"A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at." -Bruce Lee
Introduction
A little over three months ago, in late September, I was just starting a new Software Engineering job and had recently graduated from Hack Reactor. I had a relatively short job search period, and fortunately found a good job about a 50 minute commute from home. As I was coming up to speed and learning lots of new things, I found myself feeling stressed and overwhelmed.
This was mostly because I had a lot of interests and ambitions, and my mind was all over the place. I wanted to make money playing poker at night, study poker diligently, learn about cryptocurrencies and plan investment strategies, and perform well at my job. I was not getting enough sleep and was trying to accomplish too many things. Not enough hours in the day. I decided I needed to do something about it, and remembered hearing and reading about the Self Journal. I checked them out and decided to order one, and it was a great decision.
Enter Journaling
Self Journal is a great simple daily planner that combines a proven system to align day-to-day output with longer term goals. Each journal is meant to track 13 weeks of daily output. Daily gratitude, reflection, and goal setting are combined to help make success happen and cut down on procrastination.
OK. So I got a journal, now what?
I wanted to do lots of things, but knew I had to focus. After some pacing, thinking, and scribbling on a whiteboard, I decided that the best thing I could do at the time would be to focus on improving my daily habits and routines in order to boost output and happiness at the same time. Eventually it seemed pretty clear. I had been meditating on and off for a while, and had been trying to make it a daily habit for some time. I decided that if I could focus on mindfulness, meditation, and self-care, the other pieces would fall into place.
Setting the Parameters
After some thought, I decided that the best way to approach this would be to focus on building a twice daily meditation and yoga routine. I wanted to meditate and do yoga for at least 20 minutes each per day, every day. Before starting the journal, I had only tried yoga a couple of times. I generally liked it, and thought it might help with the back pain I had been putting up with for months.
Tools Used
Before starting this 13-week sprint, I had already been using the Calm meditation app. I used it for around 60-70% of my sitting time, with the rest being either self-guided meditation or assisted by guided meditation youtube videos. Calm is an awesome app, I would highly recommend checking it out. The Sleep Stories and Focus Music features are really nice as well.
For Yoga, I purchased a subscription to an iOS app called Yoga Studio. It has a lot of recorded sessions to choose from in varying lengths, and it worked great for me to use some of the 10-20 minute long sessions in the morning and after dinner. I also picked up this Gaiam yoga mat on Amazon.
How it Went
The Journaling
I'm really glad I decided to do this. Daily journaling had a massive impact on my productivity and focus throughout the 13-week journey. I wasn't even close to perfect and missed several days, but journaling most of the time was very helpful. I found myself being much more mindful of the things I needed to focus on and found it easier to adjust on a day-by-day and week-by-week basis.
I didn't just track my mindfulness and yoga habits in the journal, I used it to plan my workday the night before and also to schedule out how I would productively spend my evenings each night. As I write this, I'm already two weeks into my next Self Journal. I plan to continue using them for the foreseeable future.
The Meditation
Daily morning meditation is life-changing :)!! I really noticed a huge difference in my levels of relaxation and productivity for the early parts of the morning. This was especially noticeable during my morning commutes. I hate commuting, I hate traffic, and I like to mumble swears to myself when I have to take part. I found myself being much more aware when my stress and anger levels were starting to rise in traffic, and often times I was able to stop them from going further. This was a really cool thing to witness.
Meditating in the evening was great too. I strived to do my evening session immediately upon returning home from work, but often times I ended up doing it just before bed instead. It was really helpful in winding down before getting in bed. Before starting this practice, I would often lie awake in bed for a long time before I could fall asleep. I still do this occasionally, but as long as I make it a priority to meditate at night, falling into a restful sleep becomes much easier.
The Yoga
The one, two punch of Yoga and Meditation is a powerful combo. Yoga is a really great way to prepare yourself for a session of meditation, and I often felt it was like my transition from my busy day and busy state of mind into a more relaxed state for my sitting practice. It also helped alleviate my back pain, and made me a bit more aware of what I was choosing to eat throughout the day. I'm really glad I decided to develop this habit, and have since attended my first Yoga class. I will be attending more, and hope to improve my practice consistently.
The Datas
And now for the data. My primary goals were to meditate 20 minutes per day and practice yoga 20 minutes per day. Over 13 weeks, this is 7 * 13 * 20 = 1820 minutes. My actual results were 1,558 minutes of meditation and 1,441 minutes of yoga. This works out to an average of 17.12 minutes per day of meditation and 15.83 minutes per day of yoga. I didn't quite reach my goal, but I think this is awesome. I'm very happy with my empirical results and also the results practicing meditation and yoga presented for my everyday life.
Summary and Future Challenges
Overall, I slept better and felt less stress and unhappiness. If you ask me, the combination of practicing daily yoga, meditation, and journaling is like a superpower. I will strive to keep this practice going as I move towards my next big goal.
Full disclosure- as I am writing this, my yoga and meditation practices have started to slip a bit over the last few weeks. I've started a new journal and started to focus on a new big goal, and have skipped several days. I still practice several times per week, and hope to get back on track to practicing daily. When I go several days without, I feel a strong difference. I don't like the difference. I like the calm easy feeling I have when there is dailyness to my practice.
I'm currently a few weeks into my next 13-week goal sprint, and will write about how it went when I'm done!
Thanks for reading!