A Year of Change
I want to share this story of mine. A story of long-anticipated changes.
A long journey, which took me 12 months. I have changed my lifestyle completely! For good.
To be honest, I never thought I can pack so many things in a year. Some of you may find it to be “just a normal life”, but for me it is a huge achievement.
I owe this post to those people who were supporting me all that time.
I hope it will inspire some of you to make changes in your live. I truly think anyone can do the same, the question is just in having vision, determination and applying some life hacks on top of that.
Some background
My story began in November 2015. There were no NY resolution or “starting from Monday” kind of stuff. But as it usually happens, most big changes start with a crisis (you can find nice examples in The Power Of Habit, I won’t expand much on this topic). I’ll spare you some details, they are not really relevant.
I have made some controversial (maybe even stupid) decisions during my recent years, which led me to a weakened state of body and mind (I’ll dive into some details later).
I always knew there were some trade-offs and “debts” I would have to pay back as a result of my deliberate choices. That’s why I was studying the ways other people get better, knowing that “one day I will do it, but it can wait…”
I’ve tried some productivity and lifestyle-changing stuff during my life: GTD, meditation, dieting… Nothing really stuck. It was a question of starting and maintaining the inertia long enough.
And I was postponing the starting point in my timeline.
This time I’ve really got a lucky chance to leverage the crisis and do everything right. The main lesson I learned this year:
You have to take actions. Self-development is not the knowledge you possess, but the actions you take, based on the knowledge you get.
Changing my Mindset: Learned Optimism
The number one priority was to get out of a long-lasting depression.
Apart from “dark mood” and negative thoughts, the final sign for me was like that: I have realised that I cannot control my emotions anymore and start yelling at people without obvious reasons in those situations where I had never lost control before.
I took some time off and disconnected from the world to start reading books. There were a bunch of those I wanted to read for a long time, but was always skipping.
I have started with “Learned Optimism” by Martin Seligman. I thought it was a nice ground for further changes, as I needed some “optimism injection”. The second book was “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”.
It turned out to be a foundational thing for my further changes as well, as it pointed out the way I can reason about my real values and principles.
In a retrospect, I think this was a life-changing decision to start with those two.
I always wanted to stop being negative, but my constant stress was too much of an obstacle to stop being grumpy and aggressive.
Learned optimism helped with that. I’ve changed my internal conversation, and this thing alone was the best achievement of the year. But it turned out it was just a beginning of the journey :)
The book includes a methodology on changing your internal dialog.
This is what I have done.
It took me around 2 months to get my mind back into shape, but I have literally changed my mindset since.
Changing my habits: Morning routine
I have started building a bunch of habits. You cannot change things in a long run if you have to constantly put in conscious efforts: you willpower is finite. You need to “automate” things.
I always knew that if you want to change things, you need to start small. But often times the kick you need comes from someone (or something) validating your ideas and saying “Yes, this is actually not as crazy as it may seem”. “Mini Habits” was a final missing piece in a puzzle, which showed me the whole picture of what I want to do next. It helped me to get into the groove of automating useful habits.
I have managed to build a morning routine, something I was struggling to achieve my whole life!
I’ve seen the best progress after I’ve started controlling the streaks and engineered the routine which suited me the best. I am using Productive app for that.
There are around 15 different habits I track throughout a week, 10 of those are daily.
Today, my list of daily habits looks like that:
- Making my bed
- Drinking a glass of water
- Exercising
- Cooking & eating a breakfast
- Contrast shower
- Brushing my teeth
- Meditation
- Reading
- Evening stretching
- Brushing and flossing my tooth
Workout and Eating Regime
I have started doing 7 minutes workout daily (I am using 7MWC app) and a set of exercises to fix anterior pelvic tilt and posture (you can find some of those here). Also, I’ve start cooking nice meals as a hobby.
I wanted to change my body and I always knew that sport should come along with a change in eating habits (these days I eat every 2–3 hours 5–6 times a day and experimenting with fasting).
As a result, I’ve lost more than 10 kilos, had to change my wardrobe twice, and changed my health to the better just by doing 15 minutes of exercises combined daily and being mindful of what I eat.
My average blood pressure used to be 145/90 (it was like that for more than 10 years so far. Yes, I’ve being to doctors multiple times). My knees hurt after I run or climb stairs, my legs hurt after I walked 7000 steps, my lower back hurt after 2 hours of walking. Can I say I was devastated?
Today my average blood pressure is 135/85, my knees and lower back never hurt, my legs hurt only after around 15000 steps. I feel better than I used to for the last 10 years!
Reading
I’ve read 16 books so far this year. It is almost the number of books I have read for the last 5 years (those were mostly technical books on programming).
This time, I read all those books completely and mindfully, and I was able to put all things I learn in practice!
Meditation
I have added meditation to my daily routine (I am using Headspace app). It was hard to start, but I have got the first results in a month of a non consistent practice.
Start small and be consistent even if you do not understand the results for the first time!
I’ve being meditating daily for more than 6 moths already. My latest streak is 76 days and is keep growing.
There are a lot of changes I’ve noticed as a result of meditation habit. I’ll describe all of them in details in a separate blog post one day.
But here are the most substantial:
- I’ve learned to stop the internal monologue.
- I can see things in better, vivid details.
- I learned how to appreciate current moment.
- There is a noticeable gap between felling/emotion and reaction, and I can leverage this gap to choose not to react.
- I understand my urges and cues much better.
- I’ve become more self-aware in general.
Changing my productivity: GTD, Pomodoro and Deep Work.
GTD and Pomodoro are two productivity techniques which I was struggling with for 3 years!
These days I use Pomodoro constantly at work. And all my personal projects and most parts of my life are organised using a GTD framework.
GTD is the best way to mitigate stress I’ve found in my life so far.
Also, I’ve figured out that I was not lacking time, but it was too little organisation and too much stress around, which blocked me from doing things I want. I do believe that everyone has all the time they need, we just cannot use it wisely.
The biggest change driver was going through Getting Things Done, 2015 edition and applying everything I learn on the go.
As for the Deep Work, I have not yet weaved it completely in my life. There are still things to try out!
Changing my social life.
Emotional and social life were never easy for me to master. But I have made a substantial progress this year.
I’ve hosted several Couchsurfers in Berlin.
I’ve used to do it before in my life, and I’ve just decided to get back to this thing. You can meet a lot of nice and interesting people via Couchsurfing.
I got a habit to go out for a lunch with my colleagues.
You know, never eat alone :)
I had the best New Year eve in my life so far.
It was an unforgettable time! And it was the first time for many years I actually “felt” this holiday!
Have you ever acquired something you have lost long ago?
I had this same feeling.
Meeting people
I have started meeting people regularly.
It was always a challenge for me to meet new people. As I was going out of my comfort zone, I have decided to dive into human relationship. I’ve started with spending more time with my friends and ex-colleagues.
Organising a meetup
I’ve organised a meetup and gave around 10 talks there.
I think, organising is the only thing I truly hate in life!
This experience is a real challenge for me so far.
6 months group coaching experiment
This was a long-running experiment with a group of software developers. I will share the experience in a separate blog post eventually.
I have learned a lot and have validated a bunch of ideas.
My “students” did get some nice results, and I am looking forward getting their reviews :)
Getting out of Comfort Zone.
I have travelled for the first time as a tourist in my life!
Thanks Aleksandra for cheering me up for that!
It was a 4-day long trip to Amsterdam on the 2nd of January.
I’ve travelled to the random island in Canary.
I’ve just picked a random location and a random hotel, booked a low cost flight and that’s it. I’ve never read anything about the place. I just wanted to go somewhere random alone.
Tenerife turned out to be pretty darn good!
I’ve taken a part in a Comfort Zone Crusher challenge.
Nice things happen only outside your comfort zone. I need some challenges and I got plenty of those. Comfort Zone Crusher was just one of those.
I’ve started playing a guitar once again.
I haven’t touch a string in more than 3 years. I’ve tried playing a guitar a couple of times I was drunk, but it was terrible.
This time I get to the level I used to have before! Though, let me be honest, you do not want me to play a guitar at your party.
Failures
Of course, there are some failures. I made a lot experiments, and not all things go smoothly.
Sleep schedule
I’ve tried to hack my sleep schedule and switch to a 6–22 regime. It was one of the major goals for this year, and I put a lot of effort into fixing it.
I failed.
Though, I used to get up in between 5am and 6am for 8 months, but my schedule has changed once again this autumn. I do not know why, but this change ruined all of my attempts to fix the pattern. This is something I still need to figure out.
Swimming
Swimming was the second major goal for this year.
And I failed here as well.
There are some psychological traumas I need to deal with to get myself to the swimming pool. Well, at least I was very good at finding excuses not to hit the building this year :)
New hobbies
I’ve tried some new things (travelling, constant public speaking, networking, photography, etc.), but I still cannot say I’ve found my passion. Those are nice tools, nice ways to kill your time, but nothing I would be fascinated with.
I stopped writing as much code as I used to
This is something very scary for me: I’ve stopped spending my time on code apart from those things I need at work.
My side projects halted. I’ve stopped playing with new technologies. Not the best sign for a software engineer, right?
I treat it as taking a break from a crazy period of night hacking.
That was a long write-up! If you’ve managed to finish it at all, I would really like to hear your thoughts: leave a comment! And maybe you know someone, who can benefit from reading this? Share the stuff!
I figured out that one can change their life completely.
I know you can do it as well. And I know you can do it much better!
There is no single recipe, but you need to just start experimenting!
You will be fascinated by the results, I guarantee!
