Monthly Review #1
Time to pause and reflect
For the next while my blog is purely going to be an open journal of sorts, and apologies to anyone who subscribed thinking I would just be sharing my mental health struggles.
Retiring from sport has been harder than I ever imagined, but truth be told, push a once in a 100-year pandemic aside, most of the time I feel great and don’t want to become some sad sack and an expert in being depressed.
But like everyone, I get overwhelmed sometimes and lose sight of all the great stuff I’ve done. So to push back against that, I’m going to start doing a monthly review to reflect on what went well, and what I can do better.
What we went well:
Had my first work trip to the Barossa to do an Energy Management and Resilience presentation. Was super nervous in the morning of it, but for my first time doing an hour long presentation, I thought it went great and more on that in another blog.
I feel I contributed strongly to my team at work. We’re racing towards a big deliverable, and team stress is building. But I’m proud of the work I produced, how I communicated, how I made time to help one of the grads, and received thanks from my manager yesterday for my efforts.
Alfred has it busiest month since launch as we partnered with S1 Gyms for their 8-week fitness challenge. We had over 1000 meals come thru in first 9 days of the challenge, and awesome to see Erin and Ana (our two nutrition students who calculate the calories in the meals for users) rise to the occassion. Also a big thanks to one reader who became Alfred’s first investor. Your friendship and support means a lot. Thank you.
The S1 Crew Held down the fort while Jen went on her first work trip, and somehow the kids survived lol.
The Dock won best ACT’s Best Live Sport Venue for the 7th time. #humblebrag lol
Running 4 Resilience is absolutely exploding and it’s crazy how many people are turining up and getting behind the goal of making Canberra Suicide Free by 2033.
Wednesday’s at R4R Started the Running 4 Resilience Podcast (or Talking 4 Resilience) and recorded 3 episodes of with some mates. We’ve got no idea what where doing, but it’s been fun to just talk shit for an hour at the end of the week.
Was finally able to put into words why I track my nutrition, sleep and exercise.
Knocked over 2 more parkruns - Bowral and Jerrabomberra. Great courses.
What I could do better
Prioritising - While work is requiring a lot of my energy at the moment, I’m going to have to be super efficient and considered with how I use my left over energy.
Screen time - this is probably where I waste most of time and energy. I don’t want my screentime to be zero, becuase I enjoy reading friends blogs with the Substack reader app, using Strava, Alfred, Oura etc. But I do want to get this down below 2hrs 45mins per day by the next monthly review.
Go easier on myself when things happen that are outside my control.
Forgive myself for mistakes of the past, especially when I’m tired.
Overall, great month Benny boy. I know you felt flat before you started writing this, but you’ve had a great month and you know you’d be happy if November was just as good. Keep it up.
Nice Writeup. I do struggling my screentime and need to improve a lot. Like the point 3&4 what can we do well.
Looks like you've made great progress in reducing your screen time Ben. One step at a time :). I do am trying to break the habit of spending less time on social media. I haven't been on my own personal IG account for almost 2 months, but use it for work and run my weightlifting team account too. I try and only use facebook when on the computer and have my social apps off the home screen with all app notifications turned off. It's nice, but I also miss seeing the life things that my friends share on their socials. I try and text message more, send photos directly to the people I want to send them with. Most people know if they want to reach my urgently to call or sms me, don't direct message me or messenger me. it's amazing how reliant we are on social media apps when the best way to connect is a good old fashioned phone call, text message, in person catch up or a letter. I love writing letters, so much more personal than an email.
Glad to hear that you're not being so hard on yourself too! :)