FINAL DAY of The March Challenge: Daily Reading & Performance (31/03/22)
Reflections, lessons & and announcing my April Challenge + format change for future posts.
My report for Thursday 31st March 2022 - the final day of my Daily Reading challenge!
This report structure will be a little bit different. I’ll start with my reflections & learnings from this challenge in the form of:
My lessons & reflections from carrying out this challenge,
My improvement points if I were to replicate the challenge,
My practical actions I’m taking into the future even after this challenge has finished.
I’ll then talk about my March challenge, and finish with my ‘experience’ of the day (as I do in all posts).
March Challenge Reflections:
When I set out on my Daily Reading challenge at the start of the month, I set the objective to read 15 books by the end of the month (almost 1 every 2 days).
If you’ve been following my SubStack, you’ll know that I fell short near the end.
I managed to finish 13 books - 2 less than 15, but 13 more than I read in 2022 prior to this challenge, which is a win.
There were only 3 days where I didn’t read at all - again, that’s pretty solid.
It also only came when I was reading paperback, which is far more cumbersome for me than iBooks.
Here’s a list of the books I read:
Fiction: Two Lost Mountains (Matthew Reilly), The One Impossible Labyrinth (Matthew Reilly), Hidden Blade, Witches Bane, See No Evil, Scorpion Trap, Serpent’s Game, Edge of Darkness (all 6 by Pippa DaCosta)
Non-Fiction: Range (David Epstein), The Art of Communication (Thich Nhat Hanh), Coaching for EI (Bob Wall), Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself (Joe DiSpenza), Peace Is Every Step (Thich Nhat Hanh)
So, let me summarise my lessons from this challenge:
I used the holiday at the start of March perfectly to build my reading habit. Gave me an opportunity to read a lot of fiction books on my reading list for 2022. I loved immersing in the books while lounging on a beach. Maybe I should go on more holidays just as an excuse to read more…
I struggled to adapt when I returned from that holiday as work was busier than it has ever been (which is a win). Deprioritised reading for a few days to catch up with work. Had 4 workshops to end the month, and averaged multiple hours of client sessions per day. Despite the tactical use of the holiday to build momentum for this challenge, reading became deprioritised as work accumulated (for which I’m very grateful - I love what I do, and reading books doesn’t pay the bills :P)
Even with the challenge in place, reading was still fairly low priority. Lower than client sessions and workshops. Lower than relationship & family quality time. And lower than my sports, health and fitness. This meant that the busier I became with work, the less time I set for reading as the other factors were higher priority. I’m very peaceful with this decision.
15 books was a great target. I read 13 books this month. I’m glad I chose 15 as a number. Though I failed to meet it, I managed to read and enjoy 13 books. Had I chosen a smaller number, for example 10 books, I would have stopped at 10 (assuming I even got that far). As such, this challenge has been a success - especially since I had read 0 books up until this point in 2022. Don’t let the outcome of the end goal invalidate the progress you’ve made. Speaking of which…
I could have read 15 books, but that would have been defeating the purpose of the challenge. I could have opted to read a couple of shorter books (Siddhartha, Jonathan Livingston Seagull) as I neared the end of the challenge instead of reading a hefty book I was very curious about (Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself).
But that’s not what these challenges are about for me. I wasn’t on a challenge to prove I can read 15 books. I was on a challenge to read books that help to develop my skills, expand my perspectives, and entertain me.
I could have stayed up until 3am skim-reading a bunch more books to reach 15, but would I have learned anything from them? Would I have enjoyed them? No. I wasn’t doing this challenge to prove anything to myself. I was doing it to fall back in love with reading.
I did just that, and in doing so, that book I chose (Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself) has actually given me the meditation practice that I want to challenge myself with in April.
I still could have said I read 15 books on this post. I could have promised myself to finish those 2 shorter books tomorrow, and just say I did them today in this post. But what would the purpose of that be? One of my highest values is authenticity - and that’s anything but authentic.
First of all, my worth isn’t defined by whether or not I fulfil a challenge that I (or anyone else) sets. By choosing to be authentic, I reinforce that I have nothing to prove to myself, or anyone else.
Not only that, but a huge part of me making these posts public is that I want to show that my version of a high performance/high fulfilment life doesn’t necessarily mean obsessively pursuing goals or challenges for the sake of it.
It’s about knowing how to prioritise our time and honouring our commitments to those priorities, while creating space for challenges that push us out of our comfort zone.
And it’s about owning our decisions. Being genuine and authentic in all that we do.
2 things I would improve on if I were to do this challenge again in the future:
Set aside dedicated reading time slots. For example, between 10am and 11am each morning as a non-negotiable. If I wanted to read more later, of course I could - but that one hour minimum was a non-negotiable.
Pick a more balanced month? This month was full of extremes. A holiday in which I could read many books. And then an intense period of work which left little time for reading. It would be interesting to see what this challenge would look like in an ‘average’ month.
Though, being honest, I hope that the period of work I just had does become my ‘average’ going forwards - it’s just about sustainable in terms of balancing relationship, health and family while being financially peaceful, and still has a little slack for creative endeavours.
2 Action Points from this challenge that I will take with me into the rest of 2022:
Reading a non-fiction personal development book a fortnight is very sustainable. Setting aside even 25 minutes per day (while eating or on the toilet) can definitely help in this.
Get more books on iBooks. I loved the convenience of being able to read on my phone while on public transport and eating, for example. Reading the hefty paperback of ‘Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself’ was tougher, and 3 days where I didn’t read at all was partly due to the inertia of having to pick it up physically.
When reading on iBooks, I was also easily able to copy key parts of the text into my ‘Notes’ app, which I couldn’t do on my Kindle.
Comments on past challenges I’ve done in 2022:
January Challenge: Eating Whole-Foods Plant Based
Still eating plant-based and feeling good. Bit of inflammation so could benefit from reducing any non-whole-foods stuff, but there isn’t much of that anyway.
Dark chocolate consumption lower than what it was before the challenge, but also had a few days of having more than 50g recently. Now had a few days completely off it, which has been nice.
Body in great shape - did a reading on the last day of March and am at 11.5% body fat, which I’m very happy with.
February Challenge: Sleep Optimisation
Hasn’t been as optimised this month, 20% due to work, 5% due to shift in partner’s sleeping habits (by which I mean she’s less strict with me to get to bed early :P), 75% due to my own lack of prioritising it. Will endeavour to work on this more in coming months - waking up at 7/7:30am sets such a good tone for the day.
So, what’s the challenge for April?
April Challenge: Meditation.
For the month of April, I’ve decided to do my Challenge based on one of the habits I’ve been most wanting to rebuild - meditation.
I’ll be doing a very specific type of meditation for this month.
So, what is the meditation challenge?
I will be carrying out the 4 Guided Meditations from Joe Dispenza’s ‘Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself’ book.
Each meditation will be carried out daily for one week.
The meditations are between 15 minutes to *gulp* over 1 hour in length.
The aim of the meditations outlined in his protocol is to help us to access an alpha/theta brain-wave state through which we can more easily access & retrain our subconscious mind.
I’ll give more insights as to what these entail in the daily entries, as well as links to the Guided Meditation audio/video on YouTube.
Guided meditations are generally easier to do than non-guided, since our mind is focused on the audio we’re listening to.
As I haven’t been meditating consistently over the last year (maybe 3 times per week on average), the muscle of sitting down and meditating needs training.
Just as a beginner doing weights may start on machines to build a strong foundation before moving to free weights, so too can guided meditations help to ease the transition into non-guided meditations.
So, that’s the April challenge. Let’s see how it goes!
My Experience (Thursday 31st March 2022):
Reflections on My Reading Challenge:
Reading: Peace Is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh
Type of Book: Non-Fiction
Time Reading: 1hr6 minutes
Pages Read: 113 (166 of 166) - finished the book
Longest Uninterrupted Reading Period: 12 minutes.
Book Format: ePub, font size 6
Notes Taken: Yes.
Reflections:
Enjoyed reading this book again. So much of it is a reminder, but that doesn’t detract from the power of it.
Much of our happiness in life is our ability to remember the feeling of happiness, such that it exists as a default state. Reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s words are exactly what I need to jolt my thoughts into that state of being.
End of the challenge: finished 13 books out of 15.
Key Quote/ Idea from books - wisdom on relationships:
“We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love.
We must look deeply in order to see and understand the needs, aspirations, and suffering of the person we love. This is the ground of real love. You cannot resist loving another person when you really understand him or her.”
“From time to time, sit close to the one you love, hold his or her hand, and ask, 'Darling, do I understand you enough? Or am I making you suffer? Please tell me so that I can learn to love you properly. I don't want to make you suffer, and if I do so because of my ignorance, please tell me so that I can love you better, so that you can be happy.’"
“Maybe a father does not have time or is not brave enough to ask his son such a question. Then the love between them will not be as full as it could be. We need courage to ask these questions, but if we don't ask, the more we love, the more we may destroy the people we are trying to love.”
“True love needs understanding. With understanding, the one we love will certainly flower.”
“When you hold a child in your arms, or hug your mother, or your husband, or your friend, if you breathe in and out three times, your happiness will be multiplied at least tenfold.”
A beautiful note to end the reading challenge on :)
Impact on 6 Life Areas (Thursday 31st March 2022):
The 6 areas are 1. Career, 2. Mood, 3. Health & Fitness, 4. Family & Relationships, 5. Recreation & Screen Time, and 6. General Fulfilment.
***This section will be changing quite significantly from April onwards - I feel its main value is as a journal for my own purpose, but at this stage, likely repetitive and non-value added for the reader. I journal on my own Excel tracker anyway (including tracking the metrics below), so it’s also unproductive for me to repeat it.
Feedback I’ve received is that the main value added element to these posts are my parting notes! And less time writing the above = more time dedicated to that.
Going forwards, I may still experiment with different formats in terms of summarising wins that are value-added to share, without going into details that aren’t as valuable. Let me know if you have some ideas on what you’d like to keep, and what you could do without!***
Career:
Clients, talks & calls - 2 client sessions, 2 calls with potential clients, 1 call with a collaborator,
Content creation - Writing practice done (SubStack post).
Business development - Following up with potential clients.
Business admin - More admin and replies.
Mood/Emotions/Energy/Mental Health:
Morning - 9.75/10. Wake up and routine [peaceful], and then 2 calls with 2 potential new clients [present].
Afternoon - 10/10. Made it to the gym for a leg day session - very happy with performance. Then returned, ate, and honoured client calls from 3:30-7pm.
Evening - 9.75/10. My partner and I got caught in a random blizzard of snow on a 7:05pm walk, then cooked dinner and enjoyed a relaxing evening together.
Physical Health and Fitness:
Leg day
Deep Back Squats: 40kg x 8 reps, 4 sets of 50kg x 10 reps
Front Lever Holds: 4 sets of 2-3 seconds
Barbell Bulgarian Split Squats: 3 sets of 40kg x 8 reps
EZ Bar Bicep Curls: 3 sets of 25kg x 12 reps
Deadlifts: 2 sets of 80kg x 8 reps, 2 sets of 100kg x 6 reps
Sled Pulls: Drop down sets: 75kg, 60kg, 40kg, 20kg
Did stretches and managed 8,429 steps.
Sleep:
Went to sleep on night of Wednesday 30th at 01:27.
Woke up on morning of Thursday 31st at 09:38.
8h11m in bed, of which 6h35m was asleep.
94% sleep quality according to Sleep Cycle.
Relationships: Family, Friends, Partner:
Grateful for my amazing partner cooking such a lovely, nourishing dinner for us, and proud of her for honouring her growth journey so admirably.
Grateful to my family for checking in on FaceTime with us - small things that make a difference.
Recreation/Screen Time:
Social Media/Apps Non-Productive Phone Screen-time:
LinkedIn: 9m
Facebook: 24m
IG: 40 seconds
WhatsApp: 14m
Total: 3h42m
107 - 15 x WhatsApp used as first app on picking up.
Fulfilment:
Gave today a 9.75/10 overall. Honoured client sessions and calls, fit in a leg day session, spent time with my partner. Used the mindfulness tips in Peace Is Every Step to enjoy being caught in a mini blizzard. Only low points is sleeping too late. Part of the reason why I’m going to be streamlining my SubStack entries.
***The above section will be changing quite significantly from April onwards - I feel its main value is as a journal for my own purpose, but at this stage, likely repetitive and non-value added for the reader. I journal on my own Excel tracker anyway (including tracking the metrics below), so it’s also unproductive for me to repeat it.
Feedback I’ve received is that the main value added element to these posts are my parting notes! And less time writing the above = more time dedicated to that.
Going forwards, I may still experiment with different formats in terms of summarising wins that are value-added to share, without going into details that aren’t as valuable. Let me know if you have some ideas on what you’d like to keep, and what you could do without!***
We’ve made it to the end of our March Challenge! Thank you so much for reading - I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Hope that you have an amazing day! Now to head to sleep…
Until tomorrow,
Kam