Welcome to my very first lifestyle report published online. Here I'm going to cover some crucial aspects of my life during the span of a month, including lessons learned, income, personal expenses, fitness, and useful resources.
Why monthly reports?
I feel I really needed to start writing these reports a while ago. The good thing is that at least I have started now.
Monthly reports help to reflect better, feel responsibility, and keep myself in check every month.
Lifestyle optimization is impossible without tracking. By tracking your activities, habits, and time, you can most definitely become more aware and conscious about what are you doing, when, and most importantly - raise the question why.
I don't want to spend my time in a miserable way or in a way how society expects me to live it. Since design is what I do, I think the best way to live your life is by designing it yourself.
If you're not going to design life yourself, someone else will do it for you.
February was the shortest month of the year, however, 28 days were enough to feel the sense of an improvement. I spent the whole month here in Vilnius, Lithuania, and currently planning to stay here at least until the summer.
Income
While I'm still not working for now, I was allocating the most of my time for diving deeper into design studies and improving my skills in the area.
For this reason, I am mostly spending money instead of earning it, which is completely fine with me - I'm pretty sure I can continue living and learning like this from my savings until ~September-October, 2019.
Most income I received was from grants and design freelancing gigs.
Personal expenses
Moving towards minimalism as the lifestyle allowed me to stay extremely lean with my finances, which is just perfect while living mostly from my savings.
Overall, I wasn't overspending on any of the areas, while food/groceries and fitness were categories where I spent the most on February. Pretty proud for myself for this. I think for life in Vilnius, Lithuania, this is as lean as it gets.
Fitness & Nutrition
It wasn't an easy month in terms of physical heath, since I'm still dealing with a back injury (spinal hernia) that has been keeping me in pain for months now.
However, I'm hitting the gym twice per week with an amazing help from my kinesitherapist, and getting a massage once or twice per month. Also, not to forget yoga & stretches every single morning for 30-40 minutes.
All this kept me in shape in February, and, nevertheless I still feel pain almost every day in different parts of my body, I guess without any of fitness all of it would be much worse. I can walk, work and do what I love every single day, that's what I'm grateful for. However, it would be nice to have a painless day once in a while too, just to get the sense of how it feels.
Fasting has been a great addition to my nutrition for a little bit more than a year already. I'm keeping a usual 16:8 pattern, meaning that I don't consume any calories for at least 16 hours a day, and have my 'eating window' for remaining 8 hours.
Productivity
Except a few bumps, February been a really productive month overall and I'm really happy for it. I've been mostly improving my design skills, mostly studying Apple's Human Interaction Guidelines and Google's Material Design Guidelines, alongside with sharpening my skills working with Sketch.
Also, I feel I have developed a strong habit of working using Pomodoro Technique (will write a blog post about it too), focusing on deep work for 25 minutes, and then resting for 5 minutes.
This allows to remain concentrated for a span which is kinda normal for a human being. A short break allows to rest your body and mind a bit, and then you start another Pomodoro period of work.
What I'm really happy about is that I have found my peak performance partner, which, in my opinion, is a great improvement for self-development process in general.
I used to plan for the week ahead, but now also do a deeper reflection for the past week, and also plan for the next one, during a 30-45 minute call, every week. Peak performance partner listens to how my week was and why, all the realizations, frustrations, and a-ha moments, then we review my plan for the upcoming week. Of course, I do the same for him.
All this allows us both to keep more responsible for our own actions during the week. By having to report each weeks goals & actions to someone else, you can get way bigger motivation since, if you didn't do what you have planned for, you need to explain why.
I will definitely write an article on this concept, too.
Finally, I was quite consistent with my habits too. Was getting better at waking up on time, and only failing this because of physical pain at night. Also, no trouble at all with meditation, daily gratitude, reading, and daily movement. One thing that bothers me is that some days I keep taking my phone in the morning, so I guess I need to buy a proper alarm clock and not use my iPhone as an alarm anymore. Simple.
Books, articles & resources
I read 3 books in February (6 in 2019):
THINK STRAIGHT: Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life by Darius Foroux
My review: An amazing guide to thinking, in general. Short, concise, straight to the point. Pragmatism is what I see as the right way to think for ME, so this gets even more interesting. I’m often super flawed in thinking, so if I could take one think out of Darius’s book, is print out the Cognitive Biases and put them on your wall. Every time you’re struggling with your thoughts, take a good look at ‘em.
The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy
My review: From when I found this book, I re-read this at least twice a year. Subtle reminders is a key.
Small right choices, details and consistency are the thing I honestly believe in life. My religion.
From work to sports, health, achievements, relationships. When your choices combine and multiply by a certain period of time, either you move up or down.
This book is definitely in my top 10 all-time list. Recommend to everyone, however, reading w/o action is worthless.
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
My review: This is a great piece of knowledge. Some of y’all might or might not experienced the ‘Flow’, however, this book reveals more mechanics under the process.
What’s fascinating is that some activities are more likely to get you into the ‘flow’ than others. You can definitely use this knowledge to build better optimal experiences in life, by constructing a clear goal, challenge to match your skills, and feedback.
Some parts felt too long, however, it’s great to read something very well researched and fact established. The last part on the meaning of life is just what a lot of people need.
The good thing is that I feel in these years, and especially lately, I’ve established my life to be more complex and more inline to reach optimal experiences.
Articles worth reading
Your career ends when your life ends. It's LONG. That's why you must choose the path which is right for you. Since a lot of people are really struggling with it, the author elaborates on 3 main questions: What are my strengths? How do I perform? What are my values?
Most of us are miserable because we live in hiding. We don’t express our truth. What we like. What we stand for and believe in. We just take what is given. Accept our circumstances. We compromise. We settle.
The action of hiding looks like this: Working shitty jobs we have zero passion for. Staying in toxic and lopsided relationships/friendships. Building a life based on other people’s definitions and wants for us, not our own.
Actions steps: the best way to stop being a miserable fuck is to stop hiding.
Sometimes the only way to learn, to grow is to fail. You don’t learn much from success — or often we learn the wrong lesson from success, such as I deserved this! — but you can learn from failure, even if only what not to do next time. You can learn how resilient you are, what kind of punches you can take. You can learn the situations to avoid, the people to avoid. And, if nothing else, you can learn that life goes on.
Music finds
Every month I put up a playlist from some new tracks I discovered and also some good oldies I remembered from way back. Enjoy:
Thanks for reading,
V.
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