Jorg's Brain Log

End of the week and the start of the new one. What was on my list for last week?

Basic schedule for week 40 (September 28 - October 4)

• Rest: Workdays get up at 6am and go to bed at midnight. 6 hours of rest.
• Running: 3 times in the morning. Getting the blisters away with 5×5 minute runs with 1 minute rest in between.
• Freediving: Pool session on Wednesday. Do a dry walk or static when I feel like it.
• Food: Start eating regularly 3 times a day on workdays. Not yet paleo style but no snacks after dinner! Soda light no problem.
• Mental: Read some books and start writing regularly again.

All in all I can say that I had a good week. The early wakeup is doing me good and giving a lot of energy. The last run, today, was not so good. I started way to fast and payed the price halfway. Lesson learned.

Freediving in the pool was also fun, but not a good training at all. I’m really missing the dedicated lane to train seriously again. On Saturday we went to visit the Wiesbaden competition, and it was a lot of fun again. I want to train pool freediving again! Wow…

Food is going good. 3 times a day cycle is back again. Sometimes small snack in the evening that needs to be replaced with vegetables or something like that. But all in all I’m happy. Book reading is also up to speed so gaining new knowledge everyday with the speed of light.

Next Step

Jorg talking with Erik van Riet Paap

Now that the first 4 weeks are over, it’s clear that this schedule is a new habit and I see no problem continuing with the basic part. Now it’s time to add some small things again.

From this week on, I will be working from my home office again, so it’s important to keep up to speed and get out of bed early in the morning, like I did in the last weeks. While proven not to be a problem while working from an office, now I need to prove myself that the same thing is possible while working from home. Discipline!

Running will remain at 3 times a week. The coming week I will run 4 times 7 minutes and will see how it goes. If I keep a consistent speed I don’t expect any problems anymore, but you never know.

Sanne and I really need to find a solution for our freediving training. Dedicated lane is really a must have, so I’ll make this a top priority to arrange. In the mean time, we will keep doing one pool session per week for now. Furthermore I will renew my dry static schedule I wanted to do last month with a dry static/walk schedule. 6 days a week doing a pool training, dry static or dry walk session of max 15 minutes again for 4 weeks straight. Lets see if this brings enough diversity to keep me going.

In the coming 4 weeks I’ll keep the food intake the same. Focusing more on the time I eat and not in the evening anymore. Next month I start with paleo food again.

Mental part stays the same as well. Book reading is going great. I think I’ve got now 8 books in my new book closet that I didn’t read yet, so I don’t have to order any books in the coming month.

In short, the two changes I will implement is that I will do freediving 6 days a week and I stop eating after dinner, except for the weekends. In my new schedule it will look like this:

Basic schedule for week 41 (October 5 - October 11)

• Rest: Workdays get up at 6am and go to bed at midnight. 6 hours of rest.
• Running: 3 times in the morning. Getting the blisters away with 4×7 minute runs with 1 minute rest in between.
• Freediving: Pool session on Wednesday. Do a dry walk or static on 5 other days.
• Food: Start eating regularly 3 times a day on workdays. Not yet paleo style but no snacks after dinner! Soda light no problem.
• Mental: Read some books and start writing regularly again.

Sometimes change is necessary to get away from a (bad) habit. There is a natural resilience  against change when people don’t really see the point of change. That happens when they can’t fully understand the deeper meaning of the habit that has kicked in.

However, when they hear from their doctor (the specialist) that they really have to quit smoking or otherwise some serious consequences emerge that could threaten their existence, people most of the time understand what the bad habit will do if they continue and they take the steps to change.

Where people normally have a lot of problems voluntarily changing a bad habit, they seem to have no problems at all to make such a drastic change when they hear it’s life threatening.

Then you have the sort of people who don’t believe and trust the doctor and his bad message. They still continue with their bad habit and seek relieve by talking to other people who think the same as they are, therefore convincing themselves they are right even more.

Thankfully most people are smart enough to believe the specialist and quit smoking. They make the change and adapt to a new habit of non-smoking. Too bad that people sometimes need to find out the hard way.

Running is going great! Body is adapting and feet are going strong. After 3 weeks of dedicated training I’m started to feel better on the road. No more blisters at the moment and the  speed is coming back.

This week I’m starting week 4 of my first schedule to get back to speed with running in 8 weeks time. I’m now up to 5×5 minutes with one minute rest between each set and slowly increasing pace. It may not seem a lot, but I’m focusing myself to keep a good running technique during the sets, which is much more exhausting then just keep going with my same old bad technique.

My friends girlfriend Marieke uses www.afstandmeten.nl to track the runs she does. I started using it this evening to create some alternative routes for the coming weeks and months. Each week I run the same course 3 times and then switches to a route of opposite direction, so that I can keep fresh and excited about each week.

Here an overview of my first 4 weeks of routes  and the big route that I want to have under my belt end of the first season. Funny to see, that this is somewhat of the same route as some years ago when I ran the big loop regularly and sometimes 2 in a row.

After my first 4 weeks I want to do a 6k competition run, to see where I’m standing. It’s been a lot of years since my last race, so curious what time I can put down.

Another week has already passed and I’m pretty happy with the whole week as I look back. What was on the planning?

Basic schedule for week 39 (September 21-27)

• Rest: Workdays get up at 6am and go rest at midnight.
• Running: 3 times in the morning. Getting the blisters away with 6×4 minute runs with 1 minute rest in between.
• Freediving: Pool session on Thursday. At least 6 times this week: max 15 minute static schedule. Short but intense.
• Food: Start eating regularly 3 times a day on workdays. Not yet paleo style but no snacks after dinner! Soda light no problem.
• Mental: Read some books and start writing regularly again.

The resting part is going great! I’ve made some variables in my sleeping schedule. Basic rule number 1 is that I sleep 6 hours and that’s it. So, I try to keep it the same the whole week; going to bed at midnight (read/sleep) and get up at 6 in the morning. Sometimes there are priorities and things need to be finished. Or sometimes I’m in a working flow, that I don’t want to quit working yet. So I had a few occasions that I went to bed at 1 or 2 in the morning and got out of bed at 7 or 8 in the morning. In the weekend my only rule is to get out of bed at around 8 in the morning. Sleeping out is mentally refreshing.

Running is also going excellent. Last week 3 runs of 6 times 4 minutes, without any real problems. Only thing is that I feel my left calve and my right heel after 20 minutes of running. Not a real problem, but something to keep an eye on. No blisters or any other foot problems at the moment. I’m still taping my heels every time before going for a run. I probably go to my local sport store to video my running and examine my foot, to see if I use the right equipment for running. Next week 3 runs with a 5×5 minutes schedule.

Sanne and I did an excellent freediving session on Wednesday in the pool. We played a lot with alignment and technique, but still I’m missing a dedicated lane to improve. Outdoor season is over now and because of my busy schedule we will probably stick to the Wednesday pool training schedule. Dry static schedules are off for the moment. Maybe again next month.

Food schedule is going pretty okay. I’m back to eating 3 times a day and no snacks in the evening. But the weekends are still eat-all-I-can days.

Mental part is going okay. Writing is up and going strong again. In the last 3 weeks I’ve read 9 books. So that is 3 books a week. At the moment I’m reading around 6 others at the same time. Absorbing knowledge! The biggest one is Titan, a biography about the life of John D. Rockefeller. 760 pages written by Ron Chernow. Great read and this one alone will probably take until next weekend to finish.

What I’m learning with making schedules and therefore structured changes in my life is that I need to do it with small steps, stick with it for several weeks and then add, remove or change a habit or skill. So after the coming week I’ve done 4 weeks of good sleeping cycles, running, basic eating and mental homework that it’s time to change something again. Interesting weeks to come!

My schedule for the new week:

Basic schedule for week 40 (September 28 - October 4)

• Rest: Workdays get up at 6am and go to bed at midnight. 6 hours of rest.
• Running: 3 times in the morning. Getting the blisters away with 5×5 minute runs with 1 minute rest in between.
• Freediving: Pool session on Wednesday. Do a dry walk or static when I feel like it.
• Food: Start eating regularly 3 times a day on workdays. Not yet paleo style but no snacks after dinner! Soda light no problem.
• Mental: Read some books and start writing regularly again.

Legacy is a word that can bring many different kinds of emotions. Legacy in IT is most of the time a dirty word and brings feelings like old and difficult. Legacy in my personal live is a very beautiful word and brings me to the most important thing in the world: my children.

While I write a lot online about many different and sometimes very personal topics, I don’t write a lot about my children. Thinking about why, I can only come up with one answer: privacy. Still, it’s strange because a lot of my time is spend with my kids.

My daughter Indy is 3 years old. But if she hears this, she says she will turn 4 in only 4 months time so she can get to school. She’s my little pink princess. Problem is she really thinks that she is a little pink princess. But that’s all my girlfriends fault and a completely different story.

My son Rody is 8 years old and turns 9 end of December. He’s a Nintendo playing spiderman-ninja. He’s also the sweetest brother a sister could wish for. Well, most of the time anyway. He really enjoys private father and son activities. So for us a good excuse to go to a movie together and have some fun, while the girls stay at home in their pink dresses, dancing to Zumba music.

They sometimes are real little devils, but in the end they are children. My children, and my legacy. What I do in live reflects onto them. Which makes it so important to live a good live and raise them well.

In the end, they are my everything and I’m so glad that they are in my life. Kids, I love you!

(Okay, getting slightly emotional here. So time for a good action movie with Jason Statham)

• if being honest is always the right thing to get you forward?
• if hard work is really worth it?
• if it’s fun to watch TV every evening?
• how life would be without setting goals?
• what I would do if I couldn’t walk anymore?
• why I can’t stop thinking and analyzing?
• how it’s possible that when I sleep 4-5 hours a night I’m 100% energized?
• when I sleep more then 6 hours I keep lazy?
• why I love water so much?
• what my kids think of me?
• if I’m a great dad?
• how I can deal better with my concentration problem?
• why I always want to be the best in what I do?
• …

But in the end I’m always happy that I can find some satisfying answers to all these questions! It’s great to be at a point in my life where no direct answer can also be a good answer to a difficult question.

Here’s my regular Sunday evening post. Lets see what I’ve done last week. This was the original schedule:

Basic schedule for week 38 (September 14-20)

• Rest: Workdays get up at 6am and go rest at midnight.
• Running: 3 times in the morning. Getting the blisters away with 7×3 minute runs with 1 minute rest in between.
• Freediving: Pool session on Thursday. At least 6 times this week: max 15 minute static schedule. Short but intense.
• Food: Start eating regularly 3 times a day on workdays. Not yet paleo style but no snacks after dinner! Soda light no problem.
• Mental: Read some books and start writing regularly again.

So how did I do? In short: rest was perfect. So was Running. Freediving in the pool went okay, but I only did one static! I don’t know why, I really just forgot to do it. Very strange.

Food was also pretty okay, but still working on getting on track. Book reading is sky high (see my previous post), but writing is somehow still low. I put my lack on writing in the same category as the static training stuff!

I really have to start planning the whole day in the morning. Just to review all the tasks that need to be done that day. Strange how this happens. Lets improve in the coming week.

So what is planned for week 39? As long as not everything is going perfect, I will stick to the same schedule as above. So go, go, go!

I’m going to talk very openly about something very personal here. This will be the first time I tell anybody about my addiction. With my coming out story I hope that somebody will be able to help me with my problem.

Okay, here we go. I’m addicted to books! I just can’t stop reading them and buying them. It’s probably the equivalent of women going shopping for some new clothes and kids running around a candy story.

My family is now abandoning visits to cities which have large bookstores, because it will take hours to get me out of the bookstore once I get in. My new book closets are already filled and I need some new ones.

And still my hunger for more books is very much alive! At the moment I’m reading around 1000 pages a week and it’s going faster and faster. Where will it stop? The dosage is so high already and it’s just a matter of time that I will OD on information overload.

What to do, what to do? Who can help? Or give me an extra shot of books…

In the last few weeks I’ve written a lot, but not regularly. I need more spreading in the words I type.

Some stuff I write is related to news and in that means time  sensitive. That means that I wait with writing that certain news post, it is already old news. Now, it doesn’t matter to me to be the first to break certain news but to give insightful opinionated news. A small delay, depending on the news, shouldn’t be a problem. But still, there is some time pressure to deliver and it’s hard to work ahead, because news hasn’t happened yet.

Other stuff is writing where there is no time stamp attached to it. The stuff I write about is timeless and is informative in nature, but not news worthy. This is the stuff that can be prepared in a long outburst of writing.

Now that I’ve learn that I work best with outbursts of writing in the evenings and regular relatively small writings in the morning, I should plan my writings more and what it will be about. This together with the fact that I have to accept I have a busy life, but still had a need to be creative with my writings, make me come up with a new writing schedule which I can renew my vows with.

• Personal Blog - 3 times a week – personal diary
• iJorg – 7 times a week – news and in-depth, so morning work!
• Life Skills – 3 times a week – timeless tips/tricks for your life
• Sharkbait – 1 time a week my personal freediving training diary and maybe add a training article one in a while.
• Shark Freediving – 7 times a week – news and in-depth, so morning work. But at the moment I’ve got a little bit of a struggle to get my question answered if I should continue with this one. For now, I make the commitment of writing for a week again, and see how I feel about it. So report back next week.
• Book – I tried to do daily writings for this one. But it turns out I write better when I do this in a burst in the evening. Yesterday evening I did 4000 words in one sitting and that works better for me, and gives much higher quality content then spreading it through all the week.

Writing Schedule:

• Morning: iJorg, Shark Freediving (Daily blogs)
• Evening: Personal, Bait, Skills, Book

Lessons learned: use news worthy articles to keep my writing discipline high and inform. Use my inspiration bursts to write creatively. Let’s see how this will work out after a week.

How did the first week of planning go? I’m pretty happy but especially the last few days could have gone somewhat better. The plan was to do the following:

Basic schedule for week 37 (september 7-13)

• Rest: Workdays get up at 6am and go rest at midnight.
• Running: 3 times in the morning. Getting the blisters away with 9×2 minute runs with 1 minute rest in between.
• Food: Start eating regularly 3 times a day. 2 times strict and dinner with the family. Paleo style.
• Freediving: Regular depth session on Wednesday and Pool session on Thursday. Everyday a max 15 minute static schedule. Short but intense.
• Stretching: 3 times in the morning. Loose up the body with a 30 minute stretch session.

Mental work: Read some books and start writing regularly again.

Rest went okay! Managed to do it 100% right, so lets continue. Running was also okay and no problems on the feet.

Freediving went partially okay. I did do static on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. But that’s two missing at a minimum. So I have to step it up and make it at least 6! Depth session didn’t fit into the schedule, but I did a good pool session.

Food was just plain bad! Well, the only positive thing was, that I was eating again 3 meals a day. But not at all Paleo food and still snacking a little bit in the evening. I didn’t do any stretching at all! Didn’t make the time for it.

Mental work was okay! Reading goes like crazy. 3 books last week, so I ordered 5 new ones already. Some very interesting titles. Writing is going well, but not regularly. I’ve got creative bursts that can last as long as 6 hours, but it only happened 3 times this week, including this one. It’s better to do 7×1 hour then to do 3×6.

So plan for the coming week:

Basic schedule for week 38 (September 14-20)

• Rest: Workdays get up at 6am and go rest at midnight.
• Running: 3 times in the morning. Getting the blisters away with 7×3 minute runs with 1 minute rest in between.
• Freediving: Pool session on Thursday. At least 6 times this week: max 15 minute static schedule. Short but intense.
• Food: Start eating regularly 3 times a day on workdays. Not yet paleo style but no snacks after dinner! Soda light no problem.
• Mental: Read some books and start writing regularly again.