Jorg's Brain Log

Last Wednesday I had a little gap in my calendar and thought it would be fun to surprise my son with a nice trip to Landgraaf. Why Landgraaf? Because there is a 550 meter long indoor 5 lane wide field with snow, called Snowworld! My favorite indoor spot to do some snowboarding!

As my son is at les 3 of his 6 lessons course in snowboarding, I thought it was time to give him some extra practice. So together we drove to Landgraaf and after an hour of driving Rody, my son, was jumping with energy to get started.

It’s fun to see his face when he saw the big hill. For the first time in a stoeltjeslift was pretty exciting for him, but I’m proud to say that after the third ride up he managed to do it all by himself without falling. It took me much longer the first times I tried snowboarding!

It’s good to be young and not be afraid that you will hurt yourself! It’s clear after 3 hours of snowboarding that my son still lacks some control while going down, especially in the steering department. Wow, I wouldn’t dare to go that fast down and let yourself fall on your back because you don’t know any other way to brake.

But after a few takes more and more control came  to him. It’s clear that he hasn’t got the stamina yet to go on for 3 hours or longer! After almost two hours we took a break and eat and drink something. Afterwards we came back and within the hour it was over. He had no more energy and cold hands (time for some new bigger and longer gloves).

All in all it was fun to do something like this with my son and it made me proud to see him busy on the hill all alone while I was waiting at the bottom. I can’t wait until the course of him is over half way December so we can go again together  and he can show me how I can grind and jump!

It’s clear by now that printing out my schedule each week in advance works pretty great. I’m going to stick by it for the coming months, to keep track and see where I can make improvements.

Yesterday’s experiment of not doing any work on Sunday worked out pretty well. I think I will plan this as well for the coming time.

Furthermore, this week I’m doing another small experiment. I’m writing down what I’m doing every 30 minutes. Lets see what that brings me.

On Monday I have to do some catching up with the blogs, so there will be a big  list. Also for sports it was shit last week, and I want to make up as well.

General

• Sleep – my polyphasic sleep experiment..
• Eating – Focus on eating once between every sleep cycle, that’s 4 times each day
• Business Habit – Execute every work day! Maybe 1 hour of work, but oh so  valuable. More about this later.
• Music – Make some music everyday

Writing

• Monday: 2x iJorg, 3x Shark Freediving, 2x Brain, 2x CIO, Skills, Appetite
• Tuesday: iJorg, Shark Freediving, CIO
• Wednesday: iJorg, Shark Freediving, Brain, Appetite
• Thursday: iJorg, Shark Freediving, Skills, Sharkbait
• Friday: iJorg, Shark Freediving, CIO
• Saturday: iJorg, Shark Freediving, Appetite
• Sunday: iJorg, Shark Freediving, Brain, Book

Sports

• Monday: run 30min/5k
• Tuesday: run 40min/6k
• Wednesday: Pool Freediving
• Thursday: run 35min/5-6k, Pool Freediving
• Friday: -
• Saturday: run 35min/5-k
• Sunday: run 60min/8-9k

It has become clear that improvement needs time once again. You can’t build Rome in one day and when you think of it, it will never be finished neither.

The path of improvement is what drives me, not the end result. As soon as I reach a target I set a new one and try to reach that one.

I have a lot of plans, but I don’t plan a lot! I plan stuff that can be planned, I do stuff that needs to be done. And in the end it’s just about that feeling of accomplishment.

In that regards it was an interesting week! Some experiments made it even more interesting then usual.

General

• Sleep – was shit. Due to a small stomach virus I was so low on energy.
• Eating – this one was pretty okay. But I really have to plan to get back to my paleo food
• Business Habit – also pretty happy, but not like it should have been.
• Music – I made some music during the week, but it was mostly on my son’s keyboard, which was fun anyway.

Writing

Due to the fact that I kept my laptop out on Sunday, I have to make up for some lost writing on Monday. Plan is that have everything up again so that is 22 blog posts and some work on my book. Schedule looked like this:

• Monday: iJorg, Shark Freediving, Brain, Skills
• Tuesday: no writing
• Wednesday: 3x iJorg, 3x Shark Freediving, Brain, Appetite
• Thursday: no writing
• Friday: iJorg, Shark Freediving, Skills, Sharkbait
• Saturday: iJorg
• Sunday: no writing

As you can see I’m starting to get into pro-active writing. Working ahead of schedule. But unfortunatly I was behind schedule again end of the week. Let’s try to fix this for the coming week. Just bad planning.

Sports

Pool freediving and only one run this week. I planned to do 2 other runs in the weekend, but my stomach was not happy, so I decided to put them ahead of schedule. I have to make up for this the coming week!.

• Tuesday: -
• Wednesday: pool freediving
• Thursday: run 5k/29:15 min
• Friday: -
• Saturday: -
• Sunday: -

Let’s make a Super-week coming week!

Damn, I made a mistake! I didn’t take action when I took my last unread book out of the bookshelf (The World Is Flat). I just finished the book and remember it was my last one I had to read.

It’s now almost midnight and I feel like a junkie! I need more books! But where to get them at this hour. Ahhh, maybe some late night shopping at Bol will ease the senses… Yes, I know… I need help.

Below a picture of my collection of books. There is still room for more.

Due to last weeks big success, I’m continuing my ‘plan the week’ routine. Lets see if I can make an even more succesfull week then last week now that I’m not sick anymore.

General

• Sleep – my polyphasic sleep experiment..
• Eating – Focus on eating once between every sleep cycle, that’s 4 times each day
• Business Habit – Execute every work day! Maybe 1 hour of work, but oh so  valuable. More about this later.
• Music – Make some music everyday

Writing

• Monday: iJorg, Shark Freediving, Brain, Skills
• Tuesday: iJorg, Shark Freediving, CIO
• Wednesday: iJorg, Shark Freediving, Brain, Appetite
• Thursday: iJorg, Shark Freediving, Skills, Sharkbait
• Friday: iJorg, Shark Freediving, CIO
• Saturday: iJorg, Shark Freediving, Appetite
• Sunday: iJorg, Shark Freediving, Brain, Book

Sports

• Monday: -
• Tuesday: swim
• Wednesday: run 30min/5k
• Thursday: Pool Freediving
• Friday: -
• Saturday: run 30min/5k
• Sunday: run 40min/6k

Appointments

From this week on I also review my appointments for the whole week. This way I also exactly know what the busy and free days are. Because some of the appointments are personal and include other people, I’ll keep this list private and only put the number of appointments behind it and the total time (including travel)

• Monday: -
• Tuesday: 2 appointments / total time 2:00 hours
• Wednesday: -
• Thursday: 3 appointments / total time 10:00 hours
• Friday: 2 appointments / total time 3:30 hours
• Saturday: 2 appointments / total time 3:00 hours
• Sunday: -

Time to reflect back on the week and how everything went.

General

Because I was sick I had to cut the schedule somewhere and the best thing to do it was here. My sleep schedule has been on somewhat of a pause. Eating is still pretty okay, but when I’m hungry I eat. Business habit was shit. Because of my cold it was hard to breath and talk, but I managed to do some of it anyway. And music was also forgotten, besides a few sessions on the keyboard. Better next week!

Writing

I’m happy to report that I kept to my complete writing schedule. That is 22 blog posts and some work on my book. Schedule looked like this:

• Tuesday: iJorg, Shark Freediving, Brain, CIO, Life Skills
• Wednesday: iJorg, Shark Freediving, Appetite
• Thursday: iJorg, Shark Freediving
• Friday: iJorg, Shark Freediving, Life Skills
• Saturday: Shark Freediving, Brain
• Sunday: 2x iJorg, Shark Freediving, Brain, CIO, Sharkbait, Appetite, Book

Sports

Stretching stays a problem. I decided to first get indepth information, so that I can start with a good stretching schedule in December. For the rest it went pretty okay.

• Tuesday: -
• Wednesday: 5k / 28:30 min run
• Thursday: 1100 meter swim
• Friday: -
• Saturday: 5k / 28:57 min run
• Sunday: 8k / 52,19 min run

Conclusion

It was a good productive week, when I take in account that I was sick for some days. Writing and sports still went well. Biggest lesson learned is planning on paper really works for me. So from now on I plan my week every Sunday evening with the tasks and appointments ahead.

Mr. Influenza

Last Sunday I noticed my energy levels were declining and my breathing was going a little bit more difficult than normal. For me the first signs that something was not in order under the hood. My daughter was also getting sick, so I probably had catched the famous influenza virus. So how would this conflict with my daily work and sleep schedule?

There is one simple rule when you’re sick; you need to rest and give your body time to recover. So with that in mind I decided to take it easy for the week, or as long as I felt that I wasn’t 100%.

Instead of taking 3 hour core sleep, I added a 1,5 rem sleep to it, bringing it up to 4,5 hours and even that I didn’t feel really the need to take my 3 naps, I still took them anyway.

Sometimes I woke up after 1,5 hour of coresleep in the night. But forced myself to stay down until the 4,5 hours were over. This way I noticed that my body was really rested in the morning. I even managed to do my sport schedule, altough on a little less intense level then normally is the case.

Worst day was Friday. In the morning my head was about to explode. Again decided to stay down in bed and do some reading and sleeping. And it helped. So it’s Saturday now, the worst part is over and I’m ready to go back into full action again.

Lessons learned while being sick:

• Take it easy
• Don’t feel guilty that you can’t finish everything
• Focus on the primary goals only
• Sleep, Sleep, Sleep
• Read, Read, Read
• Eat well
• Don’t feel sorry for yourself
• Be positive

It’s Tuesday already. For me it’s the actual first real day of the week. Yesterday was sick-day together with my daughter. I’m glad I managed to push out a small run in the evening. Still, I’m not feeling myself 100%, but enough to get back on track.

So what’s in store for the coming week? Let’s see.

• Sleep – I’ll continue from today on with my polyphasic sleep experiment..
• Eating – Focus on eating once between every sleep cycle, that’s 4 times each day
• Business Habit – Execute every work day! Maybe 1 hour of work, but oh so  valuable. More about this later.
• Music – Make some music everyday
• Writing – See my writing schedule
• Sports – See my sports schedule

I thought a lot why sometimes I fail with my writing schedule and sports schedule. There is still too much procrastination going on with these 2. So I decided to become more precise and make a schedule for those 2. So here they are:

Writing Schedule (Tuesday – Sunday)

• 6x iJorg
• 6x Shark Freediving
• 3x Brain
• 2x Appetite
• 2x CIO
• 2x Life Skills
• 1x Sharkbait
• Book: complete chapters overview

Which translates into the following schedule:

• Tuesday: iJorg, Shark Freediving, Brain, CIO, Life Skills
• Wednesday: iJorg, Shark Freediving, Sharkbait, Appetite
• Thursday: iJorg, Shark Freediving, Life Skills
• Friday: iJorg, Shark Freediving, Brain, CIO
• Saturday: iJorg, Shark Freediving, Appetite
• Sunday: iJorg, Shark Freediving, Brain, Book

Sports Schedule

• Tuesday: stretching schedule (find new one)
• Wednesday: run 30min/5k
• Thursday: Pool Freediving
• Friday: stretching
• Saturday: run 30min/5k
• Sunday: run 50min/7-8k

What a week!  I must confess that due to the polyphasic sleep experiment things didn’t exactly went like planned. At times the extra burst of energy gave me a lot of productivity, while at other times, unforeseen energy drains like zombie hours took time away.

Also I’m a day late on closing my week. There is illness in the family and I’m involved as well this time. Thankfully not too much, but enough that on Sunday evening I decided to abort my running after 5 minutes. And while not feeling so well, I managed to do a late night run today.

So here in short, what went well and what didn’t:

Sleep

I wrote already enough about this one. The sleep experiment is a success. Only due to illness I aborted it now for a day or 2, but I’ll take it up again tomorrow.

Eating

With the new sleep cycle it was pretty easy to eat only during each waking period. Still I noticed extra hunger between 3pm and 9pm and had an extra snack now and then. I try to be stricter the coming week.

Business Habit

Okay, I managed to completely neglect this one. Maybe on a subconsciousness level I was not ready for this habit. So zero points here!

Music

Zero points here as well. The times I wanted to make some music, the family was asleep. Strange I only have this creative feeling between 10pm and 8am. Lets see if I can change this.

Writing

Writing went well, but not on schedule. I didn’t do daily posts for iJorg and Shark Freediving, but I was on catch-up modus again. Really have to change this way of working. Lets see how to improve.

Sports

Went okay. Did 3 runs and some pool freediving. I managed to do a stretching session, but that didn’t feel okay. I have to find a good stretching routine for this week. I thought about track & field and decided I’ll make this optional again.

Lets start planning the next week.

It’s been an interesting two days with regards to my sleep experiment. While I feel I’m pretty adapted already, I noticed a few things.

The first real challenge in the experiment, besides starting with it, was the fact that we went to a party on Friday evening. So it would be very early in the morning before I would get home. This was not in line with my 2 to 5am core sleep I did.

My last nap on Friday evening was at 21:50 and I slept for 18 minutes before waking up by myself before the alarm went off. Now I was ready to go and have some fun.

To keep the experiment running and not to mess too much with too many variables at the same time I decided to not take any alcohol, just some sugar drinks like cola.

Day 6 – Saturday

At around 2:30am I started to notice a first sign of decreased attention span and some tiredness. That was in line what was expected because I normally have this all time after around 4,5 hours after napping I find myself getting tired again. And of course the fact that I normally would have my core sleep around this time made me expect it even more.

At 3:00 am it was enough for me. I went downhill very fast from here on. Couldn’t follow conversations anymore and was going into zombie modus fast. Time to go back home. I already noticed a difference while driving our car back, less concentration.

At 3:30 am I was ready to get my core sleep. I put my alarm on 6:30 and I fell a sleep. It felt like I slept immediately after putting down my phone. I was still pretty tired when the alarm went off at 6:30, but got out of bed anyway. Clearly I was in zombie modus and very deep. Getting my core sleep this late was not good.

I decided to take another 1,5 hour sleep cycle at set the alarm clock to 8am. The first time I was going off the schedule, but at least it was voluntarily. Fun thing was that I felt a sleep again, but this time I woke up by myself at around 7:45, 15 minutes before my alarm went off.

This time no zombie modus but very active! Did a lot of writing in the morning. At 11:05 it was nap time again. This time I again woke up by myself after 17 minutes. Now every time I take a nap I dream and come into my REM sleep.

Nap time at 16:40 brought the same thing. Waking up after 18 minutes. Wow, amazing to experience that you can feel so refreshed after such a short nap. Normally I take 30 minutes for naps. I set the alarm 30 minutes ahead before I get into bed and I start reading. After 10 minutes of reading I put the book away and close my eyes. Normally it takes me around 2 to 5 minutes to fall asleep. And now I’m waking up 2-3 minutes before my alarm goes off. That means my actual nap times are between 12 to 14 minutes.

In the evening another nap that goes as the previous naps. Feeling good!

Day 7 – Sunday

While I don’t have too much trouble staying up until 2am before going to bed, my head is almost exploding. I’ve got a big headache, maybe because of the cold I have.

It’s time for my core sleep. Pretty confident about the 3 hours that come I go to sleep. Doesn’t take much time again. I even don’t read a book or watch a film.

5am, it’s time to get up. My head hurts like crazy. This doesn’t feel right. While I don’t have a problem standing up, the headache is just too much. After 10 minutes of walking around, it’s getting worse and worse. I decide that I don’t feel right and go back to bed, without setting the alarm.

In the end I get out of bed at 11am. That’s 6 hours later. Yes, I did some sleeping during these hours. But here it comes: The interesting part is that I woke up everytime after a sleep cycle was over. That’s after every 70 to 90 minutes. I’m then wide awake. Read for about 5-10 minutes and then close my eyes again and so repeat the cycle.

It’s very strange to be so consious about my sleeping and the different stages. It’s also strange to experience so many different dreams and fall asleep within a few minutes after closing my eyes.

Conclusion after a week

For sure this sleep cycle gives a lot of free time. So much free time even I am not on a hurry anymore with my time. For myself I’m going to continue with this cycle in the coming week, but the thing I really want to improve is the fact that I don’t want zombie moments anymore. Where I first experienced these moments during the late hours, this now more or less have shifted to the morning.

Maybe this is because of the fact I don’t have a real planning for my new type of day anymore. I’m not in a hurry anymore in the morning. I know what to do more or less, but I didn’t set deadlines to finish stuff before 9am or something like that.

For tomorrow I’m going to change a few things. First of all, I’m going to write down my to-do list for the day to come before my core sleep. This so that I know what I’m going to in the 4 different moments of the day.

Second of all I think I’m going to put my sporting moment in the morning. I think that will kick-start my day even more. So let’s see how it goes.