Week 24 Review

Week 24 Review on the Reset. Rounding the corner here ... I accepted an offer recently to join a firm and will start mid-September. It is great to jump back in after the reset. Really refreshed, refocused and ready to work with a great team again.

In retrospect with my goals, I didn't heed the counsel of one of my favorite books -- Atomic Habits. Specifically, I established a lot of 'end point' goals at the outset. These are like lines in the sand to be crossed, rather than focusing on the habits and systems to get there and go past them. Over time, I have been doing just that. Building the muscle and habit to achieve these goals. So, as an example, rather than hit 1050 on squat/deadlift/bench, I have been focusing on finding the right workouts that maximize gains, whatever those are. Same with reading -- rather than read 12 books instead build the reading habit and determine the best way to distill the learning points. That said:

Physical Benchmarks

• Gym: find myself alternating between high rep days (100) and really heavy days (1 RM). Enjoying this and seeing gains. I am really sore after the high volume days. This is in contrast to the 5/3/1 system I started with. A great system but the body gets used to any routine over time and it is good to mix it up to push past plateaus.

• Running: back into it. Not sure running will ever be in my DNA but cannot deny its benefits. Switching to early morning efforts here followed by some reading the Word before day starts.

• Diet: Just getting healthy snacks into a more visible and easy to grab place. Nothing too crazy here. Some sugar back in but limited for sure.

Spiritual

• The battle is in being surrendered vs. taking charge of the day in your own power and wisdom. Such a subtle but important thing. This -- for me -- is the key issue. When I try to be more Christ like, completely fail. When I try harder, I fail. But when I don't try but simply remain abiding in the vine -- available for use, there is victory. Of course, any born again Christian is positionally/legally right in the eyes of the Lord. But in terms of being conformed to His image, that is the Christian walk. Romans 8 talks about yielding our members as instruments of righteousness. A musical instrument requires someone to play it -- or surgical instruments requires a surgeon to wield it. If instruments, then we must wait upon the Lord to be used. This is key. There is such a want to go out and do everything ourselves, but it must start w/ being available for use.

Family

• I am simply appreciating and enjoying time with my family. I am thankful we are healthy and everything is ok. I do not take this for granted and realize at some point this will not be the case -- until then, I spending time at home and enjoying the ride. Habits being built to continue to minimize and organize.

Mental/Projects

• The bulk of the past two weeks has been to re-establish the right productive habits as I near the time to onboard again. This means a refreshing of Todoist -- my favorite task manager out there -- according to GTD (getting things done) principals. Ensuring calendar integration with Google Calendar and it all syncs across devices (desktop, iphone, apple watch). Setting in place the weekly review and routines to clear the desk and review the next day.

  
  

  

• Aside from this, I have been drinking in content related to the new work and practicing picking techniques and scales on the guitar but honestly in a dabbly, non-focused way.

Geeking

• Had game night Sunday where we played Thunder Road: Vendetta and Unstable Unicorns. I have never seen Justin laugh so hard as to when he was 'neighing' and 'super-neighing' Hilaire. I am sure he paid for that later.

Two fun games where you can stick it to the others at the table!

• Found new trivia place. No way we are going to hit $500 in wins by end of month. We were halfway there when World of Beer closed. New trivia place heavy on pop culture, not my favorite! Ugh ..

• AD&D 2E campaign rolls on. PCs level 4 now in a homebrew campaign. Have worked out the tools to record these sessions and upload to YT, so that is good.

• Reading: I was wrong on finishing the GE book. I continue to siphon stuff from it. It seems very popular to trash Jack Welch these days in social media. How he ruined corporate capitalism, he was a toxic leader and so on. Reality never seems to fit neatly into these binary portraits -- he was either great or terrible. The premise of such arguments is that he laid off employees and sold lower margin businesses, which inherently must be self-serving. His counter arguments in the book is that such businesses usually did much better with owners who really wanted them (like say Trane for the AC division) and to be competitive and return equity to shareholders you had to control costs, which included being more efficient with staff -- doing more with less. When others were let go, GE would provide generous outgoing packages and help them get new work. I can't say to what degree this is true and evenly applied, but he played the rules that were already established in corporate America. He just did it more aggressively. His efforts to push 6 sigma, become boundaryless and agile are great from any lens, imo. I suppose most controversial was his push to differentiate the people in terms of performance. But this meritocracy is exactly what we do as Fantasy Football League owners every week. We want to field the best team possible. Athletes are paid on their output. Teachers dole out grades every week in classes. Rewarding performance demands differentiation. But to systemize the workplace this way has brought a lot of criticism. I am quite sure there would be a right and wrong way to go about this, but Jack had it right when he said being candid, radically candid, is the only way to go. Anyhow -- a lot of good stuff in the book, imo.

AV