The past couple weeks have been monotonous. It’s challenging to continue pushing ourselves and invest when the end outcome isn’t clear. I constantly struggle with the determination of if the solution is to add more experience or to cut back and focus. The personal challenge I’ve had with focus is justifying the lack of it by stating that a broad education or skill development will allow for greater opportunities in the future. My buddy describes this as loading the cannon. You keep investing and loading. The point is that eventually you will fire the cannon and will end up further ahead. The risk is continuing to load the cannon and it blows up in your face, it fails to launch, or that there was never a need for it to fire in the first place. I personally subscribe to the mindset that our job is to create a better world that we may never see. Our job is to leave the world a better place than where we found it. The formula that would allow us to do this is to work on ourselves and then give back. I think Dave Tate summarized this beautifully with Elitefts’ mission to “Live, Learn, and Pass On.” I think that’s the key. Live your life, keep learning and support those who come after us.
Training: I’m on week three of Dan John’s easy strength. Of course I’ve made a couple modifications to the original program. I wanted to have a baseline ability to bench 225×10 and squat 315×10. Given this program has neither of these lifts built in, I do them one day a week. I also need to keep working on/maintaining an ability to run. These lifts are quick and are completed in about 30-45 minutes. As such I finish each workout with a 2 mile zone 2 run trying to keep my HR around 145. I don’t find this run to be significantly taxing, which is the point. On the Saturday when I hit the bench and squat with the easy strength lifts I go for a longer 1 hour run. So far so good. Body comp is good and weight has continued to drop to about 202. I’m a little mixed on this as I like to sit closer to 210.
BJJ: The great part of the past week is we finally got training mats. The class I started has grown to about 20 people which has been cool to see. Just feels good to roll. It’s a different challenge with green people. Some people are more athletic and this makes me play a little more defensive to avoid injury.
Sleep: Sleeps been globally poor. I think between outside work requirements and dealing with outside problems the quality of this has significantly dropped.
Stress: Up. This is all my doing. Training stress is up. Sleep is down. Dealing with more responsibility at work and from work at home.
Learning: Still working through the Serman book, been reading a lot of Robert Gates book on leadership which has helped put bureaucracy in perspective. Read the Army Medical Officer Guide and it’s one that I wish I would have read 8 times now and started reading it 8 years ago. Also been working through some works on Christian Mystics.
Seeking Progress 