What I've Learned So Far

“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.)