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Weekly Review: Reboot Q3 2019

August 5, 2019 by Will Lam Leave a Comment

  • Monday: Maintain Scooter
  • See Kristy on Tuesday
  • Hang out with Nick to play MTG and lift
  • Hang out with Melvin on Wednesday and lift
  • Sleep early wind down 10 PM 3x

Just keeping this simple and real. Realizing I need to get out of this funk and start creating in any little way possible.

I miss this part of my life

Filed Under: Uncategorized

“You’ve come a long way baby” Weekly Review: Jan 27 – Feb 2, 2019

February 4, 2019 by Will Lam Leave a Comment

It’s been well over a month since my last journal entry. Something that I’ve been neglecting is hearing, listening and actually heeding what my gut tells me after a pretty fucking tough 2018.

The main theme of 2018 is that I’ve coped with stress in unacceptable and unhealthy ways that impacted my energy and the people around me. It was something that was something that slowly crept up on me. Sparing all the gory details, I think I’m on a much better path after taking stock of my situation and viewing everything through the lens of gratitude, with my trusty and dusty 5 Minute Journal that’s the cornerstone of just feeling like I’m on solid ground.

Something I revealed to two dear friends of mine was that I was just tired of disappointment. Setbacks professionally and personally felt a bit too much to handle and I didn’t have the outlets that I previously had to maintain some semblance of emotional resilience were whittled away from the boundaries and stresses of work I was ever so slowly ceding. It wore away at my self-worth. I created threats in my head. There were also countless things that I had started but never followed through on which put me further down a spiral and the self-created pain had created such a heavy burden that all I could think of escaping and placating myself with sleep and other unhealthy ways of dealing with stress.

It all led up to me having to reach out personally to trusted friends, and eventually seeking professional help in the form of a therapist.

But this post isn’t about all the little fuckups and set backs. This post is about the little victories and wins. Every hard fought inch that is slowly helping me turn around and navigate back into not so stormy weather if you will.

As with my previous reviews, I’ll be covering categories of improvement, which for me are:

  • 💪Fitness/Mental Health
  • 🤑Personal Finance
  • 🤓Learning.

💪Fitness & Mental Health:

This category is a hybrid one that encompasses not just fitness in the traditional sense, going to the gym, the consistency, the meal planning etc. It’s also everything else that doesn’t take place in the gym, the rituals, the sleep for recovery, the mental health practices that involve meditation and self reflection. All of that adds up to overall health and a healthy outlook on life and having the resilience to deal with whatever fucked up shit comes our way.

This past week was awesome, not because I went to the gym 3 times, but because I once on my own without much cajoling and twice doing some workouts from P90X with my partner. It was really fun and I highly recommend it working out with your partner!

Other than that, I made an emphasis to sleep earlier to give my body some time to adjust and recover, but to also allow myself to not be a complete grumpy rat bastard when I’m running on only 6 hours of sleep (or less).

Most importantly, I’m carving out time for myself in the evening to wind down before bed to reflect on my day, do a rough plan of my day ahead and then give myself a dose of 7+ hours of sleep.

During my mornings, I’m finally putting to use my Muse meditation headband that has been lying around and collecting dust for the last 2 and a half years. I squeezed in 4 sessions, starting off with 3 minutes, and the fourth session being about 12 minutes. I’d like to meditate every weekday for at least 15 minutes before heading into work.

🤑Personal Finance:

My relationship with my finances hasn’t been the best, but after having paid off my student loans and now that I’m on the last bit of my line of credit, I’m starting to build up savings again. Roughly, I’m planning for saving at least $1500 a month as a conservative amount after I factor in all my expenses and vacations.

Might go further into to detail, but I’ll definitely be sharing more details about my consumption, savings and approach to building wealth later on.

🍜Learning :

One thing I’d like to do is focus on learning a new thing a week. While it has never been a consistent thing, I’d like to actually write about what I’m learning and how it’s bringing more structure and happiness to my life. One of things that I’ve often neglected is doing creative things with my hands(tm). That may entail cooking or some sort of art like origami or gloving or learning how to DJ, which is most likely next week..🎛

This past week, I learned how to make traditional Vietnamese pho (beef noodle soup) for the first time after my mom sent me a pretty decent recipe. If anything I should be learning more things from my mom in the future.

This week, I’m going to be digging into wrapping my head around some SQL queries for work.. maybe I’ll abstract that and turn it into a mini blog post.

Going forward…

My goal isn’t to be relentless and beating myself up for not being able to hit all my high falutin’ and lofty goals. It’s more so being more gentle to myself and the language and internal dialogue I have with myself, while still moving forward. As cheesy as it may sound, I’m more interested in the journey that’s more kinder and gentler to myself. However, that’s not to be confused with flip flopping or backing down on the promises I make to myself. Consistency and resilience are things to keep in mind for myself.

Filed Under: Fitness, Learning, Mental Health, Personal Development, Tracking, Weekly Reviews

Managing Energy

November 19, 2018 by Will Lam Leave a Comment

I’ve been questioning how I approach my work and how I handle anxiety levels. Yes, stress is the norm, but it should be harnessed to help focus and prioritize where we should devote our energy in a given day.
 
I’ve been thinking a bit more granularly about my energy expenditure. 
 
So a question I’ve been asking myself is on a day to day basis – how do I manage my energy and time during the day?
 
While I am tasked as a “Solutions Engineer”, what the hell does that mean when everything is of equal importance and of equal urgency. I usually get stuck spinning my wheels, but doing something as simple as writing down the “Most Important Tasks” I need to accomplish is determined by how much time I should spend and how important a customer is (re: $$$). 
 
So this is what I devised.
 
Plan for 2 things to get done by a certain time 12 PM? and work relentlessly to get those done by 12 PM. Purely for building momentum at first.
  • From there, I’ll take on mini-tasks first and then bigger task after that
  • If it takes more than 30 minutes to get any significant progress – ask for help or delegate

From that point forward, it’s all gravy.

Filed Under: Mental Health, Tracking, Weekly Reviews

vulnerability and asking for help

October 31, 2018 by Will Lam Leave a Comment

I used to think that vulnerability was admitting I was weak. That I wasn’t good enough. That I was incompetent and all the other insecurities I held with me that clung onto me so tightly as I aged and matured into the fine whiskey of 36 that I am.
 
Nowadays after surrounding myself with genuinely good people, I’m finding myself more and more anxious about things like my age (even though I look stupidly young. Thanks mom and dad for the genes!), and what station of my life I should be occupying now. It just eats away at me and paralyzes me.
 
But how did I arrive here? How did I devolve to this state? Lacking grit, courage, and confidence?

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Mental Health, Tracking

Excuse Tracker. No Excuses.

October 29, 2018 by Will Lam Leave a Comment

I’ve been making a fuck ton of excuses as of late, which I admitted on Facebook and stirred a good amount of discussion. I may be borderline depressed I think, but I think I can salvage this through journalling and more reflection which I have very seldom done on a week to week basis.will lam excuses
 
I figure I should make it as visceral and visual as possible. To the point where I wince. I’ve tried to be aspirational in the past and plan around being forward looking, innovative, etc. But when I look back at what I set out to achieve over the last say, 10 years or so, I don’t have much to show. Lots of tough learnings, but, lots of lumps and bruises, and nothing substantial or meaty that I’ve made significant progress in and stuck to through the years.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Tracking, Weekly Reviews

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