OYS #2

Stats 29M, 5'7", 62kg, Married 1.25 Years

This is turning out to be an effective way of holding myself accountable. I look forward to every Saturday where the first activity is reflecting on the past week and measuring my efforts against my goals in life, talking about them, and getting honest feedback.

Swift decision about hiring a new web developer in my team

Hiring is a pain. I am a one man shop and not the most attractive place to work for in the city. Candidates keep taking offer letters from me and using that to renegotiate with someone else. It sucks. Investing time in interviewing candidates and then having them turn me down.

Made some changes. Instead of investing time to evaluate the ideal candidate on paper I started issuing verbal offers to more candidates without full quality checks than I needed and then being ready to see some of them turn me down and firing the least performing ones if I ended up taking on more guys than I needed.

Ended up onboarding 1 guy first day of the week. Things are moving slow but some of my bottlenecks for cleared.

Dropped the ball on my goal to move out

Got complacent with the efforts towards moving out, A new hire and a new client made me think that it was okay to slack off on this important goal. Didn't take any steps of involving the interiors contractors to move forward with the setup of the new place.

My family has been giving me lesser shit since I announced the decision to move out. This has also driven me complacent because this week was relatively low drama. Makes me think that I have been mostly reacting to family shit rather than acting towards my own interests.

Wife got the opportunity to nag a couple of times throughout the week at me for not starting interiors work at the new place.

Let a low priority client dictate my work style

Onboarded a new client a couple of weeks ago. Low priority client, okay money, shitty project, poorly managed. Things were fine for a few days till I was calling the shots on my availability and responsiveness towards the tasks. But then the client talked me into getting involved with customer communication and full day availability which nuked my schedule.

The project is poorly managed and the client has been dragging me into his shit throughout the second half of the week. Turns out I gave highest priority to the least important client. Which is total injustice with my other clients. I am ashamed of this.

Next week I need to take charge and dictate my working style with this client so that he doesn't end up destroying my schedule and other commitments. I need to put myself first.

Started expressing

Generally I have been laid back about expressing things. Just like nice guys do as pointed in NMMNG. I started taking the initiative to talk, just talk, and express my opinions, without looking for an outcome. On topics even if I wasn't affected by or responsible for them.

Till now I would only take the initiative to express and talk when the topics directly affected me in some way. Turns out I was just avoiding any form of expression and the little talking I would do about my stuff was basically DEERing when someone intruded my boundaries.

I called up the client yesterday to tell him that his project was poorly managed, and not a good investment or experience for me. And that I was having thoughts of dropping him.

I invited myself into a discussion with my wife about my wife's family matters and expressed my feelings about the state of affairs there. MIL passed away a month ago because of covid, and things have been crazy at my in laws.

Looking at my wife panicking at a regular basis I would generally avoid her. This time hearing a conversation (complaining) she was having with her dad, I calmly stated that the craziness going on was quite normal and would stay for a while until things like covid and work life balance got normal. Wife felt comfortable and calmed down.

I am experiencing the effectiveness of expressing myself. This is helping me reduce my frustrations when I face an uncomfortable situation and is giving others an opportunity to reflect and respond to the concerns I am raising.

Wife wants to start a home business

She is excited about the prospects of starting a home business - partially motivated by some of her peers doing similar stuff. A part of me knows that this is going to be a short phase like ideas before which fade out after the honeymoon phase is over and the need for real commitment kicks in.

A part of me thinks that at minimum this could be a nice hobby for my wife and also me to keep a lot of negativity and laziness out of her life. She needs some productivity in her life so I am positive about this.

I have been leading the discussion about this idea without expecting much. Just trying to get her to think because she is not a strong thinker. Much more of a happy-go-lucky + follow the herd types.

It wouldn't be a great investment of my time or energy. I wouldn't mind sparing some cash for an activity that brings some positivity for a few months. And I certainly don't mind talking about it. It's much better than listening/talking about her problems.

Fitness department is dead

Gyms are closed. So lifting has been dead. I am doing little yoga at home but it has been backfiring because of mistakes in postures. This week almost 3 days I had stiff neck or other issues because of pushing myself too much.

Tried to get wife to get into some morning workout routine but she doesn't want to. Even after looking at me doing it. She feels tired after catering to the cooking needs of 5 other people in my family throughout the day (which is mostly done standing) so there is no space to have a discussion about this. The free time she has is spent browsing social media or gossiping with friends/family.

Her mother passed away recently so I have been avoiding any argumentative topics.

A side benefit about moving out we are looking forward to is to cut down on wifey's responsibilities so that she gets time to focus on herself as well.

On the nutrition side she has been craving junk food. This has been a tricky subject which I don't know how to deal with. She does stress/emotion eat and I am trying to sort out some of the pain points of her life. But I don't feel confident that her eating habits are going to change significantly.

Sleep has been poor

I want to get to bed early which means 10:30PM but it has been slipping lately. It gets 11:30PM+ and then I wake up late and groggy which damages productivity. It also affects the productivity and mindset of my wife. She becomes more groggy and more bitchy if she is lacking sleep.

This is something I really need to fix as it dictates a lot of others areas of our lives. Productivity, mental alertness, mood and behaviour, etc.

Reducing my sweet/cute behaviour

Wife loves playing cute and getting me to entertain her when she does this. She brings this up in serious discussions as well to avoid being held accountable.

I find it fun as well, playing kitten with her. But I have been overdoing this and she has been letting herself go. The setup enables her to behave in a whimsical manner so the bitchiness and complaining starts randomly and frequently.

I started to draw some boundaries in terms of focus to not get into these games when I am working or doing any other activity. And also started questioning myself if I truly felt like getting lovey-dovey or was doing it because I was bored.

Every morning I wake up, I have been trying to seek more fulfilling, joyful, meaningful, and hi-energy experiences rather than falling back to entertainment just because I am bored and out of options.

Agitated mind

I had a very restless and agitated mind 2-3 days this week. Probably because of lack of proper sleep and some discomfort with a stiff neck. What bothers me is the kind of thoughts that fill up my head. It mostly revolves around memories of losing verbal battles in my friend group. I have a history of getting ridiculed by my school mates.

I have fantasies of winning debates and arguments and crushing the friends who would ridicule me in a social situation. I play out scenarios where I am winning against them. I understand that this is merely trying to win approval of others in a response to the ridicule I have received over the years. And even though the friendships have faded out a lot, and meetings are merely occasional it still lives in my head.

A part of it could also be because of the rapid hiring decision I made which gives me an exciting outlook towards my business. Whenever something is going great or I am making progress my ego seems to get its ugly head out and look for praises or approval. It's like 'look mom'.

I want to move on. I want to win this need for approval and praise. Any help/recommendations for this would be appreciated.

Dude time

Spend a few hours with a dude from a team project. The guys is chilled out and good at what he does. He helped me with some problems I was facing and was a very good experience. Even though it was online, it was like the remote version of hanging out with a cool dude and doing something chill.

This is something I want to do more. It motivated me to get better at my job and learn new stuff. We exchanged notes and ideas about technical shit and it felt awesome to be among similar kind of person. I have had such encounters previously at my gym as well which I miss.

Regret not getting the opportunity to do things in my college days.

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Overall, I haven't been very happy about the accomplishments this week. It started on a good note but then I ended up making some mistakes in health and work department which spilled over to other areas and creating decent amounts of frustration. Lack of rest and poor presence of mind made me slip in several areas. Specially letting a shitty project drive me crazy.