My First Backgammon

After the joy of getting a Royal Flush and then getting a Royal Flush in every suit I thought that it would be neat to get a backgammon (which is winning a game of backgammon with your opponent still having pieces on your "inner board.")  It's rare . . . not Royal Flush rare, but rare.

Well, just playing around with GNU backgammon as a free hobby gave me a backgammon:

With my double at the end, I was able to pull all the pieces off for a backgammon.

Update:  I have since had a "live action" backgammon against a student.  He is one my favorite all time students, but not very experienced with backgammon.  I always root for him to win against me, but I'll still take the backgammon.

Procrastination Chronicles #6: Cleaning out the Car

On the path to greatness, there will be 100 overcomings.

I will chronicle my attempts to overcome procrastination.  My technique is to start small, really small.

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Today I will talk about another task that has been sitting there for months, actually closer to a year.

On my to-do list I only had "clean 4 items out of car," because I have discovered with dishes that 4 is the tipping point for which I can get myself to comply 100% of the time.

Still, I felt a little drowsy today even after taking a walk.

First, I let myself play a game of backgammon.  That was a few minutes.  But then I went over to my to-do list.  I sighed when I saw the item about cleaning 4 items, but then I could feel a huge smile come onto my face as I realized I could listen to a song as I did the work (which it now seems is my way of handling all of my crap work).

I pulled the recycling bin to one side, the trash can to the other, and I just cleared the entire car out.  I ended up feeling so great about it, I ended up doing some of my mowing, making tomorrow easier.

Heck, I felt sooo great about it, that I played a game of backgammon, and then wrote this post.

20 Pounds Down

And probably 15-20 more to go.

It's wild to think I messed up enough to weigh 200 pounds.  It's also slightly sobering to think I've taken this long to get to a weight a few pounds more than I used to freak out and start diets.  

Oh well, measurable progress often makes us happy.  And I still am smiling that I lost those 20 pounds.  As odd as my current diet may seem -- and I think everyone who I have explained it to in person thinks its crazy -- I think it is a sustainable way to go.  I'm going to keep on this path for a few weeks, and then in November I plan a short detour, which I will explain in due time.

The Current Diet

One day I forgot to bring my lunch to school, so I just took 2 spoons of oil, instead of 1.

The result?  I still didn't feel hungry until around 3:30 or so.  I have experimented with this super-micro lunch for a week since, and I am here to say it works just fine.  

I don't eat breakfast.  The only lunch I have is 2 spoonfuls of extra-light olive oil (200 calories) and then I eat a 3:30 snack and a dinner, both adding up to no more than 1,000 calories.  So, 1,200 calories a day, 5 days a week, and then have my free-day on Sunday after lifting, and a slightly elevated calorie day on Monday.

My favorite part of this diet may very well be its convenience.  There are fewer dishes, and less clean-up.  Also, lunch less than 30 seconds and I can then use the rest of lunch to rest, read, reflect, or do work (but only in a pinch).

Another important benefit is that my energy levels feel more consistent throughout the day.  They are lower than my normal, but that is pretty much a good thing for me.  Let me explain:  a few weeks ago, when I had my debate tournament and was eating carbs like a crazy binge monster, and I really spun out of control.  It was like when I was a kid, with what almost certainly an un-diagnosed case of hyper-activity.   Not a good way to be a leader.   And I truly regret not being able to exude a calm, confidence.

In a similar vein, I have discovered that when I drink coffee when I am in this fasting phase, I also am liable to go bezerk.  This is either if I have an exciting idea or something to rant about.   Either way, I want control over my impulses.  So . .. I've quit coffee.  I drink one cup of tea at lunch.  Once I use my tea bags, I might just quit that as well.

I plan on propagating more mint in my garden, so that in a year or so I can produce my own year-round supply of mint tea from my own garden (and there is always pine needles to forage for pine tea).

Procrastination Chronicles #5: War and Peace

On the path to greatness, there will be 100 overcomings.

I will chronicle my attempts to overcome procrastination.  My technique is to start small, really small.

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The human mind hates assigned tasks, even they are assigned for perfectly good reasons.  Even if they are assigned by yourself for perfectly good reasons.

I absolutely agree with Nassim Taleb that

Procrastination is the soul rebelling against entrapment.

Somehow I managed to turn reading one of the finest books in human literature, War and Peace, into a chore, and so I put it off for nearly whole summer, only picking it up again in late August.  The way I got around this block was a rather odd one, and not at all by design . . .

It started with Heinlein's book Starship Troopers.  I hadn't been reading much of anything lately besides blogs.  But I started trying to go to bed at a more normal time, and so I started a habit of not looking at computer screens after 9:00.  One night, I had insomnia, but I knew going online or playing a game on the computer would make the situation worse, so I went to my book shelve, and grabbed Heinlein's book.

Reading it activated some interest in matters military and the sweep of force in history.  It was all tied together in an idle moment, when I flipped through War and Peace and came to Book 14.  It had one of those long reflections on history that I had heard about, mostly by literary people bemoaning them taking away from the novel.  But I found myself enthralled by it..  I see just from that how the book can be said to "capture the Russian soul."  Furthermore, the passage is far removed from what came off on my first reading as tedious elitism in Book 1.

There are two types of people: those who have read War and Peace and those who haven't.  I now have the motivation to be someone who will.

Procrastination Chronicles #4: Mowing the Lawn

On the path to greatness, there will be 100 overcomings.

I will chronicle my attempts to overcome procrastination.  My technique is to start small, really small.

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One way to beat procrastination is to make it like a song, or a page-turning novel.  If you play a song, you don't want to just cut it off at any point.  You want to hear that last note, and if the musician holds that note, you don't skip the track when the last note starts; you wait it out.  Like-wise, a great novelist will often leave you with every chapter with some kind of cliff-hanger.

A partially started task can be the same way.  I wanted to start mowing, but all I put on my to-do list was "mow one strip on the side of the house."  So, I mowed that strip and then made myself go back into the house, and cross that item off the list.  Before I did that, I already "cheated" and mowed an extra strip.

The result?  I wasn't going to leave one (or, rather two) strips mowed.  I needed to finish that pattern out.  It went from a task I was putting off to one I felt compelled to finish.