Week 3: Realizing I’m my own worst “enemy” with my Goals and Impatience

When I made the change to pursue a new journey 3 weeks ago, it was with minimum plans but I still had set myself some goals prior to what I wanted for Rasmus 2.0. Here are the 3 overall goals I wrote down:

1. Become Healthier
   • More exercise
   • Loose 25kg (from 120kg down to 95kg)
2. Explore Mindfulness
   • Meditation
3. Get a new Career/Passion/Goal in life
   • Make a computer game?
   • Make a board game?
   • Become an Agile Coach?

I do not think anyone can say these are bad goals, and there is even a bit of breakdown into sub-goals, but what I’m beginning to realize now is that my brain’s impatience need even more breakdown because if we just look at this raw:

Goal	Achieve?
More exercise	😊 (Yes, more)
Loose 25 kg	☹️ (Not there yet)
Meditation	😕 (Maybe)
Make a computer game	☹️ (Not done)
Make a board game	☹️ (Not done)
Become an agile coach	☹️ (Not yet)

Being this black and white on achieved/not achieved, is of cause a bit absurd (some of the “goals” I have not even started to explore yet), but my brain, which like many others, craves instant gratification and success will at a weak moment see myself as a total failure and while it is of cause wrong, it is demotivating… Let’s take my weight loss goal as an example for the rest of this post:

History of my weight/weight loss

I’ve always been big, doing too little exercise, and eating too much, having only been below 100kg in the last 10 years in 2016 when I got into a healthy rhythm (after feeling poor health and hitting, back then, the high of 110kg)…

I don’t recall why I relapsed because honestly 2016 felt awesome, but as you can see above it has only gotten worse since then hitting as high as 122kg (I can begin to blame stress, covid, or any other things, but who cares… it was bad… something needed to be done)

Start is easy; patience is a virtue I don’t have 🙁

Given the high starting numbers and the “way I work”; once I set my mind to it, I always find it easy in the beginning, but then I always end up in a state of “this is easy; I can slack a bit” 🙁

So, as you can see I’ve lost 10+ kg in the last 3 months (awesome), but in the last 2 of the months only 2 of the kgs have been achieved, despite those months being where I tried the most, and that is demotivating 😥

Weight is not the only measure!

So, should I just give up and go back to my old habits, since this does not help, and do the bursts every time my weight hit 120 kg and bump it down to 110 kg?

No!, Instead I need to realize that this is not only about weight but about overall health… So what if I weigh 110 kg and not the desired 95kg… Let’s measure in different ways:

• I feel more energized (yes, no way to “measure” but why should that matter!)
• My Fat % is dropping a bit more than my weight (so the same “amount of me” kg-wise, but better types of me (more muscle, less fat))!
• My morning runs are faster (6:30/km in August, now it is 06:10/km)
• My consumption of fast food is way down (6 times in September, 1 time in October), and overall eating much healthier foods
• Various people notice I lost weight 🙂

Goal Breakdown and Week Goals are my “cure”

As you see above it is all about going deeper into an overall goal and breaking it down more on a weekly basis.

Previous goal	Redefined goals (defined weekly)
More exercise	– x number of trips to the fitness center – x number of runs – x number of walks
Loose 25 kg	– kg weight loss goal for the week – fat% loss for the week – waist in cm measure – Picture measure (body shape) – Meal plan
Meditation	– Scheduled sessions – Commit to being present
Make a computer game	– Learn Unity and complete x sections of online courses a week – Learn the basics (crawl > walk > run) – Note down ideas but be patient with starting…
Make a board game	Wait until the Computer game outcome (you can’t do it all at once!)
Become an agile coach	Wait until the Computer game outcome (you can’t do it all at once!)
– General –	All the classics – Rome was not built in a day – It is a Marathon, not a sprint – Learn the basics – Crawl before you walk, before you run…

Overall
– No rocket science here –
– No deep insights –
– Just plain old common sense –
that I needed to remind myself of…

Thank you all for reading along and see you next week

PS: Public Service Announcement: The Worst book I’ve ever read!

While today’s post does not go deep into Unity Gaming, I wanted to inform you that this “book” I’ve mentioned in my first “What’s Next” post should be avoided by anyone like the plague!

I have very high hopes for the book and it had few, but excellent reviews, but 200 pages into it, I found out that it is utter garbage with no structure, and just random topics not learning you anything coherent as the premise promises; shame on you Auther and Publisher! 🙁

What I ended up instead was buying this Unity Course on Udemy, and I can highly recommend it, as it has been awesome so far (more on that in a later post)