Deliverable

Version 0.2

Note to self: Find another way to print the book. The Village Copier charged me 3 bucks just to open the file and print front and back. Total: $11.30. Ouch.

I’ve made steady progress the past 9 days, but need to clarify the parts of the book better and dig in to the beginning sections that I’ve been putting off.

I’ve decided to do a 7 day Bikram Yoga challenge. They have an introductory package where you’re able to take a week of classes for 23 bucks. I’ve wanted to try this for some time, but wanted to be able to commit to doing all seven days. I feel like my other 30 day challenges have given me the strong foundation that will allow me to do this.

Here’s the challenge:

For the next 7 days, I will attend one Bikram yoga class a day.

It’s pretty straightforward. I will shoot for taking the first class offered each day, but I won’t let that keep me from completing the challenge if I can’t. I also may provide addendum’s to this post with my progress throughout the week.

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Updates:
–Day 1: Saturday–
Holy crap. Definitely one of the most intense workouts I’ve ever had. What the heck have I gotten myself into? Please let it get easier as it goes along.

–Day 2: Sunday–
I think I can say that it was a bit easier today. It’s still hellishly hot, and you’re literally bathed in sweat for the entire 90 minutes, but it took me longer to reach the “Oh my God, let this be over” stage. I also gave up any remaining modesty that I might have had and ditched my t-shirt 10 minutes in. It’s just too freakin’ hot to keep it on.

–Day 3: Monday–
I crashed last night at 10 p.m., got up around 4:30 this morning and made it to the 6:30 a.m. class today. It’s still pretty darn brutal. The standing poses are the most difficult… at least with the floor poses you get to lie on your back in between to let blood flow back into the joints. I bought some Glaceau “smart water” after class. It’s supposed to have electrolytes which are supposed to be good for you. I’m hoping to avoid the fatigued feeling that I had for alot of yesterday. I’m thinking that might have been dehydration, so I’m going to keep pouring the water down for the rest of the day. Also there were a couple of people in class today who didn’t sweat. They are very clearly mutants.

–Day 4: Tuesday–
Made it to the 11 a.m. class today. I had alot of dread going in, but it actually went pretty well. I got thru most of the poses and only had to take a couple of breaks. (I think she may have had the heat a bit lower today, which no doubt helped.) I’m also not as wiped this afternoon, and have been able to focus better.

–Day 5: Wednesday–
I got thru the postures better today. Definitely feel my strength and flexibility improving. (Went to the noon class…).

–Day 6: Thursday–
Somewhat tougher today. The instructor cranked up the heat more, and was moving through the postures faster. There were a couple of times where I had to sit out the 2nd half of the posture because my heart was really racing. I guess the moral is that every day is different. I went to the 4 p.m. class today.

–Day 7: Friday–
Woohoo! Final day of my 7 day challenge. The heat really kicked me hard today, but it was what it was. I showed up and did the best I could which is what it’s all about.

Final Thoughts
It’s been an enlightening 7 days. This has been some of the most difficult exercise that I’ve ever done. The heat adds a whole new dimension to things, both mentally and physically, but I love the way my body has felt. The first couple of days knocked me out more, but I seemed to get used to it about 3-4 days in. (I also felt better when I hydrated immediately after the workout.) It’s definitely something that I hope to pursue in the future.

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7 Day Challenge: Bikram Yoga
Start date: Saturday, June 24th
Check-in date:Friday, June 30th

Well, I did it….

It’s nothing grand and glorious, but it’s a start.

Onward and upward!

Today was the 30th day of my exercise challenge, and I’ve done my exercise for today! This is definitely something that I want to continue for another 30 days.

Some observations:

• I think that keeping my definition of exercise pretty loose was a good choice, and made this challenge doable. I’d like to find a ways to challenge myself over the next 30 days to increase my fitness level even more. Not sure how that’s going to work yet.
• It’s probably worth noting that I’ve felt more balanced over the past 30 days. My mood has stayed pretty positive and I feel as though I’m gaining momentum in other areas of my life. I’m sure that the consisent exercise has played a part in this.
• At one point I tweaked my shoulder abit, which made doing upper body work inadvisable. I shifted my focus to cardio and core until my shoulder healed. The variety of my exercise choices enabled me to do this.
• There were some days that I ended up doing my set of push-ups (or ab work) late at night. In some ways this felt like cheating, but I also feel that it showed my commitment to the challenge. It’s not optimal to exercise right before bed, so I need to find a way to consistently exerise in the morning to combat this. Also, if I exercise in the morning I have more opportunity throughout the day to do more exercise, which should help with the “challenge myself more” comment above.
• I began unofficially tracking my cardio a few days ago. I’d like to find more benchmarks for fitness like this. (Cardio and flexibility are the first two that jump to mind.) I don’t want to get into a whole macho “I can benchpress a ton of weight” thing, but it would probably be helpful to have ways to judge my overall fitness level.

This was a very positive experience. It will be interesting to see what the next 30 days holds for me, especially since I’m considering doing the introductory week of Bikram yoga beginning this Saturday. We’ll see what happens.

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30 Day Challenge: Exercise
Start date: Wednesday, 6/21/06
Next check-in date: Thursday, 7/20/06

Day 30 of my 30 Day Practice Challenge was last Thursday! I hadn’t even noticed it until I was doing some updating over the weekend. Guess this is a sign that things are going well.

Some observations:

• I practiced mainly trombone and bass.
• The consistency has really helped my playing, especially on trombone.
• I played guitar 4 times in the 30 days.
• I didn’t play piano, or sing at all.
• The amount and frequency of time that I spent on the trombone gradually increased over the 30 days.
• I seemed to find a good rhythm between the time spent on the bass and the time spent on trombone. My trombone “chops” never felt tired.

This has been a completely positive experience. I’ve decided to continue it for another 30 days. I’ll experiment with trying to play more piano & guitar. I still want to make singing a part of my daily life as well, so that’ll take some thought as to how to make it happen.

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30 Day Challenge: Practice
Start date: Friday, 6/16/06
Next check-in date: Saturday, 7/15/06

I aspire to be a creator of content. There are books that are inside of me… music that’s inside of me… performances that are inside of me just waiting to be released. I’ve come to realize that the indiscriminate consumption of other people’s content (re: television) keeps my own content forever locked inside of me. I will never finish the book, or write those songs, or be the actor/musician/teacher/whatever else I can be as long as I continue to allow television to be a part of my life.

I’m not saying that television is inherently bad. At a basic level it is simply a type of content delivery system. What is bad is when that content drowns out the voices inside my head.

That’s right… I hear voices inside my head. A point of fact is that we all hear voices inside our heads. We each have a unique inner voice that’s desperately trying to be heard. We stifle that voice with food. We stifle that voice with drugs & alcohol. We stifle that voice by listening to the voices of others (our parents, our peers, our critics…) that continually bounce around between our ears. Watching television is just another way to quiet the creative force inside of us. We do it because creativity can be scary.

I can’t afford (literally) to be afraid anymore. The jig is up, and I either let go of T.V. and listen to those voices in my head, or continue on as I have been and live a life that borders between desperation and mediocrity. I choose the voices.

So, here’s the challenge:

For the next 30 days, I will replace watching television with the following activities:

• Reading
• Practicing
• Exercise
• Project work
• Quality time with M.
• “me-time” in the form of artists dates (or Field Trips, if you prefer)
• Working on my acting skills
• Taking classes (yoga, dance, acting, fitness, etc.)
• Working some type of day gig
• Watching a DVD
• Watching individual episodes of the Sopranos, B.S.G., or This Old House (I consider watching a DVD or individual episodes of show’s I’ve taped a much more discriminating use of the content delivery system we call “the television”. The time is focused and isn’t the channel surfing, mind numbing, inner voice silencing activity that I’m trying to avoid with this challenge. It’s recreational time that I give to myself.)
• Whatever else the voices tell me to do

I think that the wording of this challenge is quite important. It’s an active challenge, and in the strictest sense what I’m doing for the 30 days are the activities I’ve listed above. I’m not giving up something, only to have a huge void in my life. I’m replacing one activity with other activities that are more fulfilling and more in tune with the direction I want my life to go. Now when I hear the voices in my head, I’ll listen to them and I’ll take action.

This 30 Day Challenge doesn’t mean that I have to give up T.V. forever. As with all the challenges, I’m simply trying out a habit that I think I might want to make a conditioned part of my life. After 30 days I’ll check-in and see where I’m at. I’ll track things here.

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30 Day Challenge guidelines can be found here.

30 Day Challenge: Television Replacement
Start date: Friday, 6/16/06
Check-in date: Saturday, 7/15/06

Haven’t posted one of these in a bit, but better late than never:

Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself makes you fearless. -Lao Tzu

Grabbed this from the trailer for the upcoming Jet Li movie. Seemed appropriate given some of the things I have coming up on my plate.

This challenge definitely has a bit of a mad scientist element to it, but stay with me. I think it’ll make sense in the end.

I’ve been quite happy thus far with the success of my 30 Day Challenges. The momentum that I feel building in my practice and my fitness level feels great, and I’m confident that the same type of momentum will continue with my sleep, fiber & vitamin challenges.

I believe that these personal habits are building a strong foundation for long term health and happiness. The question that I’ve struggled with is “How do I consistenly motivate myself to do the work on my projects?” I see creative people like Ze Frank doing mad cool things and I’m inspired. I know that I also have mad cool creativity inside of me. If I could only get my brain to organize itself better and do the nitty gritty day to day work that goes into realizing the aforementioned “mad cool creativity” then I’d be a much happier camper.

Thusly do I present to thee the 30 Day Project Challenge:

For the next 30 days I’ll spend a minimum of 50 uninterupted minutes a day either working on one of my projects, or engaged in active “Me Time”.

Say what?

Basically creative work is like a well. (Major hat-tip to Julia Cameron for the “well analogy” that follows.) You’re either pouring your creative self into the next actions that will make your project a reality (emptying the well), or you’re taking a break from that creative effort in order to rejuvenate (filling the well). Day to day creative work is either emptying the well, or filling the well. The trick is to build momentum by consistently working on your projects without burning out. Balance. Ying, Yang and all that.

I’ve had periods where I’ve been incredibly productive. It has usually (but not always) involved some type of deadline, where I put things off until the last minute and then bust my ass getting the work done. I have something to show for my work and it feels great! (This is a good thing.) I then have periods during which it seems I’m doing absolutely nothing. (This is not such a good thing.) These jumps forward are good, but this way of working is inefficient, unsustainable and doesn’t lead to the type of exponential growth that comes from consistent day in/day out effort. It’s tough to hit a tipping point when you’re moving three steps forward, and one step back.

So, I know that in order to build momentum I want to create a challenge that I can do successfully for 30 days. How do I work on projects for 30 days straight in a way that allows for potential burn-out, and allows for my potentially topsy turvy schedule? I enlarge my definition of what a project is. For the purposes of this challenge “working on my projects” means either the actual doing of the project “next actions”, or filling the well… engaging in active “me time” that will allow me to rest and rejuvenate without guilt so that when I come back to the project my batteries are fully charged.

But enough “Blah, Blah, Blah”… here are the nuts & bolts:

• (I’ve created the following files called “me_time.txt” & “projects.txt”.) “me_time.txt” is a list of activities that I find rejuvenating. (Photography is one example). “projects.txt” is a list of all the projects I currently have on my plate, broken down by category. Anything on those lists is fair game for this challenge.
• I’ll spend a minimum of 50 uninterupted minutes a day working on items from the lists above.
• I’ll track my progress here. This is a simple record of whether (or not) I worked on projects, or had “me time”. I’m keeping the nitty gritty details of how I’ve spent my day in my work diary.

That’s the challenge. I might tweak it as I go along. Maybe it’s a harebrained scheme. Maybe it won’t work. Either way, I’ll know in 30 days when I check in.

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30 Day Challenge guidelines can be found here.

30 Day Challenge: Projects
Start date: Tuesday, 6/13/06
Check-in date: Wednesday, 7/12/06

via this evening’s fortune cookie:

I’ve come up with a timeline for completion of the book. My version control was inspired by Firefox.

Book: Project timeline
Start date: Tuesday; June 13, 2006
Release Date: Wednesday; September 13, 2006

Short term goal(s): Bound version for review every 9 days.
“90 Day” goal: Version 1.0 available for students on Wednesday; September 13, 2006

[v. 0.1] – Wednesday; June 21, 2006 (complete)

[v. 0.2] – Friday, June 30, 2006 (complete)

[v. 0.3] – Sunday, July 9, 2006 (complete)

[v. 0.4] – Tuesday, July 18, 2006 (complete)

[v. 0.5] – Thursday, July 27, 2006 (complete)

[v. 0.6] – Saturday, August 5, 2006 (complete)

[v. 0.7] – Monday, August 14, 2006 (complete)

[v. 0.8] – Wednesday, August 23, 2006 (incomplete)

[v. 0.9] – Friday, September 1, 2006 (incomplete)

1.0 (Preview Release) – Sunday, September 10, 2006 (incomplete)

1.0 (Official Version) – Wednesday, September 13, 2006 (1st day of teaching) (incomplete) – See my 90 Day Check-in here

The idea is to release early and release often. Every nine days I’ll bind a copy together for review by my peers, students, and anyone else I can think of to show it to. Changes to each pre-release version will be marked as follows:

Sample version control:

book_0.1.0.1.txt
book_0.1.0.2.txt
book_0.2.txt
book_o.2.1.txt

etc.

I think the naming convention should help me as I make revisions. I’ll alter this as necessary. Now that I have a timeline, my next step is to clearly outline a strategy for working on my projects every day. Look for that in a future post.