Life Week #1 - Warmup
Summary of first week of life 4h blog.
π Feb 28, 2022β³ 1 minutes
Summary of first week of life 4h blog.
Every week is different - what a clichΓ©! But hey, what if this is actually true? π€
Looking back two years back I would find myself much more stressed and frustrated. It's not that something great or unexpected happened during the last 100 weeks. I feel that my mindset started a conversion towards gratefulness, acceptance of reality, finding happiness in daily life, and courage to do things I put on hold for years or decades.
The first holidays of 2024 are starting tomorrow.
We traveled to Rome. We walked over 75km through the streets of the Eternal City. We could name our visit a pretty full Rome experience - with guided tours, the full taste of Roman cuisine, and the sun beautifully shining over our longing heads. It was amazing to feel the sense of the ancient city with all the ancient buildings, walls, columns & churches. You can feel the history nearly around each corner.
The forthcoming year is the year when I need to make a significant shift in my career.
This was a very special week.
Last week I decided to participate in the two meetings with people I barely know or don't know at all.
Let me try to summarize my recent approach, shall I?
Nature is waking up. Spring is in the air, birds are singing, and leaves are appearing. My mind finally gets clear and focuses on important challenges in the forthcoming time.
Exactly 7 days ago I remember telling to my wife that the next week would be a hard one with many difficult topics in the daily work and the additional life projects related to the house renovation and the family support.
I believe I already convinced myself that I am ready to move on and change my base workplace. Although working in a great work environment, doing amazing projects and earning a pretty decent amount of money there is a couple of topics that make me strongly consider my options.
You set your goal, you plan to do something about it, but you fail in first week, then you fail in second week, and it happens for several weeks in a row. At some moment you actually have three options: change something in your approach, accept that this might not be something you actually care or continue hitting a wall with your head. As the last option seems absurdal you have very limited options.
I created my new CV...
Hmm, can a good week be a bad one at the same time?
I am currently listening to `Can't Hurt Me` by David Goggins. What a book it is! What a story! What a man!
Wake up at 5 am so you have the bonus time to focus on your obsessions and personal progress and at the same time sleep enough so your body regenerates well. Do you notice the conflict between those two?
I am writing a book! Well, not yet exactly, but I will write a book someday.
Whoa, what an intensive week it was! What an exhausting one. Lots, really lots of work with home renovation has been completed.
I like this new formula for reaching any remarkable life goal...
I started preparing myself to run the first marathon. The fact is that my whole week's training plan was even more ambitious, but still, I am happy to admit that I feel great. I run faster and longer than before, I am able to maintain a good speed without losing my breath. It is still 20 weeks before the challenge so I believe I started my preparations early enough.
I love great stories, I adore amazing comebacks. After a really tough week, my frustration reached its peak on Saturday morning when I caught myself staring at the laptop without any progress in the dev library I was working on on the first comfortable morning this week.
What a great ending to the last week it was. What a shock therapy I experienced this week when, during the periodic medical check I was sent to the hospital due to the very bad ECG chart - I had the irregular additional beats of the heart.
I like flying with my little DJI Mini 2 drone. It's perfect device for so called `Sunday pilot` - easy to steer, very stable but on the other hand very light. Still, all my time spend in the dronnie topic is related with things I really enjoy (flying), things I accept (preparing some clips for to present to my family) and things I stress about (preparing & publishing my creations). As one of my goals I wanted to become a person known from publishing dronnies. The thing is that is tightly coupled with the topic I hate most - publishing. The question is - shall this be my goal? Is this actually my goal? Or, maybe I just wanted it to become my goal while somewhere deep in my heart/soul/mind I don't feel it that way?
Next week has passed by and I am on the one hand rather relaxed, however, on the other hand, I don't believe I made any progress at all. Sure, I spent a lot of time working & enjoying time with my family, I spent a lot of time on stuff related to my new flat and reading a book "The Courage to be Disliked".
I am not an alcoholic (hopefully). However, I am aware of the bad impact of alcohol on the daily operation of the brain. This is why I would like to drastically limit the amount of this liquid I absorb ideally to zero. For the past couple of weeks, I tried to survive 10 days without a bit of alcohol and it seems impossible. On the one hand, I can't believe it, on the other - this is part of the circles I live in.
Last week was extremely exhausting, starting from the additional amount of daily family duties, through a lot of overtime work, ending with a super intense weekend with a great concert and a trip to the countryside. According to the plan, I kept positive for most of the week, maybe except for a few more difficult moments. I practiced a lot despite too warm temperatures, I performed a great additional presentation in work in the form of knowledge sharing.
Summer holidays are right around the corner! What a crazy and tiring time it was in the last weeks, but it's over. I can finally announce that I have started the 10-day out-of-work break, the longest one in the last three years!
La dolce vita, a popular Italian phrase describing a style of life, is in practice pretty similar to the Ikigai concept - focus on now, enjoy what life brings to you & stay positive.
Pretty recently I wrote about a work-life integration as the concept I disagree with.
Finally first bit of holidays this year! We spend 3,5 great days in mountains if Beskid ΕlΔ ski in the south of Poland. Weather was perfectly balanced to give us some time for montain walks when the sun was shining and wind not blowing and all the fun related to swimming pool when the weather was the other way round . This of course had to impact some other plans for this week as 3/7 days were of but well, I see no reason to regret! π₯³
It seems a bit unproffesional to plan accomplishing one thing and doing nothing about it and at the same time successfully finishing something else, that was totally not planned. But hey, that's the life, right?
Playing Blitz in chess is pretty exausting - you actually need to stay super focused through the whole game, otherwise it's super easy to make a mistake which usually means loosing a game. This week was perfect example of my attempts to play chess without preparing perfect environment for that - without any disturptions, with head free of other problems and considerations. Other that daily practices I tried several games and lost like 80% of them π± It sounds like my next checkpoint will be super difficult to achieve without serious practice.
I am kinda workaholic. There is nothing to be proud of, although I feel that for some people being a workaholic is being someone better than alcoholic, constant smoker or drug addict. Spending too much time in work, no matter how you define it is also a problem. It's not even about taking overtime in your work, but expecting something more from yourself even after work. If week has 168 hours and you work only 40 hours a week it means that you could do something extra during remaining 128 hours. So much time - so much pressure.
A big boy should find a balance between little boy' dreams and reality. Sometimes I feel that every week planing is not so optimistic and it shall be actually possible to reach most of, if not all the goals.
Actually, I like learning. It may sound weird but I like to know a lot, even if just on the basic level. Still I feel that every topic has multiple layers, like an onion. You start with scratching the surface, but under it the complexity rises up to the very detail level. Some people spend whole live diving deeply into one topic, some people prefer just scratching the surface of many of them.
Each decision has the feature, which might not be visible at first, but usually becomes visible once we feel remorseful some time later.
If we consider a week as a bunch of moments we will quickly notice that each moment is different - lots of them just pass by silently, some introduce difficulties we need to solve on daily matter while some of them are perfect to push us further.
Ain't it that simple? When you have plenty of time you have wider perspective, sometimes focus on things you just like or wanna do, not the things that are the key ones. But, in the other scenario when you are actively seeking for a bit of time to make any progress you start focusing on essentials - cause they actually matter most.
Actually the best moment to go on holidays is the one when you say that you don't have time for holidays. Lack of time sits inside your brain, keeps you stressed and tired. There might be couple of medicines for that but probably the best one is taking a break and having holidays, even if short ones.
You are at the edge of your forties and you still feel that you mostly live not you life but adopt your life to someone else's life. Do you think this is your problem, problem of the other person or simply toxic relationship? To be honest, as it stands for today I believe that any kind of toxic relationship is mostly cause by ourselves cause we allow for this situation to happen and to last.
You could call this week a total failure.
I feel that I'm kinda sorry for people that tend to have polymathic character but not enough talent & focus to become expect in being a polymath. You know, it's nothing wrong in being an expert in several areas, it's actually amazing thing. Problem starts when you want to be the expert in several areas but, for several reasons, you fail to become one. I am actually writing this from position of someone who has an eagerness to become polymath but fails to progress far enough so I really can feel how frustrating it can be.
The best definition of very active time is the one when you write weekly summary on... next Wednesday π Weeks like this happen - they are crazy, costing you lots of time & energy, however, retrospectively they are potentially the best thing that can happen to anyone. You know, craziness will end, you'll recharge batteries sooner or later but what's in memories stays in memories forever.
Today we have very small celebration - it's been a half of the year since I'm writing my weekly summaries πππ This is actually a good opportunity to repeat once more that stubborn pursuit of the goal is actually the best way to achieve it. It may not be the fastest and most efficient way, it may require lots of time, energy and patience but it gives the highest probability of reaching goals.
So, I was born and lived for first 23 years of my life in Cracov, Poland. They say that we are very traditional people. We are so traditional, that if something happens twice in a row we call it a tradition. For second week in a row we have very small celebration - this time related with finishing first milestone of `Consider it done` app. How could I did not admit that it slowly becomes a tradition to celebrate something? π
In crazy 2022 year I actually wanted to spend at least 2 weeks on holidays with my family. Usually it means going for a longer trip during holiday season. As this year is different we decided to split our holidays into set of smaller trips to different parts of Poland. Last episode of out holiday time was about to happen by the end of summary and actually happened this week.
The whole blog is all about `reaching goals`...
This week could be concluded with very important lesson - lack of good plan can lead to lack of progress. Summary of last week missed one important step of adding tasks to accomplish for this week to general week plan. As expected, it ended as it should end - week passed by without huge success.
Consistency, persistence and patience - the big three needed to reach goals. But, here comes the counter three - creativity, responsibility and helpfulness - and they don't like the big three. They want to be the three to rule me all.
For years I am used to think about myself as the healthy one. I try to live active live, I am on a pretty good diet, I limit sugar & alcohol, I've never smoked, I sleep like 8h a day. And then, suddenly, organism says that something is wrong...
Last week was really intense with lots of things happening around my health (two Holter 24h measurement sessions) and my sons wrestling career (3 visits to doctors before he was granted to become professional sportsman). All the preparations had deadlines on the weekend - I was participating half-marathon on Sunday while my son was participating wrestling tournament on Saturday.
Being alive can have so many meanings. For me, actually it means that after positive heart tests I returned to running. It also means that after couple of difficult work days I joined a project that seems to be super tailored to my best & current knowledge and it lets me instantly develop with the speed like I was in a project for at least some weeks.
Procrastination is very popular explanation for lack of progress. It's sooo easy to get disturbed when the big chunk of work is looking at you waiting to see how you try to tackle it. Oh, it's a pure fun for the chunk to see you fail even to start a task.
It's been four years actually since my butt hurt me last time from working too much in sitting position. Four long years of work, mostly from home, still in changing positions - sitting, standing, moving around, with back hurting after standing too much but never with butt pain.
The reason for `4hour.me` project is to make a progress in my life. One of my observations during weeks of this project is the need to focus and constant struggling with distractions that slow me down.
Last week I wrote about lack of focus that can slow me down. On the other side, this week I am writing about impatience that can also slow me down.
I guess most of us that watch any sports events or some commercials in the western world are familiar with one Heineken campaign - Drink responsibly. Although this combination of words does not sound perfect to me - the whole campaign is very important and needed nowadays. I have no idea if it has any measurable impact in practice but let me believe it has.
The current time is crazy. November also does not help to recharge, this is why it's tough sometimes to keep the energy at the appropriate level. Of course, the one way is to fall asleep and wake up around March, but that's the easy way.
How to summarize a week when biggest tasks planned for this week were not even started but, on the other hand, there were some successes in other areas? A good, soso, or still bad?
Short days and long evenings encourage you to spend more time at home rather than outside, eg. reading books.
Recently I heard some advice that although making a list of goals is the first step towards reaching them...
Winter has arrived in Poland. The first days of winter are extremely difficult due to both drivers and roads being unprepared for the winter to come. Freezing rain, roads not covered with salt or sand, summer tires on some cars - that's the reality we all have to face in the first days of real snowy winter.
Winter has arrived in Poland. The first days of winter are extremely difficult due to both drivers and roads being unprepared for the winter to come. Freezing rain, roads not covered with salt or sand, summer tires on some cars - that's the reality we all have to face in the first days of real snowy winter.
It's Christmas time so I had to use the opportunity to look back a year ago. Usually what I am used to is reading or listening to people proud of what they have achieved in the past year - the idea for that is to feel proud but also to prove and motivate others that lots can be done within a year.
Let's try to predict what the future brings...
Sometimes, once you look back to the week that has just passed by you realize that the week was much better than you would expect it to be. Great, unexpected progress is always welcome, especially after a series of tough weeks. I am happy that this is related to a New Year - this is always a nice boost to New Year's resolutions.
So, I finally started being more active this week and this was not an easy task. It occurred quickly how bad is my form after having flu recently. My condition is tragic, according to the Health app I'm in the worst form since June 2019 π«’
So, I finally started being more active this week and this was not an easy task. It occurred quickly how bad is my form after having flu recently. My condition is tragic, according to the Health app I'm in the worst form since June 2019 π«’
The problem with weekly summaries is that you try to summarize the whole week and each of the 168 hours of it in one moment based on your current mood and point of view. That of course is far from the average during the week, but well, it is what it is, right?
168 hours of the week runs away definitelly too quicky. Not sure why it's not.. let's say at least 200 hours. Maybe with additional 32 hours meeting progress expectations would be easier. Well, it is as it is and it's ok, cause summary shows pretty soso week!
What if life was a game of chess? Initially, it seems like it would be much easier...
From the live point of view, this was actually a kinda boring week.
The first year of this project has passed by. The first anniversary makes me wonder if this was a good year. If the project I started a year ago actually changed my life? I defining goals for year, month, and week makes it easier to achieve them?
This life week was rather focused on weekly goals, which is good, right?
At some point this week I felt like a well-programmed robot of a well-functioning machine. I'd say that I am in a pretty good physical form (one of the best, tbh). Although working hard during weekdays and the weekend, I still find time daily to learn and practice some chess and some other activities. That makes me feel both great and scared.
Finally, after tough weeks of catching form after the end-of-the-year crisis I recently had an idea to check if I am still able to run 10km.
One of my goals for March was to survive another strike of 2 weeks in a row without alcohol. I think that even writing it in the form of `surviving` exposes the scale of the issue. There are many opportunities in your life to have a glass of wine or a drink - Friday evening chill-out while watching some movie, meeting with friends, visiting family you haven't seen for a while, clubbing with work buddies, celebrating personal successes, birthdays, namesdays, anniversaries, etc.
I forced myself to pause. Sure, it did not happen on purpose, but accidentally; still, due to injury I had a medical treatment this week. On the one hand, it solves the issue, and on the other introduces a big pause in my daily activities. I feel that I've recently shaped a great form and this pause will make things complicated. I am already afraid of gaining weight and losing some muscles and stamina. What is worse I am afraid and not having a way to flush my daily stresses and frustration, especially when running.
I'm still during the medical pause. The wounds are healing but it was difficult for me to sit or stand for a longer period at least in the first part of the week. That also meant that I had much more time to think simply lying in the bed. I believe I spent that time efficiently, not only watching some Netflix or HBO but also thinking about the future.
Two weeks after the medical treatment I already feel much better and stronger and more confident when performing simpler daily activities like push-ups or plank.
I was actually wondering what could I write here in the summary of this week up to the moment when within 3 hours I caused 4 drone accidents which is somewhat interesting cause for the whole last year I made exactly one of this kind in first minute of my flying.
There are so many motivational books, speeches and courses nowadays. And they all contain some guidelines to be happy, to achieve success, to become better every day, to live a great life, etc. Sure, there are many ways to reach the same destination as well as there are many different destinations to reach.
Some things you do in your life are quick & simple or not challenging enough to look for extra motivation.
I'm back baby! The power is back, the motivation is back, the movement is back, and alcohol is also back π«’ but the overall effect of the week is super exciting.
I just realized how my general motivation is correlated with meeting the right people. Some people have a very good impact on my mood before, during, and after the meeting while others have the opposite impact.
Let me tell you the story of me - the investor to be. For many years now I am somehow aware of the fact that I should not expect a high pension when I finally am retired. After paying attention to the fundamental needs of a nice living space and fair quality of life it's time to think about investing the surplus for the retirement time.
Daily physical training. Daily lessons of investment course. Daily chess training and matches...
There is so much happening around that there is actually nothing specific to write about. The daily routine worked great this week with a bunch of good training, everyday long walks, lots of new knowledge accomplished, and a set of chess pieces of training. On top of that, we're finishing a bunch of side projects related to various areas which are also pretty time-consuming.
Last week I wrote about getting bored. The funny thing is that this week I participated in the `plSwift` conference and one of the talks was related to messing around and the side effects of it - surprisingly good side projects.
There are good habits, there are bad habits. The secret of progress is to build good habits and to destroy bad habits. As simple as that, right?
After super stressful and exhausting weeks of work, I finally started the 7-day holiday on Tuesday. In the past, I already introduced the concept of the I-need-holidays factor to measure the level of tiredness. It is represented by the number describing the number of days needed to fully relax and enjoy the holidays.
One of my goals is to improve my chess skills. I knew the rules since I was a child, but never went deeper into the topic. I'm ashamed to admit that, but a trigger to get into the chess again was watching `Queen's Gambit`. So I watched and started playing - offline with my wife and children, but also online on www.chess.com. I also found it relaxing to watch chess educational videos on youtube during home excercises.
Lazy Sunday, lazy, Sunday, lazy Sunday!
I've finished the investment course. Based on this I updated my financial plan and already started executing the first steps...
Will I enter the biggest project of my life? Will I define my future place to stay for a longer period? It looks like after years of thinking, discussing & wondering we are about to become the owners of the house in the countryside.
For a couple of days, we had a visitor in our flat - a 10-year-old cousin of my children. One thing that stroke me when we ate together was the fact of how slow she eats. It was absurdly slow compared to my family. Sure, she is known as the one that eats very little, but I realized that the speed of eating may have a significant impact on how much we eat and how it impacts our health & physical appearance.
In an ideal world, you sleep for 8 hours, you work for 8 hours and you live for 8 hours. That seems to be pretty fair, right? You give yourself enough time to recharge the batteries, to use those batteries to live an interesting life, and to earn some bucks to spend on that.
It's natural for most of us to hope to live forever, or at least as long as possible. We dream of reaching the magical age of 100 years, and we celebrate amazing records of people living even longer, looking for the secrets of a long life that only few possess, but everyone else would love to have.
I hate injuries. They happen in the least expected moment. You spend weeks or months training, growing muscles, and moving personal boundaries and suddenly you need to stop and take a few steps back.
Yet another Sunday, yet another summary time, and, to my surprise, I'm a bit stressed/frustrated since the early morning. My initial thought is the fact that once I checked my plan for the current week I realized that due to very active holiday time, I did not complete anything.
This was a crazy week mostly focused on the real estate market and decisions to be made. I've already summarized my thoughts on buying a flat for the office in the summary of...
The worst thing about living an organized life is that you have too much time to think which generates conclusions and actions that may lead to both simplification and complication, depending on luck, quality of decisions, ability to foresee the future, or random number generator, whatever fits best.
Sometimes I feel that we live in times, when things that were difficult before became simple, while, at the same time things that were simple in past are difficult right now.
We signed it! It took several years of discussions and considerations, receiving the opposite messages and considering our options. It took months of serious discussions and collecting documents. It took an hour to sign one of the most important documents of our life - our aunt gave her house to us and we agreed to take care of her once she will be old and will need it.
Life-changing decisions need to be periodically taken. Sure, they can be spontaneous or reasonable and well-thought, but the real problem is that they always are based on the past and the present, not the future, impacting not the past and the present, but the future.
They say that age makes you more aware of your emotions due to life experience and a general increase in wisdom. I can partially agree with that...
Days pass by, and weeks do the same, simply slightly slower. Sometimes it's very difficult to hold on for a while to actually celebrate and be grateful for all the things that happen around.
I was afraid of this half-marathon...
I'm forty. I take a daily bunch of pills, I visit the psychotherapist, I have my favorite shopping market, I have my routines, (finally) I have my voice and sometimes also the opinions, and, somehow I feel the age. I don't feel as young as I was even 2-3 years ago. Something has changed. Maybe it's the medical state of my organism, maybe some kind of tiredness, maybe it's my middle-aged crisis, but I feel different. I was superstressed days before the anniversary, but now I feel a bit more relaxed but still, different compared to before.
Sunday afternoon. It was a busy but productive week at work. We had many topics to learn with children, a couple of smaller fixes and changes in the flat, and two longer evening drinking meetings.
Some amount of cash and 4 options to choose from...
There is a very popular internet meme with a dog sitting on a chair...
The time for thinking is up, this is a time to decide. I've completed the loan of my flat this week and I am selling it this Monday. This also means I'm finally capable of buying something or paying off my mortgage.
I tried to meditate in past. I actually had 2 or 3 approaches but sooner or later it always ended one day when I had no time or focus or both and never continued working on habit. That is why I decided to do it differently now and combine active micro meditiations with physical activity like running, walking or swimming. And, actually it's not what I decided - I simply noticed that my brain does it on it's own when doing activity. Once I realised that it made medications much simpler - my main task is to start physical activity and just let it go.
Sometimes you prepare for the very special one week for a couple of months and, when it happens, things happen so dynamically that you simply do not have enough time & focus to celebrate.
Finally, after months of discussions and doubts, and looking for an ideal offer I decided to buy a new flat and signed the deal...
Let me start with the follow-up on the topics from the last week.
The weather can be one of the unexpected factors when planning anything.
F1 is on winter break. I lost the access to FC Barcelona matches. I completed the investment flat purchase saga. When I am thinking of a hobby I could spend more time on I'm thinking about chess.
I am generally a healthy person. In the last couple of years I have had a new tradition of catching a virus once a year around Christmas period.
It's Christmas time so I had to use the opportunity to look back a year ago. Usually what I am used to is reading or listening to people proud of what they have achieved in the past year - the idea for that is to feel proud but also to prove and motivate others that lots can be done within a year.
Let's try to predict what the future brings...
It's been about a year since visiting our local swimming pool. I have no idea how it is possible that we failed to visit our swimming pool for such a long time but this is a fact. Finally, having more or less a free Sunday we packed our family into the car and spent 2 hours swimming & relaxing.
It was the most freezing week of the whole winter so far with the temperatures reaching -20 degrees during nights. It was my most active week of the whole winter so far with two running sessions, one visit to the swimming pool, and a couple of physical activity sets. I was also a week of the real mindset switch. I finally had a great run in chess, I finished reading one book and I started the initiative of evening family reading.