Visited the Honor Fraser KAWS exhibit today.

I was going to lie to all of you and say that I got a perfect score, but my conscience wouldn’t allow it. That’s right: I failed on the last day after nearly meeting every standard I set for myself.

Fridays are generally the most difficult day for me because I have a bunch of outside influences that affect my ability to focus. Plus, to be frank, I’m usually ready for the weekend (i.e. not having to think about “Standards”), so I subconsciously slack off.

But this week was different.

I aced everything and felt like my productivity level was at its peak. I was playing the piano in a way I never thought I could, and going to sleep/waking up feeling like a 12-year-old kid.  By Wednesday, the sickness was almost completely gone and my energy was soaring. I literally would wake up and jump off my futon. One thing I can definitely say about this system is that IT GIVES YOU TREMENDOUS ENERGY. 

The energy that I received from maintaining a healthy diet throughout the week is what gave me the ability to continue exercising, which translated into other standards, and so on and so forth.

Friday came and I completed everything besides reading for 30 minutes. My girl was over, and by the time I crawled into bed, I was too tired to grab my iPhone and read a chapter from “Inside Steve’s Brain”. I know you’re thinking “wait, he just said this system is an energy-booster, why wouldn’t he be able to stay up?”. The thing is: I was mentally tired - not physically. Once mental fatigue kicks in, there’s no fighting it (unless you fuck with your brain chemistry by taking some pill to focus, ex. Adderall).

With that said, I’m going to continue aiming for this high standard of living every week. It feels too good to resist!

Day 4; finished pretty early today (10 PM).

Notes:

Breakfast - turkey sandwich.

Lunch - (2) hot dogs.

Dinner - chicken enchilada, refried beans, rice.

Day 3; today was kind of rough because I couldn’t find a good tutorial via YouTube so that I could learn a song on piano.

Notes:

Breakfast - oatmeal with brown sugar, cranberries, and walnuts.

Lunch - turkey panini, macaroni salad, oatmeal raisin cookie.

Dinner - shrimp taco, chicken burrito.

It’s interesting; one distinct fact I’ve noticed so far this week is that by eating three evenly spaced meals, I have no desire for any other food. Normally I’d lay down for bed at night and get a craving for something else. Now, I’m completely satisfied. I also wake up with incredible amounts of energy. 

FYI, so far I’ve learned “Imagine” by John Lennon, “Let It Be” by Paul McCartney, and “I’ll Be Waiting” by Lenny Kravitz on piano.

Day 2; perfect score. Will I make it ‘til the end of the week?

Notes:

Breakfast - cinnamon french toast, strawberries, freshly squeezed orange juice.

Lunch - salmon burger, bottle of water.

Dinner - roast beef sandwich, “Dole” orange juice, bottle of water, macaroni salad, oatmeal cookie.

Got a perfect score today.

Notes:

Breakfast - scrambled egg, mushroom, tomatoes on a croissant.

Lunch - peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Dinner - salmon, vegetables, mashed potatoes.

Work - went over my standard and did 9 solicitations instead of 7.

Using a printout this week via wehavestandards.com

Back again.

Hello. It’s been a while.

For the past 2 weeks I’ve experimented with trying to keep a mental chart of my Standards. It worked for the basics (eating and work), but pretty much failed for the specific/important stuff (exercise, reading, etc.).

This proved to me that the only way to really keep my Standards in tact is to blog about them. Now I will continue to do so.

I’ve made this week’s Standards very simple and straightforward, almost like how I started. I’m looking forward to improving my Spanish. I plan to keep adding stuff that I look forward to doing.

*The $50 personal spending budget is for the week, not daily. I should’ve put $10 (for the 5 days that the Standards chart is in effect).

My Standards are back.

I’m not sure if I can survive without this system now. The first day that I experimented with stopping began with me eating a ‘marijuana edible caramel’ and completely wrecking myself. I believe this happened because there was no system in place telling me that I should be doing something more important.

Here are the changes I made:

a) Descriptive sub-titles - I did this to make my log more interesting and so that I can really understand the benefit I’m receiving when I look at it.

b) “Practice” category - This was inspired by a conversation I had with my friend Ryan a few weeks ago. Whatever he said made me realize that I can be great at anything as long as there’s consistent practice - something most people will not do, and if they do, won’t be able to sustain. My thought process for this category was somewhere along the lines of “Since all it takes is practice to be great at something, let me just add everything I want to become great at”. Basically, the difficult part is sustaining it, which won’t be difficult for me since I’m aware of this and have a system in place to ensure that.

Teaching myself Spanish this week will be fun!