Ask HN: What habits did you achieve this year?

I'm starting this in my late twenties after a fairly inactive decade; hiking has been the only thing that's kept me active over the years.

I needed to do some soul searching into my excuses for not running. I'd always think to myself, "I'd like to run, but I'm tired", despite having done nothing physical all week beside walking between the coffee machine and my desk, or getting into/out of my car, or walking the grocery isles.

I ended forcing myself to think of tiredness in a more granular way. If I feel tired, I classify it as either "mentally tired", "emotionally tired", or "physically tired". I realised I was quite often coming home from work mentally and emotionally tired, and using that as an excuse to do no physical exercise. I didn't "care" to run because my soul and mind were depleted. Then I recalled all I've known and read about physical exercise cleansing the mind and the soul (somewhat). So I started thinking of it as a way to solve mental and emotional exhaustion.

I promised myself to grind for a few weeks on the habit (IF: home from work & emotionally | mentally tired THEN: run 2-5km). It absolutely sucked for 2 weeks, as I was just adding physically tired to the pile (as I felt like a sack of shit afterwards and felt down on myself for being unfit). The 3rd week however started to feel a bit better, and from that point on I was starting to feel a net positive impact on my 'tiredness' after running. Once I hit that point it was a positively reinforcing habit that, literally, had legs.

1. Sign up for a local 5k race 3 months into the future, thus forcing yourself to train.

2. Set up all your running gear the night before.

3. When you wake up and don't want to run, tell yourself all you need to do is put your shoes on and then you can go back to bed / not do it (at that point, a lot of "well I'm already up" kicks in).

4. Run slow. Really slow. Walk whenever you need to. Hell, walk the whole time if you have to.

5. Follow a couch to 5k program.

6. I personally enjoy running as a form of exploring streets I've never been down, trails I don't know the end of, and cities I'm new to.

I think a big reason people hate running is they run too fast too soon. Run 15 minute miles if you have to. Shuffle! Slowly! The joy is in being outside and moving your body.

The Runkeeper guided 5k is also very popular (only first 3 weeks are free) https://support.runkeeper.com/hc/en-us/articles/360020249332...

>I'd love to know how you pulled this off...

Here is what worked for me. Maybe some or all of it will work for you.

The foundation rule is: I will not injure myself. (I'm pushing 50 and don't heal like I used to)

To avoid all-or-nothing thinking I explicitly decided against making this a lifetime commitment. Instead I would re-evaluate at 4-week intervals if I wanted to continue. Knowing there was a GO/NOGO milestone in the near future really helped me get through the first few weeks. (After the first few cycles I had integrated the jogging habit into my lifestyle and didn't need the GO/NOGO milestones anymore)

Then, I sat down and figured some stuff out in advance. Namely:

1) Deciding (and committing) what days and times I will jog.

For my schedule, Tue/Thu/Sat mornings before work was best.

2) Decide what I will do if the weather is bad, or there is some other reason why I could not go at the scheduled time.

3) Define a set route to follow.

I follow the same route every time. I never need to think about it and I don't get bored since there are several unique stretches of environment along my route. Also all the plants and things change through the seasons which is something to notice and appreciate.

What worked best for me was to follow a set path until mid-way through my run, then turn around and retrace my steps. (Setting a countdown timer on my watch to beep when I was halfway through the session, rounding the session time up a bit if necessary.)

4) Follow an established program.

I chose the popular "Couch to 5K" program. Using the "NHS Choices 5K" podcast with Coach Laura.

5) Set the bar for success as LOW as possible.

For me, a run "counts" if I put on my jogging clothes and shoes. Then step outside my front door and walk even a single step away from the house. Seriously. I can turn around right then and go back inside and it counts as a win.

For my personality, consistency and reliability are FAR more important than time spent or distance travelled.

6) Accept that I'll need to repeat episodes. Let go of needing to progress through the program at the pre-determined pace.

The important thing was getting out and moving. The program is advertised as taking 9 weeks. It took me a lot longer than that but I accepted that up front so it didn't bother me.

--

I quickly found that carrying my phone in my hand was uncomfortable, so I bought an armband holder for about $10.

I also found using wired earbuds was a hassle (the wires) and maybe dangerous (they block environmental sound). So I bought a pair of "AfterShokz" bone conduction headphones for about $150. They're great and I'm glad I got them.

Finally, I should note that I only started the jogging plan after I got my weight down to under 200lb. For that, I went with the "Slow Carb" eating plan since it was simple to follow, seemed sustainable long-term, and gave me a "cheat day" once a week. Honestly, as far as I can tell, just about any popular eating plan will work. So if you need to lose some fat (like I did), just pick one and try it for a few months to see if you like it.

A group of us made it through Hands on ML last year.

https://github.com/ageron/handson-ml3

But that group didn’t want to do heavy theory but someone from another Meetup did so I invited them to our group.

Then someone who didn’t want to do the theory changed their mind.

Try meeting people online with a well-defined common goal.

For example, not simply “I want to learn machine learning” but I want to study a particular book or MOOC.

Getting people to agree can be difficult. No one else in my group wants to do Kaggle, for instance. Lots of cool project ideas that don’t go anywhere.

Discord seems like it should be the perfect place to meet people but most servers aren’t very active.

Here’s an OpenCourseWare server I found a few days ago that’s disappointingly not very active:

https://discord.gg/CSKeQegY

Ideally math, physics, writing, history, or whatever could be served by dedicated servers.

https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/stat110/home

Videos on YouTube and his book is available on Gdocs

First, we're a fully remote team, so all meetings are virtual. Super informal, fun and casual.

We all put it suggestions for what we want to read then we let a random wheel decide for us. Nobody is forced to read anything they don't want though! We sometimes try to alternate fiction and non-fiction.

We normally give ourselves a month to read it. Some of our team have dyslexia, so they prefer listening to it.

If everyone's finished it, we meet up and talk about the book. If someone hasn't, we delay the next meeting to allow them to finish it. At the end of the chat we ask everyone if they would recommend the book or not (we wanted to avoid "rating" the books out of X)

That's it basically.

Eventually, I decided to work on building muscle as well and started doing them in a smaller time frame, within the morning, for example. Now I do the 100 within 10 minutes or so: 4 sets with a 3 minute rest in between. I feel like I've seen changes in my physique since entering this latest phase.

So to wake up I had an alarm since I had to be up for work in the morning. But for bedtime, I would go to sleep super late every day. I'd spend the time playing videogames, watching movies, etc.

The reasoning was, I wanted to "enjoy" the time I had after work and didn't want to sleep, because going to sleep would mean after a couple of hours I'd have to wake up and go to work. So I'd prolong that time as much as I could.