Daily 5 Minute Journal - Sept. 3, 2016 - Near Death Experience

Near Death Experience

Last night I walked to Carvel with my wife and dog and as we crossed the street I picked up my phone, turned it to a bright screen and shook it in case a driver making a turn in front of us didn't see us.  I did this because I was almost hit by a car making a left turn while walking my dog.

As the woman in the car passed us, she said "It's good you picked up your phone, it really helped."

This has been making me think about a design flaw in cars where in the driver's seat there are two blind spots in front caused by a wider left and right frame that holds side air bags.

I've almost been hit by a few cars and I'm thinking it's mostly because of this blind spot. I wonder how many people have been killed because of this. I can think of 3 - 4 times off the top of my head where I was making a turn and didn't see a pedestrian or another driver that happened to be in this front blind spot. At night, this appears to be even more troublesome.

Empty Nest

Had ice cream and pizza last night, because I am a little depressed from my kids going to college. Also I worked from home alone most of the day. Felt I needed a pick me up.

Reach Some Goals Labor Day Weekend

I have 3 days for the labor day weekend. Sat, Sun Mon and I would like to accomplish something. I feel like I've been very distracted lately and haven't been making progress towards my goals whatever they are.

I thought that I should create a "Don't do list" and randomly select one thing per day to not do. Some things I could put on the list are:

1. No coffee
2. No BPC (Bulletproof Coffee)
3. No computer usage
4. No cell phone usage
5. No questbars
6. No carbs
7. No shoes
8. No twitter
9. No TV
10. No Scott Adams
11. No buying 

Another thing I could do is work on small tasks for a day. That is don't work on anything that will take more than 5 minutes.

Some things on my list for this weekend are:

1. Go to the beach. I haven't gone once this summer
2. Clean up my messy desk
3. Mow the lawn
4. Buy at Vitamin Shoppe
1. Coconut oil
2. Shampoo
5. Buy a weed wacker
6. Clean up my messy dresser
7. Get a doggy DNA test
8. Order real BPC ingredients
9. Get a haircut

Reminds me of the hardest question 

     What should I do now?

What are the top 5 habits I'd like to break or create?

What are the subtasks needed to reach one of the 3 goals ($LF)?

What's my top tasks to reach the 3 goals?

Another thing I'd like to accomplish is improve system for creating or delete habits or programs I have in. I haven't been good about exercising or using my laser comb.

Weight Loss

I weighed 169.4 this morning which is at least 5 pounds higher than I would like. I've been having problems losing weight. I'm not sure what caused it. But I'm certainly not following the Excel Diet I created.  This all seemed to happen after I read a book by (-mem: Gary Taubes - Good Calories Bad Calories.

Mindfulness/Meditating

I've been meditating at work with Evan and am really liking it. He leads the session. He sets a timer and we follow him. We do about 10  minutes all together of:

1. stretching
2. relaxing from head to toes
3. Counting breaths from 1 - 10 and restarting
4. Smiling while doing it

Miscellaneous

I've also been thinking "What is the proof that the holy books aren't the word of God?" Could this be used to reduce terrorism?

Last night I watched some episodes of Cesar 911. This guy is amazing on how he can take these crazy dogs (caused by the owners) and turn them normal. It's freaken amazing. 

Current Books I'm Reading/Listening to

I've been reading Antifragile by Nisam Taleb and am still liking it.  It's a book about a concept called anti-fragile which is the opposite of fragile which there is no word. Most people when asked will say unbreakable I'm up to chapter 3, unfortunately the pages aren't numbered in the PDF. Its a book that is hard to understand and could have a version that's hyperlinks or gives more info when hovering.

I've been listening to @Scott Adams' (creator of Dilbert) book How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big which I got from Audible.com for $2.95 and would highly recommend. I signed out of my Amazon account and the price was $17.95 today.  He says "turn experiences into stories." I'm going to create a spreadsheet that has:

• Date time
• short name
• Experience
• Story

I've been also listening to Scott's periscope feed.

He used the term "awkward silence" in his book. This is a strange concept if you think about it. Why should silence be awkward?

Some of the other terms he's been using that I like are:

• Linguistic Kill Shot
• Bringing a flamethrower to a stick fight
• AB Test
• Visual
• confirmation bias
• talent stack
• People are irrational all the time
• Godzilla
• Confirmation bias trap
• He's got the optics
• charisma = power + empathy
• primes
• moist robot
• master persuader

Oh the Pain

One thing I'd like to resolve is my pain that I've been getting in my foot for over 2 years. Recently I've been getting pain while doing a curling motion and also knee pain.