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Again, I must disclose that I work for Purity Products. “Not only am I an employee, I’m also a customer.” I take their Perfect Multi, Dr. Cannell’s Advanced D, and Ultra-Pure Omega-3 Fish Oil. :-)
My first successful 30 day challenge is almost through. I deem it a success. This one was simple enough. Stay away from time wasters. My main two were Twitter and Google Plus. There were also some message boards that I avoided too. I confirmed the suspicion that I get nothing valuable from them. All they serve to do is use up valuable idle time.
I’m reading a book now, Find Your Focus Zone, to deal with my self-diagnosed scatter brain. I’ve been trying to pinpoint the source of my frustration in not being able to accomplish more (personally and professionally). I think the source is a lack of concentration at important (yet not so obvious) times. I’ll get more into the assessment and the book in another post, but the gist I took away so far is that you can program the brain negatively when constantly checking up on things like twitter. A good and fitting quote so far is “the brain influences behavior, AND behavior influences the brain.” Bad habits and behavior can snowball. Also, these distractions can serve as fodder for avoidance and procrastination. Again, more to come in another post.
My next step is to drop Twitter and Google Plus almost entirely. I might check in once a week or so (there are really interesting people I can gain valuable information from). I know for sure I’m not going to miss anything at all by not checking in on them every hour. Same for the message boards. I’m also going to drop/reduce other non-productive habits. The key of course is to be mindful and identify them.
My next 30 day challenge is going to be hard. 30 days without hitting snooze on the alarm clock. Also I’m going to have a set wake-up time each day. Although the current one isn’t quite at 30 days (I’ll keep it up), I’m starting this one {gulp} tomorrow. This means getting to bed at a more set hour, which I’ve been sort of slacking off on.
We’re talking total first world problems here…
I’ve written about some of my gripes with Samsung and my Galaxy S 4G phone. Being annoyed by uninstallable bloatware. Being bothered by “enhancements” on top of Android that are incompatible with some apps.
Here is a review and some new ones.
1) The Music Player – Both made for Android headphones and apps like cardio trainer and c25k don’t work with Samsung’s own hacked up version of the Android music player. Why mess with it? Especially since there are no enhancements to offset the disadvantages.
2) Browser – First off, it’s terrible. Double tap to zoom in never ever snaps to text correctly. I never had that problem on the G1 and now never have that problem with the Dolphin browser that I had to download to replace Samsung’s terrible version. Second, the way the bookmarks are set up make it incompatible with apps that need to access them (e.g. for syncing). There are other reasons too…
3) Folder Management – Apps like Dropbox have some trouble that appears something to do with the way folders are managed. Some genius at Samsung decided to mess with Android again and wasn’t forward thinking enough to realize that it might negatively effect apps down the road.
I’m tired of finding limitations to the phone. Then finding out on online forums that the limitations are due to incompatible configurations that Samsung built in to the phone. I’m tired of finding cool apps, only to see in the description a special note that the app doesn’t work well with Samsung devices. If differentiating yourself from other Android phones means being incompatible with apps and hardware, then job well done!
As good as the phone is with some things, I’m annoyed enough to stay away from all things Samsung in the future. When “enhancements” lead to limitations, I say no thank you.
For the first time ever in my life, I thought I’d give new year’s resolutions a try. I’ve been compiling a list for a few weeks leading up to today. I think I came up with great goals for personal development. One thing stood out–the list seemed daunting and unstructured. I’m a big believer of adopting small changes one at a time. It’s worked wonders in my healthy living pursuit. So I have to temper the enthusiasm of embarking on all of these endeavors in favor of a long term (and more manageable) roll-out. Dates will be reviewed as I go. The ultimate goal is to have everything polished off or in full steam by September.
So rather than come up with a list, and say GO!, my one and only resolution is to adhere to one personal development plan, which has several items (which were originally separate resolutions). It sounds like I’m building in an excuse to procrastinate, but really it’s so the plan is more manageable and flexible. And so I don’t feel the need to put everything in motion at once. It will require discipline for sure.
Without further ado, here is my plan:
Truth be told, I might have attempted these things anyway. But I found the days leading up to this “announcement” extremely valuable in accessing needs, areas of need of growth, and feasibility of getting the things accomplished. I’m already going to adopt periodic assessments, reviews, and goal planning instead of waiting for a new year each year.
Lets see how it goes!
I’m a week into giving up Twitter, Google+, and some other social media and message boards.
So far so good. So far, I confirmed my suspicion that none of the above were providing me with anything valuable. I get my information from other sources (e.g. blogs through Google Reader), which are probably more reliable anyway.
The time gained really hasn’t been put to any real good use yet. But I do notice that I’m less dependent on my phone. Or more accurately, I don’t need to constantly check my phone. And if I put it down for an hour or more, I’m not compelled to check anything other than for new message icons.
It bothered my wife that my head was always on the phone, and I don’t blame her. This has cut that down tremendously. It was all needless. At least for me anyway.
Now for one of my new year’s resolutions, I’m going to try to identify less obvious time wasters and chop away. And replace that time with more enriching activities.
I haven’t forgotten about 30 day challenges. My first one ended up to be a failure in the sense it only lasted 4 days. But it emphasized something that’s been bubbling up inside my head.
The task then was to write a stream on consciousness writing for 30 minutes every night. It turned out to be too much of a task. Plus the upside of doing it wasn’t really clear to me even though I chose to do it. I read that it helps with focusing the train of thought and with writing, but perhaps I didn’t really believe it or even know what a success would look or feel like. There are probably a million reasons why I abandoned… Bottom line, it was probably a waste of time.
I wanted to do 30 day challenges at the start of each month. But this next one can’t wait. Or better, I don’t want to wait. It starts right… right…. riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight…………. now.
For the first time ever, I’ve come up with some rock solid new year’s resolutions. I’ll get to them in detail in another post. But one of them will be along the lines of identifying distractions and both eliminating them and substituting something constructive in their place. So this 30 day challenge is part of a test run and/or momentum builder for that resolution.
This 30 day challenge is 30 days without Twitter, Google+, or other social media and message boards. All except Facebook.
The logic is simple. I want to eliminate distractions and time wasters, but not cut out social interaction all together. I find Facebook valuable in keeping connected with people, and I don’t spend/waste a lot of time on there. Twitter, Google+, and the others, however, I find I spend way more time just browsing and not connecting with anything or anyone in any valuable way. It’s more of a boredom filler than anything else.
I do have a few caveats though. If someone DMs (or @’s me) me, I will respond–I set notifications accordingly so I don’t have to go Twitter, etc. to look for those messages. Again, I don’t want to abandon real social connections. I also can’t abandon the usage for my company, which is minimal anyway.
Now that I’ve gotten those distractions out of the way, it’s time to button up and finalize my new year’s resolutions.
So people have been asking me what my secrets are in losing so much weight this year. I was going to write out a similar post at some point anyway, but it’s now time. That’s because it’s difficult to explain how I did what I did seemingly effortlessly (and surely healthily). My healthy living checklist wasn’t checked off all in one day. Maybe I’ll refer them to this post.
What I mean is if I explained to anyone a-z what I have done, cumulatively it’s a lot to digest, confusing, and perhaps intimidating. I would not have succeeded if I had thrown all of the changes I incorporated all at one time. For one it would be frustrating as it’s a lot to think about. Also, I think physiologically things more naturally fall into place the way I phased things in. For example, my body might not have been ready for “phase 5″ things in the beginning.
Still, this might not work for everyone. Everyone’s fitness levels, body composition, and a million other factors can differ from me. But there should be no debate on the foundation, which is eat very healthy, exercise, and get enough sleep. Also, I never had a real tough time eating too much cake, candy, cookies, chips, etc., which should be at the top of the list for anyone.
There are debates out there about long slow cardio vs. shorter and higher intensity cardio. I actually favor high intensity, but that depends on where you are starting. It’s easy for an in shape fitness guru to push high intensity. Plus considerations on growth hormone and testosterone levels are really next level things that you should not be distracted with in the beginning. You can’t lay that on someone who is very out of shape. That’s not the time for it. There is low hanging fruit to pick off first.
The bottom line is I used long slow cardio in my endeavor and did not sacrifice lean body mass. Actually I’m still deemed overweight by the BMI standards because of my lean muscle mass. I haven’t done a body fat composition test yet, but I would bet anything I’m in a very healthy range.
Ok, so here are the phases. 1, 2, and 3 are fairly basic and should be phased in within a few months. There are really no dependencies other than getting the habits down pat. Phase 4 should come when you are seeing success and ready mentally, but that should not prevent you from incorporating it a few months in even if you are still far from your goal. It’s my opinion that the next level stuff is not effective without everything else being optimized and firing on all cylinders first, so save it.
Phase 1 (get calorie balance under control, start exercising, sleep more) :
Phase 2 (start making better diet choices):
Phase 3 (really start to eliminate and replace in the diet):
Phase 4 (up the optimization):
Phase 5: (Next level):
STILL! My challenge is to keep the weight off this time around as I had some success the previous 2 years. BUT! So far so good this winter as I’ve carried the healthy living and lifestyle parts past Thanksgiving (where I started to fail before). So far a cold has kept me out of the gym, but I’ll be back there tonight. I will declare this entire thing a success the much longer I stick to it.
After 4 rounds, we have a decision.
Judge 1 scores the bout 39-37 Soreco
Judge 2 scores the bout 38-38
Judge 3 scores the bout 39-37, for the winner by majority decision… Matt “the antioxidant” Sorecoooooooooo
Matt, what do you have to say about the bout?
“If I can change…….., you can change…………, everybody can change!”
So my last post I said that the start of a cold would prove the effectiveness of healthy living on my body’s response to the cold that was forming at the time.
I know no matter what you do, there is no way to completely guarantee getting sick. Especially being in a house with 2 others who are sick and one being a 3 year old coughing in your face all day. Rather you can reduce the number of times and minimize the effects.
I felt I had a cold, no doubt about it. But It didn’t slow me down one bit. The “judges” all gave one round to the virus. Last night, I kind of felt worn out a little. I was getting a little nervous. Perhaps the cold was in its death throws, because I woke up this morning feeling good. Not 100%, but good.
Bottom line. I attribute my mild cold on having everything healthy lined up. Hydrated, healthy eating, plenty of rest, etc.
Taken from my desk this morning. I’ve upped the ante. Green tea, fruit/berry/veggie smoothie, and plenty of vitamins (multi, fish oil, and vitamin d):
My poor son has been battling a cold/ear infection for 3 weeks. My wife has been stricken with the same cold for a few days now. The result is my house has become a petri dish for the common cold.
I have been adhering to my healthy living checklist militantly. Is it enough to ward off a cold while living in a common cold incubator?
Yesterday my son seemed to take a turn for the worse (he has a doctor’s appointment today!). So I took the day off of work rather than send him to daycare (I wish other parents did the same but that’s another story/blog post). At about 2pm, I said to myself that it will be a minor miracle if I don’t catch something. Even the most impenetrable immune system can only withhold so many times of being coughed and sneezed on.
I promised all of you (my 2 loyal readers)(hi mom!)(hi random passerby!), that I would give extensive reasons to all items that go into my morning smoothie, as well as the rest of my diet as well. I promise I will one day. Long story short, I try to get the most amount and widest range of antioxidants possible (and conveniently). Besides a berry, fruit, and veggie smoothie in the morning, I also drink green tea throughout the day and try to get garlic, tomatoes, and other well researched foods into my daily/weekly meals. Besides fighting and preventing inflammation (which is thought to cause/prolong/intensify a lot of common diseases), antioxidants are said to aid the immune response (which is also related to inflammation).
Even armed with a pristine diet (as well as lifestyle too–e.g. sleep), I think I succumbed to the inevitable. I woke up this morning with a scratchy throat. BUT! This war isn’t over! So far my symptoms are extremely mild–proving the healthy living is effective in immune response. {knocking on serious wood}
So in closing, I’d like to say, “Dear cold, I will win. You will lose.”
It’s no surprise as karma has gotten me several times following blog post from me… As it turns out Gingerbread was officially released THE SAME DAY I decided to no longer wait anymore and root my phone. Wait… Is that karma, irony, coincidence? Whatever it is, it happened.
So I upgraded my phone to Gingerbread yesterday with my fingers crossed that the rooting wouldn’t mess up the update. It didn’t thankfully. But it did unroot the phone, which I rooted back again pretty quickly.
Nothing new really wows me. Some minor improvements here and there, but nothing major. But it’s good to have the latest (or close to latest) version of Android.
I did notice that the upgrade did remove DoubleTwist, which was the bloatware that drove me over the edge in deciding to root my phone.