Practice What You Preach

A key principle of this blog is that it only shares strategies that have proven themselves to genuinely benefit my own life. This category of posts keeps me accountable to this commitment. It directly tracks my consistency on a monthly basis. In addition, it shares the gradually unfolding story of how this consistency affects my health, wealth and productive outputs.

Schalk
, ,
0

Practice What You Preach: December Edition

All the tips and strategies shared on this blog are fully implemented in my own life. This is a fascinating experiment, the results of which are shared in the monthly Practice What You Preach series.   

Streaks

Streaks are probably the most direct measure of the superpower of consistency. All my seven streaks are still alive and well:

  • Good days. According to the methodology outlined here, I’ve now had 472 consecutive good days.  
  • Morning routine. My morning routine has stood strong for the past 259 days.
  • Music practice. After a recent stumble, this streak is back up to 62 days.  
  • Supermorning. This blog has now seen 163 consistent posts.
  • Healthy days. It’s now been a full 4008 days since the last time I was sick.  
  • Days at ideal weight. Still going strong at 278 days. 
  • Highly productive months. It’s now been eight consecutive months with 200+ hours of creative work on my PC.

Health

I’m determined to stay at my ideal weight, defined as a smart BMI of 34/70, for the rest of my life. To do this, I must simply keep the thick blue line between the dotted orange lines. Easy 🙂

Next, my metabolic and biological ages (defined earlier) are still nice and low. 

Wealth

As discussed earlier, I’m conducting an interesting financial experiment: living only off my investments and saving all my income into a dedicated research fund. 

My investment portfolio for covering my living expenses is tracked below. A moderate gain in stocks cancelled out my living expenses, causing a small increase in financial resilience (number of years my wealth can sustain my lifestyle). 

Savings towards my research fund have thus far only reached 15% of my €100000 target. Long way to go…

Productivity

December did not start so great, but finished strong. In total, I reached 242 very productive hours (creative work on my PC) and an additional 114 productive hours (meetings, exercise, reading and music). Thus, fully 72% of my waking hours were productive in December. 

In the RescueTime graph below, the dark blue areas represent very productive time, the lightly blue areas productive time, and the red areas distracting time (e.g. YouTube).

I’m happy to report that the downward trend in my very productive time over the past five months has been broken in December. 

Overall, December proved to be a fitting end to a very interesting decade. I wonder what the next decade has in store… 

Schalk
, ,
0

Practice What You Preach – November Edition

All the tips and strategies shared on this blog are fully implemented in my own life. This is a fascinating experiment, the results of which are shared in the monthly Practice What You Preach series.   

Streaks

Streaks are probably the most direct measure of the superpower of consistency. Sadly, I lost one of my streaks this month, but the other six are still going strong. 

  • Good days. According to the methodology outlined here, I’ve now had 432 consecutive good days.  
  • Morning routine. My morning routine has stood strong for the past 219 days.
  • Music practice. Sadly, my daily music practice habit did not happen on a recent travel to Istanbul. Back to square one. After my return home, this streak has grown to 22 days again.  
  • Supermorning. This blog has now seen 132 consistent posts.
  • Healthy days. It’s now been 3967 days since the last time I was sick. More about this 10-year journey can be found here.  
  • Days at ideal weight. Still going strong at 238 days. 
  • Highly productive months. It’s now been six consecutive months with 200+ hours of creative work on my PC.

Health

I’m determined to stay at my ideal weight, defined as a smart BMI of 34/70, for the rest of my life. To do this, I must simply keep the thick blue line between the dotted orange lines. 

This month, I strayed a little close to the upper threshold. Hopefully, some good skiing in December will rectify matters. 

Next, my metabolic and biological ages (defined earlier) are still nice and low. 

Wealth

As discussed earlier, I’m conducting an interesting financial experiment: living only off my investments and saving all my income into a dedicated research fund. 

My investment portfolio for covering my living expenses is tracked below. A good gain in stock markets cancelled out a fall in metals to keep my financial resilience (number of years my savings can sustain my lifestyle) constant. 

Savings towards my research fund have thus far only reached 12% of my €100000 target. Long way to go…

Productivity

November started off a little slow due to travels, but luckily my productivity streak remained unscathed. Overall I racked up 212 very productive hours (creative work on my PC) and an additional 114 productive hours (meetings, exercise, reading and music).

In the RescueTime graph below, the dark blue areas represent very productive time, the lightly blue areas productive time, and the red areas distracting time (e.g. YouTube). 

The long-term productivity trends are still looking good, although the last five months show a bit of a worrying downwards trend in my very productive time. This needs to be corrected in December. 

Overall, November wasn’t bad, considering that it’s generally a rather miserable month in Norway and I had some travel obligations.

December will bring plenty of festivities that are good fun, but perhaps not so good for health and productivity. Let’s try to strike a good balance and enter the new decade on a positive trend 🙂

Schalk
, ,
0

Practice What You Preach – October Edition

One of the founding principles of this blog is that I can only share ideas and strategies that have proven to yield great results in my own life. The Practice What You Preach series keeps me accountable to this principle.     

Streaks

Streaks are probably the most direct measure of the superpower of consistency. All my seven streaks are still in good shape:

  • Good days. According to the methodology outlined here, I’ve now had 397 consecutive good days. 
  • Morning routine. My morning routine has stood strong for the past 184 days.
  • Music practice. I’ve managed to work in a little bit of music for the past 157 days straight.  
  • Supermorning. This blog has now seen 107 consistent posts.
  • Healthy days. It’s now been 3932 days since the last time I was sick. More about this 10-year journey can be found here.  
  • Days at ideal weight. Still going strong at 203 days. 
  • Highly productive months. It’s now been five consecutive months with 200+ hours of creative work on my PC.

Health

I’m determined to stay at my ideal weight, defined as a smart BMI of 34/70, for the rest of my life. To do this, I must simply keep the thick blue line between the dotted orange lines. Easy 🙂

Next, my metabolic and biological ages (defined earlier) are still nice and low. 

Wealth

As discussed earlier, I’ve recently started an interesting financial experiment: living only off my investments and saving all my income into a dedicated research fund. 

My investment portfolio for covering my living expenses is tracked below.

October was one of those rare months with sizable gains in both stocks and metals. These gains easily outpaced my living expenditures, causing a nice jump in financial resilience (number of years my wealth can sustain my lifestyle). I wish every month could be like this one 🙂

Savings towards my research fund have thus far only reached 9% of my €100000 target. Long way to go…

Productivity

October got off to a good start, but a surprisingly large number of social events late in the month caused a bit of a slowdown towards the end. It was fun though, so no worries 🙂

Even so, I reached 225 very productive hours (creative work on my PC) and an additional 108 productive hours (meetings, exercise, reading and music).

In the RescueTime graph below, the dark blue areas represent very productive time, the lightly blue areas productive time, and the red areas distracting time (e.g. YouTube). 

In general, my long-term productivity trends are still moving in the right direction.

So, October will go down as another solid month. Now for the gloomiest month of the year: November. It will also kick off with some work travels that I’m not particularly looking forward to.  

In other words, the next 30 days not be plain sailing, which makes it a good test for the principles on this blog. It will be interesting to see what the numbers say in 5 weeks’ time… 

Schalk
, , ,
0

Practice What You Preach – September Edition

All the tips and strategies shared on this blog are fully implemented in my own life. The results of this implementation are reported on a monthly basis in the Practice What You Preach series.   

Streaks

Streaks are probably the most direct measure of the superpower of consistency. All my seven streaks are still alive and well:

  • Good days. According to the methodology outlined here, I’ve now had 369 consecutive good days. That’s an entire year without a single bad or average day 🙂 
  • Morning routine. My morning routine has stood strong for the past 156 days.
  • Music practice. I’ve managed to work in a little bit of music for the past 129 days straight.  
  • Supermorning. This blog has now seen 87 consistent posts.
  • Healthy days. It’s now been 3904 days since the last time I was sick. More about this 10-year journey can be found here.  
  • Days at ideal weight. Still going strong at 175 days. 
  • Highly productive months. It’s now been four consecutive months with 200+ hours of creative work on my PC.

Health

I’m determined to stay at my ideal weight, defined as a smart BMI of 34/70, for the rest of my life. To do this, I must simply keep the thick blue line between the dotted orange lines. Easy 🙂

Next, my metabolic and biological ages (defined earlier) are still nice and low. 

Wealth

As discussed earlier, I’m conducting an interesting financial experiment: living only off my investments and saving all my income into a dedicated research fund. 

My investment portfolio for covering my living expenses is tracked below. Financial markets calmed down a bit in September, resulting in a gain in stocks and a fall in metals. 

Once again, the net effect was just enough gain to cover my living expenses. Thus, my financial resilience (number of years my wealth can sustain my lifestyle) did not change much. 

Savings towards my research fund have thus far only reached 7% of my €100000 target. Long way to go…

Productivity

September started very strong in terms of productivity. But all the sport on TV this past weekend caused a bit of a weak end to the month. Even so, I reached 227 very productive hours (creative work on my PC) and an additional 106 productive hours (meetings, exercise, reading and music).

In the RescueTime graph below, the dark blue areas represent very productive time, the lightly blue areas productive time, and the red areas distracting time (e.g. YouTube). 

I’m happy to report that the 12-month moving average of my very productive hours (blue dotted line) is now over 200 hours per month. May it fearlessly continue its upwards journey!

Overall, September was another good month. It had a bit of a weak last couple of days, but I’m confident that October will start strong once again.  

Let’s see what happens…

Schalk
, , ,
0

Practice What You Preach – August Edition

One of the founding principles of this blog is that I can only share ideas and strategies that have proven to yield great results in my own life. Hence, the results of implementing these ideas will be shared on the first Saturday of each month. 

Streaks

We start with the most direct measure of the superpower of consistency I can think of: streaks. As outlined earlier, I track four streaks. And I’m happy to report that all four are still alive:

  • Good days. According to the methodology outlined here, I’ve now had 341 consecutive good days! Less than one month to go before I reach a whole year without a single bad or average day 🙂 
  • Morning routine. My morning routine has stood strong for the past 128 days.
  • Music practice. Yesterday, I reached the milestone of practicing a bit of music for 100 days straight.  
  • Supermorning. This blog has now seen 62 consistent posts.

From the health and productivity data below, there are three more streaks to track:

  • Healthy days. It’s now been 3876 days since the last time I was sick. More about this 10-year journey can be found here.  
  • Days at ideal weight. Although there have been a few close calls, this streak is now 147 days old. 
  • Highly productive months. This little streak of spending more than 200 hours per month on creative work on my PC is just three months old.

Health

My mission to stay at my ideal weight, defined as a smart BMI of 34/70, is tracked below. The thick line is the 3-month average of my weight. This line needs to stay within the dotted orange lines. I should get it a little closer to the center of the range, but so far, so good…

Next, my metabolic and biological ages (defined earlier) have not changed. 

Wealth

As discussed earlier, I’m conducting an interesting financial experiment: living only off my investments and saving all my income into a dedicated research fund. 

My investment portfolio for covering my living expenses is tracked below. August was an interesting month with a substantial drop in stocks, compensated by a sharp rise in precious metals.

As a whole, my investments went up just enough to cover my living expenses. The result is that my financial resilience (number of years my wealth can sustain my lifestyle) did not change much. 

Savings towards my research fund have thus far only reached 5% of my €100000 target. Long way to go…

Productivity

August was a good month in terms of productive hours. Overall, I reached 235 highly productive hours (creative work on my PC) and 122 productive hours (meetings, exercise, reading and music). With 8 hours of sleep per night, that’s a full 72% of my waking time spent on productive endeavors 🙂

The trends are still going in the right direction:

So, overall, August was a good month. The principles covered on this blog held strong even as Norway returned from holiday and the regular ups and downs of office life resumed. 

Let’s see what September brings…

Schalk
, , ,
2

Practice What You Preach

This blog is still very much in the startup phase. So, after one month of daily posting and studying reader engagement statistics, it looks like some changes are in order. 

Over the past month, the weekly posts on becoming 1% better and the weekly performance trackers received the lowest readership. They need to go… 

These posts will now be condensed into a single post called “Practice what you preach” to be published on the first Saturday of each month.

The purpose of this new monthly post is to disclose the real-world results of following the practices advocated on this blog. It’s part of my commitment to only recommend practices that had a long-term positive impact on my own life. 

A result of this change is that there will now only be five posts per week: one every weekday. Amateur Creativity will shift from Saturday to Friday, while Monday to Thursday will remain unchanged. 

It will be interesting to see how this modification in the posting pattern turns out… Let the experiment continue 🙂

In the meantime, please keep voting with your clicks! And rest assured that I will always strive to provide more of the content that engages readers, while cutting out the content that doesn’t. 

See you tomorrow!

Schalk
, , , ,
0

Money Tracker

Following more than a decade of saving more than half my income, my personal finances are in a good place. And while I’m certainly not rich by any stretch of the imagination, I am financially free. 

Financial freedom means that you no longer need to work to sustain a lifestyle you genuinely enjoy. This milestone can be achieved either by becoming very rich or by building an enjoyable lifestyle that is very cheap.

My financial freedom comes largely from the second option, enabled by a simple life philosophy:

Sustainable happiness comes from the freedom to create what you want, not the freedom to consume what you want. 

In line with the well-known 4% rule, I achieved financial freedom at the start of this month when my net-worth exceeded 25 years of my annual living expenses for the first time (see below). 

From this starting point, I have resolved to put the 4% rule to the test in the real world.

So, starting on July, 1st 2019, my personal finances are split into two parts: 

  1. Daily living. This includes my current net-worth with the breakdown shown below. Hopefully, this wealth can sustain my lifestyle indefinitely. 
  2. Research fund. All my future income will go into a separate account for funding research on sustainable development. When this fund reaches a meaningful size in a couple of years, it will be tracked on a separate page together with the research it is financing. 

Over the next decade, I’ll live from increases in my home loan, leaving my stock portfolio to grow. This will gradually shift my overall asset allocation towards stocks to make it easier to achieve a long-term average return of 4%. 

Cutting off all my income is pretty scary, particularly at this time when most assets look rather overvalued. But I’m very interested to see if I can manage my wealth to prove that the 4% rule works.

I’m also highly motivated to get to a position where I can fund promising sustainability research. This will be a very direct commitment to my life philosophy mentioned above. 

I’ll keep a monthly tab on the developments in this interesting experiment. Let’s see how it turns out… 

Schalk
, , ,
0

Productivity Tracker

My rather peculiar life choices are guided by a simple philosophy: 

Sustainable happiness comes from the freedom to create what you want, not the freedom to consume what you want. 

This philosophy drives me to buy creative freedom rather than stuff. And all of this creative freedom is great for productivity 🙂 

To measure progress in this area, I rely on this great little app called RescueTime. If you spend most of your time working on your PC (or if your PC is a huge source of distraction), you should really try it! It also works great on Android devices, although the iOS app is more limited.  

RescueTime automatically tracks the way you use your devices. Do some creative writing in MS Word, and you’ll grow some lovely deep blue “very productive” bars. Get lost in YouTube, and you’ll get some nasty red “very distracting” bars going in the wrong direction.

My month of June is shown below as an example: 

If you are brave enough to face a good dose of objective reality, RescueTime is for you. It tracks the time you are actually working, not the time that you are at work (which can be two very different things). 

It also mercilessly exposes every little bit of procrastination you get up to on your PC or phone. 

I’ve managed to use this cool data to drive myself to gradually higher performance over the past couple of years. My 1-year moving average for highly productive time should soon cross that 200 hour/month line 🙂

I’ll be back with another productivity update next month. Thus far, July has been awesome, so the positive trends should continue 🙂

See you tomorrow for the third edition of Amateur Creativity!

Schalk
, , , , , ,
1

Health Tracker

Health has long been one of my top priorities. Ever since a couple of health scares many years ago, I’ve been on a real mission to optimize this area of my life (the full story is available here).

As a result, I’ve not been sick for over a decade 🙂

But despite my good health, I never managed to get down to my ideal weight. It was not until I finally cracked the consistency code nine months ago that the weight came off (see below). 

The graph also shows the narrow corridor of my ideal weight, which I define as a smart BMI of 34/70. 

Aside from my weight, I also track two less straightforward metrics: metabolic age and biological age (see below).

My body composition monitor tells me my metabolic age (mainly from measuring my body-fat percentage).  Things like heart rate and waist measurement are used to calculate my biological age with this calculator. 

All I can say about that is that it’s fun to have an (almost) 35-year-old’s experience in a 20-year-old body!

Finally, I have a funny little animation composed from four fortnightly pictures of me flexing. I hope it will provide a good laugh and a little inspiration 😀

The aim of this is not to show off my annoyingly asymmetric sixpack, but rather to visualize how my body changes over the years. Indeed, I plan to take such a picture once every two weeks for the rest of my life! 

It’s also a nice illustration of what consistency can do. No gym membership, no weight-loss diet, no drugs. Just consistently sticking to my healthy eating habits combined with moderate daily exercise. 

See you tomorrow!

Schalk
,
0

Streak Tracker

You’d be hard-pressed to find a better measure of consistency than the streak (the act of racking up consecutive achievements, not the act of running naked before of a bunch of strangers 😉 ). 

Keeping a streak alive demands complete consistency. One screw-up and you have to start all over again. 

I currently track four streaks:

  • Good days. Researchers love data. I love it so much that I score the quality of my previous day every morning. A good day scores 25 points or more, something I have achieved for the past 277 days straight. You can check out a Medium article I wrote about this for more details. 
  • Morning routine. I’ve been maintaining this one for a long time, but only started properly tracking it 64 days ago.
  • Music practice. Even though I’m no Mozart, I’ve managed to play some piano or guitar every day for the past 36 days.  
  • Supermorning. Yep, you’re reading day 6 of my latest streak 🙂 Publishing an original post every day is a great test of consistency. 

Does anyone remember the Tamagotchi craze from a couple of decades ago? Well, a streak is just like a Tamagotchi – only useful. 

Its usefulness lies in the motivation it gives you to keep going. I have to admit that my “good day” streak has saved me from a self-destructive ice cream binge many-a-time over a recent trying period at work. 

So, get yourself a couple and do your best to keep them alive!

Do you have some already? I’d be very interested to know what you track.

I’ll be here with another streak update in one month’s time. I hope you will too 🙂