[nefitty]

My plan is very similar. Nootropics and caffeine are an integral part of my success, though! Haha Have you tried ytracking your success with each of these items? I have been doing so for the past few months and it is definitely helping me pinpoint where I need to redouble my efforts. I also set a theme for each month (either Health, Wealth or Social, cycling through those three). The thing is to focus on mastering one are at a time, plateauing in that area with solid habit formation and then tackling the next area. Can you share what practical steps you have taken to achieve any successes? ie schedules, habits, plans, etc.

[rayalez]

Setting a theme for each month is an awesome idea!

Yes, I track these habits. There's an awesome app called TracknShare, super convenient. Here's how my list looks like: http://imgur.com/I9qK9iu

I measure writing by the number of words I write each day, and I measure CS in "Pomodoros"(from pomodoro technique, 20-minute-sized chunks of uninterrupted time).

Participating in /r/WritingPrompts really helps with daily writing. Prompts are a great place to start, and provide instant gratification, also it's really fun.

When I have an interesting and exciting project to work on - I can easily stay on top of CS, but if not it becomes super hard.

The main thing about healthy food - is just throwing away everything unhealthy, and replacing it wih a lot of delicious healthy alternatives. If I get hungry and I don't have some nuts/berries to chew on immediately - I know I will go and buy chocolate/pizza. So it's mostly about controlling my environment. If everything around me is healthy - it's not that hard to keep it up.

When it comes to coffee and reddit - I still haven't found a good solution, I'm addicted to that stuff.

Exercising isn't that hard to keep up, just set a goal that is easy enough to not be intimidating, and spend several days paying attention to it, because when I don't I simply forget.

[nefitty]

Awesome, so you're tracking daily streaks then? That helped me form my meditation habit pretty solidly. I also measure productivity in pomodoros! It's dope to meet other people as excited about this stuff as me. Since you shared I'll go ahead and show you how I have my ratings system set up. I'm using Google Sheets, tracking each metric daily and then at the end of each week I enter the average of the values or the sum, depending on what I'm measuring. I then turn that into graphs, which give my brain some nice feedback about its behavior haha hope you find this cool!

http://imgur.com/a/95cet

[nefitty]

@rayalez I couldn't reply directly to your last comment, the thread looks like it's too deep now. The biggest challenge is definitely the size and amount of things to track. If I slack on one day it's hard to pick up the pieces the next. The patterns are still hard to discern, but I'm definitely seeing that the biggest factor in my success day-to-day is amount and time of sleep. It's literally the biggest leverage point, so I'm investing more resources in perfecting that as well. The amount of projects that arise from this list of metrics can be overwhelming, so the ethos of "keep it simple" is the best way for me to make any headway.

If you ever want to continue this convo feel free to email me, it's my HN username at gmail. Maybe you could use an accountability partner or someone to bounce ideas off of? Either way, good luck with your project!

[rayalez]

Wow, this is very cool and detailed.

I've tried to simplify my list as much as possible, because many details are hard for me to keep in mind, and when I have too many things to track it's hard for me to focus. Now the list of things Im tracking doubles as my daily goal list.

But I'm sure your way creates a lot of interesting results. Did you notice some interesting patterns?

I also used to use Emacs org mode for that sort of thing, it was pretty convenient. It has a neat todo list function, so you can track things and have a list of daily goals separately. (though it won't create charts).

Also yeah, once I keep up with all my habits for like 30-60 days, I will add "Social" and maybe meditation. It's great that you're doing this, I found it very helpful.

[cmurf]

A coffee in the morning is OK if you like coffee. Once a week I either have two 8oz coffees or skip entirely, subjectively. Most days I have one or two teas in the afternoon, but none after 4pm. Food wise I never eat after 7pm, and usually dinner is light fare like a sandwich or soup and a salad. Lunch is the bigger meal, but I usually eat that after biking/running because eating before exercise gives me cramps. On days I don't exercise I don't eat anything before noon and just have lunch and a light dinner. No exercise, no breakfast calories are justifiable.

Sometimes when I was in the process of losing weight this way, that I would be a little bit hungry when it was time for bed. But this is ignored. If it's more distracting then I have ~150g yogurt, usually skyr, but sometimes plain greek and sometimes that I'll mix in a teaspoon of honey or jam. Most U.S. yogurt is a massive sugar bomb.

Often this has more to do with discipline (do the exercise, don't eat everything on the plate or don't fill it up to begin with, or don't eat out often) rather than motivation. Needing motiviation is understandable but it's a weakness to rely on it; having discipline is more powerful.

[vijayr]

What is nootropics? If it is a drug, could you explain more about how it helps you?

[nefitty]

Technically nootropics are drugs with no negative side effects that increase a person's capacity for memory retention, focus and analytic ability. Various noots have different properties, so a person can pick and choose what to take and combine depending on what abilities they want to reinforce.

[Kiro]

What Nootropics are you using?

[nefitty]

Right now my daily stack is a caffeine & creatine preworkout supplement (hot coffee took way too long to consume, giving me time to get lost in the internet abyss), theacrine (chemical structurally similar to caffeine), adrafinil (modafinil prodrug), noopept + choline, lion's mane mushroom extract, centrophenoxine and occasionally forskolin extract. I built this stack to sharpen focus and motivation, which are my biggest "psychic" areas of opportunity.

[rbinv]

You consume all of those EVERY DAY? Jesus. That's a lot.

[nefitty]

Really? I still feel like a mid-level supplementer, if not a straight out noob, compared to other nootropics users out there. You should see some of the more extreme stacks, they take into account neurotransmitter balance, metabolism, diet, antioxidative properties etc. Those can swell up to 15-20 different substances being ingested daily!