nehal : Feb 3, 2010
So I’m a little late in getting this posted, but I finally did it.
- Financial
- Earn $5K from sources outside my primary income
- I sold stock options, but I hardly count that.
- Give more to charity this year than I did last year
- Finish building and maintain a 6-month emergency fund
- I think I have about 6 months now (probably a bit more). I think I need to continue extending this to a 12-month cushion in this economy.
- Save $10K for our 2010 trip to Africa
- Sitting in the bank account, but it’ll likely mean dipping into the cushion.
- Limit spending on dining out
- Travel
- Plan our trip to the UK (already paid for airfare in 2008)
- Organize the Africa trip for 2010
- Planning to head out at the end of July. Waiting for airfares to come down (crossing fingers)
- Visit Mom & Dad in Chicago
- Went home to Chicago again in June, but unfortunately not for a pleasure; Dad passed away on June 24.
- Friends & Family
- Call someone I haven’t spoken to in a while once a week
- This one was tough to keep up with. A valiant effort, but fell to the way-side
- Work
- Re-assess my career goals at my current employer
- Job = $. Period.
- The year ended pretty much the same way. A 5% pay cut didn’t help (though we got it back as a bonus at the end of the year).
- Trying to decide if I want to go for a promotion.
- Re-establish discipline in day-to-day task management
- The daily deluge of email and being pulling 20 directions took its toll.
- Health & Fitness
- Stay on the Zone diet and track my progress using FitDay
- Never got this going. Doing better now.
- Perform 30 pull-ups without rest
- Got to 26 during a workout!
- Run a 5K in under 23 minutes
- Perform 1 muscle-up
- Getting close; need more practice
- Still needed more practice
- Perform Fran as prescribed in under 12 minutes
- It was tough at 85lbs, but still managed to do it in under 10 min then
- Tried it with 95lbs. Still tough. 16 minutes-plus.
- Learning
- Read 12 books
- Catch up on, and stay current with, my magazine subscriptions
- Photography
- Take one photography-specific trip (could be anywhere)
- does my trip to India count?
- Sell 5 stock photos
nehal : Nov 30, 2009
Something I find myself doing quite a bit is conducting my own little life experiments. I get an idea or hear about one, do a little research, devise some sort of “experiment”, and try it out. Though they’ve been pretty major subjects of late, my experiments have not been isolated to diet or exercise. I’ve experimented with personal finance, investing, organization, and time-management strategies as well.
The experiment is always pretty informal; I don’t start with any clear objective nor do I log any hard data. The objective is something like “try it for thirty days and see how it goes.” As a result, my conclusions are more of a “gut feel” than anything scientific. Sometimes I don’t need to be able to say, “I’ve lost x pounds following y diet or z fitness regimen”. Instead, “I feel healthier, stronger, faster, and more energetic than I’ve ever been” can be a much better, if subjective, result.
It’s got me thinking, though. What if I could quantify these results? What if I could track and later cite how much my 5K time has improved, how much more I can lift, or how much more time or money I have as the result of a specific experiment? Are there too many variables in life to be able to run controlled experiments and draw definitive conclusions?
What experiments do you run on yourself? Do you track data? How?
nehal : Oct 19, 2009
[ Also posted at CrossFit Genesis ]
What am I talking about? Challenging yourself. Pushing your limits. At the gym. On the field. At work. In the classroom. It’s the best way to grow and adapt. It is too easy to become complacent and settle into a routine, only to find yourself bored and wondering what happened to the last six months of your life.
You will be surprised how quickly you can adapt and find what was once daunting and uncomfortable is now doable. Your limits are not fixed walls; they move when you get close enough often enough. Just look back to where you were a year ago or a month ago. If you’ve been challenging yourself, I guarantee you’ve improved.
As a concrete example, we have to look no farther than our Fight Gone Bad IV Results. Nearly everyone who participated improved their score, and some by a large margin. During the month of the challenge, coaches John and Phil chose a variety of workouts to push our limits on the movements and exercises used in Fight Gone Bad and stimulate our bodies (and minds) to adapt.
So run that extra mile. Take on another project. Throw another five pounds on the bar. “Push the envelope. Watch it bend” – Tool
nehal : Aug 26, 2009
[Also posted on CrossFit Genesis ]
I’ve had the pleasure of attending a couple of seminars where Brad Kearns was a speaker. One of his ideas that really resonates with me is that your best results come when your motivation is pure. When you train because you actually enjoy it and you’re not wrapped up in how you’ll perform at your next workout or event, you simply do better. You spending less energy fretting about performance and letting your body and mind just perform. Think back to school – when you got yourself all worked up about an exam in a subject you didn’t particularly enjoy, how did you do? Compare that to a subject you actually had a keen interest in. Did you even worry about those exams?
Do you worry about how you’ll perform in your next “Fran” or “Fight Gone Bad!”?
My best triathlon performance came when I told myself to just go and have fun. Prior to that, I had hired a coach who laid out a training program which I tried to follow for 6 or 8 months. I got myself wrapped up in my performance, missed workouts, worried more, missed more workouts, and the cycle continued until I showed up for the Auburn International Triathlon (and didn’t finish). I had psyched myself out and got so worked up about training that I didn’t actually train. After that, I took a little time off, got my head on straight, and just decided to have fun with it. Training came more naturally and my workouts became fun again. Fast forward one month to my performance at the San Jose International Triathlon where I still remember having a smile on my face for most of the race.
The next time you find yourself anxious about how you’ll perform on a workout or at an event, take a deep breath and remind yourself to just enjoy it.
nehal : Aug 12, 2009
[ Also posted at CrossFit Genesis ]
Looking back at this year’s CrossFit Games, I was very impressed at the variety of workouts the competitors had to perform; winning required doing well in all aspects of fitness – cardiovascular, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy. That got me thinking about how that notion translates to real life.
Because we have so many demands on our time, attention, and energy, it seems we are all in a constant struggle to find and keep balance in our lives. We work. We go to school. We exercise. We socialize with friends. We spend time with our families. We recreate. We have friends or relatives who spend countless hours working only to see their health and relationships suffer. We had friends at school who spent more time socializing than they did studying. We wonder what elite athletes and CEOs do for fun. And the interesting thing here is there is no single, static balance point; there will be multiple equilibria depending on who or what is demanding the most time, attention, and energy at various points in our lives.
Personally, I’ve only been able to maintain a sense of equilibrium temporarily – a week or two, at best. It seems something always happens to tip me off balance – an illness or injury, a demanding project at work, an upcoming competition, a family emergency, a night out with friends (and the resulting hangover), or simple boredom. Sometimes it is a little nudge and easy to recover, and sometimes it is a shove that requires me to find a new balance point. But that’s what keeps things interesting.
What do you do to find or regain balance in your life?