To Running Silent or Not

I'm finding I have to hunker down and seriously reduce the number of activities I'm engaging in to push past an important milestone, so my posting frequency will be (if you haven't already noticed) drastically reduced. I was feeling very guilty about this, until I thought to myself that there was no reason to. My life is my own, right?

Well, not really. My life is now intertwined with dozens of other lives, and participating in the blogosphere has been very positive. I'm loathe to let go of it even for a short spell to again don the black clothes of the itinerant freelance codeslinger, but it's what I need to do. I call it "hermit mode", and last year I recognized that it was a kind of luxury to be able to shut out the world and focus exclusively on just a few things. As more of my friends start families, I see how their priorities change and how their schedules shift with the need to juggle many more balls.

I've never been particularly good at juggling, or perhaps more accurately I've never liked feeling the stress and fear of dropping the ball. My coping mechanism has been to run silent and deep, like a nuclear submarine on patrol hundreds of feet below the surface of the ocean, alone with my work and shut out from the world. It's during these times that I lose contact with the natural day, staying up later and later until I'm going to sleep at the crack dawn and waking up at noon. There's just a couple of balls to juggle then, and there's few distractions. It's actually not so bad a life, if you have a few 24-hour supermarkets near you, and with the Internet you're never completely isolated. Now that I think about it, since adopting the early waking schedule about a year ago (yes, I'm still doing it) I've lost touch with quite a few people that I used to talk to regularly in the wee hours of the morning, fellow hermits tapping greetings across the slumbering Internet.

I'm faced with a decision: I could manage my time better by applying any number of techniques I've used in the past, though frankly I don't really want to do it. I'm tired. Or I could shut out the world and pour all my attention into the tasks that I want to get done.

• The advantage of managing my time is that it's more sustainable---if I accept that what I get done every day is going to be incremental and feel very small. I personally have little patience for incremental change, which is why I probably suck at it. The one exception to this is when I am actually observing incremental change in PEOPLE...that fascinates me, because each small change in a person's behavior can indicate something much larger. I guess I am naturally curious about what makes people tick, not the number of ticks I can count.

• The advantage of shutting out the world is that it is a more exciting commitment to action; kind of an adventure, really. I like getting ready for adventures, strategically planning my moves, getting everything ready for the big push. The problem is that it is an expensive contextual switch, on the order of planning a vacation without the relaxation, and it always burns me out at the end. This may, however, be the natural way I work by myself. It is a recurring pattern.

My gut reaction is that I should avoid going into hermit mode, but instead triage what I am focusing on. Blogging is going to have to go on the sideline for a bit, because there is a lot of other stuff that I need to get done for both the business and for my projects.

I'm also considering my energy levels. Last week I tracked my hours using my excel timesheet and added two additional fields: energy level and what I ate. I had the feeling that I wasn't doing the right work at peak times, so I wanted to see if there were any patterns at all to my day. I discovered that in the morning, after going to the gym, I was at peak alertness. I checked my email afterwards and followed up with people, and found that after a couple of hours of this my energy levels were again drained. Surprisingly, activities like washing the dishes seemed to recover some of that energy. What I ate didn't seem to make as much of a difference as I thought, though the quantity might still have something to do with it (overly full = sleepy).

My tentative conclusions:

• I am getting eyestrain from looking at the screen, and this is making me dizzy. I can go maybe a couple of hours before the slight headache starts distracting me. I just ordered a larger monitor to alleviate this, hopefully it will get here tomorrow.

• I need to pace my eating so it's smaller amounts, more frequently. I hear this advice a lot from people who are optimizing their metabolism, and it's high time I did the same. This is a whole new kind of process I will need to learn. Also, I should be drinking a lot more water. Remembering to do this in the winter time is more difficult, for some reason.

• I need to shift the priority from communication to project, which is a reversal of my current values. I like to read email and respond to it, and I like chatting with people to see what they're up to. For the past half year I've been pretty bad at replying to email in a timely manner because I've been busy with more projects, and I've felt guilty and inadequate. I will have to face up to the fact that I don't have the bandwidth to spend 4 hours a day just writing back to people and exploring interesting opportunities. The "golden time" right after my workout should be devoted to project work, no exceptions. Email will have to wait to the end of the day, along with blogging. When I was responding to email, it was right after my workout. I'm still going to get eyestrain and dizziness after a few hours of staring at the computer screen (assuming the new larger one doesn't alleviate this), but knowing this I can at least make sure my best hours are devoted to project work.

I don't know how this will work out, and I've already frittered away some prime "work time" by writing this post instead of doing project work, but at least I am laying the groundwork for future productivity this week.

In other news, the initial wave of people who have pre-ordered Emergent Task Planner Pads has dwindled, and the remaining people who haven't yet ordered either have decided not to or have non-functioning email addresses. I am now going to start the process of collecting the names of people who have expressed interest in leftovers. I also need to figure out a better way of doing order fulfillment, as PayPal's initially-promising merchant tools are cumbersome and painful to use. The biggest obstacle to just opening up a store is the ability to track inventory levels; PayPal does not offer this, and I do not want to accept money when I do not have product in stock. Someone must make a combined ordering, payment receiving, inventory-counting e-commerce front end with integrated postage and packing slip management. Eventually I will probably go with Amazon Fulfillment, but for now I want to continue to ship myself as I work out the best way to package these boxes. Until that time, there are so many shopping cart options out there that it's going to take days to research them all. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears.

Why I Design

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you may have noticed how it's changed its focus from the personal to the productive. In the beginning, when I first started blogging out of a kind of quiet desperation to once and for all figure myself out, the entries were short clippings of my thoughts on whatever happened to catch my eye and interest. As time went on, and I discovered that long-lost friends were starting to stumble upon the webby shores of my site, I grew a little bolder and started writing in more depth about topics that were interesting to me. Blogging for that small audience was the outlet I needed.

At the beginning of 2005, I was starting to just come out of a two-year period of negativity, and was comfortable enough about writing online to make a few rambling journeys into personal introspection. These felt quite daring because they were so out of character with the other posts, which tended to be more detailed, hard-edged and technical. I remember posting about feeling negative, and a couple of my friends actually emailed me to make sure I wasn't about to lose it. While I find those posts to be somewhat embarrassing in retrospect, they are also as honest as I could make them, so I leave them up as signposts of my online journey. And it was through this journey that I really started getting to the bottom of what was important to me so I could create solutions to my problems. This is what lead to the original Printable CEO article, with its bizarre merging of psychology via video game design philosophy. I think one reason people like it, other than its sheer geekiness, is that it was designed to help you care about yourself. Fundamentally, I think of it as a design that is all about caring, inspiring, and empowering individuals.

Lately I've been avoiding writing the long introspective posts, because I've been aware of the growing contingent of productivity enthusiasts who have come here through sites like LifeHacker and Web Worker Daily. These are very popular, tip-focused sites that link to the various forms I've created to address the different inefficiencies I've faced in my freelancing career. Every time one of these sites links to an article here, I see a bump in RSS subscriptions. A few days later, I see a corresponding dip as people realize that I tend to write about other stuff like sandwiches and they unsubscribe. This used to bum me out, but I would tell myself that my writing is not for everyone. It's hard to describe exactly what keeps people here, actually, but I figure the people who stay are the ones I want to talk to in the first place. It's been tougher recently to stick to that line because I'm starting to realize that there is a lot I could do to drive traffic and build a real "web property". I'm starting my 4th year of blogging, and over those years I've learned quite a bit about how to write content and how to maintain a website. I've seen other websites that have started at around the same time I have flourish and explode into full-fledged enterprises, far beyond what I've done here. It was for this reason that I switched from WordPress to Expression Engine, because Expression Engine offers me the ability to start expanding my site facilities without a whole of painful integration work. It will allow me to start compartmentalizing my writing into focused, ad-friendly packets of content. It's a good media strategy.

You might be surprised to know that I don't spend every day reading RSS feeds to suck down the latest productivity and design news. I know that stuff is out there, but I get most of what I know through other people mentioning what's hot in passing. The sites that I do visit are ones that share the stories of someone's life. If there are any tips, they're offered in context to what someone has done and how it affected them. This is what I am drawn to, and recognizing that changes the way I deploy my shiny technical skills. I design because I like stories. And the kind of stories I like best are ones where someone has a dream, meets an obstacle that seems unsurmountable, then finds that greatness in themselves somehow to get past it.

I recently reread Po Bronson's What Should I Do With My Life?, which is his book about ordinary people who have asked this question and what they did about it. I originally read the book sometime in 2003, before I knew what a blog was and before I knew what was important to me. All I knew was that I wasn't particularly happy or inspired or motivated, though I wanted to feel that way. I wanted a calling, and the book reassured me that I wasn't alone or crazy in desiring this. Then I forgot about the book and went on with my life. 2004 kind of sucked, but 2005 offered possibility. 2006 was pretty good, and 2007 was better still because I've met people who have made a difference in my life, and have given me fresh perspective. What I lacked, though, was a sense of being part of a greater movement. What Should I Do With My Life? (a book about individual calling), along with Why Do I Love These People (a related book about family bonds) has reconnected me with the notion that it's really the people making their lives work that inspire me every day. And so, if what I can do with my life can help them make their stories better and make a good life...that's precisely what I want to do. I just need to make it pay.

I'm not exactly sure why I wrote this, though I suspect it's partly a reaction to my NOT having written a rambling personal post in quite some time, and it's probably also part of my processing of my Po Bronson weekend. I think maybe this is an affirmation of faith, and maybe it's also a beacon. As an experiment I've tried linking this post to the forum that I just installed this weekend for the C# Study Group. If there's anything I've learned, it's the small offerings to connect that lead to surprising opportunities. You just need to keep making the offer, and not have expectations on what comes back. It's both scary and exciting. It doesn't always work out or last, but heck let's see if anything happens. You can register here.

Merry Catmas!

My sister says this picture reminds her of some kind of European rock album cover.

OLPC XO Laptop: First Impressions

I was pleasantly surprised to receive my XO Laptop, formally known as the $100 Laptop for the One Laptop Per Child non-profit, and I just spent a couple hours playing with it. It is the cutest, coolest piece of gear I have in the house. I would venture to say that it's WAY cooler than my MacBook Pro 17" which is, basically, a production workstation. Sure, the XO is not very fast, is made of the type of plastic that's used for toddler toys, and the "keyboard" is a chicklet-style membrane that is not designed for touch-typing. There isn't a hard drive, and it doesn't run Windows or a window system for that matter. So what good is it you ask? It's good for getting education and computing into the great outdoors, that's what. It is the most exciting thing I've seen in quite some time. Yes, I even think it's cooler than the iPhone.

Admittedly, it is designed for smaller hands than mine, and in terms of speed you can practically feel the tiny processor grunting to itself like a jogger huffing I CAN!!! toward the top of a mountain as tourists stare curiously at him from their air-conditioned rental cars. Fast, it isn't. It reminds me a lot of one of the microcomputers I wanted when I was 12, the Sinclair ZX80. Like the Sinclair, the XO makes thrifty use of its limited memory. And like microcomputers of the early 80s, the XO is open. Open Source, in fact. The guts of the software are accessible, so this is a machine that people just getting introduced to computers will be able to learn on. What's really exciting, though, is the quality of the I/O. There's a camera, microphone, speakers, a high-res sunlight-readable display, and self-organizing mesh networking all built in. For expansion, there are USB ports and a memory card slot. You can take this computer on outdoor adventures with you, take pictures and notes, and share your findings with your peers around you. I find this incredibly exciting.

I haven't really played with the software at all yet, but I'm looking forward to trying to use this machine quite a bit as my primary "on the go" laptop to see what it's like. When I'm traveling around I usually just take notes anyway in my reporter-style Moleskine. The wireless networking capabilities of the XO should make this a good coffeehouse companion, though the keyboard is not suitable for touch typing at all.

Fortunately for me, the XO recognized my treasured IBM Model M 84-Key Space Saver Keyboard, which I plugged through a PS2-to-USB adapter. Seemed to work fine with the machine. When you put the XO into tablet mode, you end up with a very compact word processing station that is high-resolution and usable in direct sunlight. While the XO is supposed to run for quite a while on batteries (especially with the backlight off), the additional current drain of the Model M keyboard might reduce battery life further...I have no idea.

Anyway, it's here in time for Christmas, so I'm looking forward to spending a bit of time looking at the development environment. It might be neat to develop some portable tracking tools for the machine, if only for my own amusement.

Information Capture and Geek Dinners

Friday is my last day in San Jose, which was pleasantly sunny but chilly--chillier than I expected, actually. I shouldn't complain since I have been hearing that New England is getting hammered with snow. Here's hoping that I don't end up camping out in the Chicago Midway airport Food Court tomorrow. On the plus side, Midway has a pretty decent food court, as airports go. But I digress! Here's what's going on:

Geek Dinner

We had a small gathering of five productivity nerds on Thursday night, meeting at an open air mall called The Pruneyard in Campbell, California. My fellow productivity enthusiasts informed me that The Pruneyard is a popular meeting place for events in Silicon Valley, particularly because there are several good restaurants right there. After convening at The Coffee Society, we moved on to a diner-like place called Hobee's, where I had a club sandwich served with TORTILLA CHIPS on the side instead of fries. It's these regional differences (or perhaps it is just a Hobee's thing) that I find fascinating about new places.

The conversation opened up with an inquiry into The Great Big Mess that all the information capturing we do seems to create. After a great deal of inquiry about job text, performance metrics, and the tossing around of the word "orthogonal" more than a few times, we came to a tentative conclusion that the ideal system would have the following characteristics:

• minimal overhead in note taking and information capture
• not necessary to do a structuring pass to make the notes useful
• available everywhere and anywhere

This is the DREAM SYSTEM, and on first glance it seems untenable. Note taking is essentially the entire scope of information capture; anything we think we should be able to recall later is fair game. This includes conversations in the hallway, planning meetings, things on the Internet, email email email, and pieces of documents scattered across dozens of computer systems. A great deal of our time is spent processing all this raw input into useful resources (or it should be); the seminal information system designer Douglas Engelbart had observed that much of our time is spent just doing clerical work. TThe percentage of time spent being CREATIVE (like, actually making something) is pretty small. Once you have your nuggets all in a row, you naturally want to have them accessible. This is a form of magic. I think the reason devices like smart phones, PDAs, and even Moleskines and Hipsters are so popular is because they are arcane artifacts in a mundane world filled with ordinary information. At least they would be, if they actually worked. Right now, these systems function because we spend a lot of energy maintaining them with methodologies like Getting Things Done and 7 Habits. That isn't quite magic, though...what we want is something we DON'T have to work at constantly, because we're lazy and believe we have better things to do. Even if we force ourselves to do them, we don't enjoy it.

I've written about productivity systems in the past in terms of the importance of context, but lately my emphasis has shifted to continuity as being even more fundamental when it comes to doing stuff.

1. If you are just doing without thinking, you'll make progress, but maybe not the right progress.
2. If you are doing within an understood context, you have an idea of how your work will be applied; therefore your work is theoretically better.
3. If you are maintaining continuity in doing, you have a form of momentum that tells you what to do next, because it follows from what you just did.

The better user interfaces I've seen have addressed context through intelligent screen layout and functional grouping, but I haven't seen anything that really pays attention to continuity. My paper-based tools tend to enforce continuity probably because I need it; I don't have a manager who's job would be to direct my energies along fruitful paths. The modern knowledge worker has so many things going on that it's impossible to maintain continuity of everything, so you're forced to do it very badly or learn to shut things out. For people who want to do more, they turn to a methodology that ensures that they ARE maintaining continuity; this is one of the strengths of GTD, though it doesn't help you with WHAT you should be doing to achieve your desires. That's a different system.

After realizing that we were chasing a system spec that was basically asking for the moon, our brainstorming became more animated. Some of the suggestions (that I think I can share):

• Maintaining several distinct information data streams, based on "beautiful filters", that create themselves without you having to be involved. Instead, you use days of the week as continuity. When you need information from a particular area, you go and dip back into it.

• Creation of a universal work/life filtering language that imposes a standard continuity description language on different information sources.

• Capture metadata about the day by recording what you see throughout the day with Tivo-like camera glasses; when something important happens, you press a button to timestamp that moment and say something about what it is. Since a lot of interesting information is recognized only after it has been observed, the digital rewind capability ensures you don't miss anything.

• Get email programs to re-implement really excellent conversational threading, and provide a visual overlay tool that you can use to create a continuity of relevance and context. In other words, methods of organizing who conversations, not just tagging individual items. Nerd analogy: Sort of like using Ethereal to isolate HTTP packet traffic, filter out the non-http stuff, and reconstruct the actual back-and-forth between client and server.

• Create "Project Manager ELIZA", a chatterbot that can be used as a tool for continuity reflection and conversational memory storage. The theory is that maybe all we need is someone to talk to about what we're doing, constantly, to maintain our own continuity. ELIZA is known for taking the user's text input, extracting nouns and ideas it recognizes through simple pattern matching, and then spitting back a canned reply using those words. The results can sometimes be very insightful, and certainly they are just as good as the average "bad project manager" :-) Combine this with conversation logging, and the ability to just tell the chatterbot to remember things for you, and you might have a pretty decent personal assistant that doesn't cost you anything.

There were various products mentioned throughout the night in this context: OmniFocus, OmniGraffle, Microsoft OneNote, 37Signals Basecamp / HighRise / Backpack, That Mac Program That Keeps Track Of What You Are Looking (name?), Tablet PCs, and Moleskines are what I remember.

RSS Feeds

Some readers have had problems with the RSS feed updating multiple times for the same article. I've started seeing this too in the email subscriptions, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why certain posts kept reappearing. I finally dipped into Expression Engine's RSS template and looked around to see what actually goes in there, and after some reading have tried changing:

<guid>{title_permalink=blog}#When:{gmt_entry_date format="%H:%i:%sZ"}</guid>

to

<guid>{title_permalink=blog}</guid>

From what I can tell about RSS feeds, the "globally unique identifier" (GUID) is supposed to be unique but is otherwise just a string. I don't know if there are strange inconsistencies happening in the way {gmt_entry_date} is producing its output as a HH:MM:SS...maybe my server is wobbling slightly on the way seconds are being reported. And wouldn't the date of the post be a more stable GUID string? Anyway, I just nuked that whole part and I hope the RSS problem fixes itself.

Hot Sauces and Yummy Tacos

Two culinary food finds on this trip. First, this is an excellent spicy hot sauce:

My cousin Ben, who tries every hot sauce he comes across, turned me on to this. He warned me to use only a little bit. I spooned on just a bit more than he suggested, and my mouth was scorched in the most loving yet alarming way. The entire top of my scalp started to sweat profusely and my eyes filled with tears of joy and consternation. At the same time, it was more than just heat...there was flavor and warmth and a feeling of some accomplishment. The heat lingers too, becoming stronger over the next 5-10 minutes, so be careful. Really yummy.

We also had lunch at a place called Plaza Garibaldi in San Jose, which had these tacos:

They were good in a way I didn't expect: as an ensemble cast of ingredients, each offering its own contribution to the overall taste. For me, my reference point for tacos are Taco Bell and the numerous so-so Mexican restaurants scattered around New England. The tacos were not intensely flavored, and because of that there was a much more interesting flavor arc. It was subtle like a quiet passage in a piece of classical music, requiring you to listen carefully so you can catch what is going on. I liked them quite a bit, but in a reflective way.

Desktop Grilling

Last Christmas, a good friend of mine surprised me an indoor electric grill. I was surprised in that Why, I never considered getting one of these way, where you're actually not sure what you're going to do with the gift. I like grilling outside and burning stuff, and the idea of doing this in my house didn't seem like quite a good idea because of two problems:

1. My kitchen doesn't have a good exhaust for high-heat cooking, not that my crap stove can generate the tens of thousands of BTUs I'd need to make a decent stir fry. The exhaust issue is related to the second problem:

2. My overly-sensitive smoke detectors, which readily go off if I even boil a lot of water. On second thought, the smoke detectors are probably just right, but it's still pretty annoying.

Because of this, I couldn't even conceive of grilling in the house. This course of action had, in the past, produced too much smoke and anxiety to be fun. So the gift, after an initial period of admiration, was left in the box unused and forgotten.

Fast forward a year, and I stumbled upon the grill again while cleaning my office. With the wisdom that advancing age must have bestowed upon me, I could immediately see a new application for the grill, and this was entirely due to the grill being in my office. You see, my office is vented to the outside. It's in the basement next to the storage room, which is also host to the litterbox for my cats. One of the first things I did after I started working down here with the cats was to figure out how to exhaust the fumes from their sandy deposits. Step 1 was to get a Littermaid Automatic Scooping Litterbox. Step 2, after the Littermaid failed to completely contain the smell, was to visit Home Depot to by an electric ventillation fan and an outside vent pipe that would fit in the tiny basement window. With one portable Ground Fault Interruptor outlet for the fan (just in case) and some duct tape to seal the vent pipe to the window, I now constantly vent the nastiness into the Great Outdoors where it belongs. There have been some additional side benefits too: visiting smokers can actually smoke in my office when it's cold out, and the smoke gets sucked outside pretty quickly.

Anyway, I reasoned, what works for cigarette smoke and litterbox odor probably would work for the gently smoking meats and sizzling steaks. So I cleared off the top of my drafting table and set up the grill:

The grill itself, a nice West Bend electric, is about the size of a large scanner, fitting approximately 4 burger patties at once with a flat area off to the side suitable for toasting buns. Unlike my mom's ancient electric skillet from the 70s, the electric grill unit is immersible in water (simplifying cleaning considerably) and has a separate drip pan that fits underneath it. The manual instructs you to fill the drip pan with water, which is a good trick to make cleanup easier (the grease doesn't harden and char). I have tried this in conventional ovens but it tends to create steam at the same time, creating a mushy gray yuckiness on the bottom of the meat. I was pleased to see that this grill didn't seem have that problem when I tested it just now with lightly-salted cross-cut beef short ribs marinated with a touch of low-sodium soy sauce. Overall cooking time was around 15 minutes per batch. While the smoky charcoal taste was lacking, the convenience of working and grilling in the same space was, dare I say, exhilarating. I can see a bit of grease that has escaped, so this isn't the sort of thing I would do every day, but it's just a bit crazy, which is what I needed today :-)

Inka Pen

I've been writing way too much heavy stuff about focus lately, so it's time for a quick gear break!

I ordered an Inka Pen from ThinkGeek a few weeks ago, hoping to use it as a replacement for the flat pens I've been using. While I like the flat pens, they are not quite as durable in the pocket, and despite their relative thinness they tend to bulge out of my reporter-style Moleskine notebooks. Wear and tear is also increased because I carry the notebook in my back pocket, which makes the flat pen tend to chew its way out of the pocket. Not good.

Construction

The Inka pens are pretty cool, having been designed for extreme conditions by its inventor, Greg Adelman. From the website:

Lightweight, watertight and built to withstand harsh environments. The pressurized ink cartridge ensures the pen will write wet or dry at any angle, any temperature, and any altitude.

I was a little skeptical about the robustness of the pen, because I could imagine the steel barrel warping or other some similar disaster occurring. This post on Kickstart News, however, offers some heartening detail about the pen's machined outer barrel and carbon-fiber inner body construction.

I've been carrying the Inka around on my keychain for about a week, and I haven't yet noticed any warping or even scratching. We shall see how it holds up over the long term, but two small details give me hope: the end of the steel outer body, which you can see above, is utterly round and smoothly polished, unlike just about every mass-market pen I've ever seen. The pen also screws together without any scratchiness or scraping sensation, again unlike just about any other pen I've owned. This is a precision-made object.

The pen itself is comprised of several unscrewable components. You can use the pen in two ways:

• Pull the pen straight out of the outer body tube. It's held in place with friction from a blue o-ring. The pen is short, but usable.
• Assemble a full-size pen. Unscrew the pen from the key ring cap, then screw the mini pen to the end of the outer barrel. The result is a full-sized pen that feels pretty good in the hand.

The one down side I've found about the Inka pen is that it got me held up at the TSA security line. It didn't help that I was also carrying a stubby plastic pen shaped like a small cigarette and mechanical lead engineering pencil with a very cool double-clutch lead gripping mechanism on top of the usual laptop gear. My laptop bag must have looked like a bomb maker's tool kit. :-)

Mysteries of the Gym, Part I

I finally signed up for a gym membership, having realized that it's actually cheaper than my daily Starbucks habit, and therefore actually quite a good deal by comparison. At an average of $5 a day, the Starbucks habit costs me about $100/month. The gym membership will be costing me about $500 for the first year, minus a $200 yearly health insurance reimbursement, for a grand total of $300/year. After the first year, the cost will be $20/month, with no lock-in. With the health insurance reimbursement, the cost will be a mere $40/year. This is a no-brainer.

For my first year, I opted to sign up for program consisting of 5-7 individual 1-hour sessions with one of the club trainers. After that, there are 30 minute follow up sessions every so often. Although this costs $99, I figured it was expertise worth paying for since I know absolutely nothing about exercise.

OMG WHAT DO I WEAR

I am such a newbie that I didn't even know what to wear. The general consensus is not to be too flashy or too slovenly. This article covered the basics, and after some more digging I settled on the following.

• Plain Cotton Dark T-shirt --- I went with basic black microweave wicking (cost: about $7). White t-shirts apparently can stain yellow from deodorant running. Gray t-shirts turn dark from pit sweat...gross! A friend of mine also suggested that I wash the shirt every day so it's fresh. I bought an extra one just in case I forgot.

• Plain Cotton shorts --- Not too baggy, but not too revealing. Should end just above the knee, to avoid looking like a dork. Mine are gray with a drawstring. About $7 also.

• Plain White Cotton Socks --- Cushioned socks, not going past the ankle. I went with the ankle-length socks from Haynes, 83% Cotton, at $9 for 6 pairs. They seemed to work fine.

• Training Shoes --- Cross trainers apparently have the arch support you need for this kind of exercise. I already had a pair of Nike Air cross trainers, about $40, from before. They're white with dark blue trim. They weren't so good for basketball, but they seem to have held up for today's session.

Some other stuff I forgot to get:

• Gym Bag --- I carried around my stuff in a plastic shopping bag like a yutz. Never again!

• Gym Lock --- I guess they make you bring your own locks for the lockers. Duh.

• Towel --- I brought a bath towel. It's way too big. I need to get a smaller one.

• Water Bottle --- Not necessary, as it turns out. Just go to the water fountain.

WEEK 1 - ORIENTATION, CARDIOVASCULAR

I had to fill out a health history form to determine if I had any pre-existing medical conditions. The only ones I weren't sure of: blood pressure and cholesterol. The last time I had a full physical they were fine (I was surprised), but it's been a few years so I should really schedule a doctor's appointment.

The trainer asked me some questions about what I wanted to accomplish with my exercise, and I replied as follows:

• Learn about Fitness and the Variety of Fitness Activities --- I really don't know that much about physical exercise. The last time I did anything regular was when I was forced to in High School.

• Improve strength across the board --- I don't want to have giant muscles, but I want to know my body can perform when it needs to.

• Know what exercises might match with training for what sports --- For example, what kind of exercises do rock climbers do? I was just curious.

• Lose weight --- I figure that this would come naturally while doing all the other stuff, so I listed it last.

• Not be bored --- This is the one that I am most concerned about. Is the gym becomes a chore, or doesn't deliver results that are tangible, then I will lose interest. I don't want this to happen.

The trainer, John, nodded through all these questions, and told me that the first thing to do was to focus on cardiovascular exercise. Minimum: 30 minutes a day of elevated heart rate. So for today, we focused on a variety of machines in the Cardio room. John indicated that we'd start with the hardest machines, and end with the easiest ones. I think the idea was to get the heart rate elevated quickly.

As we walked to the machine area, I asked if I had to stretch. The trainer said it wasn't necessary with these machines and that it was bad to do when you were "cold", but stretching AFTERWARDS was critical. This not-stretching thing in the beginning was new to me, and I'm thinking there must be more to the story. I had always equated "warming up" with "stretching", but maybe this isn't the case.

All the machines had a "quick start" button on them, which allows you to just get the machine moving and measuring your heart rate, calories burned, and so on. They all have programmed modes too to simulate different environments.

Here are the machines I used today:

• Stair Climbing Machine --- This was kind of like an endless staircase, like an escalator, with adjustable resistance. I actually like climbing stairs, so this was kind of fun. Although my leg muscles aren't as strong as they used to be, I used to ride bikes a lot when I was a kid. They were single-speed, short crank bikes, and I lived on a mountain...I had incredibly strong leg muscles, which surprised people because I was kind of a pale geeky-looking kid. It did get the heart rate going quickly, I must say.

At this point, I asked questions about how to monitor one's body for trouble...when was I over exerting myself? What should I pay attention to? John said that I would learn to listen to my body. Feeling the "burn" in the muscles is good, but it's not good if it's in the joints. If I felt dizzy or light headed or short of breath, stop and walk it off by going to the water fountain. Don't just stop everything...keep moving. I felt a little light headed, so I got off the stair climber and got some water.

• Stepper Machine --- I think that's what it was caused...I privately thought of it as the "bouncy" machine. You stand in it and lift each leg up in a kind of bouncing motion, like you are a hop-scotching bunny. I actually liked this machine a lot too, but mostly for the silly reasons above.

• Elliptical --- This was the freakiest machine of the bunch, with a foot motion somewhere between bicycling and walking. I thought of it as "peddle-shuffling". Apparently it is very good for working the butt, which might explain the number of women using it. I didn't particularly care for the first one I used, though I could just feel the years falling away from my ass (or so I imagined). The second variant of the Elliptical had hand levers attached to it, so as you peddle-shuffle and move your arms at the same time. The motion was sort of like a toddler learning how to cross-country ski. I liked this second variant a lot, because it moved my arms more. I commented to the trainer that I liked this one because of that.

• Treadmill --- Realizing I had never used one before by the way I stood on it, the trainer warned me to put my feet to the side of the conveyor belt before hitting the QUICKSTART button (all machines had one). Thus, I narrowly avoided one of those cartoon gym moments, when the noob flies off the treadmill. I wasn't looking forward to the treadmill, because it looked super boring, but it actually sort of grew on me. You have to maintain a fluid rhythm to stay in place. There's also TV to watch. You can kind of move and zone out. Not nearly as bad as I thought. The trainer showed me some alternative standing and holding positions too, suggesting I try taking longer strides if I wanted when I inquired about it. He said 2.5 miles per hour was a good walking speed, though clearly there were people actually running on the treadmill. They looked like gazelles.

• Stationary Bike --- Sit on a bike, and peddle. I was bored before I even got on it. I guess when I'm on a bike, I want to go somewhere. I guess it wasn't a bad way to cool down.

Afterwards, the trainer showed me how to stretch out:

• Leg Stretches --- sit against the wall on the mat, one left straight out, the other pulled in. Reach toward the stretched out leg until you feel it pulling on the backs of the leg. Hold for 30 seconds. Switch to other leg.

• Squatting Stretch --- put the bottom of your feet against each other, pull them in, let the legs flop to the side like you are sitting crossed-legged, and stretch the inner thigh. Hold 30 seconds.

• Lower Back Stretch --- Lie on back, relax the upper body and make sure it's contacting the mat. Lift both knees toward you, hugging with arms. Make sure upper body is relaxed. Pull them up, vary the machine a bit. Do this for like 30-40 seconds.

• Stretch The Body --- Lying on back, stretch arms up above your head, and get as LONG as you can.

At this point, I was ready for my carton of milk and cupcake, but there were none forthcoming. I even asked about it, but all I got was a laugh in response. Harrumph.

WRAP UP

All in all, I did 40 minutes of cardio, and I got sweaty, and I actually felt really good afterwards. We'll see if this is the case tomorrow...I may be sore. Next week, I have a second session scheduled to go over the weight training machines. Until then, I'm planning on going every day to do about 30-40 minutes of the same thing to see what it's like and try to get addicted to it as a habit.

Before I left, I asked about eating beforehand. The trainer said not to eat too much, no more than 1/4 of a meal. I mentioned that I typically don't eat breakfast, and he said (predictably) that this was the MOST IMPORTANT MEAL OF THE DAY. I asked him why, and he said it was because while we're sleeping, our body metabolism shuts off. The first meal of the day signals it to turn back on again, and start burnin' calories. I also learned that the reason you want to eat a lot of small regular meals is so your body doesn't go into "calorie hoarding" mode. The description reminded me of older people who grew up during a depression or wartime famine; they had been so conditioned not to know when their next meal would be, they would hoard as much as possible. You probably know someone of an older generation who loves going to CostCo and buys tons of laundry detergent, way more than anyone reasonably (in today's age) would need. But you know, it just puts them at ease so they don't bite your head off :-)

So, if you want your body to run efficiently, you need to maintain it at predictable intervals. This covers sleeping times, drinking enough water, and when and what you are eating. The overall principle seems to be surprise your body as little as possible, except perhaps in the case of weight training when you DO want your body to start hoarding muscle.

I'm looking forward to trying this all myself again tomorrow. Overall, not a bad "first day of school" :-)

» The mystery continues in Part 2...

Catching Up

I've been very bad about writing new articles for the blog. Here's an omnibus catch-up post!

SOCIAL

It's possible I'm a little burned out from the large amount of social and business networking I've been doing. I've turned some kind of corner and am now enjoying meeting people. This is due, largely, to having a much better idea of what it is that I'm doing, and how I relate to people personally.

WORK

I also have been doing some interesting work. One that's just getting started is some technical graphics consulting for a Holocaust museum interactive, working with my friends at Inquirium once again. They're a company that specialized in design for education. I may get a chance to work with some sweet real-time graphics technology. I did my first real print piece for a game studio out in Aliso Viejo, nothing fancy, mind you. However, the experience of using InDesign to lay out a book got me interested in

BUSINESS

On the Printable CEO front, I've been working with my buddy Scott to price out some likely printing scenarios for a first run of bew Emergent Task Planner sheets. What I may do is put up a preorder form to just get an idea of who wants how many, and then we'll price out the print run so we cover the cost of printing plus some profit.

I also have a few articles stewing in the back of my mind, and it's related to my new business focus around three key ideas that I've been developing over the past couple of years.

• Practice Investigative Design -- I recently realized that I think more like an investigative journalist or detective. I enjoy getting behind surface facts to find out the real truths and motivations. My design process is heavy on questions and background digging, mapping the relationships between individuals and their motivations, and then coming up with a design concept that works with all of them. This is what I love doing.

• Apply The Scientific Creative Method -- I'm not a naturally-expressive artist, and in the past used to wonder what was wrong with me. It turns out that I'm just expressive when I'm applying a process based my "scientific creative method". In essence, it's using my analytical brain to design and build things that, ultimately, are judged based on how they make me feel.

• Use Storytelling as a Design Tool -- I'm convinced that physical environments shape our thoughts, feelings, and actions far more quickly than abstract ideas. I also am convinced that the vast majority of people understand themselves in context to the world through stories and storytelling. If you combine storytelling techniques with the physical world, you can create very powerful tools for behavioral change. Interacting with physical props, scenes, and characters in day-to-day life is much more compelling than passively reading a book. I am thinking of storytelling and design is a very broad sense, including different ways of presenting stories (film, theater) and of creating the elements that support the presentation (set building, cinematography, sound, prop-making).

These are three approaches that I can get really excited about, and I could write and explain these all day long. Which leads me to the next step: fixing the website so people can find this content, and see what it is I do. I've been looking at Expression Engine, on and off, to figure out how to transition things over.

RELATIONSHIPS

It seems that a number of my conscientious female friends, either on the verge of getting married or crazed by the summer heat, have spontaneously decided that I needed to be pushed in the area of romance before I rot away on the vine. So I've been thinking a lot about what a RELATIONSHIP is, what LOVE is, what I am LOOKING for, who might be looking for ME, and of course where to FIND it. I think I am doing an admirable job of displacing my unease with this process by over-analyzing everything---it's a topic that's closely related to identity, purpose, and fulfillment, which isn't that much of a leap from productivity, right?

Um, right?

It suddenly occurs to me that statements like this may be a factor in why I'm perennially single :-)

BALANCE

I have been actually hitting a pretty good rhythm the past couple weeks as far as work and social life is concerned, but this has been at the expense of blogging and working on the website. Plus, this is the week that I'm going to start a new habit to go to the gym. This week I'll be trying to resolve the whole "blogging versus business versus fitness versus social networking" thing.

So that's what's been going on. I'll try to maintain a regular posting schedule this week.

Grogginess

So it's the second day of a 2-week experiment to wake up every day at 630AM. Despite getting to sleep at 10:30PM and falling asleep right away, I am feeling very groggy. So. Groggy.

Last night's sleep cycle was weird...I woke up a couple times but didn't remember anything until 4AM rolled around, when I became very wide awake. My brain was alert, thinking of things to do, while the rest of my body was saying, "C'mon, go back to sleep!" I tried focusing on my breathing, trying to get into the experience of just letting air in and out of my body. It hadn't occured to me before that maybe meditation was simply about not thinking so darn much. I eventually fell asleep again after about an hour and a half, but when the alarm went off at 630AM it was very difficult to roll out of bed. The morning exercise regimen failed to wake me up, though it did get the blood flowing so I could make it to the coffee shop before 8AM and do the planning for the day.

It's 930AM now, and I have my daily plan set before me. My mind, though, is unfocused and weary, and the reason I'm writing this blog post is to kickstart the mental process. Even now, I'm not quite alert, writing automatically with my head listing about 30 degrees to the right. I need some grogginess solutions!

I decided to see what Steve Pavlina had to say on the subject, as a reader had mentioned his site the other day. His article How to get up right away when your alarm goes off had a crazy-genius suggestion to practice getting up when you're already awake...the idea is to condition yourself to do things when any alarm sounds, and by practicing this getting up becomes easier. I had a related thought recently about reducing my "lag time" between thought and action; Pavlina's approach is very pragmatic and implementable. Bravo!

In the meantime, I'm still feeling groggy, but am slightly more alert, because my curiosity has become activated. I am feeling the urge to do some more investigation of this sleepiness topic. Which itself, I think, is a clue that I'm not actually sleepy, I'm just not that excited about doing the work today. Yesterday was all about starting a new habit, and that was exciting. Today is just day #2, and there's work to be done. Nothing exciting or glamorous about that, so my mind already anticipating being bored and is playing tricks on me. Which I find very irritating.

So...I just need to get past that.

I'm going to go drink a cup of water, do some jumping jacks, and knock off a few of those "boring" tasks. I know that doing these tasks are necessary and interesting once I get them done. For example, by the end of the day I should be more conversant with Flash video and Version 2 components, which would be awesome. However, because I know I can do it, the intellectual challenge isn't there.

I'm reminded of an observation I made Impulsive versus Methodical Action, regarding the drudgery of doing lab work:

Progress is made by keeping your head down and pushing, often without a promise of immediate reward, until it is done.

I have to clarify that "without a promise of immediate reward" actually means "deferred reward". The impulsive side of me enjoys the quest for knowledge as it is happening, so the reward is immediate. The application of that knowledge through process takes time, and the reward is deferred. For people that enjoy the mechanical process side of things, the reward would be immediate. In my case, I have to be aware that my brain is going to try to distract me with more immediately-gratifying things. Like writing a blog post clarifying my thoughts, which in a way is helpful.

SUMMARY: Grogginess == Brain Tricking Me