Message to self:
I inherit the consequences of all my volitions, skillful or unskillful. This is a core belief I have seen playing out over the past few days. The skillful habits of sleeping early, not reacting to instant messages, recording my to-dos in a backlog, not eating junk food or meat, fasting after 12noon - they had been bearing fruits in the form of a sharp mind, alertness, a sense of peace and calm. I am also feeling more and more satisfied with my progress in life, knowing that there are consistent actions against important goals. Big projects are no longer deferred, and no goals seem too big and vague.
Wanted to address a feeling from yesterday. I felt I was running on unstable grounds mentally. If I reflect on the root cause of that emotion, it was a combination of a lack of sleep due to the adjustment, and also lack of immediate energy from glucose due to my fasting and diarrhea. In the past, this spiralled into a deeper worry about the sustainability of the unusual habits and schedules, at least relative to my immediate environment, worries about whether it alienated me from my tribe. Now I can see more clearly through these worries, that they are figments of my perspective. Logically, these are very sustainable and healthy habits that monks have maintained for lifetimes, and work-wise, peope who produce deep and valuable work swears by them. It was just an adjustment period I can quickly get through. Socially, there is minimal damage to my social bonds. In fact, I can be more present and compassionate with them, when I am deeply healthy inside.
Never in a rush. Are there ever cases where we need to rush? Act fast, yes, but never in a haste. Even in fast-paced sports like badminton, the best players are not scrambling around. They have game plan, faster perception, great conditioning, and they respond intentionally. From that extreme down, there is no reason everything else, including running a startup, can’t be run with intentionality.
0800am - woke up
12:13pm - lifted, sat for 30 mins; attended 4PM meeting; had lunch; went through morning rituals
2:49pm - shared context about Growth and Product problems with engineering management team
9:07pm - researched and jotted down notes for Head of Data role
Learnings
It is easy to dive too deep and read too much and lose sight of the original research goal. That was my problem with 4PM last year. Read too much, too wide, without translating to action. Problem is not with researching, problem is with scoping, planning and acting. It was good that I a) set a stop time, b) defined my goals clearly and c) spun off interesting future reads in a to-read list