Deliberate practice and First-Order Priorities

Hey, I started a post with a non-clickbait title that sounds more sophisticated than it should. But guess what, I am betting that the usual trolls are not reading this and hating on my clickbait prowess. You prove my point that click baits work. But that is not the point of this post.

I have always been a Silver kind of guy during IPPT. I did my annual IPPT yesterday, and nothing changed this year. But the Silver result this year bummed me out more because I promised myself during my ICT last year that I will shoot for Gold this year. I had let myself down.

First-order priorities

As I said in an older post, there are at most two things I think an individual can excel in his life. Given N priorities, I get only to pick two. One during work hours, another after work hours. These two priorities would stand rooted as first-order priorities.

That is not to say everything else takes a backseat and goes to shit. For one, I have not acquired the dreaded dad's bod after the birth of my son. I make sure to work out (intensely) just before lunchtime every Tuesday. I still spend some hours every week buying shrimps only to murder them a few weeks later inadvertently. It's my hobby planted shrimp tank. But I have nothing to show for these.

So even though I still work out, I clocked a slower runtime for my 2.4km segment during the IPPT this year.

And even though I have all the money to spend on my shrimp tank, I cannot seem to get my shrimps to make merry and get berried (slang word in the pet shrimp for pregnancy).

I also have an electric skateboard that I have been modifying but have not had a chance to take out for a spin. I can go on, but you get it.

I have very little to show for priorities that I did not deliberately seek out to get better at.

Deliberate Practice

I stopped believing in new year resolutions. Because I find that sudden changes in lifestyle are not lasting. Routines last. The only way I can effect change is by enacting deliberate routine practice. Like how I am adding a new post in this blog every day, because I wanted to get better at communicating at work.

And here is the kicker -- I enacted this routine because it was what my first-order priority, work, demanded of me. The same way I would come home on time, spend time, and read to my son every day without exceptions. Off-work, my family, is my first-order priority.

Outside of first-order priorities, everything else is compromised.

What am I trying to say?

Do you still not get it? I am trying to self-rationalize an excuse for running a Silver timing yesterday, duh.