Mischa's Blog

I recently started a Skool community at https://mischavandenburg.com/skool where I’m publishing courses and building a community of engineers who are dedicated to learning and becoming better at their craft.

One member came up the with the idea of starting a 30 day challenge to keep ourselves accountable. I’m doing this continuously already with my daily, weekly and monthly reflections, but it was fun to join in on this nonetheless. This is the list I shared with the community and which I’ll be aiming for every day.

My friend’s suggested list:

– [ ] A healthy breakfast.

– [ ] Writing my daily tasks.

– [ ] Write at least one line of code.

– [ ] Contribute to the community.

– [ ] Exercise for at least 20 minutes.

– [ ] Tidy up.

Additional habits I’ll track:

– [ ] Calorie logging

– [ ] Yoga

– [ ] Bedtime routine

– [ ] Skin routine

– [ ] CKS Katas – RBAC & Network Policies

– [ ] A healthy breakfast.

I have a very healthy plant-based diet which is heavily standardized and is on full automatic. Every morning I eat spiced oatmeal with cinnamon, ginger and cardamom with apples, raisins and chia seeds. But as spring is starting to come for full I will transition to a smoothie with tons of leafy greens and avocado tomato on whole grain seed toast.

– [ ] Writing my daily tasks.

I want to become more intentional about my tasks which I want to achieve the following day, so I’m ticking this off if I had a moment in the evening to consciously plan the tasks for the following day and the content I will create that day.

– [ ] Write at least one line of code.

– [ ] Contribute to the community.

– [ ] Exercise for at least 20 minutes.

Running has come to a point where I simply need it during the day and it has become fully automatic, and I don’t need to track that anymore. And my daily run also counts as meditation as I rarely run with music or podcasts on and just focus on my thoughts, my body, and being outdoors in the elements.

However, it can still be useful to track this. I should go for a walk on the days I’m not running, which I sometimes have neglected. I also want to track yoga, see below.

– [ ] Tidy up.

I live a very clean organized life already. I have a pretty rigid cleaning schedule and that also goes on automatic. But it can always be better.

In one of my favorite videos, “8 simple Japanese habits”, he explains many Japanese have the habit of cleaning the toilet daily, and my “Tidy up” will be ticked off if I do this.

– [ ] Calorie logging

I had a good stretch, but when I started Skool a month ago, my daily routine underwent changes and it was a stressful time for the first weeks. And when I received some easter chocolate as a gift from work I fell from the wagon for over a week, and I’ve gained weight again.

Time to get back on the horse. Especially planning out my entire week’s worth of food and laying out all of the food I’m allowed to eat in the morning are habits that proved to be very successful but which haven’t become automatic yet.

– [ ] Yoga

I need to prioritize this more. Even if it is just 5 minutes of intentional stretching I can tick this off. But I want to do at least 3 proper sessions a week and daily stretching. It has been 1-2 sessions a week this past couple of months, after a good stretch of 5 sessions a week.

– [ ] Bedtime routine

I already have a pretty good night time routine and I have a very solid sleep schedule. Sleep is the #1 priority in my life, and I haven’t used an alarm clock in 6 months. I naturally wake up between 6 and 7.

I usually have wind down time at 21-21:30 and I’m asleep by 22:30. But with the summer coming up, and some changes I’ve made to my social responsibilities, I’m intending to shift this a little earlier. I’ve always felt best when I get up very early and go to bed early. And I’m now at a point in life where I simply don’t care about societal norms any more. Because I am in the privileged position of living alone and working a job where my hours are relatively flexible and I only need to go to the office once a week. For 95% of the time I can be in full control of my routine.

So I’m going to shift it a little earlier. 8pm is going to be the new wind down time and 9pm is the new bedtime. This means I will be waking up around 5 – 5:30 am fully refreshed every day, instead of my normal wake up time of 6-7.

As part of the bedtime wind down routine, I will plan a moment for journaling and accountability, where I’ll also plan the tasks for the next day. This sort of happens naturally already, but I want to be more intentional about turning this into a routine.

– [ ] Skin routine

I have good skin and never have any problems, but a couple of months ago I started a skin routine for longevity purposes, inspired by Bryan Johnson / Blueprint which I’ve been following for over a year. I’m fairly consistent at doing it in the mornings, but not in the evenings.

– [ ] CKS Katas – RBAC & Network Policies

I got the idea of Coding Katas from the Clean Coder book. These are challenges you solve on a regular basis to get good at them. I’ll do RBAC and Network Policy exercises every day on Killercoda and come up with my own, because these are my weakest points currently.