I've had pretty intense one and a half weeks. Fall has started with a bang and everything has picked up at work, at home and everywhere. Here's a report on the busy period and what it meant considering Hacked Man.

Hard stuff gets harder

I've had huge trouble keeping up reality checks even after I thought up the behaviour hook. Sadly no long term improvement. The busier I've got, the harder it's been to remember this kind of things that I don't have nailed down properly yet.

I also failed a Beeminder goal about writing in the normal diary. I can keep dream journal pretty much without any extra effort, but keeping a normal diary seems hard. I might have a too high goal in Beeminder for this, as I practically have to force myself to write in the diary most times Beeminder tells me to and I don't have that much to say.

I'm a bit undecided if this is a good or a bad thing. It's annoying (and therefore hard to keep up), but I want to have a steady stream of journal entries, even if they are small and not that remarkable by themselves. So maybe I'll just have to bite the bullet and keep doing it. I actually had to pay Beeminder this time and I sure as hell don't want to end up doing that again.

Trying new stuff

Didn't happen. I was sleep deprived enough to begin with, that I just didn't even consider cutting down on sleeping any more than I had to. So that's still on the backlog. Will get around to it soon.

Sticking to the basics

On the other hand, I've got a lot of mileage out of habits that have sticked. At times I was rather burdened by all the multitasking and tight deadlines. In those moments meditation really seemed like a powerful tool. A chance to stop and relax for a while and gather my spirits.

At times it felt like a challenge to find that 15-20 minutes to meditate, which is ridiculous. There's always 15 minutes during 24 hours. One just tends to forget it, when you are very busy.

Next up in Hacked Man

It's funny how even costless things are forgotten if you are stressed out. It's annoying, counter-productive and even blatantly harmful. Taking vitamins takes about 13 seconds, so there is no way that you would ever be "too busy" to do it. It's a curious psychological effect, that annoys me to no end.

So naturally my next Hacked Man task will be to find out what I can do to combat that. Tools like Beeminder are one option, but I'll try to find more hacks to combat this problem.