- Be fit
- For the past two weeks (except Sundays), I have gotten up at 5am to spend about an hour working out on the weight machine. So far, success has been based on my not giving up. Weight loss has been negligible. My exercise has been anaerobic lifting, lower weights for more reps. My hope was that it would mean a better visit to the bathroom scale, but so far that has not been the case. It may be that I’m adding muscle and losing some weight at a relatively equal pace.
- I started back on the No S diet, although its been more of a guideline than a rule. I’m still avoiding unnecessary snacking, but I’m still trying to adjust to the new exercise routine. I’ve also been taking Sundays as a free-food day. A lot of this is because we tend to eat out the most on Sunday.
- Goal status: Good.
- Write More
- Three posts total for an average of less than one per week. I noticed that working out has significantly cut into blogging time. I’m not sure how to shift to an alternate writing time, but I’m hoping to make better with the writing. I have a few ideas for new blogs: one for the business as well as another idea in the works. However, I feel I have to close out some previous commitments before starting new blogs.
- Goal status: Poor.
- Remember important annual events
- No events to remember. Success!
- Goal status: Satisfactory
- Deliberate Dates
- Since we’ve been back from vacation, I haven’t taken the time to date my wife officially, but we have been watching Lost – Seasons 1 and 2 – on DVD on Saturday nights (with a romantic basket full of laundry to be folded). She thinks Lost jumped the shark at the start of Season 2, but continues to watch it because its some specific time together.
- With the boys, it has been harder. Soccer and t-ball seasons have begun. That’s five nights a week spent driving to practices or games of one sport or the other. That leaves little time to deliberately do things with the boys. Even geocaching has been difficult to organize. I took a bicycle ride with the Youngest today, which was a very nice time together.
- Goal status: Fair.
Previous series posts
When David Seah suggested the monthly review of Groundhog Day Resolutions, I thought the idea was brilliant. It is one thing to have goals, but another thing to actually review how you are doing on them. Little did I know how quickly a month passes.
I have written before about power naps before — short naps in the middle of the day that refresh and renew.
Now it seems that researchers have discovered that afternoon siestas have health benefits as well. A recent study (registration required) discovered that Greek men who took a regular afternoon naps were 37% less likely to die of heart disease than those who did not.
While the researchers admit that a single study does not make this conclusive, there are many physicians who see the benefit of a mid-day rest.
Specialists not involved with the study said there are sound biochemical reasons to believe that a nap may help protect against heart disease.
Essentially, they said, sleep at any time of day acts like a valve to release the stress of everyday life. Blood pressure is reduced and heart rates slow. At the same time, the immune system shores itself up. Increasingly, researchers are recognizing the role the immune system plays in heart disease.
As I’ve mentioned before, my dad takes an afternoon siesta every day right after lunch. He is the youngest 74-year-old I know. While I am sure this is only one part of his story of success, I can see how some rest during the day can be beneficial.
In my own experience, a 20 minute power nap has greatly benefited me on days I’m feeling drowsy. If I had the ability to integrate this into a regular daily pattern I would, but most client sites won’t put in a nap room just for my benefit.
My first Groundhog Day Resolution is, as it is every year, to be fit. I always want to be in better shape than I was the previous year. This usually stems from how exhausted I feel after our year-end ski trip and I vow each New Year’s that I will not be so tired out by a sport that lets gravity do most of the work for me.
One of the biggest challenges to any resolution or goal is the inability to make sweeping changes. Humans are creatures of habit, and breaking habits is hard. For example, going from a high-calorie, high-fat diet to celery on a whim is just too huge of a change to be sustainable. The first slice of French Silk Pie to come along is going to be trouble. Instead, the better method to sustainable change is through small, incremental moves in the right direction. I’m calling these moves tiny discipline.
I was at my desk when fellow consultant Scott stopped by to discuss a few work matters. As he was leaving he noticed my canvas work bag. Embroidered on the bag are my initials: “JEU”.
“Do you know what your initials mean in French?” he asked.
New Year’s Resolutions are silly, in my opinion. Why should we only resolve to do new things once a year? Like millions of other people, I make a pile of resolutions on the first of January. Like millions of other people, I go back to my regularly scheduled programming by the first of February.
It seems my post on Writing Effective Email is one of the most popular ones I’ve written here at uhri.com. In that post I talked about some techniques for better subject lines, but I’ve recently seen a few additional things that have been very helpful.
At my current client, the project on which I’m working has a new project manager who uses these techniques. The first is the <eom> trick. <eom> stands for “End of Message” and is used when the message is the subject. Busy people can save a bit of time because the <eom> tells them there is nothing in the body of the message. For example, a subject of Build has been deployed - please retest <eom> tells the reader everything without opening the email itself. For me, opening an email is a slow process (*ahem* Groupwise) so I know I don’t need to click the link and can clear it from my notifier instead.
Another beneficial thing the project manager does is append “please respond” to the end of her messages when she actually needs a reply. It almost always leads to my immediate response, so she’s doing the right motivating with it. I’m always able, based on her well crafted subject, to reply in less than two minutes to the topic.
Merlin Mann at 43Folders has more to say on the topic of good email subjects in his Writing Sensible Email Messages post.
I lost my cell phone a week ago. It hadn’t turned up, so I officially declared it lost. In dire need of a replacement, I headed to the Cingular store in the mall to get a new one. Unfortunately, I was only 10 months into a 24 month contract; I was ineligable for an upgraded phone. The woman who helped me, obviously driven by a commission, started pointing out the various phones and their $200+ price tags. Depressed, I left the store vowing to ransack the house a few more times before laying down that kind of green.
My phone didn’t turn up.
With boys in tow I headed back to the mall. After an endless wait (during which my youngest learned how to make paper airplanes and the older used every cell in the store to call and leave a message at home), I finally got my turn to talk to the only guy working the store. His suggestion was this: Buy a Cingular pay-as-you-go phone from Walmart, bring it in and they would put in a new SIMM card. It would be just like new.
The new phone cost me $30 and Cingular put in the SIMM for free. At $3.99 a month for phone insurance, I’ve already saved myself $10 over the life of this contract. Sure I have a crappy phone with no features, but who needs a fancy phone with a lousy camera, anyway?
As much as I’d like to be one of Steve Pavlina’s polyphasic mutants, its not a sleep structure I beleive will work with my job and family lifestyle. The basic gist of a polyhasic sleep schedule is to take many small naps throughout the day instead of a large chunk of time in the evenings. Mr. Pavlina indicates that after 90 days he sees no reason to switch back to being a hibernating “bear” in a monophasic sleep schedule. He has the advantage of setting his own work schedule (as he is self employed) and has only 1 young daughter. I don’t think it will work out for me.
One component of the polyphasic sleep schedule which has always run true for me, however, is the idea of a short nap: the so-called Power Naps. My first experiences with the power nap were with my dad. Each day, after returning home from the office to eat lunch, he would relax in his recliner. He would fall asleep until his office called for him. He would get up and go to his appointment none the worse for wear.
Having seen his example, I started the same technique in college. With classes scheduled around a central lunch break, I had time to squeeze in a quick snooze before afternoon class. I crashed on the couch in our apartment in favor of my bed… I didn’t want to be too comfortable and oversleep. Actually, I didn’t use an alarm clock; my internal clock was able to wake me up in 20 minutes every time. These refreshing naps recharged my mind and body and made long days of classes bearable.
These days I don’t take specific time for power napping unless I feel particularly drowsy. I feel a bit weird about it, so my particular method is to leave my employer’s property and park somewhere relatively quiet. I set the alarm on my cell phone for 20 minutes and crash. I find taking a half hour out of my afternoon for a nap is much more effective than other methods of trying to stay awake. Its certainly a better policy than incoherent time “on the clock”.
My understanding is that another coworker uses the same technique, although I’ve never talked to him about it. Some companies have seen the benefits of the power nap and even provide “relaxation rooms” for their employees. Nike is one of the biggest companies to give this benefit to its employees. There are other enlightened companies, especially in transportation, that encourage quick nap breaks.
One tweak to the power nap I recently came across is the Caffeine Nap. With this technique, you drink a cup of coffee followed by a nap chaser. The caffeine clears the drowiness during your sleep leaving you more alert afterward. I can vouch for the caffeine nap — I used to do it all the time. My routine was a little different, though, since I used it as a wake-up technique. I’d set my first alarm for an hour earlier than I needed to be up. When it went off, I’d turn on the coffee maker I prepared the evening before. I’d cool the coffee down with ice when it was ready, and drink it as quickly as I could. Once finished, I’d climb back into bed and fell back asleep. The second alarm would wake me at the time I needed to get up. I’d get up and be fully awake the second time.
One final note about power napping: get a clock with a nap button. This brilliant feature lets you set a nap alarm with one button click. I have an Emerson Alarm Clock with Nap Timer. This clock has given me a couple of problems with the regular alarms not going off and the radio turning on when I turn them on. It is also blindingly bright — I turn it toward the wall to be able to sleep. But the nap button! It makes all the other foibles disappear. You might have more luck with the Neverlate 7-day Alarm Clock.
Here are a couple of resources I’ve found on the subject of power napping:
- Pzizz.com’s power napping page.
- Luxe Vivant’s Who is Napping page.
(hat tip: Randomize’s Caffeine Nap)
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