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Wellness Wednesday for March 11, 2026

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

  1. Work: Trying to implement some of Cal Newport's Deep Work ideas, and am realizing that my focus is shot, need to plan better. Wrote out a plan this morning of all the experiments that I need to do to graduate, and it seems very achievable. Starting to look for postdoc positions as well as industry jobs in Baltimore.
  2. Fitness: 7.5 hours (only running) last week. Foot is a little sore, so going to a). focus on cross training this week and b). make sure I stretch better.
  3. Intellectual Stuff: Limiting myself to one YouTube video and one blog post a day. Focusing on US history in English, and reading fiction in the Spanish and Italian. In the spirit of Cal Newport trying to only do one of these each day (Spanish, Italian, history reading) and give my full attention to it.
  4. Finances: This month is looking like it's going to be very light on expenses. We're halfway through and I've only spent $1200, and that includes rent. Still working on my parents' transfer.
  5. Dating: Have been really bad with masturbation this week, but no porn.
  6. Tarot: Didn't do this week.
  7. Socializing: Thesis defense party for my friend, workout Wednesday and probably swing dancing friday.
  8. Screen time: 1.5 hours again, which is pretty surprising, given I was on my phone for a lot of the conference.

Systems goals this month:

  1. Prioritize exercise, this is the year I go big.
  2. Reduce screen time via a combination of hard locks and behavioral change
  3. Simplify my life as much as possible!

Reduce screen time via a combination of hard locks and behavioral change

You might have already taken this step (I don't recall from your past posts), but a simple way to drop screen time is to never take a phone into the bathroom with you.

I've been trying to get into the habit of reading my book on the loo for this very reason.