Category: Personal Project

30x30

30 x 30: #20 – See a comedian/comedy show live

Geoff W

2014 05-18 Road To OddballTonight I saw The Road 2 Oddball tour featuring Adam Cayton-Holland, Howard Kremer and Brody Stevens, right, in that order. Seeing comedy live is one of those things I enjoy when I do it and think “oh I should do that more often,” but then don’t. I think the last time I saw comedy live was in 2006 when I was visiting the great Helen Blowers in Newcastle and we went to a show which was epic.

I knew I would go to tonight’s show if given the opportunity as Howard Kremer is one of my top five podcasters and I’m obsessed with Who Charted. His odd sense of humor mixed with Kulap’s hilarity and the ever interesting engineers make it a great show, so I wanted to see his stand-up. Needless to say I wasn’t disappointed. I felt bad for my friend who went with me, when we left he was like “uh, not really my thing, but I got a couple of laughs out of it.” 🙁 To be completely fair there were some pretty big hits and misses from all three of the headliners, and the local who opened the show (Samaria Johnson) was pretty good.

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30x30, Personal Project

30 x 30: #8 – One day Star Wars I-VI movie marathon

Geoff W

Star Wars DVDsI’m now 1/10th of the way through my 30 x 30 list, and have made plans for two more already (see a comedian and visit Tara in NYC). If you don’t follow me on Twitter, you missed a treat as I crazily tweeted the six Star Wars films for May the Fourth (be with you) yesterday. Towards the end of the night when I was starting to lose it I created the hashtag #SassyYoda and we discussed the idea of #SassWars, a parody and/or YouTube channel which dubs sassy commentary (a la drag queens or teenage girls) over some of the epic shade throwing scenes throughout the series. Yeah, it was a rough last hour, but I made it.

What I found most challenging about the day was how exhausting and uncomfortable it was to sit through and pay attention to six full length movies. I somehow managed to (mostly) time myself while in front of the TV and it came in at just over 12.25 hours, but with breaks it was closer to 14 hours. I seriously wonder if I listed this one in the wrong place. It’s listed under relaxing, but after yesterday, I’m thinking it should’ve been classified as physical, because by the end of the day I was physically sore and mentally exhausted.

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Books, Professional Development

Book 277: The Willpower Instinct – Kelly McGonigal

Geoff W

This wasn’t one of the original self-help books I set out to read this year, but one that I randomly found on the library shelf while looking for another book and I’m glad I snagged it. In case you missed it, I’ve just wrapped up a 10 week project following this book’s program and you should check it out. I’ve also linked to each of the individual posts at the end of this post.

The book started out slower than I thought it would, but as I followed her instructions and spread it out over the ten weeks, a week per chapter, I found that it was laid out perfectly. Even though I struggled with how slow the implementation of the first bit was, it seriously helped lay the foundations for the later chapters. McGonigal clearly knows her subject matter and set it up in a way to slowly build on every thing until you were ready to tackle the more philosophical/psychological aspects.

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Personal Project, Willpower

The Willpower Instinct Project – Week 8, 9 & Wrap-Up

Geoff W

McGonigal, Kelly - The Willpower InstinctAs I said two weekends ago I was struggling to finish up the project. I did finish reading the book and the review will post tomorrow, but I just had a couple of rough weekend sin a row and didn’t take the time to blog about the last two chapters. This’ll be a quick recap of those chapters and my final thoughts on the project.

Chapter 8: Infected: Why Willpower is Contagious focused primarily on how your willpower project isn’t just yours alone. We were told to spend time identifying when/if other people affected how we approached challenges. Do the people we identify with or want to be like help or hinder our process? The experiments for the week were to take a few minutes to remind ourselves of the goals every morning, find a positive role model, go public with the our challenge and find others to support you.

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Personal Project, Willpower

The Willpower Instinct Project – Week 7

Geoff W

McGonigal, Kelly - The Willpower InstinctNot sure this brings much to my project, but I needed to keep with the schedule and hold myself accountable.

This week I definitely noticed a change in my habits, but honestly I’ve hit enough road blocks I’m wondering why I’m still doing this. Thankfully, I’m a completionist and will follow through the project. This entire week focused solely on connecting our current self with our future self and finding out if we are undercutting that future self.

We were to reflect on if or how we discount future rewards, whether we’re waiting for a future self to take charge and inversely whether we’re too farsighted for our own good. I find that depending on what I’m looking at there are complete opposite answers. When it comes to money and savings, I’ve made a lot of changes recently where I’ve taken charge and am sorting things out. I do occasionally have to remind myself that it’s okay to have fun and not save every penny to pay things off, so I am too farsighted for my own good.

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