What I’ve Learned So Far

Bearing this photo in mind, you’ll note that I didn’t call it The Impressive Physique Project.

• What it is: a shirtless photo of myself, every day.
• The point: social reinforcement for my efforts to get myself into killer condition.
• The context: I’m going to turn 40 twenty-two months from now, I’ve never had a six-pack in my life, . . . and I want to achieve the latter before I achieve the former.

Please, no digs in the comments. But if you’re interested to track my progress, you can see the Flickr stream for these photos by clicking here.

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Related posts:

• It Begins Here, Again.
• Exposed.

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Probably not for me . . .

[This is one of those things that you write once so you can refer people to it over and over. If you’re not interested in my academic history or future, feel free to pass this one by — especially because it’s quite long.]

You’ll have guessed the punchline of this story from its title: it’s likely that I’ll never finish the Ph.D. in United States history that I started in 2004 at the University of Texas. This post explains why. (And don’t worry — it’s a story with a happy ending.) Read the rest of this entry »

Me, yesterday:

My verdict on my physique & overall fitness: meh.

To give myself credit:

• I’m 38 and, at 5′10″, I’ve kept my weight between 155 and 168 since I filled out as a junior in high school — with the exception of the second half of last year, when I intentionally went 10 pounds above the top end of that range by lifting weights and eating so as to put on more muscle. (You can see the results of that program, such as they were, via this link.)
• I just started a new job with a steep learning curve and a longer commute from home, so my time is more constrained than it was.
• The kids are out of school and out of camp, which again affects the time I have available for working out.
• I’ve been working out a little bit anyway.

To avoid giving excuses:

• So what?

The fact is, I haven’t been making the time to get in the shape I want to be in, whether that means lifting weights, walking in the cool of the morning, prepping healthy lunches in advance, or what have you.

So I’m publicizing my quest to do something better. The point isn’t to complain about where I am — because where I am is okay — but to make myself accountable for achieving something more-than-okay. For those of you who are interested in helping out with this, I’m asking you to help keep me accountable — and to help encourage my progress — via this blog.

I look to many sources of inspiration, but one I came back across this week is Dave Tate, who has been documenting his own progress in reshaping his body on the site for his company, EliteFTS. My outcomes will be very different from Dave’s, since (a) he’s a champion powerlifter, (b) fitness is his livelihood, (c) our physical frames are very different, (d) I’m never going to use nutritional supplements to the degree that he does, and, most importantly (e) my goals are different from his.

What are my goals? That will be the topic of my next fitness post, so stay tuned . . . 

Just kicking the tires on a new computer setup as I ponder a long stream of topics to discuss here.

Expect more, soon.

Meantime, how’s by you?

Exciting news for me: this week I start my new job as a content marketer for BreakingPoint Systems here in Austin.

Just some of the reasons I’m stoked:

• BreakingPoint is a small(ish), fast-paced company that will provide me with daily opportunities to expand my business skills.
• The job description might have been written specifically with me in mind. Besides drawing heavily on my writing skills, the role will build on the chops I laid down as a marketer and social media pro over the past three years at Hoover’s. And even though I don’t already have specific grounding in the network security hardware business, I’ll be able to draw on the seven prior years that I spent in Hoover’s editorial department, when I covered hard-core tech like semiconductors and scientific instrumentation.
• I get to work alongside my good friend Kyle Flaherty. [Cue Troy McClure voice from The Simpsons . . . ] You may remember Kyle from his role as my co-panelist in this year’s South by Southwest Interactive session on sports metaphors. [End Troy McClure voice.] I know I’ll learn a lot from Kyle, as well as from our boss Pam O’Neal, whom I’ve already known for a couple of years in Austin’s social media circles.
• Kyle and I talk a lot with each other about fitness, but now we’ll get to work out together regularly. (He tells me that this was the aspect of my hire that made him most skittish, but that’s only because he knows I will CRUSH him.)

It’s bittersweet to leave Hoover’s after ten (!) years. Besides being the place where I’ve had the longest job tenure — I worked there longer than I lived in my boyhood hometown — Hoover’s is also where I learned the most about business, as both an analyst and practitioner, and where I made the most good friends in business.

I’m particularly grateful that Hoover’s gave me three starts in my career: as a full-time writer, as a marketer, and as a social media practitioner. I’m also pleased to say that I worked for ten years there without ever reporting to a bad manager, which sounds like some kind of miracle unless you’ve been inside Hoover’s walls and grasped its tradition as a workplace where people treat each other like human beings.

Oh, and in case anyone’s curious, it was purely my decision to leave Hoover’s. I was ready for something new, the opportunity at BreakingPoint opened up at a perfect time, . . . and the rest is history. I’m glad I worked on — and in some cases built — the ground floor of Hoover’s social media efforts, and I look forward to seeing how the company grows in years to come.

So, the short version: cool new job, nifty people and product, starts Wednesday, woo-hoo!

Comments? 

“Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.”

–Henry David Thoreau

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(Photo by HDC Photography, used under a CC-Noncommercial license.)

My buddy Chris Brogan said this on Facebook:

Oh formletters. I do love you. Thanks, “friends” who use form letters. I love you all. (And any time my company’s done it on my behalf, forget me, too.) We’re all putting on robot pants.

To my ear, it echoes a line of thought he just espoused on his blog:

So why jump [from an airplane]?

Because I’m afraid. Afraid enough.

I’m afraid of lots of minor things in life: confrontation, my own faults, not working hard enough, things like that. You know what tackling a big fear is going to do to those small fears?

Either way, it’s about freeing yourself from your mental habits. The robot-pants thing we could file under the headings of “Shake It Up” or “Think for Yourself.” But combined with the skydiving thing, I’d put it under a rubric I call . . .

Counter-Aversion

If you have aversions to drinking yourself into a stupor or cheating on your spouse or running your car off the road, keep those.

But your aversion to taking the necessary risks to build your career? Or to pursue your dreams? Or to make yourself vulnerable to someone you love? Or to admit that you’re wrong? Or to make the phone call you’ve been dreading?

Chuck ‘em.

In fact, go out of your way to chuck ‘em. Violate your sacred boundaries. Rush to do the thing you know you need to do, before your defenses can kick in . . . and before you’re ready.

“Ready” may never come. So just launch ahead without it.

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(Image by GogDog, used under a Creative Commons Noncommercial license.)

Sadly, I think they stopped making TRS-80’s — like the one I had on my desk as a teenager — 25+ years ago.

Seriously, my old IBM ThinkPad is on its last legs, wheezing along stoically but not really getting things done in a way you’d want it to. It’s time for me to shop around for something newer / shinier / faster / better. And so I turn to you, my willing thralls crowdsourcing audience, for advice on what to buy.

Purchasing criteria:

• It must be a laptop — and smaller is better.
• This will be my primary computer away from my company office, so it has to be a warhorse.
• Less than $1,200, and ideally less than $1,000.
• I’m not a gamer, don’t watch movies on my computer, and don’t use any graphically intense apps like Photoshop, so it need not be fancy from a graphics card / memory standpoint.
• Open to buying a Mac, but I’ve been using PCs for a long time & have my methods down cold.
• Primary uses: writing (mostly in Word), blogging, e-mail, light spreadsheets, lots of Twitter (using Air apps), often running two browsers at a time.
• Open to used / refurbished, or would buy new if it’s worth it.

I’ve been very happy with my ThinkPad, and would consider getting a new one — but I’d like to hear as many good suggestions as I can get.

Your thoughts, O technophiles?

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(Photo by Jeff Kubina.)

May wasn’t nearly as successful as April for me in terms of exercise, but toward the end of the month I did get into a good groove with this circuit workout:

• Legs A — 3 sets of leg presses (typically 15 x 180#, 15 x 270#, 15 x 360#)
• Chest A — 3 sets of 15 dips
• Back A — 3 sets of 10 to 12 reps on a lat pull machine
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• Legs B — 3 sets of 15 per side box steps @ 24″
• Chest B — 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps dumbbell incline bench press
• Back B — either 3 sets of bent-over dumbbell rows, or just repeat Back A

I do all the “A” sets in rotation, boom-boom-boom, then do all the “B” sets in rotation. When I’m cooking, I can do all of this in less than 25 minutes.

Advantages of this approach:

• There’s a cardio / endurance element to go along with the resistance element. By the time you get a couple of rotations into this, your heart is really pumping.
• By extension, there seems to be a greater fat-burning effect to it — at least if the fit of my waistbands and the image that greets me in the mirror are any indication.
• It doesn’t take long. This is vital, given how hectic my work / life schedule has been lately.
• It doesn’t require planning. I actually enjoy it when I can sit down and futz with workout schedules that accommodate fancy split routines — back and biceps on Tuesday, chest and triceps on Wednesday, legs on Friday, etc. — but the hecticity* just referenced has been keeping me from executing such a fancy routine. Whole-body workouts like this are simple: if you didn’t exercise yesterday, do this routine; if you did this routine yesterday and have time for the gym today, do cardio and core work. Simple.

[* Yes, I did just coin “hecticity.” Please use it with my compliments.]

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(Image by Eric McGregor.)

Remember a little while back, when I wrote this?

Needed: an app for matchmaking.

Well, someone went and built it, and it runs off of Facebook. It’s called Thread.

Looks kinda cool.

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(Image by CHRIS230***, used under a BY-NC-SA license.)