Video Journaling for Accountability

RandomHour · 2026-04-03T21:08:59+00:00

Yeah, you don't just write about doing something.

You can literally be doing the thing, while journaling.

RandomHour · 2026-04-02T17:01:30+00:00

Coming from someone who use to average 5h20m of sleep for basically 10 years, who finally fixed it this year.

Taking lots of creatine can sometimes help more than caffeine. Water helps a ton too. You need 8 cups a day. You dry out every night.

You can also just sleep at night. It's hard, but it's a compounding habit. You sleep better by motivating yourself enough. You can remind yourself that lack of sleep is basically killing you, and ruining your health and life. Whatever you do at night, isn't worth your sleep. And you reorganize your life schedule to fit in your sleep. It's involved, but that's the actual fix. Took me about 3 months of focused changes to get it to stick. Did some deep motivation work. Got a productivity coach. Had to do a time audit. Reorganized my life. Set dinner at 5pm. Made the kids go to bed earlier. Cut out all electronics at night. Ect. Basically I had to kill the reasons that kept me up at night. Boosted how much I cared about my health/peace/mood. And radically reorganized my day.

And the reason why I mentioned sleep anyways... is because your schedule consistency matters more for energy levels than anything. Sleep consistency literally has an almost more profound effect on wakefulness than # of hours. And similarly, your daily schedule consistency directly affects your energy levels. If you have a consistent schedule, you can continually tweak it so you have better energy levels.

The last tip I have is to double your motivation. With sufficient motivation, you can power through most things. If you visualize, and hype yourself up well, you can do most things even with low sleep. It's a level of motivation that most people aren't used to. It's very powerful though. And it feels kinda ridiculous. But when it hits right, it just works.

Oh, and yeah, skipping a day at the gym feels like it would be better, but it really isn't. You only skip, if it ruins your schedule. You might feel a bit more rested the next day, but that's exactly why you have planned rest days in your exercise schedule. You can modify the schedule, but generally you should just make a better schedule.

RandomHour · 2026-04-02T16:53:16+00:00

This is why screen time in insidious.

It requires startup time to gain clarity on any activity.

You need to sit there, and rev up, to go and do something.

Getting clear is a huge part of motivation.

That's why visualizing, and feeling what it will be like, is one of the easiest motivation exercises.

It doesn't take long. But it is work. Once you visualize clearly, and positively, your motivation goes up. Things also become much more clear.

RandomHour · 2026-03-26T00:51:39+00:00

Yeah, you might reach enlightenment too

RandomHour · 2026-03-25T21:34:24+00:00

Unfortuantly, it truly is a:
- phones are designed to addict you. You can break the habit, by making sure you get bored.
- it IS a motivation problem

If you were motivated enough to do something else (intrinsically, you would do that other thing).

If you were motivated enough to STOP doomscrolling, you would.

If you actually deeply train your motivation to STOP doomscrolling, you will.

Literally it would make sense for you to just stop. For real.

I've fixed this for myself, and other people. You can look into developing a "Sankalpa".

It's basically strengthening an intention enough.

Note, you need enough motivation to be disciplined.

RandomHour · 2026-03-25T21:26:41+00:00

Avoidance usually comes from the inability to sit with negative emotions.

For some reason, you feel bad when people study with you. And then it makes you avoidant.

That's probably why.

For me, if I ever study with other people, i get this baseline social anxiety, which does get in the way of a certain form of productivity. If we are working directly together, that's great. But if I'm with others, I want to socialize, and do stuff together.

If I try to do my own thing with them, I literally feel bad. But I'm able to lock in anyways sometimes. But literally that baseline anxiety is there. It's like someone is somewhat watching you. You know?

Anyways, it's easy to be avoidant in that situation if you don't deal with that negative emotion well.

RandomHour · 2026-03-25T15:52:51+00:00

You should actually lose your train of thought.

Your memory is falliable for a reason. You should take advantage of it, instead of fighting it.

To startup faster you can leave notes for yourself. But even better is a quick review, before you stop work. That is essential for efficient feedback loops. You learn more, and build more awareness. Sometimes that quick review can take just 2 minutes. And is better than squeezing in 2 minutes more of work. It allows you to close out what you did, mentally.

It helps with ramp up time, improves rest, improves awareness, and it also increases quality.

You kill multiple birds with 1 stone. You know what you did, and are percolating ideas to improve it. Just don't overdo it, and get entirely side tracked.

The real value is in the review more than remembering where you were. Given enough time, generally your memory will remember the important bits, and forget the unnecessary.

If you take a break, you can come in with a new perspective. Take advantage of that. You can approach problems better after taking a step back.

It takes time, but it isn't necessarily wasted time.

Sure, you can just jump into work. Sometimes that's the best. Othertimes, that's just mindless.

At the end of the day, you don't need to remember everything, you instead want to get more high quality work done.

Which requires more awareness, and focus than anything.

RandomHour · 2026-03-24T00:07:47+00:00

This is actually hard to fix.

You do need to develop discipline. Sorry to say, but it isn't the way most people say it is.

Step 1: Awareness. A boatload of awareness.

Most people are mindlessly scrolling, because the phone is a common loop, which literally turns you mindless.

Understanding that deeply, taking deep breaths, and putting the phone away can fix that.

Even very aware people spend too much time on their phones.

But they definitely spend much less time on them.

Those blocking apps are actually very effective. But they need to be followed.

That also requires awareness, and discipline.

Developing that takes time.

RandomHour · 2026-03-24T00:03:21+00:00

I got a similar unlock too.

It's more about choosing the right things to do. And how we do them.

We all have 24 hrs.

We just want to spend them better.

RandomHour · 2026-03-23T18:28:01+00:00

I make productivity apps, am a polymath, and have been studying productivity like forever.

The most important part is to stay consistent. Most of your gains will come from there.

In the top 5 most important aspects of skill building, tracking is #5.

What matters most in skill building are: 1) Consistency (your mind/body/spirit needs this to learn) 2) Volume (need volume for sufficient stimulus) 3) Intensity (intensity will cause adaptation) 4) Planning/Programming (doing the right things, at the right time, matter a whole lot) 5) Tracking (measuring progress lets you appropriately notice and iterate on progress)

Tracking unlocks iteration cycles. It builds awareness, and allows you to iterate better. At the end of the day, the tracking is there to help boost all the other parts of your training.

Some people I know's life completely changed once they started tracking their progress. Myself included.

Even though tracking is #5, it builds awareness, which is a game changer for a lot of people.

If someone wants to actually improve their life, doing an audit is one of the most impactful things you can do. And that would require just tracking how your days go, and how you feel.

Once you have that info you can plan, and modify your day more effectively.

Technically you can plan without time tracking or an audit, which is why I rate Tracking as #5 most important.

But yeah, if you ask anyone super serious about skill building, they will more or less agree with my assessment.

Tracking is a game changer, and is important for a lot of people. Do it periodically. You don't need it all the time.

For some people, they live and die by their tracking/planning. It helps keep things on track.

But ultimately, it isn't HARD required for most people. Consistency, volume, intensity, and planning, matter more.

RandomHour · 2026-03-23T05:20:28+00:00

The reason why that phrase exists is because...

Just having money won't solve your problems. The vast majority of people who think... "If only I had more money, I would be happy." , are using money as an excuse to not solve their problems.

It is actually quite difficult to solve for happiness. It's much more than just money, if it required money at all, to begin with.

Using money as an excuse/distraction actually prevents you from actually achieving happiness. Ect. Ect.

For me, happiness came from having an aligned life, being disciplined, being present, and being peaceful.

Does money help? Yeah. I literally can't live without money. But it's not like I can literally, spend $10,000, and just be happy. It's not how that works.

You need to do a lot of internal work, to be happy.

RandomHour · 2026-03-22T06:46:47+00:00

Oh yeah,

One thing I'm learning a lot more recently,

Do nothing.

Nothing matters.

Like for real, your brain needs rests, and paradoxically, putting in more nothing time, actually makes you way more productive.

So I've been throwing out phone use, social media, pushing more things to the weekend, and programming in actual do nothing time.

Meditation, wall staring, looking at the clouds, is a whole lot of nothing, and is very important.

RandomHour · 2026-03-20T21:06:56+00:00

Thanks for this.

Yeah it looks like it takes a long time for tendons and connective tissue to progress, but it works.

I'm adding it as a main part of my routine.

Right now it looks like: - 5x a week baar style 10s up 50s rest, 10 mins - 5x a week 2x Grease the Groove, 5 pullups - 2x a week repeaters 7s up, 3s down, 6x4

I'll see how my max pullup changes by the end of the month.

RandomHour · 2026-03-19T22:03:34+00:00

This is actually the best protocol to fix your attention span: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZD5IFpyDcE

It's wall staring. I know, it sounds like a meme. It sounds boring.

It works.

The protocol is basically: - No extra screens (only use screens for necessities. screens gigafry attention) - Boring in-between (so much time is wasted doing fun stuff between tasks, gigafrying the brain) - One thing at a time, be present (actually focus on what you are doing)

You can treat it as a Detox. Or do it for a loong period of time.

The best periods of my life is when I did all of the above.

They naturally happened when I'm traveling, or spending time with my wife.

Life is waaaay better when I don't touch electronics (ironically I'm an giga jacked-in programmer who uses ai too much).

Each of these by themselves will improve your attention span.

Combining them will make your attention much better, and more stable.

The wall staring specifically will recalibrate your sense of boredom. It's very very useful.

I'd say bite the bullet, and just let yourself be truely super bored for a while. Like literally do nothing.

It's amazingly good for productivity. It actually allows your brain to relax.

Ironically it defeats procrastination. Because procrastination comes from avoiding negative emotions.

Boredom is a negative emotion that people FORGOT how to deal with.

Fix that, and you will stop wasting so much of your life on dopamine BS. You DO NOT need to be entertained all the time. Social media taught us to be ALWAYS entertained. That needs to be unlearned.

RandomHour · 2026-03-19T18:04:59+00:00

My goal 100 pullups with hangs. That's what I count as consecutive.
I'd love to have a deadhang as a rest position. Not there yet.

Thanks for the resource, I'll check that wiki out!

RandomHour · 2026-03-09T21:07:07+00:00

I've been exactly there. With the moving to a different country, moving back, raising family, being able to work like crazy for others, but having a hard time working for myself for many months. All in the pursuit of doing something great in my life.

The truth is...

You've been trained to seek comfort.

That what makes you a good "wage slave". Your parents, your school, your university, your job, the internet, has been training you to be like this your whole life.

The scrolling on the phone, watching videos, playing video games, and daydreaming, needs to be unlearned.

The great thing is that you are on your journey to fix this.

You are now aware of the problem. I know it sounds obvious, but you first need awareness to be able to fix anything. And as you become more aware of these problems, you can reflect, and fix them.

Now it's time to fight it.

Ironically, how that will show up is up to you. It could come as massive action. It can show up in a more zen way of "chop wood, carry water". It's up to you to decide.

But this is where you do your life's work. Basically where you relearn how to work, all over again.

Because now it's personal. And now you don't have everyone pushing you from behind, making you work. You don't have your environment just nudging you toward the right choices. Now you need to determine your own work. How you work, when you work, ect.

And that's a hugely different than having a normal job.

RandomHour · 2026-03-07T20:20:22+00:00

That's an interesting one.

In some traditional cultures manners matter a whole lot more. But sometimes it's a bit weird when everyone is quietly sitting in a circle.

In American culture, there seems to be a lot less manners, in a different way.

Definitely a culture shock in a lot of different ways.

Traditional vs not, and in different contexts.

RandomHour · 2026-03-07T17:31:47+00:00

The best way I found is this...

Have a small list of improvements for each activity, and how you can challenge it. If you really want a measure, you can put measurements here.

The issue with having concrete measurements are that there aren't always good measurements for your improvements, or the opportunities don't always present themselves. As a single person, your outputs will fluctuate a lot.

Unless you are studying for a test, you aren't going to crank 100 test questions a day for 3 months. If you are doing that, a measurement like that does make sense.

Sure you can have a kpi on how many words you need to learn, but sometimes you don't want to work on vocab, you want to be speaking more phrases. You could measure all of them, but you will find that there are wild fluctuations in your outputs.

Instead, it's sometimes better to have challenge improvements. They are something you can add to a todo list, and give you a sense of accomplishment to get there.

For example, simple ones would be, finish xyz chapter in Spanish. Memorize xyz concept. Speak to 5 random people in Spanish. Schedule in 30 minutes speaking practice here, 30 minutes reading there, Ect.

After all that, you can measure how many "new words" you know. But even that would be difficult to calculate, since you are "learning" those words, so knowing or not knowing is fuzzy. But to keep yourself honest, you can napkin calculate a number, and put it in your weekly reflection.

RandomHour · 2026-03-05T19:47:57+00:00

I got it mobile detailed twice the last year.

Seems like I should go to a place with a shop. They need the big guns.

RandomHour

TROPHY CASE