Tag: Exercise

The Motivation of Failure

Last week, I was passed over on a job opportunity for a more qualified candidate.  Such is life, and I don’t bear any ill-thoughts for the results of the job search.  I’m disappointed, but not soured by the experience.  It’s an opportunity to learn and grow, and I find that more important to focus on than to give in to a fixed mindset of self-pity.

After the feelings of sadness ebbed, I found myself experiencing a different feeling – motivation.  This has happened a few times in my life, and it was strange to be reaquainted with it.  There have been a few critical moments in my life where I failed at something important, and that failure created a fire within that motivated me.

It happened when I climbed Mount Kenya in 2007 after I failed my summit in the summer of 2003 of a mountain in Alberta whose name I’ve forgotten.

It happened when I joined the Campus Response Team and became a Coordinator after I failed twice to be a residence don.

And it happened again last week when I wasn’t selected for the job.  The self-critical sadness was overtaken by a motivation to go to the gym.

As I’ve written previously, It’s been a while since I’ve visited the gym.  According to my fitness journal, the last time I was in the gym was around Hallowe’en.  I’ve been rowing this last month a few times a week in the mornings, but I haven’t lifted iron in around five months.

Initially, I stopped going to the gym after my routine was disrupted by travelling to Scotland.  Then I didn’t go out of laziness, and then I didn’t go because I didn’t feel like I could justify going to the gym when I was supposed to be marking assignments and prepping my lectures.  By the time December rolled around I had regained my weight, but I also proposed to my fiancee, and started the planning process for moving out of my apartment.  Along the way, I was tired from a lack of sleep and dissatisfied with what I saw in the mirror.  Yet, it was never enough to overcome my inertia.

Failing to get the job was the final push I needed to hit the gym.  Maybe I needed a physical outlet to vent some frustration.  Maybe it was a form of punishment.  I’d like to think it was something more constructive – I accepted that I failed but I also saw that I could do better next time.  It is within my power to learn from the experience and grow.  The failures seemed to stack until it hit a critical mass; a line was crossed that set off the warning bells that I was heading in a direction I didn’t want to go.

It was time to make the first step and correct my course.

 

I vlog occasionally for my buddy’s YouTube channel, Artpress, and posted this immediately after I got out of the gym.

So, I hit the gym and pumped some iron.  I was nervous to go back as a beginner again, and overcoming inertia was incredibly uncomfortable, but I did it.

Now the trick is to keep it up.  That’s, perhaps, the greater challenge I face.

 

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Morning Productivity

I had an interesting morning last Tuesday.  As I’ve mentioned recently, I’ve been getting up early with my fiancee.  She typically leaves for work around 7am, and I don’t need to leave for work until around 9am, which leaves me with almost 2-hours to fill with how I wish.

I could go back to sleep and work on hitting my 7-hours of sleep per day goal (as of writing, I’m still failing on this goal, but only narrowly).

Or, I could try to use this quiet time to do some things distraction-free.

*If my fiancee is reading this, I mean distraction from technology and daily pressures.  Love you!*

I’ve been steadily adopting the latter option, and last Tuesday I had an amazingly productive morning.

First, I read for around 30 minutes.  I’ve been working my way through Tim Ferriss’s new book “Tools of Titans” which is hefty 700 pages.

Then, I opened up the Coursera app on my phone and did a few lecture videos on an introductory calculus course I’m working on, including practice problems on functions.  That was around 15-20 minutes.

Then I went upstairs to row for 10 minutes.  I started rowing two weeks ago in the mornings and I’ve already noticed an improvement – I’m less winded after the workout and my hips are not nearly so tight afterwards.  I’ll probably write a post about rowing soon, but for now it’s a small habit I’m trying to instill during the work week.

After rowing, I recorded two vlogs.  I recorded a short vlog for Art Press, my podcasting partner’s side-channel that features vlogs from artists who also exercise.  Then, I recorded my daily vlog that I upload privately to my channel as my version of a diary.  The two vlogs took me 5-7 minutes to record.

Then, I finally showered and got ready for work.

Reflection

I know that starting your day on the right foot is a key to success.  It sets you up with a positive mindset that you are accomplishing your goals and using you time well.  I certainly don’t want to do things for the sake of being busy.

I suppose I’m being a little arrogant by sharing this information within my social media feeds – I’ve been tweeting my progress on rowing, and sharing my small productivity wins as they happen.  Am I just looking for approval from others?  Does sharing this really keep me motivated and accountable?  Would I enjoy the process less if I didn’t share (boast) about it?  Am I looking to inspire others?  Lead by example?  Make them jealous?  I don’t have good answers for this.

I also don’t know whether I can keep this up regularly.  This system (I’m calling it a system for the sake of the argument) is fragilely held afloat because of my fiancee’s schedule.  If that were to change, I’m fairly confident I wouldn’t be able to wake up at 6am on my own – I have about of decade of anecdotal evidence to support this.  Also, will I be able to keep this pace?  Exercise, reading, studies, and vlogging takes up a lot of time; will I be able to guarantee that I’ll have enough time and mental focus everyday to continue this process.  Again, I don’t have an answer to this.

Time will tell.  After all, as of writing, I only have one data point to draw an inference from.  It’s important to not get too far ahead of myself and focus on hitting my targets tomorrow.

 

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

I Really Need to Sleep More

As the title says, I need more sleep.  It should surprise no one that sleep is good for you and you generally feel better getting more of it.

And yet, I’m terrible at it.  I’ve known for a while I’m terrible at managing sleep, but wearing a Fitbit over the last year really helped quantify how terrible I am.

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Here is a typical week for me back in mid-October, 2016.  As you can see, I was averaging less than 6-hours a week, and I would occasionally punctuate my sleepiness with a crash that would waste half a day by recuperating.  By the end of the academic term, I was turning into a zombie.  Things were starting to slide, I felt irritable, my weight had gone up; basically everything bad about not getting sleep was happening.  The only thing that thankfully did not happen was falling asleep behind the wheel.

A small part of me wore my fatigue like a badge of honour.  It was the natural consequence of hustling and being busy.  The problem with this is it was impressing no one, it was wearing me out, and it was pissing people off who I was failing to deliver to on my promises.

Something needed to change.

… And the Clock Strikes Twelve – New Year, New Rules

While I’m not a big new year’s resolutions guy, I saw the start of January as a good time to try and reclaim my sleeping habits.  I had wound down a bunch of my obligations, finished teaching, and was going to spend less time commuting for a long-distance relationship (the fiancee was moving back to my city), so January made sense to focus on cultivating a better sleeping habit.

Step one in any major change is to identify and isolate the variables you want to modify, and track the delta from your baseline.  After all, you can’t change what you don’t measure.

I set 7-hours as a good goal to strive towards as it was more sleep than I was used to but not an unreasonable jump that would set me up for failure.  I decided to track each day’s worth of sleep as a binary yes-no check in my notebook.  The Fitbit would auto-track my sleep, and I would manually log my sleep to ensure I was consciously paying attention to sleep.  I modified the Bullet Journal method and tracked the days I got less than 7-hours of sleep (alongside the days I read, and the days I exercised).

After one month, I look back at my progress.

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For privacy reasons, I’ve blocked out my calendar notes.

Yikes.

Needless to say, if January is my baseline, then at least I have nowhere to go but up.  I hit my target four times all month.  My reading habit was fairly strong, and my exercise is still abysmal.

Light on the Horizon

There is one thing that has changed in February so far that has given me hope: my fiancee has started a new job.

As of writing, she’s in her first week at her new job, and I have only now given notice to my apartment managers that I will be moving in with her, so I’m spending a few nights a week at her place to help support her as she starts the job.  This includes groceries, errands, and taking care of our dog.

Her new job is a few cities over, so she needs to commute about an hour each way, meaning she needs to get up before me and hit the road before I normal would wake up.  As a consequence, she needs to follow a fairly strict bed time while she adjusts to the new schedule.

At one point, I would have let her go to bed, then I would have gone to bed whenever I felt like it, and set my own alarm.  But, in the spirit of supporting her (and wanting to spend quality time with her), I’ve been going to bed at the same time as her, and getting up with her to tend to the dog’s morning needs.

The days where I’ve gotten 7+ hours of sleep have been the greatest I’ve felt in a long time.

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Wednesday would have been 7-hours if I hadn’t had restless sleep.  The Fitbit subtracts your restless period from the total duration of sleep.

Obviously, it’s too early to suggest that I’ve got my habit down, but subjectively I can report feeling better overall.  I have wanted to wake up early for some time now, and getting up with my partner has felt great.  I have time to enjoy my morning coffee while I read or listen to the news, and not feeling rushed out the door has lifted my spirits.  Ideally, I want to keep this going, so it’ll be interesting to see how the system adapts to other obligations in my life (working at the bar being the harshest pressure on my sleep schedule).

I know that rationally, sleeping is good.  It’s good for mental clarity, it’s good for decision-making, it’s good for general health as well as weightloss.  But knowing the facts has so far proven to be a challenge for me.  Perhaps focusing on my relationship and supporting my partner’s success is just the motivation I’ve needed to force me to take better care of myself.

We shall see where things go from here.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Reflection – The Cost of a Lack of Routine

I’ve posted a few times recently about how I’ve been incredibly slack on keeping up my (lack of) fitness habit.  The addition of teaching was enough for me to abandon fitness as a priority.  There are obvious costs associated with this, such as poorer health and eating habits, but there is also the financial cost that most people are aware of, and I don’t think I’ve really appreciated the magnitude of until now.

Since July, I’ve been paying for my membership to the gym without going.  This cost shouldn’t be surprising to anyone.  At various points since July, I’ve been aware that the fees were being applied to my credit card each month.  On reflection, I realized how much of a “death by 1,000 cuts” scenario this is.  During each month’s charge, I rationalized that the cost is fairly low.  Because it wasn’t breaking the bank, it was easier to excuse the bad habit.

Yet, it all adds up:

August – monthly fee $11.30
September – monthly fee $11.30
September – bi-annual equipment fee $20
October – monthly fee $11.30
November – monthly fee $11.30
December – monthly fee $11.30
 Total (CAD): $76.50

If you don’t include any interest accrued, I’ve spent a little over $75 to not go to the gym.  There are two ways of looking at it.  Either, $75 has been the cost of inaction (not going, or not cancelling my membership), or $75 has been what I spent to sit at home and do other things (opportunity cost).  Regardless of how I frame it, I’m out $75 with little to show or account for it.

I suppose the obvious next step is to create a solution to this problem.  With the new year and my birthday rapidly approaching, it makes sense to use this as an excuse to erase the bad history and start fresh.  I want to, however, learn from this experience.  It’s important that I reflect intentionally because otherwise I’ll be doomed to repeat the behaviour.

I don’t have a nifty solution to this at present.  I merely wish to make this observation public to hold myself accountable and get myself thinking about what I can do about it.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Blog – Off and On the Wagon (Of Fitness)

Welp!  That streak didn’t last very long.  Last week I wrote how I proudly went to the gym the previous week, and how I was looking forward to trying to maintain that pace.  I’m sad to report that I did not go to the gym last week.  And it’s important that I stay transparent about this.  It’s been hard trying to find a balance these last few months.  When I wasn’t working three jobs, I found it relatively easy to go to the gym at least twice per week.  Now, I can’t manage going once.

I can’t blame the job fully on this.  Part of the reason for my poor performance is the lack of sleep.  I have poor discipline to go to bed at a reasonable time, so things tend to compound from there.  Poor sleep leads to decision fatigue, and then it becomes easy to excuse all sorts of bad habits – further bad sleep, poor nutrition, procrastination, etc.

These failures of mine have been harsh but incredibly instructive.  I’ve learned two important things about myself: I’ve learned where my limit is for how much I can juggle at any one time, and I learned a bit more about my priorities.  I learned that I need structures and rules in place if I have any chance of sticking to a plan for progress.  Present-Me is very bad at self-regulation and is prone to making all sorts of bad decisions.  Present-Me is short-sighted, lazy, and pleasure-seeking.  I want to prioritize health and fitness, but when it’s time to deliver, my priority tends to favour pleasurable activities (I’m looking at you, YouTube!).

A tired cliche is that the first step is to admit you have a problem.  In this case, I have a problem when it comes to managing myself.  Not sure where to turn from there, but at least we’ve drilled down to the bedrock.  Let’s see where I can take this.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Fitness Update (Small Milestones)

I finally returned to some non-zero fitness activity last week!  It’s not exactly awe-inspiring, but it’s better than what I’ve done in the past two months.  My last log entry for the gym was August 25th.  In August, I had two trips to the gym, and then nothing prior to that since before my trip to Scotland in July.  It’s a gross understatement to say that I fell off the wagon.

Last week, I forced myself to hit the gym for a light workout on Monday.  “Light” in this case means limiting myself to 60-80% of my previous set weights, and only committing to 3 sets of each exercise.  I knew I was going to have muscle soreness this week, so I went easy on myself in order to re-acclimate myself to lifting.  While I’ve lost some momentum compared to July, it was good to return to the gym.

My second round of exercise this week was a home-based round on the rowing machine at my girlfriend’s place.  I did a fairly leisurally row of a little over 5 kilometres in 30 minutes.  Again, I wasn’t looking to impress anyone, but merely to dip my toe back into the game and see what happened.

The real test will be whether I continue my progress into next week.  The hard part about overcoming weakness of the will is shrugging off the guilt you feel when you know you mess up.  The best remedy I’ve come up with is to forgive myself for my past mistakes (not going to the gym) and moving on to do better next time.  The only thing you can do is to reset the counter and start from scratch.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Blog – Break Week

I’ve finally hit week 8 for the course I’m teaching!  At the college I work at, many of the schools have adopted a 7:1:7 model of course delivery, including the School of Liberal Studies.  This means that the 15-week term is broken down into two seven week blocks and a break week in the middle.  It’s like a traditional reading week, except it’s a free pass for students.  They get a week to recharge, catch up, or enjoy a lull in their workload.  While this usually elicits a “kids these days” shake of the fist from people, I fully support the break week.  Many students are first-generation college kids, meaning they are coming from families that may or may not have had the academic support to help them through school.  The transition to college is a big leap, so a break week helps ensure the students have the support they need to succeed.  I prefer to set my students up for success, than to wear them down through a war of attrition.

This also means that I don’t teach this week, and *I* get a break, too!  As you’ve been reading the last few weeks, a break is exactly what I need.  This will give me a chance to prep, mark and feel slightly less pressure during the week.  This also means that I might *gasp* actually get out to the gym this week.  No promises, though.  But, here’s hoping…

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

 

Blog – “You Look Tired”

This post is “late,” and there is really no excuse for it.  There are reasons of course: when I created a backlog of posts, I didn’t feel the pressure to write weekly, so things slipped in my mind.  But that’s not a good excuse for this being written about an hour after it should have gone live.

A colleague of mine just commented to me “You look tired!”  Which is true – I am tired.  I’ve been tracking my sleep since about November of last year thanks to my trusty Fitbit, and in that year I found I get an average of five and a half hours of sleep per night.  That’s well below the recommended eight hours.  Until now, I’ve managed things fairly well,  but with the addition of the third job (teaching) and maintaining a long distance relationship, things are really starting to strain for me.  I’ve noticed it for a few weeks now, but this weekend things are starting pile up.

I napped more this weekend than I have in probably the last two years.  I almost never nap.  I hate napping, in fact.  It feels like a waste of time, when I could be using that time (daylight) to do something more desirable than tending to my body’s needs.  And yet, this weekend I found myself napping for at least an hour each day in the afternoon.  I also elected to cut time short with my girlfriend to tend to some much needed cleaning at my apartment.  The alternative would have been more social engagements and an early morning commute back home to go to work.  She understood that I needed the time away and supported my decision.  It’s why she’s a great gal!

My focus has been off lately, too.  I keep talking about how I want to go back to the gym, but I haven’t acted on it.  Call it failure to plan, call it failure to action on an item, but I suspect the real culprit is depleted will power. No, I don’t mean that I’m not willing myself to the gym.  I mean I think have decision fatigue.  It’s a long accumulation of factors that have finally hit a tipping point: poor sleep, poor nutrition, too many demands on my cognitive workload, stress from things in life, added stress from social media, etc.  It creates a feedback loop that further breaks me down.  Because I don’t sleep well and still try to contend with normal daily activities, my will power and motivation wane; this leads to poor choices and procrastination through my favourite habit (watching YouTube videos), which keeps me awake, which makes it harder for me to do the things I need to do, which weakens my ability to force myself to go to bed at a reasonable time, which leads to lesser amounts of sleep, and the cycle continues.

I don’t have an obvious solution to this problem.  What I need to do is to critically evaluate my obligations, priorities and goals to find a better fit with my habits.  That will take longer than one blog post to figure out, but for the meantime, the best I can do is monitor my health and situation to guard against large scale system crashes.

Blog: Decisions in Life

A little while back, I swallowed some of my biases and checked out Tony Robbins’s documentary on Netflix, I Am Not Your Guru (trailer here).  I had prejudged him as something in between a vacuous motivational speaker and a charlatan.  I of course based this opinion on nothing and admit that it was incredibly closed-minded of me.

I quite enjoyed the documentary, and I felt that I was captivated by his charisma.  While I know a lot of the business involves crafting a certain persona and message, and that the documentary is edited to create a particular narrative, it softened me to him and I wanted to check out some of his other works.  I’m not interested in investing the money to attend his events (I’m not *THAT* open-minded), but I thought I’d give one of his books a shot.  He also recently appeared in a podcast episode with Tim Ferriss, whom I’ve started to trust as something of an authority figure.  Anything that Tim Ferriss says, I’m willing to listen to.

So, I checked out Awaken The Giant Within, by Tony Robbins.

There was a really cool perspective he shared that has stuck with me since hearing it.  Explained the etymological origin of “decision” or “to decide.”  Without getting technical, it splits the word into “de” and “cision” or “away” and “to cut,” or in essence, “to cut away.”

Ok, that doesn’t sound very insightful.  But then he framed it in terms of what a proper decision entails.  He notes that when we talk about “making decisions” in our lives, we often are speaking as if we are expressing wishes.  To him, people “decide” to lose weight all the time, but never follow through on the execution.  In other words, when someone says they’ve decided to exercise and lose weight, until they follow through on that action, all they are saying is “I wish to exercise and lose weight.”

To make it a proper decision, you have to essentially make a cut and discard every other alternative.  When you decide something, you are firmly choosing not to entertain any other alternatives, and you are committing to that course of action.  To decide is to cut off those alternatives.

Framing it that way made a lot of sense to me.  It’s a criticism of myself that I’ve heard flavours of for some time, and it’s something I try to be mindful of.  This past year I’ve been reading books and reflecting on myself in order to live more intentionally.  I’ve had a few decision points so far that are opening up interesting futures to me.  Right now, I’m looking at career moves; should I continue to become a paramedic, or should I commit more fully to teaching.  I don’t have an answer to that questions yet.  It’s still really early in the process and I’m fine to live with that ambiguity for now.  I have plenty of time yet to explore my options.

There are other areas where making decisions has become important.  For the sake of being cryptic, I cannot divulge them at the moment and I apologize for that.  I’ve had a decision weighing over me recently that I finally pulled the trigger on.  But there are other “decisions” that are manifesting themselves as “wishes” and I’m not forgetting about them (I’m looking at you, exercise!).  I still haven’t followed through on committing to exercise, so for now that’s is my personal shame I carry around.

What I’m starting to wrestle with is how to take ownership of deciding my life’s course and what it means to be a person of character and commitment.  It’s not a strength of mine historically, but it’s a virtue I seek to cultivate moving forward.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan