ERE Adventuring

[NuncFluens]

Cool, thanks for the update. Your mentioning GTD has me thinking that I should give it another spin. It was a revelation when I first read it, but I'd be hard pressed to summarize the system today. I guess I just applied a whole lot of it and stopped thinking about it as part of GTD, but a reread is definitely in order anyway.

[Alphaville]

ah, gtd... gtd is a whole “philosophy” of work. the basic notion, borrowed from eastern ideas via martial arts, is that one’s head must be “empty” when performing an action—forget everything else except what you’re doing. thus in counterbalance it creates a personal bureaucracy to store and process everything else that is not the action that is in process. he calls it the “trusted system”.

like all bureaucracies, it tends toward maximization, so when it’s good it’s very good, but it can get quite overwhelming with noise over signal. when you hold trivial things right next to crucial ones, the trivial tends to overwhelm. of course, it’s best that the trivial stuff is outside your head anyway, instead of interrupting you when you’re doing something, so maybe it’s the monkey mind and not gtd that is to blame for it.

i am perhaps confusing gtd with omnifocus which are not the same. omnifocus is a software that was originally invented (i think) to handle gtd. merlin mann (of that “priorities!” article) i think is/was involved with that company from the start. (mann’s blog used to be called “43 folders” after the number of basic folders required to set up gtd).

omnifocus can handle the functions of gtd of course, but it has evolved beyond it. for one thing, gtd was paper-based and required large filing cabinets, whereas omnifocus is a software/cloud based solution, and thus more flexible in how it can sort and display your information.

one of these sorters, which is not original gtd stuff, is the “forecast perspective” which shows you what is coming up the pipeline. but it’s not a calendar proper, because the calendar in gtd is “sacrosanct” (if it’s in the calendar you can’t avoid it.) forecast shows you your calendars and then the tasks you have scheduled for that day. so, you can execute, reschedule, delete, etc. (like bujo) outside of your calendar commitments.

the gtd part i like there is that it lets you connect actions to big projects, and viceversa, i.e, to break down complex processes into actionable items. gtd goes into great depth about what it considers an “action” which is more or less atomic and must be concrete and executable and moves the larger project forward. a project is a coordinated group or sequence of actions—eg learn about some material, go buy it,clean workspace, work with said material, clean workspace, are 5 separate actions that would constitute a project. in my research into bujo i’ve seen complex things listed as “tasks,” which is less granular/less friendly to “chunking.”

the other thing i love about gtd is that the action lists are by contexts, so i know what i need to do when i change location or modality. e.g., i used to always leave my supermarket list at home, hahahahahaaa. now this is basically impossible. and if i went right now to my other house, i’d know right away what i need to do there (big advantage of cloud is i don’t need to grab a folder from my desk to take with me). and because actions are listed by context (as the example project above hints at, learning and buying and working with the material happen in different contexts) i can move projects forward when i’m in different contexts (instead of “oh no, i went to the store and forgot this material for my project!”)

it does take some work to learn and a lot more work to master gtd though, and it’s definitely not without its perils: it can swamp you with too much information. but over the years i have come to find it useful and a great way to avoid “forgetting” things i don’t want to or can’t do right now. it also removes “i worry that i’ll forget this,” which is huge.

the thing about the bullet journal is that it helped me with the “forecast perspective” in omnifocus, which is the daily bujo-style front-end to a gtd back-end. so it’s a nice synthesis in the software for me. bujo provides the conceptual framework for managing the forecast.

one alternative for you, closer to the bullet journal, might be leo babauta’s “zen to done” (ztd) method in which he attempts to simplify gtd. i think it might be more readily compatible with bullet journal because he deals in one list per day as well, rather than “43 folders plus a an interminable filing cabinet plus a current past and finished project library, plus a weekly review plus the 50,000 ft perspective plus a very large paper shredder”

see: https://zenhabits.net/zen-to-done-ztd-t ... ty-system/

eta: i use evernote for my “paperless” filing cabinet.

[NuncFluens]

... The basic notion, borrowed from eastern ideas via martial arts, is that one’s head must be “empty” when performing an action—forget everything else except what you’re doing. thus in counterbalance it creates a personal bureaucracy to store and process everything else that is not the action that is in process. he calls it the “trusted system”.

This was the selling point for me. I really had problems with remembering to do stuff. Although I do find vanilla GTD very excessive. I just re-read a 15 minute summary and noticed that I took most of what worked for me and cut it down to the minimum. The context and project stuff is implicit in my main checkboxes for the day, with the actionable items put as sub-items. The BuJo already includes a someday-list too, so most of this stuff is already (still?) in my system.

The review gave me a few ideas for improvement though, like extra pages/envelopes for next week/next month, which I plan to wrap into a calendar-substitute of sorts. I should also restart and improve my weekly review process, as the mid-term planning took a backseat to the daily to-dos over time :/

[Alphaville]

great!

[NuncFluens]

The Basement:
After dumping the obvious trash, we've now moved on to sorting through all the boxes and bags in the basement. The living room floor looks like a battlefield right now, with everything strewn about. But we have hopes of getting it tidied up by tonight.

I've also noticed that I started a lot of hobbies throughout the years. And although most of them (art, equipment-heavy strength training, skateboarding) still seem like fun, I just don't have the capacity to do them anymore. I'm especially sad to put my DIY guitar effects building on hold, as I've come up with a few unique pedals. Maybe there's potential for a side-gig in the future, but for now it's on hold.

On the bright side, I've put up a few items for sale on ebay, so maybe I'll be making some money. I even found another item that quadrupled in price since I bought it, which of course means it will be a pain to sell now :/

Fitness:
My strength training routine is really picking up. During my last session I made the mistake of accidentally checking the work chatroom on my laptop which I use for music during training. As it turns out, applying software fixes inbetween sets extends the rest periods so much that I can keep going much longer. So this was a blessing in disguise, as I managed to almost double my (still puny) training volume without any ill effects.

It does leave me much sorer on the days after, though, so I've finally decided to step away from mandatory daily step goals. Instead I'll focus on 2 strength training session and 2 long walks per week. The first walk was only 9km, but I definitely still felt the soreness from 2 days before. I hope to counteract this with eating a bit more (i.e. not skipping meals anymore). Right now it's exhausting but sustainable.

Life:
Our ISP messed up once and apologized by giving us this coupon which entitles us to spend a free night in a partner-hotel of our choosing. Since it expires at the end of the year, we decided to take a short trip in 2 weeks. Or so we thought. Turns out the hotel of our choosing doesn't do single night stays anymore because of *handwave* Corona We've requested that it be extended until next year, but if they don't comply we'll be left with a hotel-coupon we can't realistically use.

[NuncFluens]

The Basement
Our living room is livable again, yey! A lot of stuff was trashed and the rest has been sorted into drawers and boxes. I'm not sure how big of a dent we actually made, but it feels like progress at least. We're also thinking of getting rid of this huge shelf that we brought home once. It looks super cool, but is just not very practical. With that thing gone we could install a writing table instead, which is especially good since my fiance's corporation decided to switch to periodic home office indefinitely.

I also managed to sell my first item on the local equivalent of craigslist. I made back a whopping 54% of what I paid initially, but at least it was quick and only mildly stressful.

Fitness
I managed to increase my workout volume significantly again last monday. That left me with a painful soreness and achy knees (nothing serious) though, so I'll have to scale back a bit. Because of this my thursday session consisted only of mobility, foam rolling and warmup sets. This helped with the lingering soreness and didn't do any further damage. Next up is my saturday hiking session, which should be ~12km this time. As I had to skip my mid-week hiking session due to suboptimal knees this will be my only hike this week.

I also noticed how I was considerably hungrier than the week before, which is probably linked to my increased need for recovery. Considering how little actual energy I burned during my 1h workout it's a small wonder that I didn't gain any weight this week. Still, I don't think I want to eat even more to aid recovery, as I just lost a bunch of weight and would like to keep it off. With the (pre-)christmas season looming I'm already quite afraid of gaining in all the wrong places

Going forward I'd like to try an 4-day schedule, where I hike, rest, train, rest, and then repeat. It's a bit unusual to deviate from a weekly schedule, but I've had a lot of success with every-second-day training schedules in the past, so I think I can pull it off. One big factor I need to keep in mind is that I can't be too sore to hike after training, so I'll just have to "punch the clock" and not obsess over increases in volume for now. The other thing is that hiking is more important than strength training to me, so I might have to dial down the occassional workout after a strenuous hike.

Work
We've had our big meeting on monday, where we talked about the reorientation towards partner projects for technology transfer. I really hoped to get an idea of what the strategic vision would be, but it seems like we're just re-branding and keep on doing what we always did. The focus will be on building our capactity to do more of the same projects we already did. So it's more of a scale-out rather than a reorientation, which has me a bit down at the moment.

Apart from that work sucked hard, as we had a few big problems with our current project. In the end it turned out that the project partner reconfigured our test-servers without telling us. Since communication with the project partner was decidedly sub-par, we spent 4 person days searching for a problem that we didn't even cause. After things were set right, I noticed how my mood instantly increased, which was a wake up call as to how work stress influences me even if I don't consciously assign much energy to it :/

As part of our re-branding, I'm also supposed to get certified in our key technology as soon as possible. Which means I'll have to go through the arduous process of getting the payment department to first approve my request, and then pay it on time. On the bright side, training for the certification will let me block off huge blocks of time for self-directed study. So for the next few weeks half of my work week will basically consist of reading moderately interesting literature on computer science while scaling back my day-to-day responsibilities considerably

Other
We've decided to get another cat, as the remaining one seems really needy. The animal shelter informed us that we can't have a single kitten, though, as according to them the cat we already have is too old. So we might get an older cat or two kittens now. We'll go there today and see what happens.

The fiance's nephew will also be visiting over the weekend, which has me stressed a little bit. I'm really more of a loner, so I'm not sure I'll partake in all the activities that need to be done to keep a 17 year old interested. He'll be brought to us by his mother (fiance's sister), who will start at my fiance's corporation next month. So they will be having a dinner out to which I'm also invited. I'm skeptical though, as I know from experience that their work will be a major conversation topic (careerists!). So overall, the stressful work week will be followed up by a stressful weekend, I fear.

Edit: Ah, and the hotel coupon company got back to us, too. They've found it in their hearts to extend the coupon for another year for a small fee (7€). I think we should definitely extend the coupon so we can use it all (hopefully?), but I also feel taken advantage of somehow. We'll probably go for it anyway, though, if just to get rid of the need to make a decision. If I can get the peace of mind for the unbeatable price of just 2 kebabs (that's an SI-unit, look it up) it's probably worth it.

[Alphaville]

hahaha well don’t write off the 17yo as a provider of lols amidst careerist conversations. there’s always hope in the not-yet totally corrupted by life. maybe.

i’m going to start measuring everything in kebabs, or (american units) cheeseburgers.

but no seriously have you heard of the big mac index? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index

btw re: fitness, my kindle app took me to some “book” (a marketing pamphlet really, why should i pay for marketing materials?i just read the free chapter 1 sample) about how weight lifting is a waste of time ha ha ha. what? hmmm...

[NuncFluens]

i’m going to start measuring everything in kebabs, or (american units) cheeseburgers.

but no seriously have you heard of the big mac index? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index

I did not, but that makes sense. We have a shopping cart of reference goods as a similar metric in germany and apparently it's a thing all over the world (market basket?). But a Big Mac/Kebab is just that much more tangible, as I routinely make the decision to (not) buy a kebab so it just feels more natural.

btw re: fitness, my kindle app took me to some “book” (a marketing pamphlet really, why should i pay for marketing materials?i just read the free chapter 1 sample) about how weight lifting is a waste of time ha ha ha. what? hmmm...

I myself do not use strength training for weight loss, as I'll just eat the calories back (and more). Ray Cronise, the guy that got Penn Gilette slim, even says to not strength train while losing weight because of the increased appetite. That only holds for untrained individuals though, as muscle loss would be a problem with trained people. So I definitely do train during a diet, although for different reasons.

Depending on the target population, though, building muscle be actually be a downside. I've definitely gotten to a point that other women would call "too much", so maybe the book had women in mind when making that statement?

[Alphaville]

it’s written by some dude worried about his looks, the book seems to be about some variable resistance training thing and fighting osteoporosis and gymnasts and huh? i just thought i’d throw in the idea to see if something pops, like popcorn, because i like his premise of “i have no time for cardio”.

as to what muscle is too much muscle, that is up to you, no? here i read some article about how muscle was a marker of social class, with the upper classes prefering the “lean look” of endurance training and the workers (cops, firefighters) cultivating mass+strength.

me as an outsider i prefer some mass no doubt against accidents, but my focus is more functional fitness these days rather than “looks” or competitions. i just need to operate without decomposing

—

eta: yup i did more research and it was a marketing pamphlet for some pricey exercise equipment hahaha. presumably about “more efficiency”.

[Alphaville]

ah! i found the article re: muscles.

it’s for/about men though, but i found it interesting that it was really about sociology:
https://psmag.com/social-justice/half-l ... lass-85221

(me, like the writer, i just wanna prevent sarcopenia)

anyway while not exactly the same as your experience i thought it might have some parallels re: “too much muscle.”

(the marketing person with the book i mentioned earlier wants to sell muscle—but with their own product instead of weights)

[NuncFluens]

That was a great read, Thank you. It also reminded me of the time when I was reading the very brainy Slate Star Codex blog regularly. Every so often a question about strength training would pop up in the open thread and it just felt so out of place in a community of academic high-achievers that I had my fingers crossed that it wouldn't devolve into a liberal vs. conservative or intellectual vs. physical discussion. It seems a lot of things about status, politics and intellectual capacity are just assumed once you look like you lift.

I can't deny that strength training cultivates a lot of conservative values (willingness to work hard physically, self-sufficiency, responsibility) though. The strength training community really was a breath of fresh air in that regard for me, as I was coming from a very lefty liberal background and found those qualities sorely lacking. I might even go as far and say that I have become more conservative in my personal values since I started strength training.

[disk_poet]

@NuncFluens: A lot of things happening for you! I hope the coupon works out (I actually had a budget spreadsheet once that measured everything in drinks but now mentally switched to eating out or days cooking at home). I hope you find some nice kittens a home. I sometimes have similar feelings towards younger relatives and when they stayed with me but nowadays I try to see it as an opportunity to fend of the grumpy-old-man-process and diversify my point of view . Also I am always soo happy afterwards that I am older now! I'm not sure a 17 year old really needs that much attention, can't they take care of themselves? I wouldn't feel bad about leaving him to his own devices for awhile. At least those are my 2 cents. I obviously know neither you nor this person at all. Just speaking generally.

[NuncFluens]

The 17 yeard old is fine. He was super introverted when he visited before, but it seems he has left his shell a bit. The dinner fell through, so we spent the evening watching action movies which was nice. I think this will turn out alright.

We also actually did get a 4 year old cat yesterday. We had our eyes set on two kittens before, but the one we took in the end just came up to me and we immediately bonded. I coulnd't leave without her after that

[Alphaville]

dammit, i miss having a cat. my current place however is too small for that.

i think all training breeds individual grit, whether strength or endurance. but if it’s true that one type leans that way and the other the other way politically, then maybe i’m a centrist— i want strength *and* endurance.

glad to know it worked out with the visitors for you. btw i have “predator” (turns out i have never seen it, not complete anyway) on the video queue for octarnold/schwarzentober...

[NuncFluens]

Ah, Predator... We planned to watch the 2nd part yesterday and realized 15 minutes into the movie that Arnold wasn't even in there :/
Killing Gunther was awesome btw so thanks for the tip. It was a 9/10 movie all along but when Arnold finally made an appearance it went straight to 11. Definitely worth the wait

[NuncFluens]

Last week was not great. First our visitor got sick and had to leave early because of it. Then a few days later I got sick

The Basement
This thing is growing a huge rat's tail. To make room for more stuff we decided to get rid of our old-timey drawer, as it's just not that practical. Which means before we can draw our office-things together again, we'll have to get rid of it and build a new table to put in it's place. This will also give us a second workspace, which is just as well as this whole Corona-thing is picking up again around here (more on that later).

I also sold my skateboard. The whole idea of buying the thing was to relive the glory days, but it didn't take off this time around. I never found the time or the motivation to go out and actually re-learn all the tricks. I also did it wrong the first time around, so I'd have had to relearn basic riding skills from scratch. Add to that the potential for injury, which threatens my hiking plans, and it's clear the skateboard had to go. Made me 60€ too, so ok.

Fitness
As I was sick I didn't manage to get much done. I did a workout with reduced volume on monday before I got sick and nothing else since that. I am feeling okay-ish today, just not good enough for hiking. Maybe I can resume my plans tomorrow.

In general it's really slow going right now, but I definitely notice improvements on paper. Although at this pace it's gonna be a few months before I can hike like I want to. At least I'm working my way up though. Last year I did a complete off-season and lost all my gains and my ability to hike pain-free. That can never happen again, so I slog on.

Work
Work is stressful, as I'm in charge of our key technology for 2 projects and problems just keep coming up. And if I don't fix them they just pile up, which is why I worked a bit durin my sick leave. Which wasn't really an official sick-leave, as that would mean I'd have to go to the doctor. So officially I did home office with reduced hours, which was alright. I might decide to take a day off to compensate for that next week.

The certification process is also super tedious, as the certification training platform only offers payment by credit card and nothing else. My institution has no workflow for that exactly, so I'll have to fake a work trip to get the payment approved. Add to that that the clerical staff is working reduced hours because of corona and it gets really hard to get anything done. Oh, my deadline is November 3rd, so this training might not happen at all.

Coronavirus
It seems like the infamous 2nd wave is hitting us here right now. We now have a traffic-light system and apparently my region is in the red (not the dark-red, though!). This means I'm officially forbidden from going to the office if at least one other person is working there. It also means our weekly meeting on monday should be done remotely, but as of friday 3PM we have no information on that. It might well be that our immediate boss decides to bend the rules a bit, which means our appointed safety-person is going to start a fight :/

Overall this is very stressful, as I can't plan for anything right now. I also don't see how the measures taken will help the situation, as they seem very meek. In general it seems to be agreed upon that we have to do something, but noone is taking things seriously. I am very disappointed with my fellow humans and the higher-ups

[NuncFluens]

Corona
My region is now in the dark red and the government has decided on drastic measures for (at least) all of november. Since I'm a very introverted lone wolf, it doesn't hit that hard. I will be in the home office indefinitely though, even if the boss is gently pushing for work in the office. Shopping might become tedious, as they limited the number of customers per shop and this will probably ripple into panic buying again. Individual sports are still allowed, so I can at least hike. I will have to keep it local however, as the restrictions forbid travelling for fun.

Fitness
As of tuesday, I seem to be healthy again. I did a light workout (only mobility & unweighted warmup) without getting sick again. Today would be a hiking day, but due to the weather I'm considering a real workout instead. What shocked me was that I didn't gain any weight while being sick, even though I overate quite a bit to aid my recovery.

Work
I managed to get my certification training paid on time, although we had to go around the official process for this. I still have to get everything sorted out after the fact, which is hampered by my boss' unwillingness to engage with the administrative software. As of now, he is ignoring my mails and has instead referred me to a colleague who is on vacation

The certification training itself is going well. I am working on the on-demand course right now, which is already quite challenging. Next week I will be attending the 3-day live course which is another step up. But I'm confident that I'll make it, as I tend to overthink and worry about details they cannot possibly ask in a multiple-choice test.

[Flurry]

Nice journal, really enjoying reading the last few pages.
Good luck with the new Covid restrictions, just waiting to be affected here in Austria as well. Seems to be a leisure-time-only lockdown so we can keep on working.

[NuncFluens]

Thanks, Flurry. I'm not sure if you meant that working part tongue in cheek, as I could think of better things than working. On the other hand I'm quite happy to have a stable job right now. My mother is working on an as-needed basis and apparently she won't be needed much in the coming weeks. Luckily she has some meager savings, but there won't be much income for her this month :/

---
Finances
The month is drawing to an end and I already got paid. Contrary to my gut-feeling this month was a very good one. I guess worrying about my SR paid off? The savings rate was a whopping 78% this month, even though we bought a few parts for building our own furniture and ordered takeout a few times. I also managed to sell 2 items from my basement for 186€ total, which all went into savings (not reflected in SR).

What strikes me is that apparently, I only spent 472€ this last month, with a few caveats:

• I don't keep track of what's in my wallet, so maybe I could have spent a bit more of that without tracking it. It's still filled quite well though, so my gut feeling tells me that's not it.

• A few longer term bills had to be paid, but a few others were refunded, because of my moving appartments. At a quick glance this seems to cancel out, mostly.

• My fiance and I also split costs with one of us paying at a time. We track the balance and don't pay each other out every month. This couldn't be more than 100€, though. It might be that my fiance has misplaced a big bill for now and I'll have to pay my part later, but that shouldn't be too much either.

• I also don't keep track of several other accounts like paypal or amazon credit, as those can't ever be in the negative. My paypal balance shot up, though, so I could have actually let them pay me out and saved even more.

All in all it looks like the move to my fiance's apartment just really paid off by cutting my fix costs (rent, electricity, etc.) in half. It wouldn't be the first time that I only spent 200-300€ beside that, so maybe it was just a very good month coupled with the savings from moving. Although it is atypical, as my excel sheet tells me my average spendings for the last 4 months is just below 1000€. Those were stressful months though, so I hope to keep reducing that average over the next few (hopefully quieter) months.

[Alphaville]

did you check what your illness was or did you just ride it out?