idea what they would have b

I hoped by now I would have enough of a routine to be able to fall asleep at 10 and wake up at 6 feeling great. That hasn't happened. I've been struggling with not being able to fall asleep, having weird dreams that wake me up, waking up in the middle of the night without being able to fall back asleep easily and needing more sleep after 6am. This challenge has made me feel extra guilty as I'm not able to fall asleep as well as the regular issue of not feeling well when I don't sleep great. While my goal is still to go to bed roughly at 10pm and get up at 6am for work, I don't think that I should set a strict wake up time on the weekends. While my goal would be sleeping between 10pm and 6am, what I really want is 8 hours of sleep. If I can achieve that, I would be pleased. I'm running into issues like insomnia, repeatedly waking up during the night, trouble falling asleep, forgetting to stop reading at 9:30, and doing chores/writing/reading/hobbies entirely

I felt a little bad not pulling a ticket in to work on, as I didn't have active ticket in the development queue. By 7:15am, I no longer felt that way. I was on troubleshooting and putting out fires duty for our dry run to be sure the exam ran properly. Now, the set up is a little unusual, and not everyone is going to do things like they generally do for a real exam. But, I was asked to 2 tasks script-wise that that should have been handled by people for testing the functionality; new code was put into one database but never requested to replicate to another; I was given the wrong time to run a step, which meant a job didn't run; and the data setup wasn't done completely correctly, so some people didn't see things that they expected to see. Despite telling me that's how they 'never set up X this way', I couldn't find a way for the people to appear because the code was looking for people in a certain table that wasn't fully populated. I looked for 4 ho

Work was work. Write reports. Send files. Collaborate with database administrator on exam deployment. I finally finished the SQL Compliance course, and now I'm doing the test questions. After the test questions are done, I'll move on to the video course about SQL High Availability and Disaster Recovery. Teeth are doing fine today. I'm eating just as big of a lunch as I can (today was chicken, edamame, mushrooms and noodles, which required a leftover box) and eat a sizable dinner (the rest of the noodles, and some buttermilk biscuits with honey.) Drank more seltzer water than yesterday, so I don't feel parched and I don't have a headache. I read several chapters of the Strong Curves which discussed muscle movement, several anecdotal stories, and nutritional information. I'm looking forward to starting the new program and focusing on stretching and my form as well as the primary exercises. I also did a load of laundry and went to the gym. All good things, and

Wasn't too bad. I still ate slow... or, I just didn't talk as much during lunch with my co-workers. One co-worker mentioned she couldn't even tell I had the attachments on my teeth, which was helpful to know. I feel like they're extremely noticeable! My teeth feel so clean since I floss and brush them at least twice a day, but more like three or four times now. Today, I tried out not having morning coffee, and instead drinking warm plain water. Instead of drinking two cups of coffee and two cups of tea by lunchtime, I had only managed one and a half cups of plain water by lunch, drank a diet soda during lunch, then nothing until I got home. So... that didn't work! When I got home, I noticed I was very thirsty and drank a can of seltzer water, then another quarter can of seltzer water while I cooked Ramen with three eggs for dinner. I finished the rest of the seltzer water, so clearly I was thirsty. 3 cups of water in the form of seltzer, and at least 2 cups of wat

Chapter 7 is about Reimagining the Task. Instead of considering the trigger of a habit, we instead think about the task itself. Eyal read one of Ian Bogost's books, in which he discusses using fun and play to get through tasks in a more pleasant way. By finding something fun about a task, you change your perception of the task. It's no longer drudgery. You can now focus on the task at hand. Bogost uses mowing his lawn as an example. He doesn't like mowing his lawn, but instead of covering up the drudgery of mowing the lawn with a reward, like a beer after its completion, he finds how to turn the task of mowing into 'what is the most efficient way to mow the lawn?' 'What is the best weed killer to use?' and making his task now a playground. I suppose I do that with weightlifting. I always carry my workout log to the gym to record what I'll be lifting and a few notes about how I did. It can get boring to exercise with the same machines day in and day out