Archive for the ‘Life Experiments’ Category

Phew!

Time log number 2… complete.

Here I’ve identified the key, critical areas that I made a note on in my first time log. In my prior log I had made note on the key aspects of daily behavior that needed a shift. I guess there’s only one way to tell…

The key results of my 2nd 9-day time log:

Driving:

8 Music

23 Audio

1 with Friend, just catching up

6 Rehearse

23 Calls and texts

Rehearsals did not skyrocket but they did increase to a degree, which was desired. a Big jump was seen in listening to audio programs, which have been playing ubiquitously in my car as of late! (Learning A LOT about marketing right now…)

Sleeping:

Average lumber per night: 5 hours 41 minutes

Average nap length: 27 minutes

Average sleep time went down around 35 minutes, and average nap time was a drop in about 15 minutes as well. Preferably I’d like to see naps just stop altogether. I think that they only occur because there is a lack of CRUSHING urgency and a feeling of tiredness seems to warrant them at times. Still a nice improvement here.

Rehearsing Speeches:

6 in car

7 out of car, average length of 22 minutes

Out of car rehearsals still weren’t tremendously frequent but honestly I felt as though I didn’t need them. I would rattle off a few lines of my next gig and feel 100% comfortable in terms of preparation. The speeches went off without a hitch. I feel as though when I speak on new material more rehearsal time will be more necessary.

Shower Length:

Average shower length: 6 minutes

Less than half the average time as before. Was shooting for 5, but this is a great improvement.

Read Time:

4 occasions of reading: 35 minutes, 25 minutes, 47 minutes, and 8 minutes (finishing the chapter)

I was aiming for 45 minutes per session and did not reach this goal. However, 25 minutes – 45 minutes is a solid range (though I aim for more).

Project Time:

20 occasions of working on projects.

Average project time: 47 minutes

A much bigger improvement over the last time log. I was shooting for an hour but this improvement of more than 15 minutes is significant. Distractions and choppy work sessions aren’t in my best interest and I know that my conscious efforts to eliminate them were successful.

Facebook / Email:

Email checks: 14

Facebook: 7

Email got a bit out of hand, and my minor blips into email (IE: to touch base of check up on even a single message) all added up to be a bit more than I’d like. I think once a day aught to be sufficient 90% of the time and will look to improve this continuously.

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To be frank, there were parts of this process where I thought I was forcing myself through with “will,” but I knew I needed to make the comparisons and its good to see tangible improvement after calibrating the areas I wanted to work on.

I think that if you want the highest level of personal efficiency, such an experiment is essential in seeing your own strengths and flaws.

Until next time…!

In late February / early March I decided to keep a log of my time for about a week – and it turned out to go for about 9 days. It was different having to record everything I do, and I think if nothing else it showed me how many things go on in any given day, and how many random tasks and interruptions occur in the midst of bigger-picture stuff.

Rather than getting carpal tunnel and boring the heck out of readers, I decided to summarize major notable points instead of re-typing everything.

The benefit of actually doing a time log is that you get to see read figures as to where your time is allocated on a minute-by-minute basis. You might find (as I did), that things are slightly different than you had previously anticipated – and that leaves space open to make real improvements in areas you didn’t know you had issues with, or areas you thought were closer to your ideas than they actually are.

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Here are the areas I wanted to look at, and the areas I will look to improve in the next time log project.

Driving: Here I wasn’t so interested in how much time I spent doing it (which I know if plenty), but more of what was I doing while driving. I like to make the most of my car time by rehearsing speeches, listening to audio, running through philosophical questions (inquiry), or making calls (mostly for business). Sometimes I just end up listening to music, which isn’t a sin but I don’t want it to be the norm because I could be making car time important (and though sometimes music is important in terms of lifting my energy and pumping me up for an event or something, it usually isn’t priority number one).

I drove a total of about 41 times. Within those 41 times I did different things while driving, sometimes I did more than one thing in one drive (like listen to music, then rehearse, for example).

Music – 17

Audio – 16

Rehearse – 5

w / Friends – 6

Calls – 9

Inquiry – 3

Visualization – 1

Clearly most of my time is taken up with music and audio, which doesn’t surprise me due to how easy it is to throw something from the iPod. The big change I want to see here is in far more rehearsals. I make a point to rehearse at least a part of a speech every day now, so my next time log should be much different. I’d also like to see music go down a little bit to make room for more rehearsals and maybe audio material. Inquiry and visualization are fun but not current area of focus.

Sleeping: I have made a point to not sleep much for the last year or so. Its one of the best decisions of my life from what I can tell. Here I wanted to track my actual hours of sleep and my naps as well.

Over the course of 9 nights I slept for 56:45. That’s an average of 6:17 per night. In addition, there were 6 total naps in the 9 days, amounting to an average of about :40 per day. This is not preferable. I’d prefer to see the sleep down to about 5:30 or 6:00 an the naps at a total minimum. These areas will be monitored as well.

Shower: Sometimes after a 4.5 hour Jiu Jitsu practice (running classes, teaching private lessons, etc…) I just want to “relax” in the shower forever. Its a waste of water and heat, and frankly there’s more important things to do – so I recorded my times in the shower.

Average shower time over 9 days was 12.8 minutes. I’d like to see that consistently be around the 5 minute mark.

Speech Rehearsal: Granted, in early March I wasn’t doing as many speaking engagements as I am now, but I wanted to make note of how much I actually practiced so that I can set a standard for myself.

Car Rehears – 5

(out of car:)

Under 30 min Rehearse – 4

Over 30 min Rehearse – 1

I would like to continue to see at least one rehearsal of around 45 minutes per week to just keep myself primed on my best material and used to speaking of extended periods. This also gives me time to perfect the way I communicate. I’d like to see far more car rehearsals, and I will time them next time.

Facebook / email: I have made a point to check these once, twice, or zero times per day. I don’t like to waste time bouncing to my inbox 20 times a day.

9 checks in 9 days. Thats actually just about the ratio I’m looking for. I can’t loose track of that stuff but I also can’t get too into it. Nice work here.

Average Time Reading: Sometimes I do more project work than I do reading (I go through phases like that), but its important that I get blocks of time to read within, so I wanted to track my reading time.

I found that I read 5 times, with an average of only 19 minutes per session. I need to see this number JUMP. The best method of doing so would be to block off larger chunks of time. 19 minutes does not allow someone to really sink into material, I’d like to see 45 minutes on average – at least!

Average Time Working Projects: Same as above. I want to know if I’m giving myself enough blocked-off time to really put effort into the projects that matter so much to my career and eventual grand-scheme contribution to the world.

I found that with 9 different instances of working on a project (about once a day), the average time spent working on a project strait was 28.33 minutes. Again, this is not adequate in my book. If I’m working on a speech or a presentation or my sport psychology independent study, I’d want to see much larger numbers on the board (1 hour at least).

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Craziness, this gives me a lot to work with and a lot to work on.

I have some distinct areas for improvement now, and the next time I work on this time log thing you can expect to see some huge improvements.

Until then!

-Dan

Funny image, to be honest I don’t even understand the message but for some reason I think its cool.

There were a few days I missed on this one, but most every day I carried this experiment out.

Part of me didn’t even want to record this experiment because I feel like I lost passion with it, but I cannot NOT finish what I start, so I’m going to at least throw up the details of what happened and go into a brief synopsis at the end. There’s a lot of very random “why would I do that”-type stuff in here, but hey thats what this experiment was about – being able to spontaneously act on something I set my mind to – even if I can’t rationally justify it.

Anyway, here’s a log of

‘Exercising the Will’ :

Day 1 -

I decided to eat nothing from 12:00 pm to 9:15 pm. I realized that once I realized that food wasn’t a possibility my mind let it go. If I didn’t set a firm line that I absolutely wouldn’t eat until a certain time, then I probably would have felt more hungry because my mind would have been able to consider food.

Its a good thing that the thought on not being able to eat didn’t run through my head. It was cut off with the possibility of food. Makes me realize (as I realized when I was cutting weight to compete in the Pan Ams in 2009) that thoughts of food – no matter what kind of thoughts – seem to result in a sensations of hunger.

Day 2 -

I had 4 hours to drive down to NY to train at a premier Brazilian Jiu Jitsu academy. I decided to spend an entire hour with no music and no phone, focusing on nothing except what was in front of me – my immediate sensations.

This meditation exercise wasn’t easy, as my mind quickly channelled itself to mental dialogue which it deemed to be productive. I consciously shut all of this down and aimed to focus on the lights on the cars at night, the dark landscape, and my own breathing. There were a few times where I would see an electrical tower or series of trees and I was able to consider them beautiful. Genuinely focusing 100% on my senses brought me to notice those little scenes that just had something mystical and pretty about them.

Day 3 -

I didn’t think of a will exercise all day, and then while in the shower after a long day of training I decided to stand under the coldest water possible for 30 seconds. Its something I’ve always disliked massively, and going from super hot water to super cold water was a shock, it was actually a little hard to breath for a bit because my chest and intercostals locked up on me when I turned on the cold water.

Day 4 -

After going out and hanging with a friend at my house until about 2:30am, I decided to jog around my neighborhood. In the dead of night. In the freezing cold. Over a mile. Backwards! Haha if anyone was up they would certainly have thought I was nuts. I liked this one – this was something I definitely didn’t want to do but when the idea popped into my mind I thought “Time to exercise the will” and just committed to do it.

Day 5 -

I wake up and its freezing rain outside. I have a business meeting in 40-something minutes away. You know what I don’t feel like doing? Feeling that icey rain. So I decide to take the entire drive with one hand out of the car. Man it was frigid, I had to bring my hand in a few times to make sure there was still blood flow and to prevent some kind of frost bite.

Then on my way home I thought about cleaning my bathroom, and how I didn’t want to do it – it wasn’t necessary. I realized, however, that I had missed a day of this experiment and that I would exercise my will and clean the whole thing spotless as soon as I got home – so I did. Sure didn’t “feel” like it, but it was cool to do.

Day 6 -

Before hoping into the shower I realize that I haven’t worked my exercise of the will, and the first thing that pops in to my head is a headstand so I randomly just go into a headstand for as long as I could stand it.

Day 7 -

I have a cool party coming up in a bit, and I definitely want to make it a fun event. It dawns on me that I should invite some people. Some random girl walks by on campus and she’s pretty cute. I introduce myself and tell her about the party and how I thought she was cute and wanted to invite her. We talk briefly and get some laughs in. I get the phone number and I’m off.

Day 8 -

Believe it or not I was afraid of the dark for a long time – even into early adulthood. Could have been all those scary movies as a kid – I use to love horror. On this night I walked around my house in the 100% pitch black – basically going by feel. I even went into my basement and explored it – basically like a blind person would.

Day 9 -

After a hard night of training I am filling up my tank at the gas station but decide to do it in sandals, shorts, and a T-shirt. Its 9:30pm and its well below freezing. I basically aimed to allow the cold sensation to pass through – to take my mind off of it and appreciate my surroundings.

Day 10 -

I wake up and start reading some sport psychology – then I decide that until I’m done with this chapter I will not take my eyes off the book. It was a fun challenge because the chapter took me 2 hours (I take a lot of notes). I was fiending for breakfast after that.

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Thoughts :

I had fun with this experiment. I think that just acting because we want to act is a capacity we could all use to develop. There are so many times when “I don’t feel like it” has held me back – and I want to be able to take my best action regardless. That’s why I developed this experiment – to cultivate the ability to act without having to justify it with reason – because reason is often clouded by rationalization and bogus fears.

Part of me thought the experiment was silliness. And it was. Pat of me just though “why don’t you just do what you really think is best instead of doing all these random things for the sake of ‘developing the capacity.’ Why not develop the capacity in everyday life by taking right action on your own terms?” AKA: why not just do homework when I know its best to do homework, and study when its best to study, and talk to new people when its best, etc… and develop it genuinely like that.

I like that approach too, and thats definitely something I do on a daily basis, but I think having an experiment like this is cool too. Its weird how something silly and pointless like jogging backwards around the neighborhood can actually seem fulfilling when you make it a challenge to yourself – when you make it part of a meaningful project. It actually does give that feel of “damn, I can do that… I can do whatever I tell myself to do.” It does feel like flexing the muscles of the will.

Its not that I want to be able to be the guy that jogs backwards at 3 in the morning or does headstands until his skull hurts – but damn, I definitely want to be able to be the guy who can just ACT and doesn’t need to sit and calculate and get caught up in rationalizing “reasoning.”

It has been quite some time since my last post here on LE. I’ve been traveling to compete, teach seminars, and train Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I’ve been writing performance psychology seminars for local sports teams, I’ve been applying to graduate schools (UPenn’s program for positive psychology is totally for me), and I have managed to keep and active social life.

Recently, however, I’ve decided to get into another bout of tinkering with human potential, and what better way to manage progress and ensure follow-through than to post it up on this site?

The Gist

Here’s what’s going on with this particular experiment:

Each day I’m going to make some challenging decision to either Do Something or Not Do Something, and either way I will follow through ruthlessly. For instance, today I’ve decided to not eat until after I’m done teaching grappling class after 9:00pm tonight. Tomorrow I might randomly drop and do 50 pushups while hopping in circles, or I might commit to only getting 3 hours of sleep.

Why would I ever want to challenge myself do following through on at least one random, out-of-the-blue thing that I determine for no reason?

To develop my will.

To develop my efficacy in my decisions ruling over my actions.

Think about it like this: When you tell yourself you’ll follow through on something, and you don’t follow through, you will usually come up with some rational construct as to why you didn’t follow through on your intentions. What I am doing is basically recognizing that I have no reason for doing an action other than demonstrating my will.

I am acting for the sake of developing the ability to act. Period.

My mind will say “Wait, don’t take this difficult action, there is no reason to do it!” and I will act anyway, developing my capacity to blow through any kind of hinderance to my intention.

My actions will not be random simple actions, they will be challenging and/or uncomfortable, such as talking to strangers, karaoke, limiting my sleep or food, limiting my phone use, etc… I do this because it is “uncomfortable” actions that my mind will be quickest to resist, and I’ve determined that “uncomfortable” is not a criterion for my mind to NOT follow through on my intentions.

But… why?

I think about it this way:

Often times when we set challenges for ourselves that are uncomfortable or unusual our mind will bring up enough rationalization to prevent us from following through.

Often times, this is because our present mind state (flooded with fear or with discomfort) is inferior to our mind state when we made the commitment to change or act (presumably, this was a state unfettered by silly fears and doubt, a state connected to our bold intentions).

If one is able to turn off fears and doubts as much as possible by placing action on following through in and of itself, one may be able to develop a will that is more and more powerful at directly effecting behavior - as opposed to a weak will.

That’s the theory anyway!

Getting Started

So today is day 1, the challenge came to me as I unwrapped a delicious granola bar. I thought “Hey, I want to eat this so bad, how about I don’t eat anything until way later tonight?” Hurray, something uncomfortable – something to push through and develop the will.

We’ll see how it works out, there will be at least another 2 weeks worth of these posts coming.

Disclaimer

I’m not a cognitive behavioral therapist, and frankly this experiment might not develop the kind of inner efficacy and strength of mental fortitude that I’d hope for it to develop, but either way I’m pushing forward into it, leaning into my edge, and I know for a fact that I will draw something valuable from it.

Until next time…

Today I’ve run through my Efficiency Study Life Experiment. Reading through the study provided me with insight in terms of common sticking points and recurring issues – something I was definitely looking forward to.

Why? Because now I can set some new habits in place to ensure that I manage my time and my life in ways that facilitate the experiences and achievements that I most want in my life. Fantastic.

Before recording a single day for this study, I determined that when I finished it, I would implement 10 changes into my life that would deal with the biggest issues I encountered.

Here they are in all their glory:

(You’ll notice the first 3 have to do with a sense of urgency and getting my life honed hard towards priorities [a big theme for me right now], while the last 7 are more in the category of general “best practice” for efficiency.)

 

1. Oscillate between periods of Achievement and Exploration: I noticed that most weeks I will work on some Achievement-oriented stuff like building presentations and making phone calls to set up meetings and writing material for coaching and making flyers, while other times I am involved in more Exploration-oriented stuff like reading, taking notes on audio programs, writing inquiries on topics in self-development, etc… I want to make a firm distinction between these two and keep them separated – this is the most important new habit I am going to implement! I will designate the last week of any given month to do the more Exploratory work, while I want to cram the rest of my life with activities that are bringing me towards concrete ends in Time Management Consulting, my Jiu Jitsu academy, making money, making and booking presentations, getting referrals, etc… Don’t get me wrong, the Exploration stuff is great, thats where I innovate new content and thats important to me BIG TIME. However, I want to get things done and focus most of my time on those activities that will get things done. If I have little slices of time I might do a little exploration here and there, but I know where I want most of my resources. I might change up the way I separate these two facets of my work, but I will definitely keep them separated.
2. Set firm weekly goals tied into my highest monthly / annual / life goals: I have been doing this for all of August, and I think it has kept me on track in a fantastic manner. Having concrete weekly goals makes it much harder to flounder time away, and it orients my resources towards my bigger life goals which seem abstract without the middle-man of a weekly goal list. This helps to bring urgency into the picture as well.
3. Purge my potential creative writing and Life Experiment list monthly: Each week, I come up with new ideas for Life Experiments and articles and inquiries. It is always the case that I come up with more ideas than I finish. Soooo many more ideas than I have time to tackle. This is a great thing, but it tends to backfire when I see huge lists of potential creative work. Some of it I’m not interested in anymore, some I have forgotten about. Now on the first of each month I will delete the potential writing that I’m no longer interested in working on.
4. Set time caps on potentially time consuming creative tasks: For instance, I could get stuck for 2 hours finding the best template and font to use for a flyer, or I could spend 20 minutes deciding which color to use for a border. Both of these seem way too long, and with little tasks like that, I think its best to just set a short timer and make a decision. 5 minutes, 10 minutes, whatever. This is what I do for research – I only allot a specific amount of time because I know I could spend all day doing research. Now I’ll apply it to small creative tasks that have the same potential to rob time.
5. Stack chores and do them before / after away from computer tasks: Here I want to take advantage of doing like activities with other like activities. For instance, instead of interrupting my creative work or my research a few times during the day to run laundry and clean my car and go to make copies at staples, I can stack these activities on top of one another. In doing so, I can get into “physical work” mode for a specific amount of time, and then go back to “mind work” mode fully. In addition, all of this physical work time gives me long stretches to listen to audio programs, instead of listening to 5-minute snippets while I do little tasks intermittently throughout the day. I must beware of “feeling productive” while listening to audio programs – I will keep a fast tempo and do all the chores swiftly so I can return to the other cool things I can do (see my good friends, go out at night, work on material I want to use in consulting, etc…).
6. Have a list of mindless physical tasks established: Sometimes I am too excited to be creative, my mind and body are alert and positive but in more of a bouncy, pumped-up way – and doing creative work doesn’t make much sense in these situations. So, I will have a log in my project list for random physical tasks that I can do when I have a lot of energy to release.
7. Designating times for the phone, especially in car: Barring some kind of impending emergency or big event on the horizon, I can avoid even noticing that my phone exists while I work on the important things in my life. So, while working on creative material, I can set my phone on silent and put it face down. Then when I break for lunch or I am getting ready to go out, I can make the calls / texts I want to make and the return calls I want to make. I can also save these calls and texts for when I’m in the car (going to a friend’s house, to a meeting, to class, etc…). Even if I’m waiting for a call, I can keep the volume down and only pick up if its a priority call.
8. Keeping track of wallet, phone, keys… : I can’t keep forgetting these things in random places, seriously. I’ve decided that when I’m out, I’ll have my wallet and keys in my left pocket and my phone in my right pocket. That way I keep a routine and nothing gets lost in the mix, its all habits. Also, when I am at home I only have specific, designate spaces where I allow myself to put my phone / wallet / keys down. So when I’m looking for them in my house they can really only be in one of a few counter tops or tables.
9. Check email and facebook every two or three days: I used to check this stuff daily, but honestly most of the time I don’t have a need to do so. Unless I have a pressing project or some very important contacts to make, I only need to look at it once every 2-3 days. If I look sooner, I will just check for the things I need to see and look at the rest on my designated “email and facebook” days.
10. Only relax while working for long enough to rest my neck and spine: When I sit and read / write for 6-8 hours strait, I end up having little pains in my neck and back that are alleviated by laying down or leaning far back. This is fine to do, but I notice that when I do this my body goes into sleep mode because I don’t sleep much. My answer is to only relax while working for long enough to get rid of the pain, get comfortable, and sit right back up to get alert and working. I will also permit no “long blinks” when I’m relaxing, they tend to want to turn into naps.

I know I’m going to have fun implementing these new habits, and I’m sure that’ll bring me to make even more distinctions in this area. 

Stay tuned.

 

 

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Took a little longer than expected, but the efficiency study is complete.

Over the last few weeks I’ve done 5-10 minutes of writing about my own efficiency to do what I want to do in my life – whether thats finding time to do my best writing or fitting in social events with the rest of my schedule.

This is going to be cool for me because I’m going to be able to read over all my notes on this project, which I have not done as of yet. Here goes:

Aug 4th-

Designating specifics for specific times, blocking out my day with time slots for individual activities. This is a good thing.

Research and building my GEMs (files where I record “keepers” from the material I read) / Archives takes less mental sharpness than it does to work on one of my speeches. Taking out most of the creative element allows me to still get things done in terms of finding new cool distinctions and extracting them. (I can calibrate my activity to my level of mental acuity, and work to get my acuity level up so that I can work on whatever I please… my options are limited as my faculties are limited)

^This means that when I’m tired I can work on less mentally straining stuff like research or GEMs or housework.

Always carry the iPod. Another 15 minutes of listening to productive audio while I eat breakfast or walk around the house doing chores is only a good thing.

Find the best use of discretionary time in terms of what needed to get done that day anyways. I spent some time surfing psychology on the web when I could have worked to build my GEMs.

Aug 5th-

I was on a roll with the stuff I had drawn up for myself. I had time slots and a nice variety of awesome projects.

One thing I’m noticing now is that I can’t write these things when I’m dead tired. I’ll have to include LATE last night into the daily efficiency studies.

Part of me yearns for more sense of real urgency in my life, for more PUSH towards something that must necessarily happen. Though its nice to have free reign to read and write as I desire, I want to have a bunch on my horizon that I have to chase hard. I will do this with my consulting and presentations at URI for tomorrow. I want to set dates I want things done by and I want to set goals for how much I can do with this (and tweak it given what the market can bear).

Eating food at night tends to be a time waster downstairs. I should prepare foods quickly – and preferably have something portable and workable while doing other work – like a granola bar or something.

I managed calls and texts today very well, putting the phone on silent and honing into fulfilling work. Sometimes you will have interruptions every 30 seconds, and you must learn to do activities that can be interrupted – and usually get done with those phone conversations or text conversations so that you can hone into working more deeply.

Aug 6th-

Most notable comment – keep the cell on silent when working. It makes a massive difference.

However, what do you do when you’re already in a conversation via txt with 3 people, and you’re having them rain down on you?

It seems like these times should be matched with car times, because in the car I have nothing better to do but call and txt. Then again txting a driving isn’t very safe.

It seems like I should align these times for before or after my productive blocks. I can use them like a breather and at the same time I can run through info to build my GEMs files (right now I’m working on Lifehacker and 43 Folders). I could also check facebook, email, analytics, phone / cc bills, etc… I can do anything that can be intermittently interrupted without detriment to the process.

It also seems like I should run these text-a-thons all at the same time so that its one flood for one period, and not a big trickle that chops up by day.

Also, when I’m feeling low on energy and working on anything (especially my most creative work, such as my speeches), I’ve gotta get up and snap out of it. I can walk downstairs, pace back and forth, and generally convey that high intensity and energy that I carry in me, I have to wake it up. I can run some internal dialogue about how pumped I am to be working on what I’m working on.

There is no reason not to be listening to productive audio when eating. I do it during all chores, why not all logistical things where I am not engaging my brain with other things.

I’ve moved checking email and facebook to once every 2 days. Good move. I have to now find designated times to check out the psychology forum. I never daddle their all day, but sometimes I will check it a few times throughout the day and I feel like one time is idea. I will from now on only check it in the morning, and I’ll plan to check is once every 2 days.

Aug 7th-

I have a new term: accordion activities. These are activities that can be short or long depending on variables.

For instance, today I was in limbo as to when I was going to the beach with my friends. It was one of those “could be any second, could be an hour from now” situations. No use just sitting on edge until the call comes in. Instead I worked on doing a book review (I like to read and record the GEMS of various books or content-oriented websites). This is something that can be interrupted by texts without real detriment. It can also be done for 5 minutes or 5 hours. Writing articles and speeches is not like that, those are creative activities that require blocked away spans of uninterrupted time.

It occurred to me that if we know we must be somewhere or do something later in a day, we should get our stuff together and prepare ourselves fully WAY before the time comes, be it the day before or a few hours before. That way there are no variables for having to find things or change cloths or gather materials. Hence, if I’m going to Jiu Jitsu I already have a water bottle filled, some fruit packed for a snack, and my grappling cloths ready. Then I can literally leave and know almost exactly when I’ll get there, as opposed to rushing last minute (a very human tendency).

On another note (and this is something I’ve mentioned before), doing logistical things at a fast pace pays off. In this instance, I use “logistical” in terms of anything that is not creative or necessarily meaningful or desired, such as walking to a club, making lunch, taking a shower, etc… I lot of time can be flittered away on those things. Its funny, but I notice that when I have a clear idea of my purpose in a given context, to as to where I’m going and what I’m going, I have a very fast tempo (because I am driven by the compelling things I want to accomplish).

I keep forgetting to bring my ipod inside when I walk inside. Then when I’m making a sandwich or something I can still be jamming out to some productive audio on philosophy or psychology.

Started a hotkeys text document. Definitely a good idea for reference if I want to be captain speedy in the mac environment.

Aug 8th-

I have noticed that when I am pumped on something, when I am really excited about something – it becomes difficult to sit, focus, and hone into work. If I come home from an awesome day at the beach or an intensely fun event, the tendency is for me to want to “bask” in that emotional state some more. It makes me want to play music that resonates with that state (high energy, fun music). I noticed that even in the car ride home from such an event, I want to crank tunes instead of doing what I usually do and listen to audio programs.

In terms of efficiency, is my objective to bask in that state or to settle into working? Of course this depends, for work without joy probably is not very good, and joy without work doesn’t facilitate my highest goals.

The next time this happens, I’ll aim to either keep the tunes on and occupy myself with mindless tasks like room / car cleaning or other grunt work, or I’ll take some deep breaths, channel my excitement into a functional work state, and get to pounding away on speeches, inquiries and articles.

In an interview with David Allen (author of “Getting Things Done”), I heard him quote a book called “The War of Art,” where he said something like: “We resist what comes forth from our soul, because we must draw it from there.” I resonate with this insight. I find that often what we are most excited to express tends to want to hide, there is an antsy-ness to its coming forth.

This may be why I am rarely in a peak state when I write, there is some resistance in drawing content from within myself. The answer here seems to be pushing through and expressing it anyway.

During the night I spent a bit too much time on a tedious, relatively mindless task: looking for a photo in my records. I was sifting through and poking around for 20 minutes or so.

This instance made me realize that such tedious tasks should either be coupled with productive audio (since I wasn’t occupying much cognitive energy during this task), and that such tasks aught to also have time limits. Obviously I could spend 30 minutes picking the right font to use on a flyer, but that would be a waste – 5 minutes tops would do the trick almost as well and would move me on to bigger things.

Dealing with excitement before an event can also involve doing mindless work. This is why its important to have a list of simple physical tasks, so that in the bit of time before something exciting (a tournament, a big trip, whatever), we can still get things done.

Aug 9th-

Today I successfully switched activities to something less cognitively involved when I felt tired. I got up and moved around because I noticed I was dozing off, and then I regrouped with another priority task that involved less thinking and creativity.

We tend to flounder time when we get antsy about something. When your mind goes into the land of potentials and it imagines desirable and undesirable consequences, you end up floundering mental faculties and unless you have some low-involvement activity to get into, you’ll wind up floundering your time, too.

Locked my keys in my car like a rocket scientist. I still do not have the flawless habit of checking for my wallet, phone, and keys before transitioning between different contexts. I still find myself running into the house after I leave and realize my keys are inside somewhere. My “spaces like offices” project should help with this, but its not fully integrated. I’m totally going to get sneaky and attach a key somewhere under my car.

Food is plain logistics to me. I can appreciate good food, but in my day-to-day life, food is just fuel for my body and mind to strive in fulfilling directions. Thats it. Period. It serves no other real purpose for me during most days. I have found that I can mix a meal with conversation and make the event worthwhile. Normally I just want something fast, something I can eat while I type or read. However, if I am eating more of a real meal with utensils and all, engaging people I care about (parents, friends, brother) in conversation makes the event have some value outside “fuel.”

Aug 10th-

Napping is not an ideal in my opinion. Although sleeping 2.5 hours at night and taking a 1 hour nap during the day does allow me to feel more awake throughout the day than a 3.5 hour sleep at night, napping tends to interrupt potential creative time. Getting into and out of bed, getting into and out of the semi-groggy state that sleep involves… these are both factors that discourage naps in my opinion.

Got lost taking the back roads to my house. Granted I had productive audio to listen to, but this could be a big waste of time. When in doubt, GPS (might as well USE the thing).

Setting firm daily and weekly objectives and blocking out other projects seems to be a very effective way to channel oneself totally into priority tasks and make “free time” (which I am lucky to have this summer) into ideally productive times, too.

Today I’m setting a morning objective to take more notes on the “LifeHack” book I got online. Lets see if this morning objective gets things going correctly (IE: pop out of bed and pound into material).

Do not permit “long blinks.” When you sleep as little as I do, your body will do all that it can to slip in some shut-eye. This same rule can apply anywhere: do not permit short periods of anything that you don’t deem to be in line with your ideals in the first place. If I need sleep I’ll get it, but when I’m working I don’t want to doze off – so I won’t permit any of it.

I am pretty good at focusing on one task, but what I want to become proficient with is dedicating to work on only project Y until it is done, then only project X, then only project Z. This is a kind of discipline I know I would benefit from. I will do this tomorrow and see how it works out…!

Aug 11th-

Didn’t set my computer alarm, just my phone alarm for 4:30. Even if I get a good amount of sleep, I find that such times usually just get blown over in a sleepy haze. I shut off my phone alarm and didn’t get up for a second. Which turned into two hours. I am awoken to realize I’m late for a casual meeting. AAAAH out the door I go.

Worked exclusively on my speech today for 3-4 hours. In the beginning there were a lot of txt interruptions, but I got them handled, put the phone on silent and faced it down. Working strait through was a bit of a challenge for only one topic, and I did have to battle through sleepy eyes from time to time. During this time when something else came to mind I wrote it down like a mind-sweep, and forgot about it in order to keep working. Overall this resulted in some very big progress on the project in general.

Towards the end of my project focus, I picked up the phone and sent out a few texts

which was a bad idea. I ended up now having more interruptions while working. They weren’t terrible ones, its just that I could have waited until I was in the phone to contact those people (when I have less priority stuff competing with it).

Aug 12th-

There are some activities (such as washing the car or doing laundry) than cannot be coupled with creative writing or even with the computer at all. During these activities I usually will listen to cool music (which I find gives me a good pace during these activities and makes them enjoyable) or I listen to come kind of productive audio about psychology / philosophy.

My recent idea is to try to stack these activities so that I knock them all off at once – which is more efficient. In addition, I would be able to listen to productive audio for a more extended period of time as opposed to random 5-minute blips of time when I do these “away from cpu” activities.

Forgot my wallet in my car when I went out tonight. Makes me think more about my “organize spaces like an office” idea. The premise is: what if in every context I had my things organized.

I have my car organized so that I know what is in what side door, what is in the glove, etc… and I have all of this written down. I did the same with my room.

What if I could make a point to always have my phone in the right pocket and the wallet in the left. What if I made THAT into a habit? I probably wouldn’t loose track of my stuff as much. I will be writing about this in a productivity post soon, this is an idea that I’m going to stick to.

Aug 13th-

Was in an awesome social state for a lot of today. When I am in these states I feel like just jamming to good music, dancing, and meeting people. This draws me away from yearnings to do much “productive work” in the traditional sense, though it sure feels good.

During these times it seems as though my best bet is to in fact go out and be super social and bouncy, or to settle down by doing something that doesn’t have to involve all my creative faculties. Something like taking notes on web articles or podcasts that I want to learn from.

Its funny, but it seems that positive emotions tend to trump “productivity” almost every time. Of course I recognize the value of producing good work, but at the same time if I feel really good doing something else that is in alignment with my values (meeting people, chicks, etc…) then I feel the strongest draw there. Its an art to know when to draw out of that and when to lean into it.

Today I was listening to a Merlin Mann audio recording, taking notes on it, and also surfing his site for content as well. When I heard something that clicked I’d write it, while in the meantime I was skimming his written stuff to see what I would want to refer to later. I found this to be a good use of my mental capacities.

Aug 14th-

First thing’s first. I had a tremendous amount of time today to get things done, and I totally focused on doing the highest priority tasks that I identified at the beginning of the week. I must say that using weekly goals as a guideline for priorities in the battlefield of real time… its daaaarn useful.

Tomorrow I will write more detailed monthly and future goals and be sure that all of them are aligned with me being who I want to be, and innovating / contributing / experiencing as much as I desire.

On short naps: it seems like they serve a place. I probably got 4 hours of sleep, then took about 40 minutes for a power nap and woke up feeling phenomenal. Its better than sleeping 4 hours and 40 minutes strait for the night.

I’ll make note to keep experimenting with this nap thing. It could be my body feeling lazy or it could be that these little blips of sleep have an awesome effect on my general alertness in the first place.

Why do we resist that which we know we want? Success barriers and other psychological factors involved are fun to bring in, but not so funny on a counter. Even when we know what is best for us, we will often hold ourselves back with silly fears that we will always regret 5 seconds later. It seems like the only mechanism to bypass this is to recognize it as a pattern and aim to change it.

Man I am tired… haha.

Aug 15th-

????? 

Aug 16th-

?????

Aug 17th-

?????

Aug 18th-

?????

Aug 19th-

Putting on the iPod while I walk around and do things in the house is a good idea – especially while eating, making the bed, doing laundry, and all those other activities that involve the body but no intellect.

The danger is, sometimes I will feel like I’m “being productive” while just listening to material and idling with menial house tasks – when in fact I would be best off to take advantage of my computer time and work on projects (I can jam to educational audio whenever I want).

When in a heightened state, the tendency is to perpetuate that state with music or related thoughts. When we feel “on” and excited and fun and social, we tend to want to stay in that good feeling.

For a while I have felt as though eating takes up more time than it has to. I find myself looking through pantries and grabbing a little something – then randomly idling around the same area and looking in same pantry for some stuff I just checked for and I know I don’t have – or I’ll sift through the fridge and do the same thing.

I think that coming up with some easy and ready-made, non-messy foods is a good idea. It seems like its also important that – if possible – to have some “to do while eating” tasks related to the task I’m working on when I get hungry. For instance, if I’m researching, I can bring up a bunch of websites I want to read and I can read them while I eat (since scrolling and clicking will be harder when I’m trying to eat food). Or for instance, if I’m doing some writing, I might do my read-through during the eating time so that I can get some editing in while I get fuel in my body.

It also seems important to eat only once. I find myself going in for small bites time and time again, when I’d likely save a lot of time by just putting a bunch on my plate and feeling satisfied afterwards.

I’m going to experiment with the food thing tomorrow.

Aug 20th-

Food and work. Tried to combine them today.

During breakfast I read a book that I’ve been meaning to read (which only involves sight and cognition so I was able to do it continuously while eating). Later in the day I was eating lunch and I did the same thing: I read.

Using this time wisely seems only proper.

In addition, I did not spend time fumbling around and eating every few hours. I grabbed a bunch of food, sat down with a book and ate it while I read. Bam.

Later in the day I felt a bit tired while doing some writing work, and I took a nap. Granted, I haven’t slept much as of late, but I don’t know if a nap was called for. I aught to have gotten up and attempted to shake off the tired feeling with a little walking around or deep breathing or calisthenics.

As I write this on August 21st, I realize that I will probably be able to experiment more with this stuff today being as I slept for only about 2.5 hours last night. Thats why they call it a life experiment…

Aug 21st-

????? 

Aug 22nd-

?????

Aug 23rd-

I almost nodded off while writing today. Again. This often happens when I’m laying down to type (usually because my back starts to hurt after a while of doing this stuff – and by “stuff” I mean reading and writing and reading and writing).

I noticed the tell-tale “long blink” happen, and I knew I had to snap out of it – I couldn’t succumb – I had gotten enough sleep last night.

So I put on a song that I love, a real sick jam (Craig David’s “Can You Fill Me In”). I stood up, stretched out, and grooved all high-energy to the entire song.

After this I put the computer back on the desk and sat upright, feeling alive, awake, refreshed, and ready to type like a machine.

On a side note, I think its important not to stay laying down for very long. I find that all I need to rest my neck is about 10 minutes or so. Thats all I need because my likelihood of “feeling tired” Get back to the desk. Back strait. F***ing WORK.

I switched to less creative work later in the night as I become tired. I went into note-taking mode on some psychology / productivity stuff that I wanted to record and process big-time. This is a smart move being as I don’t want to butcher intellectual material when I’m not optimally capable of intellectual stuff.

Conversations and interactions can be hardcore time-drainers. This is why its important to have a relatively secluded workspace.

I love warm human contact, don’t get me wrong. Enriching relationships is one of the core pursuits in my life. However, I don’t want to stick around and chit chat when its time to sit down and produce content.

Its important to have the capacity to end conversations with things like “before I go downstairs to get back to work…” or “one last thing before I leave…” Its also important to have the capacity to leave social situations when you deem it best. Sometimes its easier to just ‘chill’ and stay, but if you know in your core that you have other things to do that you value higher at this time – then don’t restrain yourself. I leave my friends to read and write occasionally, its not a big deal.

I had a touch of “inactive state” today. Thats what I refer to as the state where you just feel tired and not ready to move forward on anything. I was at a BBQ and just felt like sitting down even though I knew I wanted to go home and work on content.

In these instances, taking actions and getting excited is optimally important.

 

14 days analyzed hard…

The finale post of this Experiment will involve identifying major themes and making 10 commitments to the way I work and organize my life so that I can make tangible increases in my degree of efficiency. 

 

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I’m Excited.

I’ve decided my next Life Experiment is going to involve studying my own efficiency in terms of achieving my desired outcomes.

I plan to sit down and break down where I was most and least effective during my day.

This isn’t a blind view towards some ideal in “productivity” in the sense of making and producing for the sake of doing so. I’d also like to be effective in my workouts, in my teaching style, in how I organize fun things with friends, etc…

Sure some of this involves my implementation of GDT. For the most part, though, I think that I have integrated the GDT system relatively fluently, and now I’m starting to move into other material and my own style (though GDT is still something I study and something I highly revere). 

 

The experiment involves:

• Critically evaluating my day-to-day efficiency 
• Writing about it for 10 – 15 minutes per night
• Recording my adventures in this experiment category
• Editing my way of going about things and making new distinctions in personal effectiveness
• Identifying the 10 biggest new distinctions and sticking to them! (While sharing them with you guys, of course)

 

Pretty cut and dry, I’m excited to figure out where my loopholes are and write them down so that I can consciously move past them and become more effective at achieving what I want to achieve and experiencing what I want to experience.

It starts today…

Look for the first week’s updates next Tuesday (August 11th 2009).

 

 

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I spend much longer on this project than I had anticipated, but I think I drew a lot from it and I am pretty pumped to write up a finale about the entire process.

As a review, I made a point to visualize before major activities throughout my day. Sometimes this involved my internship, teaching grappling class, preparing a dinner, reading and writing personal development material, or anything else that occupied a block of time.

I gauged the activities with three figures: the number of minutes I visualized for, the intensity and “juice” of that visualization (0 to 10), and my rating of the overall experience of the event itself (0 to 10).

(X, Y – Z). X = minutes spent visualizing, Y = intensity of visualization, Z = intensity of experience.

The rating system was mostly to keep tabs on how I felt generally – its specific relevance and validity is looked at more closely at the bottom of this post.

Here’s a list of all that I recorded, including activities from July 8th to July 27th. In the actual writings I did, I included detail about each event, but the amount of typing I’d have to do in order to get that done would be astounding and carple tunnel-inducing. Enjoy:

1, 5 – 9 (Teaching a private lesson in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu)

2, 5 – 8.5 (Internship)

2, 5.5 – 4 (Writing a Time Management Presentation)

2, 4 – 7.5 (Internship)

0, 0 – 7.5 (Teaching Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Class)

3, 6 – 5 (Writing a Time Management Presentation)

0, 0 – 8.5 (Beach with Friends)

0, 0 – 10 (Friend’s House at Night)

1, 5 – 7.5 (Teaching Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Class)

1, 4 – 8.5 (Beach with Friends)

2, 8 – 7.5 (Weekly Review of my Files and Projects)

2, 5 – 8 (Internship)

0, 0 – 9 (Friend’s Party)

2, 8 – 7.5 (Writing a Time Management Presentation)

2, 5 – 8 (Teaching a Private Lesson in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu)

5, 7.5 – 9.5 (Teaching a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Class)

2, 5 – 7.5 (Internship)

1, 6 – 8.5 (University Seminar)

0, 0 – 8 (Writing a Time Management Seminar)

2, 7 – 9.5 (Internship)

2, 6 – 9 (Teaching a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Class)

0, 0 – 8 (Beach at Night)

10, 7 – 7 (Internship)

0, 0 – 7 (Gym)

1, 7.5 – 8.5 (Club in Newport)

1, 5 – 7.5 (Beach)

2, 6 – 7 (Writing)

2, 8.5 – 9 (Night in Providence)

0, 0 – 7 (Water Skiing)

1, 6 – 8 (Teaching a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Class)

0, 0 – 6.5 (Beach)

0, 0 – 5 (Picnic with Family)

1, 6 – 7.5 (Weekly Update on Files and Projects)

3, 8 – 8 (Business Consulting Meeting)

2, 7 – 7 (Business Meeting)

0, 0 – 7 (Teaching a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Class)

3, 7.5 – 9 (Club in Narragansett)

2, 6 – 8 (Internship)

1, 7 – 8.5 (University Seminar)

2, 7 – 9 (Toastmasters)

2, 5 – 7.5 (Teaching a Private Lesson in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu)

0, 0 – 8 (Writing a Time Management Presentation)

1, 5 – 8 (Teaching Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Class)

0, 0 – 6 (Business Meeting)

1, 5 – 8.5 (Sales Class)

3, 7 – 7.5 (Writing a Presentation on Time Management)

2, 5 – 8.5 (Teaching a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Class)

2, 7 – 6 (Club in Providence)

o, o – 9 (Reading “StrengthsFinder 2.0″)

1, 6 – 9 (Coaching for Time Management)

0, 0 – 7.5 (Meal with Mom)

1, 6 – 7.5 (Club in Narragansett)

1, 5 – 9.5 (Beach with Friends)

0, 0 – 8.5 (Carpentry with my Father)

2, 7 – 8 (House Parties)

2, 5 – 8 (Weekly Review of Files and Projects)

1, 7 – 8 (Running an In-House Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Tournament)

0, 0 – 6 (Hanging with Friends)

2, 8 – 7 (Friend’s House)

1, 6 – 7 (Business Consulting Class)

1, 6 – 8 (Visit Friend on the Beach)

0, 0 – 6.5 (Teaching a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Class)

 

Whoa thats a lot of stuff… 

Keep in mind that this doesn’t include all events that took a block of my time, but this is probably the majority of them – its everything I recorded.

The rankings themselves are rough and subjective, and many factors could have contributed to the scored of “intensity” for those various activities. 

Of course, it is very, very likely that one’s thoughts during an activity is the main determinant of one’s quality of experience.

The rankings may still be relevant in terms of referring to them to see basic trends.

 

The finale to this Life Experiment will be composed shortly. It contains personal insights from the experiment, trends in my own experience, and information recorded over the last week involving my mental focus during specific activities and how that might have contributed to the experience itself (I pose, after all, that the activity of one’s focus and thoughts during an activity is the main determinant factor in one’s quality of experience).

Don’t miss it.

 

As I stated in my first post, I have begun a Life Experiment involving a focus on positive outcomes. 

For well over a week I’ve taken time before the majority of my day’s major activities and focused on what I wanted to do, what I wanted to get done, and how I wanted to experience and move through the activity or event itself.

Some of the times I felt as though I was wasting my own time (part of my mind was saying “let me just DO things, come on!”), while other times I felt as though I had benefitted myself through the habit.

After a short while of practice and reflection, I think I’ve come to understand visualization and imagining positive outcomes a little bit better, and here’s the breakdown:

_________________________________________________________________

Reticular Activator System:

Before getting into this project, I was already aware of positive visualization (imagining ideal scenes, imaging ideal outcomes, etc…) as a tool that would gear our mind towards that which we desired most.

The portion of the brain called the reticular activator system is generally thought to be the place in our minds that determines what we pay attention at any given time. If we focus on hair styles and think of nothing but styling hair, we will notice hair styles everywhere, we will pick up on details about the styles of hair that we see on anyone we meet or even everyone we see. That’s what we focus on, and so our reticular activator system shows us that information in as many ways as possible.

The idea is, if you focus on failure, your mind will only notice the millions of ways to fail and will not open your mind to methods of success. It will keep you trapped in behaviors and thoughts which bring about what you think about – failure. 

Hence, if you think success and your mind is geared towards what you actually want in your life, your filters will align to let you see all those factors which will lead to your success – it will bring you to manifest behaviors and notice new perspectives that will further your objectives.

That’s the premise.

 

The Value of Visualization:

During my personal experimentation, I noticed that positive visualization is useless unless it serves one of two functions:

• Enhances the experience you feel (brings about happiness or charisma or compassion, or whatever emotional resource you deem to be best)

For instance, sometimes my visualization was not very specific or even particularly sharp, but I only thought of positive outcomes while listening to some fun music. This might not give me a clue as to what I should actually do during the event or activity, but it would bring me into an energetic and outgoing emotional state, which I would experience along with my visualization of the event – and also with the event itself.

Essentially, this is about involving feeling into the visualization process. Wether that involves getting pumped about an outcome you really want, or moving around energetically, or listening to some good music tracks.

• Enhances your meaningful objectives (clarifies what needs to actually get done, brings you to follow through on actions towards your goals)

For instance, a few times I barely visualized at all but wrote down different tasks to accomplish in a certain context or during a certain activity. This by itself was able to structure my experience of the event and make it more enjoyable and more geared towards my purpose.

I find that a simple check involving the question “what is my purpose?” will often yield steps towards that purpose. I did this at meetings, before teaching Jiu Jitsu class, or before going to the beach – all to just make note of exactly why I was going there and what I could do there in terms of my highest aims. This might be talking to someone in private, or asking a specific question, or buying something at the store, or dropping something off to someone I thought I was going to see. 

The Habit of Success-Thinking:

Additional future value of positive visualization is the fact that it aids in developing the habit of thinking about positive outcomes.

If we are able to gear our minds towards imagining absolute success in terms of any activity or event, we are on the track of getting towards those desired outcomes. We will help to gear our senses, our emotions, and our intellect towards what is best for the achievement of our ideal future.

We are what we think. We bring what we think into the world in far more ways than we are consciously aware of. Imagine if that entire process worked FOR us!

However, visualization needn’t be done during a pause before an activity in the way I did during this activity. It can be done far ahead of the activity, and most importantly during the event or activity. For this reason, my experiment (which I will provide the result for in a different post) isn’t an accurate measure of how much I “positively visualized” about a particular situation.

This brings us too:

 

An Ever-Present Function:

So long as we alive, our mind filters information to some degree. Wether we are walking on the beach, working on the job, or going to a social event, we are almost always thinking – at least to a slight degree, but often to a very noticeable one. 

If these thoughts swirl around failure, it will be difficult for us to achieve success (and if we do achieve it, it will be harder to notice). 

For example:

You plan to attend a social event with the goal of having fun and sharing stories and adventures with new people.

Before even leaving your house you think of how awkward you will feel trying to have fun with new people. You think about how people might react to you, you think about how that might feel. Your mind flashes with mental pictures of you off in a corner by yourself. 

When you enter the party, you remind yourself that you are here to meet fun new people and have a blast with them, but you can’t seem to achieve that end.

We might not consider what happened here to be formal “visualization,” but nonetheless, the reticular activator system was responding constantly to your thoughts. 

Since the inner pictures and dialogue were about failure in the given situation, you would have worked against yourself in two separate ways:

 

1. You would have brought your mind to notice mostly the information that would be related to your thoughts – and since your thoughts were about social “failure,” your lenses of perception would be likely to let through just that information to bring you to social “failure.”
2. You would have associated socializing – or that social scene in particular – with “failure,” with “rejection,” with pain. Doing this continually will bring you to generally fear these experiences in those given context, hence permanently keeping you from the attainment of your ideals in that realm.

Now let us imagine you think and feel a bit differently:

You plan to attend a social event with the goal of having fun and sharing stories and adventures with new people.

Before you even walk into the event, your mind spins with excitement around who you will meet there and all the fun you’ll have. You see yourself walking around and talking to everyone, spreading the party out and having a blast.

When you’re at the party itself, you feelings and thoughts are 100% aligned with your objective to have fun and meet new exciting people. You’re living your ideals because your mind contains no thoughts that aren’t congruent to the ideals themselves.

We might not consider this to be formal “visualization,” either, but the fact of the matter is that our emotional state and perception lenses were completely on “success,” and so we found it effortlessly.

Here you are aligning our thoughts with our ideals and so living out our ideals as an extension of your mental activity (which in this case is an excited, charismatic expression). You are also coming to associate social scenarios with pleasure, since that is the emotion that swirls in your body as our mind swirls with pleasurable thoughts.

To conclude, I have decided to slightly alter my Life Experiment to adjust for the details of how I believe the reticular activator system to genuinely function.

In my opinion, the most important thing about “visualization” is its effect on our perceptual lenses – which in turn affect our intellect, thought, and action. The subtle stream of thought before, during, and after an activity is likely to be far more important a determiner of our experience than a few minutes of visualization beforehand.

Hence, in addition to recording the duration and intensity of my visualization before an activity, followed by a rundown of my experience of the activity itself – I will do something different.

For at least one activity a day, I will also record something about the state of my mind during the activity. I will write about my focus during the activity, the inner dialogue I experience, and how I take control (or don’t take control) of it.

This might be a challenging task, since I will intentionally getting in my own head – which might bring about negative consequences since the most positive “flow” states (from my experience and from evidence in my psychology research) involve a certain letting go of self-awareness, a certain out-of-your-head-ness. 

This experiment will be longer than expected, but I’m sure it will be worth it in terms of insight and experience. I’m excited to dive into the understanding of the reticular activator and gain a better understanding of how we can come to control our perception and our experience!

 

 

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I continue to be amazed with the application of the ideas within “Getting Things Done.” Literally anything that I see as functional in my life I implement immediately, and I’m having a blast doing it. 

For a long time I have been diving in to ideas like “productivity” and “priorities” (including my first long philosophical treatise which dealt with these activities directly), but there’s a lot covered here that I haven’t seen anywhere else.

Here’s what I’ve been up to recently:

• Organized a workflow for my room and my car. Things are no longer randomly put in nice places, but placed in the most functionally efficient places possible, along with other related items. For instance, I have my reference files directly next to me by my desk, and I have a specific role for each drawer in my desk (writing utensils and office equipment, electronics, financial records, etc…
• I’ve begun reading “Keeping Work Simple.” This is another interesting book relating to uncluttered, stress-free work and productivity. Fascinating stuff. I’m currently digesting it in chunks (during discretionary time, such as lunch break at my internship) and taking notes on the poignant tips and tricks that I extract.
• I’ve begun consciously scheduling 60 to 90 minute blocks of time for important work. Its not a simple algorithm given my currently lifestyle, and it takes away more time from sleep (which as some of you know, I’ve been getting away from lately). However, these blocks of time are integral in genuinely becoming immersed in a project and producing the kind of quality work that comes from flow.
• I’ve organized the way I write in my daily planner. Used to be strait down chronologically with “maybe” actions in there with cemented issues. Now my calls are written on one side, with specific times listed next to those that require them. My “maybe” actions are fitted at the bottom, these are the actions I refer to when I find discretionary time. What’s written down chronologically are things that must be done. Different contexts are underlined to make things cleared (IE: At Jiu Jitsu Academy, At YMCA, At Internship, etc…).

There’s so much more to go into with this project and I’m eager to dive into it. One thing I’ve got to work on now is finding blocks of time to turn the phone off so that I can focus appropriately and not have intermittent distraction and random, fleeting topics cross my mind.

Much more to come, and in fact I’m sure this isn’t a complete list of the things I’ve updated.

 

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