Photo: TheLizardQueen

We're inside the 2 week runup to our trip to Ireland. This is a trip that we originally wanted to take 10 years ago when we got married. At that time, we didn't have the money, so we told ourselves we'd go 5 years later. Of course, by that time, we were busy and, while we could have charged the trip and paid it off, we couldn't afford to pay for it outright, so we postponed it 5 more years.

A little over a year ago, we set up a savings plan and started siphoning money off for this trip. After a significant amount had piled up a few months ago, we started booking portions of the trip and paying for them from that account. The flights ($2500 total), hotels (another $1400), car rental (more than a rental car should cost), etc. were all checked off the list with absolutely no debt incurred.

We're going to be doing the kind of travel that we've come to realize really matches how we like to do things. We book hotels smack in the middle of relatively large cities and then see and do things nearby, working out for day trips as it makes sense.

For this trip, we're actually going to spend time headquartered in 3 different cities: Cork, Limerick and Dublin.

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Photo: Ed Tarwinski

This web site has been poorly tended to for the past couple of months. Part of the problem was the de-listing by Google. That took more wind out of my sails than I believed it would. Apparently, I am more of an attention whore than my self-image had reflected previously.

In my head, the original reasons for starting this site still held. I had a thought or an idea or something I wanted to share or remember for later, so I'd write it up and put it here, regardless if anyone ever read it. However, somehow over the last several years, it seems that it matters to me in some way that there is someone out there to read it.

Regardless, that's something I either just need to change my thinking on or something I need to come to grips with and is only one of the reasons for the relative silence over the last couple of months. In fact, that's probably one of the lesser factors.

The biggest factor by far is a paralysis brought on by overcommitment. I can clearly point to this element being the leader of the pack because of a common situation that has come up at some point during every post I've started to write (and there are currently 23 drafts for this site).

See, I have WAY too many things going on where people are counting on me. Some are paid projects; some are just things people have asked me to do. I ended up committed to each as a gradual process. They stacked up, in some cases, by lying dormant while additional commitments were stacked on top.

At this point, there are at least a dozen people who are more than a little concerned with how I'm spending my time. They are all likely to ask me at some point in the next few days whether I'm done with the object of their concern and if not, how much longer it will take. Unfortunately, keeping all of those project moving forward pretty much means that none of them move very far.

And so, I've been frantically attempting to keep juggling all of the balls without dropping any. However, I won't pretend that there haven't been a few close calls.

Knowing that the crowd of people waiting on me is out there dominates my thoughts every time I sit down to write for this site. That knowledge fills my head every time I do something other than work on the list or sleep. I think about it every time I so much as glance at my own list of projects.

This past week, I crossed a line when I felt bad for taking the time to make dinner. I fully realize that 99% of the people I'm beholden to wouldn't begrudge me that task, but the fact that my own guilt kicked in says that something needs to change.

So, I started looking for those things that I'm juggling that bounce or can be set down. I'm handing off one of my projects to another web guy as a subcontractor, and with the others, I'm having frank conversations about my capacity and how it relates to their need.

In those conversations I've had so far, the real people were far more understanding than my imaginary projections of them (I apologize for not thinking of you as highly as I clearly should). In at least one case, they weren't nearly in as big of a hurry as I thought they were.

Things are starting to loosen, which is important. It's not because I want more time to write (though I do) or because I've got a list of personal projects a mile long (though I do). Rather, it's actually because of the very things that people hire me for. People hire me because I solve problems in unique and practical ways. However, when I'm working beyond capacity, I don't do that nearly as well as when I am keeping things in balance.

Here's to getting things back in balance. Cheers.

On May 23, back in 1998,I stood out on a wooded hill behind a church in New London, MN. I actually spent quite a bit of time waiting on that hill that day. First to see Shelly for the first time in her dress. Because the whole modern picture taking tradition has pretty much taken away the special moment of seeing each other for the first time, we carved out time specifically for that on the hill before photography.

Later, I stood on that hill alone, waiting to go into the side of the sanctuary for the ceremony from outside. The music seeped through the windows and a crack in the door and it all started being very real to me.

Now, 10 years later, many of the details of that day: the ceremony, the dinner and reception, the dance in the barn are all still vivid. The day both seems as only yesterday and a long time ago.

That one specific day is something we celebrate each year as its anniversary passes. However, that one day actually fades in the face of the ~3650 that we've spent since as husband and wife.

We've lived in many places, had some of the sickness and the health, been richer and poorer and had our fair share of better and of worse. We've both remained stubborn in some habits and personality traits and changed wildly in others.

In the vows I wrote for my part in the ceremony, I talked about how we were poised at the beginning of a journey as traveling companions. Now, 10 years later, I can say that, with a good start on that journey, I could have no better person with whom to share the trek and I'm looking forward to where the next 10 years and beyond bring us.

Photo: Steve Jurvetson

A while back, there was a TV commercial (for a product/service I can't recall)¹ that showed a group of businessmen having a meeting in a shower. They were there because the executive that called the meeting wanted to leverage the fact that his best ideas came to him in the shower.

That commercial hits us as relevant because nearly everyone has had the experience of being in the shower and having that thought, solution or idea completely come out of "nowhere" that is exactly what we want.

Of course, the commercial takes that experience and attempts to apply it in a way that obviously won't work. It's obvious to pretty much everyone. But, why?

It's because it's not about the shower. It's actually about the "slack" time and is key to innovative thinking. The beauty is that, while gathering your team into the shower won't foster this innovative thinking, it *is* possible to deliberately make these moments happen and is a topic I've been looking at quite a bit lately.

Lots of people develop their own ways to manufacture these moment. I like to think that I did a reasonable job at it myself. However, my recent interest in the junction of economics, neurology, psychology, self-improvement and my longstanding interest in cross disciplinary learning have been coming together to better understand and debug my own brain. Deeper understanding of how my own neurons are working can lead to better decisions and more effective practices.

On this particular topic, recent interest was sparked by an EconTalk episode with William Duggan. He was talking about his book: Strategic Intuition.

The conversation was very enlightening and I bought and subsequently read the book. While I've got lots I could say about the book (it really resonated with me), what's really worth taking away from it is the core idea of what exactly "strategic intuition" is.
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About a month ago, I set a goal for myself to go to the gym every day for a month. The idea was largely predicated on a principle that I've seen in many other areas of life. Basically, if you do something often enough for it to become a habit and part of your routine, you end up feeling weird if it's missing.

For something that really should be part of my daily routine for the rest of my life, that seemed like a pretty good approach.

I'd heard people throw out a 14 day timeframe for things to "become a habit". In my own experience, however, that's proven to be wholly inadequate unless I already was inclined to do the thing.

So, I basically doubled the "conventional wisdom" and rounded to 30 days. The hope was that at the end of the 30 days, that mechanism in my brain that makes me feel guilty about not doing other stuff would be employed in keeping me going to the gym.

Measurement

I used Don't Break The Chain as a quick way to track whether I complied with my rules. I also kept an ad hoc kind of notebook along with my other notes for things like my weight and body fat percentage. I wasn't as thorough as one should be for really understanding what happened. However, I'm also pretty sure that if I'd imposed greater measurement requirements, I would have abandoned the whole thing.

While I don't have access to the REALLY accurate body fat measurements (i.e. the big water tank), I *do* have a scale that reports my body fat percentage along with the weight. It's the same scale I had when going to the weight loss doctor and the numbers were always fairly close to the ones that the more expensive equipment in her office reported.

I measured my weight and body fat percentage about 1-2 times a week for the duration. I logged those numbers along with the actual body fat in pounds, as calculated from the numbers that the scale spit out.

All of the workouts were between 30 and 60 minutes with most between 30 and 40 minutes long. I didn't track this for very long before patterns started to emerge. Most consisted of 25-35 minutes on the treadmill followed with 10-15 minutes of weight training.

The treadmill portion consisted of walking at 2.8mph at 9% incline with interval spikes of either a 15% incline or 1% incline and running between 6-7mph (only on some days). That consistently got my heart rate into the recommended range for cardio conditioning. I'd love to have gotten my VO2 measured before this (and should probably look even now), but didn't.

Weight training was mostly squats, bench press and seated row. From a training perspective, I pretty much just aimed to slowly bring up my condition without pushing things too far, so the weight stuff wasn't terribly intense.

Evaluation

Boolean Success/Fail

The actual goal was not achieved as I didn't actually make 30 days in a row: only 27. This is due in large part to my poor planning. The decision for the starting date was dictated almost entirely by the day that I finally got fed up and just jumped in. Had I looked at the calendar on that date, I would have noticed that I would be out of town in rural Iowa (where my gym is not) for my sister's wedding at the tail end of this 30 days.

However, once back in town, I started back up and it's clear that the *spirit* of the project took as going to the gym is now a habit. As such, I consider the project a success.

Weight and Fat

I expressly did not include any specific goals with regard to weight or fat loss.

At the beginning, my total body fat was 81.28 lbs. As of this morning, that's dropped to 74.24 lbs, for a drop in body fat of about 7 pounds. At the same time, my actual weight went UP from 253 to 256.

The combined math says that I gained 10 pounds of lean tissue and lost 7 pounds of fat in the last 30 days.

Cardiovascular

I wish I had tracked some things in this area better. Alas, it's probably unlikely that this will improve much going forward either. I *do* know that my endurance for bursts of running has improved pretty steadily.

Going Forward

Since the goal was to establish the habit of regular exercise, I do plan to keep this up. I've now been back on track for 2 days straight and see no reason to stop. There will undoubtedly be days like the wedding weekend where I can't get to the gym, but it looks like the habit is getting ingrained enough that those won't derail me.

I *have* heard from several people that I shouldn't be going every single day because I'll "overtrain". To me, that makes little sense, sorry. I spend 8-12 hours a day sitting in front of a computer plus 30-60 minutes of exercise on a treadmill and a few weights. That, compared with the amount of physical activity *demanded* of 99.99% of the population for all of human history except the last 30 years or even my own youth is preposterous.