[SDP]

Originally Posted by Lalvaz

Hi SDP - The quote alert helped, Thank you. I got into procastination mode once again, but your quote alert really worked wonders. Seeing how dedicated you guys were, I felt ashamed, and vowed to make amends. Its been tough, but for the last one month, here are the lifestyle changes I've made.

Diet: Dubba of home cooked food for lunch everyday, with a strict watch on sweets. Dinners, I do eat out, but again no more than 3 times per week.

Exercise: Gym atleast 3 times per week, brisk walk every day, golf twice a week, and just started playing squash today, Gosh its tough, but I can really see how little stamina I have, and I will try really hard to stick with it. Also take the stairs to the 9th floor at work atleast once or twice a week. Must confess, my legs turn to jelly post the 7th floor. And I thought I had muscles, damn.

Miscellaneous life changes: Trying to accomplish a lot of things that were on the backburner for ages, finally appeared for my CISSP examination, finally been hitting the books. Trying to clear my mind. On the cards later this year is a long overdue holiday, and this time, I'm going to make it happen.

So thank you SDP, thank you very much for the wake up call.

Your are welcome, Lalvaz!
Those are some really good changes you have started with. Keep it up!

[SDP]

I would not have access to Internet over next 2 Mondays. So there are going to be no updates reported from my side on 21st May and 28th May.
The reclaiming would continue during the 2 week vacation and I would report the status of those 2 weeks once I return to Mumbai in first week of June.

PS: After I return, would love to see lot of updates from your side reported during the 2 weeks.

[ajitkumarlb]

Weight Loss:
- 30 min on recumbent cycle on 6 days
- Food good control all through the week except for lunch on Sunday

Best part even after 4 weeks of no exercise I had managed to remain at 92kgs!

Not much other activity is happening on any other front. For now want to make sure weight loss remains steady.


And common folks only SDP is on vacation, not the rest of us

[ajitkumarlb]

Mon, Tue: 30 Min
Wed: As I had spent the Tue night in office working till Wed morning, Wed was a washout
Thu: Another night out at office, but this time I saw that I had to wait 1 hour for someone else to complete their task before I could resume, so, I hit the gym did 60 min on the recumbent bike newly installed at office.
Fri: I was in office from previous day till 6PM, I just had to go home sleep
Sat: was too tired to do any thing
Sun: Sunday as well was too tired to do any thing, but my daughter was insisting on eating pizza and we did, the guilt kicked in and at around 12 AM spent 30 min on the bike

[SDP]

Thanks Ajit for keeping this thread alive for 2 weeks! The overall inactivity on this thread has got me a bit worried about most of the remaining folks (with a notable exception of MC) falling off the bandwagon.

Update for (last-2) week:
#1 Weight-Control
1. Went for briskWalk-cum-jog on 6 days during the week.
2. Walked up to the 10th floor 8 times during the week.
3. Missed the one hour meditation session on Monday.
4. Ate out 3 times during the week, need to control.

#2 Reading
1. Seven habits continue. No teaching in the week.

#3 Planned 'core' work
1. Four to five hours of 'core' work in the week.

#4 Home-maintenance (neat-clean-tidy)
1. Spent around 4 hours in the week cleaning and organizing the home.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Update for (last-1) week:
This was the 1st week of my vacation.
#1 Weight-Control
1. Went for a walk on all 7 days during the week.
2. Used to get up at 6AM and go for an hour long walk.
3. Tried different routes every day and explored a lot of surrounding areas. Most routes were ~5km for a round trip.
4. Started carrying my camera around as early morning is a good time to spot birds.

#2 Reading
1. No driving, so no audio books. Carried two physical books with me, but got too engrossed in playing with my kids and reading took a back-seat.

#3 Planned 'core' work
1. On vacation, so no work!

#4 Home-maintenance (neat-clean-tidy)
1. Away from my home, so no home-maintenance.
2. Did spend a few minutes on spot-cleaning at my dad's place.
3. (Does not belong to this categoty, but still) spent some time cleaning the car.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Update for last week:
This was the 2nd week of my vacation.
#1 Weight-Control
1. Went for a walk on 6 days during the week.
2. Have been over-eating since last few days, so increased the daily walk from 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes.
3. Longest roundtrip was 7 kms. Took me one and half hour.
4. One day took a entirely different route. Came back and told my mom about it and she mentioned that in part of that route leopards have been spotted during early mornings. Needless to say, stayed away from that route from next day.

#2 Reading
1. Completed the long pending book "Critical Chain".

#3 Planned 'core' work
1. On vacation, so no work!

#4 Home-maintenance (neat-clean-tidy)
1. Away from my home, so no home-maintenance.
2. Bought some sand paper and few small cans of paint. Painted 3 metal gates at my dad's place. Easily 8-10 hours of effort.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Spent a lot of time chasing birds. Selected snaps coming up in this thread soon.

[SDP]

A lot of use can easily identify with "procrastination" being the evil which holds us back from doing a lot of important things in our life.
Here's a beautiful article I came across:
What we can learn from procrastination : The New Yorker
What is interesting is that I came across this a few months back. Started reading, realized it is a bit long. But its important, so wanted to complete it. Bookmarked it and then completely forgot.

[Fordmanchau]

I know this is going to be surprise post after so long. In general, there was nothing for me to update. Fell off the routine exercises, as got hit by viral in months of April and May and then decided to take it slow. Again, procrastination seeped in and I was every day telling myself "from tomorrow" . But then as it happens, that "tomorrow" was not coming.
So finally, I had it enough and on sheer impulse,last sunday on 3rd june, enrolled myself for the half -marathon event(21 kms) in Hyderabad Marathon scheduled for Aug 26th , this year.
Needless to say, now I have the pressure of date to show results. All eyes are on me, as even parents are now here.
Have been training since monday, but I have to get more serious about it.

Here is what I did.
Monday- 3.31km run in 30 minutes
Tuesday- 3.49 kms run in 30 minutes
Wed/Thurs- Rest
Friday- 5kms run in 44 minutes.
Hope that I'll top the 20kms mark by sunday , the 10th and improve it next week.

Our very own MC is helping me on this. Hope to run the full distance of 21kms on August 26th.


I hope you won't mind my absence from this thread SDP. In general , i have only been reading around but have not posted anything for a while.

[SDP]

Originally Posted by Fordmanchau

...Hope that I'll top the 20kms mark by sunday , the 10th and improve it next week.

Our very own MC is helping me on this. Hope to run the full distance of 21kms on August 26th.


I hope you won't mind my absence from this thread SDP. In general , i have only been reading around but have not posted anything for a while.

Hey welcome back! Congratulations for restarting the journey. Murphy does strike everybody every now and then. As you have shown, what is important is to get back on track at the earliest.
All the best for the half-marathon! With MC, I am sure you are in good hands.

[SDP]

Originally Posted by SDP

...
Spent a lot of time chasing birds. Selected snaps coming up in this thread soon.

[Wind]

Originally Posted by SDP

Spent a lot of time chasing birds. Selected snaps coming up in this thread soon.

These snaps are beautiful!. Where is this place and what is the equipment and zoom lens you re using?

-- Wind

[SDP]

Originally Posted by Wind

These snaps are beautiful!. Where is this place and what is the equipment and zoom lens you re using?

-- Wind

Thanks. The place is in Ratnagiri district - part of coastal Maharashtra.
The snaps are taken with a Nikon D90 mostly with the 70-300 telephoto lens.

[SDP]

Update for last week:

#1 Weight-Control
1. Went for a walk on 5 days during the week. Missed on day. Would compensate next week.

#2 Reading
1. Started and finished audiobook "Four disciplines of execution"

#3 Planned 'core' work
1. Just couple of hours of core work.
2. Two full days were spent just to clear the 700+ emails that had accumulated during the 2 week vacation.

#4 Home-maintenance (neat-clean-tidy)
1. Spent an hour cleaning up.

[ajitkumarlb]

Welcome back SDP! I suppose you had a great vacation and Great Pics there as well.

Not much to report on weight management, except for, I manged to clock 30 min of walking on two days during the 28th May week and once in the 4th June week and two days of this week and nothing to report.

My saga with time continues, I know its just another form of excuse, I just need to get around this time crunch going on at job.

I hope I have a better update by end of this week.

[SDP]

Originally Posted by ajitkumarlb

Welcome back SDP! I suppose you had a great vacation and Great Pics there as well.

Not much to report on weight management, except for, I manged to clock 30 min of walking on two days during the 28th May week and once in the 4th June week and two days of this week and nothing to report.

My saga with time continues, I know its just another form of excuse, I just need to get around this time crunch going on at job.

I hope I have a better update by end of this week.

Thanks Ajit! Your hectic work-schedule seems to be a much deeper issue than I had initiatlly imagined. I always thought, its a temporary spike and would go away in 4-6 weeks. Don't want to offer any unsolicited advice or opinion, without understanding the situation completely, but I suspect either the organizationx expectations from you and/or your own interpretation of 'ownership and commitment' is slightly off.

-------------
Update for last week:

#1 Weight-Control
1. Went for a walk on 5 days during the week. Missed one day this week as well.
2. Walked up 10 floors 10 times this week.

#2 Reading
1. Started with "The 8th habit". Quite impressive book.

#3 Planned 'core' work
1. Just couple of hours of core work.

#4 Home-maintenance (neat-clean-tidy)
1. Spent less than an hour cleaning up. The home is quite messy all over again. Need a long term solution.

[ajitkumarlb]

Weight Management
Mon & Tue: Landmine and not job this time
Wed: 30 & 30 Min on the cycle
Thu: 30 Min on the cycle
Fri: Landmine and not job this time
Sat: 30 Min on the cycle
Sun: 30 Min on the cycle

Over all a good week and this week started well with 30 min brisk walk, I would say a good pattern is setting in. Food overall is under control as well.

No activity on any other front. I am revisiting other activities and will be re-looking at the priority of each - that's a WIP.

Originally Posted by SDP

...your own interpretation of 'ownership and commitment' is slightly off.

SDP, you have put it very well, I could not have articulated it better and this has been an thing with me right from the day one of my career, I would not call it an issue or a challenge, I have enjoyed every bit of it.

It's been both a need as well as my nature/habit. Need, as I did not start off my career with typical education, campus as it usually happens in the IT world, I had to work my way on every front of the job to have reached the place where I am able to choose today, but if I had tried to be choosy when I started, I am quite certain today my choices would have been very limited.

Now I am learning to make those choices, and this reclaiming is not in any way a negative reflection on the job, but its me learning to make those choices now, that's what this thread is all about for me!