The One Non-Negociable Rule I (Almost) Never Break
Open Goals 2025#06
This is the story of how one small, tiny change in my behaviour had a ripple of positive effects in my whole life.
In 2019, before the pandemic lockdown struck, I was experiencing painful migraines almost every week. In some episodes, it was even worse because the headache would wake me up in the middle of the night.
It was frustrating, and I was anxious, anticipating the next headache.
I had no clue what was going on, so I started investigating.
All my blood tests were okay, except my cholesterol, which is still way above the average (a story for another time). I took various other tests and visited different practitioners, including a neurologist.
Nobody could tell me what was wrong. Not even a shred of light in this mystery.
I even went to the dentist to see if any issues with how my teeth grew could trigger migraines.
More tests were planned, but the pandemic happened, and we all got stuck in our homes, so I cancelled everything.
Disclaimer
The following content is for informational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. Always do your own diligence and consult a qualified healthcare professional before making health-related decisions. Don’t rely on information from random writers on the internet for medical guidance.
Fast-forward one year in the pandemic, and I started to gain weight due to my lack of exercise, which, before the lockdown, mainly consisted of walking to the office.
It wasn’t anything serious, but the trend was going upward, so I decided to do something about it. My plan? Start my morning with a healthy breakfast.
I don’t know why I thought it would help. In fact, I have struggled to create a healthy breakfast routine for a couple of years now, and I don’t know why I thought working from home would magically make it happen overnight.
Spoiler alert: it didn’t.
However, at the same time, I was reading about intermittent fasting, and one key piece of information changed everything: drinking an espresso on an empty stomach was ok, as long as it was without sugar or milk, because it wouldn’t trigger the digestive system.
It was counterintuitive and against the popular belief I grew up with: drinking coffee on an empty stomach can cause serious digestive problems.
But I was already starting my day with coffee on an empty stomach. With milk. No sugar.
So, I did one of the hardest things in my life: I removed the milk from my morning coffee and committed to a 14/10 intermittent fasting schedule.
This means I take a 14-hour break between the last and first meals of the day, having only a 10-hour window for eating.
Next, a lot of unexpected, positive things started to happen.
First, I got rid of my habit of snacking late at night and early in the morning. I would frequently eat fruits, snacks, or sweets just before going to bed or first thing in the morning after waking up.
Second, the migraines started to be less and less frequent. I still have them occasionally, but not as intensely as before, and they are no longer a source of anticipatory anxiety.
And thirdly, my body weight reversed the trend until it stabilized at levels better than before.
Oh, and now I can appreciate an espresso’s aroma and intensity without making faces while drinking it.
I can even say I’ve been a little bit religious with this habit; I follow it consistently daily, guided by the 14/10 rule, and weekends are no exception. However, it’s a guideline, and there are also days when I do 12/12 or 16/8, without beating myself up.
Vacations are a little bit different, and I break the rule on purpose, but I still give my body at least an 8-hour break from eating. However, I compensate on other occasions, such as when challenging myself to fast for 3 or 4 days.
If you had asked me five years ago if I could ever not eat anything for more than 14 hours, I would have said it’s totally impossible, not to mention 3-4 days.
It’s unbelievable how, by ditching milk from my morning coffee, I gained a healthy habit 180 degrees different from where I initially thought I should be. In exchange, I also fixed a medical condition that seemed not to have any resolution.
From here, I started working on other micro adjustments in my behavior, some of which were more successful than others.
Sleep was the next on the list. I average 7 hours and 30 minutes per night, gaining almost one extra hour of sleep. Then I started making running part of my life, improving my fitness from 55-year-old energy levels to feeling like a 26-year-old.
This year, I started fighting my addiction to sugar, and I miserably lost the first few battles. But the war is not over yet.
And this brings me to the next section. Smooth segue, don’t you think?
Monthly Challenges
Sweetless month,
Read daily for at least 10 minutes.
There was NO SINGLE DAY in May when I did not eat something with added sugar. There was always an occasion: a birthday, pancakes at the office, and stashes of sweets in every drawer of the house, literally.
Since summer is already here and vacation is just around the corner, I decided to retreat from this fight and come back with a better strategy when September ends (metaphorically speaking).
Regarding my reading challenge, I’m not ashamed of it either—23% success rate, which means I’ve read with one day more than I did in April. 😐
So, for June, I dropped my sugarless challenge, and instead, I challenged myself to post at least a Substack Note daily. I’m keeping the daily reading challenge.
Growth Objective
Last month, I decided to focus this section only on the objectives aligned with the newsletter’s light motives—mastery (or craftsmanship), productivity, and well-being.
But life is broader than these pillars and had other plans for me, so I’ve spent most of my time with other family objectives, which I won’t bother you with.
Well-being
Objective: Strengthen my key performance indicators.
Key Results:
🚧 Increase my VO2 Max to 50
🚧 Boost my deep sleep to 60 minutes
Results
For my well-being, I decided to focus on strengthening my performance indicator by the end of the year.
Currently, I have only two such indicators: VO2 Max, a proxy for my fitness levels, and deep sleep, a proxy for how well I rest during sleep.
My current ideal baseline for my VO2 max would be 47-48 VO2 Max. However, I’ve set myself a stretch goal of 50 VO2 Max.
When it comes to my deep sleep, I want to increase it to an average of at least one hour every night, given that I’m currently at about the 40-minute mark.
Intitiatives
Every month, I will research actions I could take to improve any of these metrics and take notes on them in this section.
My current initiative was to find the key indicators I care about and note them down.
I’m still looking for two more indicators I want to improve, and I hope to have them by next issue.
Mastery
I gave myself until the end of May to think of the objective for making a plan on how to improve my engineering skills, but I failed to make a concrete plan.
I did, however, experiment with augmented coding this month, which is something I consider for my mastery in the near future.
At the same time, I also have a bunch of topics I want to explore, such as Domain Driven Design or negotiation skills.
Also, I have to see how I can link the challenges my readers share—to make the newsletter more useful—with my interests. Or how to better reach readers who already have the same interests as me.
Productivity
Objective: Slick Newsletter.
Key Results:
🔄 Write daily for 10 minutes
🚧 Receive 100 meaningful comments
🚧 Grow Substacks recommending me by 4X
🚧 Donate 200 EURO
Results
There was only one key result with any heartbeats in it, and that is the only meaningful comment I received on one of my issues.
Other than that, there was no other progress.
However, it is understandable since I focused on other, more essential family objectives. I still have to remind myself that this newsletter is a side project and not my primary business, although I try to make it look like it is.
Inititatives
Most of the initiatives happened at the beginning of the month, when I finally organized the first Engineering Mastermind session and met with
at . If curious, you can read more about it here.Then, I met with
at , for an informal engineering talk, which I plan to turn into a pilot episode for a short-form engineering podcast, which hopefully will be aired in June.Next, I had a guest post from
on crafting a CV that gets you interviews.I also experimented more with Reddit and got another viral post with 1.45k views, leading to 4 subscribers.
Overall, I published six issues in May:
7 Golden Rules For a CV That Actually Gets Interviews (guest post by
)
Closing Thoughts
These mark my Open Goals updates for May. I look forward to seeing you in the next issue. Cheers!
—Alex