After hearing how important it is to strength train enough times, I joined a gym last year so I could “test out” lifting weights, something I haven’t done since high school. I followed a program from a book that inspired me to lift in the first place (Bigger, Leaner, Stronger). After a few months, I was shocked to see real muscles on my normally skinny/athletic frame. I then went all in and built out a home gym with great but secondhand equipment from fb marketplace. 9 months later, I’m still lifting every week and at 48, am stronger than I’ve ever been.
My next change is trying to learn to swim properly. To force it, I signed up for my first sprint triathlon. Now I have a deadline and a real life need to be able to do the thing I want to learn or I face potential drowning. That’s a great motivator!
A decade ago I needed to use an android for work and absolutely hated it. However, given how crummy Apple AI is, I’m guessing, newer androids are a heck of a lot better in that category. Curious to see which one you prefer.
I use the free Stacked app which has the workouts from the book Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. The app is great. I lift m/t/w. Otherwise, I swim 2x/wk; t/th. Friday I go for a longish (~90m) run or bike ride or in the winter uphill skiing or snowshoeing. During the weekend, I do whatever activities I can get my kids to do.
So sorry to hear about your house. What a profound change.
On learning and change, I recently found this article about the evolutionary pros and cons of learning quickly and adapting to ones environment:
Study: Optimal learning in noisy ecological niches
Organisms that respond quickly to changing environments have an advantage over those that don’t. However, reacting too quickly wastes time and energy in tracking meaningless environmental changes. The authors derive a scaling law that shows that an organism’s learning rate should change as the square root of the rate of environmental change.
They also ask what happens when organisms seek to engineer the time scales in their environments — adding structure or erasing structure through niche construction.
Lastly, the researchers looked at how learning and metabolic costs intersect. For small, short-lived animals, learning costs exceed metabolic costs. Conversely, metabolic costs dominate for larger, longer-lived animals, or for those whose environments change slowly, promoting longer memories.
Kevin, I’m really sorry to hear about your home, and wish you all the best in rebuilding.
Re. your post, I agree that combining goals (“time-bound forcing functions”) and habits is the best way to manage transformational personal change.
I’ve coached many people trying to do this, and I’ve found the best way is to have a clear vision of where they want to get to in 1-2 years, and manage the roadmap to get there through a series of time-bound goals as stepping stones. Habits can provide powerful supporting structure to this (slipstream effect). Linking habits and goals to vision helps connect the “what” to the “how” and “why”.
But this is hard to do, compared with the relative simplicity of pursuing a basic habit. It’s difficult to get the roadmap defined in the first place, and to keep it dynamically updated as change happens. I suspect this is why a lot of attempts at personal change do not sustain for more than a few months unless supporting mechanisms are in place.
To help people with this, I’ve been working on an app and set of supporting resources (with optional coaching support). To really get into the user experience of stepping outside comfort zone, I learned how to do all the coding and web development myself, and stuck with it to completion (using early versions of the app to help me develop later versions). This also gave me proof of concept (at a personal level).
I’m now looking for user feedback to refine product/market fit, and it would be really helpful if you could have a look vis-à-vis what you’re trying to do, and let me know what you think on concept, feature set, and opportunities to improve.
The app is iOS/macOS at this point, so if you no longer have access to your iPhone, it would still be helpful to have feedback on the concept and demo video on the landing page.
1 question: Why choose Arc browser if the team seems to abandon it?
On top of my mind, Using zen browser is a better experiment than Arc. The browser is actively developed. The community and the main developer is responsive. Also, the move from chromium (Chrome) → Firefox (zen browser) seems radical than Chrome → Arc.
After hearing how important it is to strength train enough times, I joined a gym last year so I could “test out” lifting weights, something I haven’t done since high school. I followed a program from a book that inspired me to lift in the first place (Bigger, Leaner, Stronger). After a few months, I was shocked to see real muscles on my normally skinny/athletic frame. I then went all in and built out a home gym with great but secondhand equipment from fb marketplace. 9 months later, I’m still lifting every week and at 48, am stronger than I’ve ever been.
My next change is trying to learn to swim properly. To force it, I signed up for my first sprint triathlon. Now I have a deadline and a real life need to be able to do the thing I want to learn or I face potential drowning. That’s a great motivator!
A decade ago I needed to use an android for work and absolutely hated it. However, given how crummy Apple AI is, I’m guessing, newer androids are a heck of a lot better in that category. Curious to see which one you prefer.
What workout program are you still using?
I use the free Stacked app which has the workouts from the book Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. The app is great. I lift m/t/w. Otherwise, I swim 2x/wk; t/th. Friday I go for a longish (~90m) run or bike ride or in the winter uphill skiing or snowshoeing. During the weekend, I do whatever activities I can get my kids to do.
So sorry to hear about your house. What a profound change.
On learning and change, I recently found this article about the evolutionary pros and cons of learning quickly and adapting to ones environment:
Study: Optimal learning in noisy ecological niches
Organisms that respond quickly to changing environments have an advantage over those that don’t. However, reacting too quickly wastes time and energy in tracking meaningless environmental changes. The authors derive a scaling law that shows that an organism’s learning rate should change as the square root of the rate of environmental change.
They also ask what happens when organisms seek to engineer the time scales in their environments — adding structure or erasing structure through niche construction.
Lastly, the researchers looked at how learning and metabolic costs intersect. For small, short-lived animals, learning costs exceed metabolic costs. Conversely, metabolic costs dominate for larger, longer-lived animals, or for those whose environments change slowly, promoting longer memories.
https://www.santafe.edu/news-center/news/study-optimal-learning-in-noisy-ecological-niches
TLDR
1. I agree: a tight set of time-bound goals, linked to a clear vision, are key to personal change (enabling habits remain useful though).
2. But this is difficult to set up & maintain, so I developed an app and supporting resources.
3. I'm refining product/market fit, and I'd really welcome your thoughts on concept and feature set: see: excellgrowth.com/excellgrowth-app and excellgrowth.com/resources
———————
Kevin, I’m really sorry to hear about your home, and wish you all the best in rebuilding.
Re. your post, I agree that combining goals (“time-bound forcing functions”) and habits is the best way to manage transformational personal change.
I’ve coached many people trying to do this, and I’ve found the best way is to have a clear vision of where they want to get to in 1-2 years, and manage the roadmap to get there through a series of time-bound goals as stepping stones. Habits can provide powerful supporting structure to this (slipstream effect). Linking habits and goals to vision helps connect the “what” to the “how” and “why”.
But this is hard to do, compared with the relative simplicity of pursuing a basic habit. It’s difficult to get the roadmap defined in the first place, and to keep it dynamically updated as change happens. I suspect this is why a lot of attempts at personal change do not sustain for more than a few months unless supporting mechanisms are in place.
To help people with this, I’ve been working on an app and set of supporting resources (with optional coaching support). To really get into the user experience of stepping outside comfort zone, I learned how to do all the coding and web development myself, and stuck with it to completion (using early versions of the app to help me develop later versions). This also gave me proof of concept (at a personal level).
I’m now looking for user feedback to refine product/market fit, and it would be really helpful if you could have a look vis-à-vis what you’re trying to do, and let me know what you think on concept, feature set, and opportunities to improve.
The app is iOS/macOS at this point, so if you no longer have access to your iPhone, it would still be helpful to have feedback on the concept and demo video on the landing page.
Look forward to your thoughts!
1 question: Why choose Arc browser if the team seems to abandon it?
On top of my mind, Using zen browser is a better experiment than Arc. The browser is actively developed. The community and the main developer is responsive. Also, the move from chromium (Chrome) → Firefox (zen browser) seems radical than Chrome → Arc.
I’ve been thinking about the Android switch. This may have inspired me to take the leap!