Vali2003

I’ve been sporadically wearing earplugs over the last two-three weeks and every time I did wear them, my sleep was significantly better. I originally bought the earplugs because it can be noisy in my shared-flat sometimes. Think, game night, someone coming home late at night, late-night kitchen action etc. I didn’t plan to use the earplugs every night. However, I’ve noticed that every night that I’ve worn them my sleep is significantly better than without them. I don’t wake up in the night at all. And there’s a much more “solid” feel to my sleep. I also wake up feeling more recovered. Note that it’s not just better than my sleep in those noisy nights. It’s better than my sleep even when in nights when it’s “quiet.” So, what I think happens is that (in my case at least) there always are micro-noises (a car driving by, someone using the bathroom, some neighbor..) that disturb my sleep. But they aren’t loud enough to wake me up. On some level these micro-noises make me not sleep as deep even though I don’t consciously notice them. When I put in the ear plugs that flies out the window and hence my sleep is better. Earplugs for the win. I think silence is often underestimated in the “improve sleep discussion,” because there can be these micro-noises disturbing your sleep quality without you being able to consciously notice them. So I wanted to share this.

@Leo Gura Leo, your info on weightlifting is like 5-10 years outdated I’d say . But yeah, most people, especially if they’re beginners will get great results from that I’d say. In general, all the tactics, strategies, to train to failure or not to train to failure, deep stretches, de-loads etc. are much more relevant for advanced lifters who hit plateaus. Beginners can do whatever they want and gain muscle.

@Elliott It would actually make a lot of sense in that case. Especially since you don’t have hearing damage. I also have excellent hearing despite my tinnitus. Do you notice that sometimes the ringing is louder and sometimes it’s quieter? That could also be an indication of it having to do with your jaw/neck. For example if you had a bad night of sleep and clenched your jaw a lot, it might be louder. I also struggle with good sleeping posture. I bought a special neck-pillow that’s supposed to help, but it doesn’t really do much. For my jaw/neck, it’s the best for me to sleep completely straight on my back without a pillow, but I rarely do it cause it’s quite a pain in the ass.

@Elliott My tinnitus is triggered by tightness in the jaw and upper neck. I tried lots of different ways to solve it when I first got it, but now I mostly don’t mind it, so I stopped searching for solutions. But my neck and jaw tightness is slowly getting better anyways and I think my tinnitus is quieter than it used to be, so, that’s good. What’s the reason you’re not able to sleep in silence when you’re stressed?

I agree. I was brainwashed by RIR. Going to failure or at least close to it on every set feels more natural to me.

@Elliott I actually have tinnitus, yeah. But it’s not a very severe one. It get’s a little bit louder when the earplugs press on my ears, and because of that I thought for years that I couldn’t wear earplugs (because I was scared of the noise getting louder). But now it mainly doesn’t bother me anymore so I started using them more frequently. Do you have tinnitus, and if yes, what kind?

Sleep mask + ear plugs is a killer combo. Although I sometimes wake up in the middle of my night suddenly without my sleep mask.

Basketball is by far the best sport in terms of the aesthetic and vibe of it. Much better than ice hockey. p.s. I’ve never watched ice hockey in my life

Just wrote a literal novel here and then the site crashed...

I've been meaning to create this journal for three weeks, but I keep putting it off. I don't know why. Maybe because it's a signal for me to get serious about life. And maybe I know that I'll have to confront fears if I do that. And maybe I know, that won't be comfortable. Anyways, here I am. Escaping wage slavery is what I think about the most. And I think it's one of the most, if not the most important thing, there is in my life right now. I feel, I'm at a crossroads at the moment. Where I can decide about truly going for the actualized life, or going with a cushy, safe, decent life. I know I want the actualized life. And I know I can get there if I put my all into it. I want this journal to be a place where I get really honest about where I'm at. About what challenges I'm facing, which dilemmas, which beliefs hold me back. About that which chains me to the idea of a safe life. But it'll also be about how I free myself from this, and how, eventually, I may succeed in my goals.

And when I write about these things now, they seem so obvious. But in the moment it’s just confusing and frustrating. This is one thing I didn’t get before I actually did this. It seems easy from the outside. But while you’re in it, things are tough and unclear. Nobody will tell you the exact path… And even if they do, you won’t really get it. And even if you get it, you still won’t have the skills (I’ll give an example for this later). The most important thing is just to keep going. Keep going, and the fog will clear up, bit by bit, day by day. Until you walk into the next cloud of fog… (which is ideally the case, because you want to keep learning). And then, if you have the balls to just not stop, then you will reach your goal. You just have to be willing to endure the periods of uncertainty and the failure. Those are growing pains. Embrace them. There’s a section from Seth Godin's book "the dip" that I find mightily wise in regard to this: Of course, this is mainly a message to myself. To just not quit.

Here’s how I found this client who I will now be working with: I cold-emailed people. Sounds simple enough, but there’s actually a bunch of stuff that needs to be regarded for it to work. I’ll list some stuff: Need to have professional emails to improve deliverability of your emails - otherwise they land in spam Need to find the right people to contact Need to have double-verified email addresses, otherwise you will get too many “bounces” (email addresses not being found), and you address will get flagged You need to communicate your offer in a trustworthy but relevant fashion (in 100-150 words) Need to warm up email accounts. Meaning start with 5 emails per day for a week and then increase by 5 every day until you reach 40 per day maximum … there’s much more. When I started contacting people I didn’t know jack shit of this. But I kept reading and taking action, so I learned pretty fast. Still, I’m quite shit at it, so I was surprised when one person had answered after I just got out of basketball practice on thursday.

Soooo, haven’t written here in a long time… but that’s ok. I want to give a small update about how my business is going. I have my first client! (that isn’t my mom) It hasn’t been easy, not gonna lie, but I’m quite happy now. Note that I’m doing free work for her. So I’m not gonna make any money from this, but I don’t care. Working with actual people will help me learn so much and gain confidence so that’s a big step towards getting paid for my work. It’s kind of ridiculous how difficult it is to even get somebody to take something that’s highly valuable (other people charge $5K for the thing I’m offering) FOR FREE. But the thing is, as a bare beginner, you have absolutely no social proof, so nobody trusts you. Also, you lack experience and hence confidence in your ability to produce results.

As said above. I don’t feel AI gives good advice. Or, it does, objectively, give good advice about some things. But it’s never great. And It’s always detached from reality, because the AI doesn’t speak from a specific, biased POV. I’ve noticed that, when seeking advice from AI on something, I don’t have more clarity afterwards than I had before. Primarily, it’s mental masturbation and a waste of time. I’ve also developed such a distain for the type of writing that most chatbots output (although I mostly use GPT). But it’s not only that, it’s also the lack of strong position, or reference to experience that annoys me. As soon as I notice somebody used an AI for their writing I can’t take it serious anymore. I even feel a bit of disgust, if I am completely honest. I find myself rather reading a horribly written blog post than a well-prompted GPT-5 response. I get more out of it. However… maybe it’s just because my prompts are shit. What do you think? This is how I feel:

Just by watching the first hour of the video I grasped how conformist my mind is. And how, there actually is no difference between my conformity and a religious person’s except for contents. It made me partly realize the openness of mind I could achieve if I free myself from all this conformity. Leo’s videos are the most powerful permission slips for me to have insights. When he says something and tells me to consider something, I always give myself permission to fully step outside of my own bias and truly see if what he says is true. Leading to many insights. With conformity it took more time now. Several times when he said it before, I didn’t get it. Now I did. It’s fascinating. Now I think, why didn’t he just say this is what he means. But, of course, I realize he did actually say it, my mind was just too closed up.

I feel like I have many amazing German songs to share with people that they would likely never experience if it weren't for somebody to tell them about them. I bet other people feel the same way about songs in their native language. This thread is about sharing songs from your native language that you’d love people from other countries to experience so that everyone can widen their horizons. Please share your favorite songs, even if you’re from a small, unknown country. Think twice about posting songs here if your native language is English. The cultural mainstream is already English and the purpose of this thread is not to get more of the same. Understand, this is not meant as disrespect towards English-speaking culture, it’s just that most people already know a lot about that. I will add English translations of the lyrics to my songs to enable understanding the meaning behind them. Feel free to do the same. Don’t worry if it’s too big of a hassle though. Just post the YT video or link then. Let me know if the overlap with the other music thread is too big. I’ll take the post down if that’s the case. Otherwise, let’s hear it! https://lyricstranslate.com/en/baum-tree.html

I want to improve my productivity and have read that L-Theanine works well with caffeine to induce a calm state of focused concentration. I’m gonna try it out in the next days. Have any of you here made experiences with that before and has suggestions on dosage? Also, I’d be interested in knowing what you guys and gals think of nootropics to improve productivity in general. It’s a topic I’m quite ignorant on. Is there genuine potential, or is it more of a gimmick?

I care more about getting athletic and improving my movement quality anyway nowadays. Don’t do weightlifting anymore.

You’re definitely right about the tendency to over-intelectualize lifting in regard to RIR. It can be useful to be strategic about systemic fatigue though, if you have joint pain (especially over several weeks of training). I think it’s less relevant for controlling the eccentric and ROM. You imagine controlling the eccentric as some slow ass shit, but - for me at least - it just means controlling the weight instead of letting gravity do the work. This doesn’t contradict the primal vibe you mean. I’d say you probably train like this, actually - I may be wrong, of course. With the more extreme ROM’s, like with Mike’s barbell rows for example, it most definitely eliminates the primal energy. With squats and deadlifts it also takes all the primal energy out. But with bench press for example, I don’t think it’s a problem.

@Carl-Richard So the notion of “pushing yourself,” doesn’t exist in your vocabulary then? Pushing myself is fun to me. But it’s not what I’d usually call listening to my body. Maybe we have a difference of definitions here. it seems like what I said kinda triggered you though? I said it more in a fun kinda way and didn’t intend it to be received like this. Personally, I think weight training, pushing myself and training hard is very fun, but still I prefer more dynamic movement like basketball that requires more athleticism.

If I listened to my body while doing squats, I’d stop doing them after the first few reps 😩

@Carl-Richard Do you train every set you do until failure? I’d say that’s not sustainable over a 6 week training cycle.

My biggest weaknesses are 1) impatience 2) lack of consistency over long time (closely related to no.1), and 3) fear. 1) impatience: I want my results faster than is possible to reach sustainably. Thus I go hard for a bit and then stop eventually… until I start again. 2) I’m a very creative person. I have no trouble at all finding creative visions and good, original ideas ( IMO at least hihi). But I struggle with the discipline to actually follow through with them. This is critical, since good things take time. I have to consistently work on this business now every single day, for years. I have to get it off the ground, master the base-level. After I’ve done that, I have no doubt that I’ll find innovations in my field. That’s actually not really the hard part for me. 3) Growth requires us to walk straight into the flames of fear as though our skin was made of dragon scale. And sometimes, I’m too much of a pussy for that. Especially when it comes to things that risk other people’s approvals. I’ll have to become better at facing my fears.

One insight I’ve had about business is, how unnatural the whole process is. Getting people to give you money for something is an immense act of willpower. I’m realizing now, that my entire life up to this point, I’ve been interacting with a made-up fantasy of what business actually is. It’s not natural. It’s not easy. It’s stressful. It requires creativity. A good metaphor is bushcraft/survival. It seems so fun, and cool, and easy, when you look at it from far away. You make some fire, build a shelter, get some fish (maybe you find a pig as a best friend). But the reality of it is violent. You arrive. You have to search for a water source for five hours, while you’re surrounded by mosquitoes, everything itches, you’re sweating and you have a headache. Then, the only water you find is dirty, but you drink it anyways, cause you have to, or you’ll die if thirst. You get diarrhea, because the water is dirty. You create a primitive shelter, because it’s getting dark and you need to sleep somewhere. While chopping wood, you cut yourself and — if it’s a real situation — you die. Now, of course, there are some highly skilled people that actually thrive in the same circumstances. But none of it is natural. You have to constantly enforce your will to survive on the environment. Otherwise you die. Business is really the same thing. It’s not natural at all. You have to fail, and fail, and fail, and stay persistent and then at some point you may figure it out. But none of it is natural. Understanding this has made me respect business people a lot more, and in general, people who’ve built something on their own.

Tomorrow, I’ll write a little bit more about business stuff. But now is sleepy time .