As August is over and we are now moving towards autumn, it’s time to recap the challenge. If you are reading this without knowing what challenge I’m talking about, I encourage you to read this.
31 days and 16 daily habits – It was a long interesting month! (Most of the habits were based on Dr. Andrew Huberman podcast episode 38)
First, I will go through different habits in the morning, daytime and evening. I have divided them into 3 categories:
1. Love it (will continue daily)
2. Like it (will continue every and now then)
3. Didn’t work for me (no more that habit)
After that, I will discuss my overall productivity and health metrics.
Table of Contents
1. Morning habits that I love
1.1 A few physical exercises to strengthen the weak points in my body
Reasoning: There are 3 arguments for continuing doing this. First, little physical activity wakes you up. Second, it’s important to strengthen weak points in the body to ensure a healthy future. Lastly, it doesn’t take much time, 5 minutes is enough. It wasn’t a challenge to complete the 31/31 challenge on this.
I’m currently focusing on core muscles and gluteus muscles (based on the feedback I got from the physiotherapist).
Achievement target
31/31 days – 100%
1.2 Whitenoise & screen above eyes
Reasoning: Focus music and a standing desk where the screen is above the eyes are my go-to when focusing fully. I talked about white noise in the challenge article, but I noticed that I like “deep focus music” more, like this.
Achievement target
31/31 days – 100%
1.3 Ice Cold shower
Reasoning: There’s something special with morning cold showers, it is the most challenging time to do it as you still feel sleepy, but afterward, you feel energetic and motivated.
When you have done it enough, the mental challenge part decreases, and you actually enjoy it more.
And it doesn’t take much time, only 1-2 minutes.
We had some water problems in the countryside, no water coming from the shower, so I lost few days of morning cold showers. (Although I took them in the evening in the gym)
Achievement target
29/31 days – 93%
1.4 Guaysa Tea
Reasoning: This one was big for me; I’m caffeine sensitive, but Guaysa tea seemed to give me just the correct dose of energy without a jittery feeling (thanks to L-theanine, which is one of the ingredients in the tea)
This will be my daily habit in the future too!
Achievement target
31/31 days – 100%
2. Morning habits that I like
2.1 Water with little bit a salt
Reasoning: I see this as important in the hot summer periods, but not sure for winter mornings. I’m waiting to see studies on this to make an end conclusion. (I cannot say that I noticed a major difference from this)
Achievement target
31/31 days – 100%
2.2 Walk or run outdoors
Reasoning: Getting morning sunshine is awesome but what if it’s raining cold water from the sky? I will keep this spring & summer habit at least when it’s sunshine / cloudy weather without rain.
I loved when I got morning sunshine to my eyes!
Achievement target
27/31 days – 87%
2.3 10 Ideas
Reasoning: Listing 10 ideas a day is a challenge, 5 comes easily but the last few are tough. Nevertheless, it is a good exercise to strengthen the creativity muscle, and every now and then good ideas will pop up. I actually need to skim through all my ideas from August..
After you have finished the 10 ideas, you feel pretty good. Average time for completing this was around 15 minutes. Still, I would choose meditation over 10 ideas If I have to prioritize.
There were few days when I forgot/were too busy to do in the mornings.
Achievement target
29/31 days – 93%
3. Morning habits that didn't work for me
3.1 10 minutes hypnosis (Reveri.com)
Reasoning: I used reveri.com hypnosis for 14 days, but then I stopped doing it. I didn’t like it because it was poorly done in terms of quality. Headspace is much better as you don’t have to listen same audio every day. Rather, you progress in your journey.
Reveri had a feature where the hypnotist asks questions, and you answer yes, or no. It felt stupid to say yes 6x times a session for the same questions.
I replaced reveri hypnosis with good ol’ meditation
Achievement target
14/31 days – 45%
4. Daytime habits that I love
4.1 Intermittent fasting
Reasoning: This was a big one! Before the challenge, I had my doubts about this; Do I have energy in workouts in the mornings or evening? Do I have energy in the mornings to focus? Will I start losing weight (which I don’t want)?
All my doubts were incorrect! Intermittent fasting with Guaysa tea was the perfect combo for a productive morning.
With IF, you even save time when you don’t have to create breakfast or eat. It was the easiest habit to do a daily the whole month of August.
Achievement target
31/31 days – 100%
5. Evening habits that I love
5.1 Large meal with starchy carbohydrates
Reasoning: I have already followed this protocol for a few years, so it was easy to complete. For lunch I prefer salad and for evening meal more carbohydrates and calories.
Achievement target
31/31 days – 100%
5.2 1000 mg of EPA with dinner
Reasoning: I might feel a slight improvement in mood when dosing with 1000 mg of EPA. Science is there, and many credible scientists speak of the importance of Omega 3 and EPA. I will definitely keep supplementing with Omega 3’s.
Achievement target
31/31 days – 100%
6. Evening habits that I like
6.3 Evening Sunlight before bed
Reasoning: I drop the ball with this. It wasn’t that I was lazy, but somehow I forgot this many times. Still, most of the days, I get it automatically ex. When throwing trash away or returning from the gym.
It’s hard to say what kind of effect it had, but I would like to keep making this habit, especially in the summertime.
Achievement target
21/31 days – 67%
7. Evening habits that I didnt work for me
7.1 Magnesium Threonate before sleep
Reasoning: I was hyped about magnesium threonate but didn’t notice any effect. I have seen similar comments on the internet. Threonate didn’t cause any problems either, but it’s a rare magnesium form (I have to order it outside of Finland), so it’s not worth the cost.
I will try Magnesium bisglycinate next.
Achievement target
31/31 days – 100%
8. All day habits that I love
8.1 Reading news only once a week
Reasoning: This was awesome; I’m definitely going to keep practicing this. Thanks to Freedom. I was blocked many times when I tried to read the news (Sometimes, even unconsciously, I took the phone out of my pocket to read the news). Once a week is enough to keep in the loop of what’s happening around the globe.
Achievement target
31/31 days – 100%
9. My productivity during august
Then the most interesting question; how was my productivity? I will approach this question from 3 different angles:
1. What is my subjective feeling now when the challenge is over?
2. What did I achieve in August?
3. How did I rate my daily productivity level in the dailio app?
9.1 Subjective feeling after the challenge is over
There was a clear productivity boost in the mornings. I even experienced flow states numerous times, which was enjoyable.
That said, the same kind of productivity wasn’t present anymore after 2 pm. There was a decrease in focus and attention. Luckily I got it back in the evening most of the days.
There was also a period when I slept badly few days, which hindered my productivity.
9.2 What did I achieve in August?
Work-life
I experienced flow states in work, something that I haven’t felt for years. That was an awesome and motivating experience! I progressed in work-related tasks as I wanted. I also went to the office, which I haven’t done for a while because of COVID (Held internal audit, which went well).
Blog
I published 2 articles, one new and one old, that I updated:
Why you should hang upside down?
1000 days with Oura ring – My revelations with HRV
I’m also working on a huge quantified self-related article that I will publish in September. It’s been my main focus in August.
I was pretty active on social media (Reddit, IG, and Facebook) to discuss different health topics and promote my blog.
I’m also happy to announce that I received the highest amount of visits to my site this august, a total of 3600.
Calisthenics (or other physical exercises)
I trained a total of 28 training sessions and had 6 rest days. So that’s 1-2 rest a day week, and once a week a day with two sessions.
August was an excellent month in terms of training progress. I did 3×5 muscle ups with 5kg additional weight, my handstand improved a lot, and my front- and back lever got more seconds. All the habits seemed to support my training.
Next week will be deload, I haven’t had that while, and I can see that in my HRV values.
Toastmasters
I participated in two meetings and held one speech. I also gave introduction sessions to new members.
Other
I didn’t finish any book, but I read around 200 pages total (two different books)
I did listen to many educational podcasts or youtube videos, for example, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Petter Attia, and many others.
I also start the use mem, which is a new note-taking application. I’m moving from one note to mem gradually. I feel that it will support more my research and blogging. You can check it here.
9.1 Daily productivity levels on Dailio app
I rate my productivity daily. There are 3 levels, high, average, and low. In the graph below, I compare my August productivity scores against May-July.
It was interesting to see that in August, I was 57% of the days in a high productivity state, that’s 23% more than in May-July. Based on this, it’s safe to say that this challenge was successful. There were 2 days when I rated my productivity low (due to bad sleep).
Few tweaks and 70% could be possible to achieve in the future, I believe.
10. Learnings from health metrics
My assumption is that from 16 habits, intermittent fasting and maybe Omega 3 supplementation has the biggest effect on health metrics (if any).
I have never done 30-day straight intermittent fasting, so I was excited to see if I can notice any difference in health metrics.
I compared August values to past 3 month values (May-July), and from that data (8 metrics), 7 improved, and one stayed the same.
The most significant change was resting heart rate (daytime), which decreased from 60 to 57 (I’m not putting too much emphasis on readiness nor sleep score). Overall, the changes were quite small, but I was happy with how they were going in a positive direction.
This makes sense, most likely intermittent fasting has positive effects on these metrics, but changes aren’t as significant as they would be for overweight people.
Lastly, I want to focus on pulse wave velocity.
There wasn’t a big difference in monthly level comparison, but I noticed significant changes at the end of august and the beginning of September. The lower the value, the better it is for you.
I have data only from 5 months, but we can see that I’m currently on the lowest point at the beginning of September, closing up on optimal level.
This trend has changed my vascular age from the 32-36 group (I’m 34) to the 28-32 group. Is this because of intermittent fasting? In theory, it makes sense. Pulse wave velocity takes into account blood pressure and cholesterol, both of which can be improved via intermittent fasting. Still, improvement is happening in such a drastic phase that it makes you wonder. Regardless, I’m happy where it is going.
I used the following gadgets and tools in this experiment:
Oura (Sleep & Recovery)
Garmin watch (day time HR & Stress)
Withings (Pulse wave velocity)
Veri (Morning glucose – You can use my referral link to get -20% off from your first Veri sensor order)
(I didn’t use a blood pressure monitor, that was a mistake)
11. Conclusion
- Intermittent fasting increases productivity (significantly) and improves health metrics (slightly)
- Guaysa tea is an excellent choice for a caffeine-sensitive person, and it supports focus and clarity
- 1000 mg of EPA seems to support health & happiness (Happiness & health metrics increased)
- I don’t need to read the news every day
This Post Has 6 Comments
Awesome article, thanks for the insights!
Did you try matcha tea as well? It also has l-theanine, less caffeine and gives a long lasting focus boost, I swear by it now and take it daily instead of coffee. I’m gonna try out Guaysa tea now based on your article as it seems to be a bit cheaper.
Will there be a blog about nootropics/supplements reviewing as well?
I have only tried matcha shot, but that’s interesting, will try it in tea form as well.
Yes, I might write about nootropics/supplements as well. I actually just ordered Lactobacillus plantarum DR7 which is pretty unknown but science is there. That could be one option!
Thank you for sharing your personal development experience, Ilmo! It is quite comprehensive, interesting, and useful. Keep going!
thank you very much for your comment!
Thank you for sharing Ilmo, I enjoy reading your articles!
Thank you Laila !