I just woke up from a three-hour afternoon nap. It was inevitable after playing cricket in the 44° sun with hardly any air. The temperature is soul-sucking, and it’s taking me two days to recover every time I play a match.

Jeez.

Anyway, I am writing this from a much better place—a 22°-air-conditioned room with a mango shake on my left 🥭 

Like always, we are set for another brain dump!

Tracking Life

I am a huge proponent of ‘WHAT GETS MEASURED CAN BE IMPROVED.’ But I am afraid I will turn into a data nerd.

I started tracking my time ten months ago and then introduced the same to my cricket scores, finances, health, content, etc.

At first, I tried to track every little thing possible. But time has humbled me to understand the right metrics to track and focus on, ignoring unnecessary data.

To give you an example, I used to track every single activity—how much I slept, hours I spent on entertainment, sports and workout sessions, freelancing and content, friends and family, hobbies, etc.

This is all great data to have and can be used to hyper-optimize your life but I have come to understand I don’t need this level of detailed tracking at this point in my life.

I have trouble balancing my time for content and freelancing - so I am tracking time in these two departments alone and balancing it out. Everything else is in place. I am sleeping fine, playing fine, and socializing fine.

Getting Shit Done

We scream EXECUTION OVER PLANNING all the time, and then we don’t celebrate doers, action-takers, and folks who just get shit done.

I am being a hypocrite by tweeting this and still working almost all the time. But the thing is, I love doing it, and I do spend a good time with my hobbies and social circle - at least it’s a lot better compared to eighteen months ago.

But my point is people don’t really appreciate speed and execution as much as they appreciate working long hours. It’s okay for us to agree someone working 15 hours a day deserves career success but it’s not the same for a person who works 30 hours a week and does a bunch of other personal activities.

We brush off their success (or read it as a happy life), mentioning they’re lucky or they don’t work ‘hard enough’, but in reality, these are just people with insanely good management skills.

Movement and Independent Hobbies

Combining two different recent lifestyle choices here: Movement and Independent Hobbies

I feel I can sit and work for 3-4 hours straight. But I really can’t. I am physically present, but my focus and efficiency keep deteriorating, and I have failed to notice it for years.

I realized there is hardly any body movement apart from when I play sports. The impact is clearly evident when I don’t get to play sports for a week due to rain, festivals, work, or any other reason. I get irritated easily, tend to eat more junk, and have decreased focus and creativity.

I introduced more movement to counter this. I do cricket drills, play with my NERF gun, or walk while listening to a podcast every ninety minutes. I have also set a daily step count target to ensure minimum movement.

I am not doing this to lose weight or to improve physically. Movement keeps my mind fresh, fueling my productivity and creativity.

It brings me to my second lifestyle choice: Independent Hobbies.

My friend once told me, “We need to build friend groups independent of each other,” and I am replicating this in my hobbies and fun activities.

The only movement-based hobby I had earlier was my cricket drills. Now I shoot every bottle in my house with my NERF gun—I deliberately use only one bullet so I get to move around and pick it up every time I shoot.

Drawing is another activity - not movement-based but good for my mind. I am trying to build as many device-free-independent hobbies as possible so I don’t feel stuck when I ask myself, ‘What can I do for fun?’

That’s all the thoughts I have this week.

What’s up with you? Have you tried something new that’s keeping you excited lately?