The Antithesis of Serendipity

During sleep the level of external distractions is reduced to a peaceful empty set. Not only does the body go into a mode of rejuvenation, but the mind enters a trancelike subconscious processing state. It is within the confines of blissful slumber that we perform deep analysis on the myriad of life’s signals in order to make important decisions which are vital to our well being and happiness. 

It surprises me that there aren’t more startups and products which try and mimic the contemplative benefits of rest^. In a rush to claim eager venture capital, limited attention of news hungry tech journalists, and ultimately paying clients, most entrepreneurs chase after waining attention with deeper social integration, greater engagement, and interruption dressed up as viral sharing. What if the most profound gift a company can offer a client is a break? Perhaps the next startup trend is a form of enhanced silence, carved out of a day deprived of solitary contemplation.

Notes:
*=  To be clear, when I mention born again it is no way referring to a religious experience. Philosophical yes, spiritual maybe, religious hell no .

^= Charlie Crystle developed an app called Focus which monitored and cut off specific communication channels. His instincts are definitely on to something, but the interface demands the browser constantly be in control. Maybe a monitoring app that yields minutes visiting various information or social sites. Do browser histories already store this information? 

Related posts to rest and subconscious processing:

• Dream of Deus ex Machina
• Sleep Dep not all bad for creatives
• Enhanced Vital Energy
• Locate the Minimize Button for Exhaustion
• Our Minds Never Tire of Simulating Reality

I’m at the doc this morning getting my back examined. I decided to get checked out after a marathon of pain 3 mile walk with my wife yesterday evening. That type of walk is normally a few moments of relaxation for me, but felt like an eternity of effort. I listened to my body’s warning signals, “somethings outta whack”, and am hoping the specialists can figure out what’s wrong. My main objective is to ensure my pain isn’t a sign of something more serious. I just heard back and my bones are all in the right place. My X-rays were clear, so it’s likely soft tissue damage (injured muscles), which is comforting news.

Looking forward to getting back to my normal state of health and high functionality asap. There is work to be done! Jesse Ventura captured my sentiment best from the Predator, “I ain’t got time to bleed”.

Notes:
*= regular blogging is great for developing stronger communication and writing skills. I highly value connecting with folks who share my enthusiasm for startups, web dev, and the evolution social technology.

Keep Marching Forward, Each Step a Little Victory

My regular ten to fourteen mile morning walks have gotten a little tougher over the past year. I confess to adding significant extra padding, like a bear preparing for hibernation (30-40lbs). I skip breakfast during the week and eat a balanced lunch*. Long working days have lead to late dinners where I eat much more than I should. My wife’s a fantastic cook and baker which further increases the challenge of eating light.

Fitness is critical to productivity

Good health acts as an amplifier on all other activities. Concentration, drive, and effort are all at peak performance when we are fit. On the other hand, being less fit is a tax on every action. Between diminished enthusiasm and lethargy the cost is severe. On top of those costs, as fitness declines we become more prone to injury. I submit my lower back as a painful example.

Life Hacking

Maintaining fitness requires discipline, yet I have little in reserve after 15 hour days. I can clearly see where my daily habits go non-linear, leaving me with an opportunity to hack my own habits. The point in the day where I’m slipping (8pm) and dinner are the beach head I’ll target.

This week I’ll eat dinner earlier whenever possible, and in the cases when I can’t I’ll guzzle a pint of water before eating to trigger an earlier feeling of satisfaction. Beyond that I’ll squeeze in breakfast to shift my calorie consumption earlier and kick start my metabolism.

Notes:
*= a healthy lunch for me consists of a small sandwich, carrots, snack bar & fruit

Not rarely enough, our bodies remind us of just how machinelike we are by malfunctioning. My particular periodic malady is my lower back. Just about once per year (or two if I’m lucky) it decides to go on strike. The guilty pleasure that leads to this is no doubt my excessive walking* combined with overdosing on energy drinks and my size. The area becomes stiff and non-responsive making anything but lying on my back an excruciating labor, even sitting is only bearable for a few minutes after the minute or two spent struggling to achieve that position.

Needless to say, the trip to the doc to get anti inflammatories (muscle relaxants) is not one I look forward to. What I am optimistic about is the relief I’ll have by tomorrow. It’s a wonderfully liberating feeling having a great pain lifted.

The Good News

For the next day or two I’ll have time away from my regular hike-a-thon, programming, and my normal schedule. This humble reprieve enables me to take stock of things. I appreciate all the wonderful gifts life has granted me, as well as the small tokens I’ve worked hard for. Having time to reflect is a gift in of itself, albeit a painful one. I wish each of you very little time for reflection this year, stay healthy!

Notes:
*= I can’t impart how great of a habit walking ~80miles a week is. It makes the rest of each day much better and I’ll miss it dearly while my back recovers.

The Swine Strikes Back?

Wishful thinking wasn’t enough to be free and clear of this year’s flu back in September.  That was before things jumped the shark, and schools closed. I heard this morning from Bill at 7-11 that 160 kids were out sick yesterday at the local Port Jeff school. Take a few minutes to catch up on the flu trends and you’ll see how ruthlessly effective this years flu variants have been.

Ruby on Rails

Since I’m feeling terrible at home anyway, I decided this was a great time to dig into the Ruby on Rails tutorial mashup I had constructed from my web browsing. The Chief Tech of Victus Media Tyler has been kicking ass and taking names with RoR coding.  Sadly I haven’t been able to dig my teeth into this web framework yet. I spent a few days banging my head on building the victus media intelligent search/ads code locally with netbeans without success. I settled on starting with a simpler environment. Somehow during the netbeans setup, I mangled my gem directory and install of Ruby, so I started over and am following the advice here: Setting up Rails Development Environment on Windows Vista/XP by tabrez. After that simple install (it worked!) I decided to go with “Hello, World” Web Application in Ruby on Rails using console another great post by tabrez. I have since mixed in some MongoDB usage and am getting a gem error (no sqlite3), but there’s plenty of documentation on how to use mongoDB from Ruby here.

I’ve endeavored to put together a list of documentation sources I have gathered to help first time Ruby on Rails users (yeah Ruby’s new to me too). I should have this setup so others can edit and add on their favorite rails documentation. Here’s the link to the Google Spreadsheet.

Disclaimer on self help: The best advice is the direction you figure out for yourself. As I’ve mentioned several times, I try and think of changes or lifestyles that make sense from my personal experience and knowledge. I don’t profess to know what’s best for you, only you can make that decision. If what I write about clicks with your personal compass, please let me know.

Selflessness

The secret to maintaining a great feeling of energy each day is to focus your attention on service to others. For ourselves we can afford to be slackers and take it easy. When it comes to helping those who truly need us, sluggishness isn’t an option. We simply need to recognize the needs of folks that touch our existence, and push beyond our self made excuses to take action. This is no small feat.

The insulation and barriers we build to filter out calls for our attention are buried in selfish distractions. Familiar excuses you may have heard or said:
“I’ll give you a hand once I’m done with this”
“I just need more time to myself”
“Can’t you do that yourself?”
Recognizing and overcoming these excuses is an important step in the right direction. The energy that flows from purpose is enduring. Nurture that positive source within yourself by reaching out and giving a hand. Selfless acts don’t need to be out of the ordinary, and you likely participate in many already on a regular basis.

Core Physical Elements to Personal Energy

1. Eat right, that means healthy
2. Exercise regularly. Yup, it’s a no brainer.
3. Sleep so that your body is well rested. This is much easier after having a regular exercise schedule.

We have more than enough information to make informed eating decisions. It takes discipline to regularly consume both healthy portions and fresh, nutrition rich food. I for one have great difficulties with this primary requirement to living an energetic life. The best tasting foods (brownies, and chicken tikka marsala are my favorites) are rich not only in flavor but calories with and extra dose of fat. Endulge in these foods but only seldomly. If you give in to temptation too often:
1) these foods will lose their special deliciousness, and become expected flavors
2) you will put on weight and become sluggish as your metabolism slows down
3) you will dream and even write about these foods

Exercising regularly means incorporating a daily form of physical activity into your life. Forming a habit around exercise is aligning the activity with what you enjoy. If you hate going indoors to an oppressive gym to weightlift, you will be hard pressed to maintain this habit for more than a couple of years (my longest streak was 18 months of 3-4 visits a week before finally quitting a few years ago). Find a physicial activity, or multiple activities that harmonize well with your style. I found simply walking was cathartic for my thoughts and mind, and great for my body. I regularly walk 70-110 miles a week outdoors, weather permitting.

Regular sleep habits, the third physical element to maintaining vibrant personal energy level, is much easier when you eat right and exercise. If you find your body prefers a different cycle, it may require a shift of work and social activities to accomodate. For me, going to bed early and rising early is ideal.

As always I appreciate any and all feedback. Please feel free to share your own self energy secrets as comments.

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First it’s a good idea to understand the background of influenza, and wikipedia is a solid reference: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza

Second, my friend and boss Ralph always recommends getting a flu shot. There are many statistics for getting sick with and without the shot at the CDC and elsewhere, but the the specifics are highly correlated to your age group, and overall health. As the flu strain (genetic variation) that circulates through the population may differ from those in the vaccine or nasal shot the efficacy of the shot diminishes. In laboratory cases the shot prevents 70-90% infection for the strains in the vaccine. But in any given year it may only prevent 15-30% of the actual cases. Here’s some info from the CDC on the efficacy of vaccines: http://www.cdc.gov/FLU/PROFESSIONALS/VACCINATION/effectivenessqa.htm

Google has done a great job of making information available to those interested with flutrends (http://www.google.org/about/flutrends/download.html). You can save the data locally and plot it.

When I’m up and about later I’ll put together a chart showing vaccination percentage versus the Google flu trends, then you can decide for yourself if getting the nasal spray or vaccine is the right decision. From my initial reading, there are definite advantages to getting the shot for the very young and for folks in the 65+ age bracket.

Current Year 2009-2010

Past Years

See Google does a much nicer job of layering legends/axes, I’m new to their chart API.

United States flu activity from June to July:

Australia flu activity from January to December:

New Zealand flu activity from January to December:

Mexico flu activity from July to June:

I was reminded this morning of the fragile nature of our lives. Consider that as you age, you will likely lose many of the gifts of youth that you possess now. One day you won’t be able to run, you won’t be able to start up a bold new business, or compete in a triathlon. Each moment is only available to us for an instant, and then it’s gone just as soon as it arrived. In any case if we have the ability to push forward, we should capitalize on it and expend our energy. There is a strategy of waiting until the the right moment, to push forward with all our might at a time of our choosing, and I wrote briefly about it here. An alternative option is to just keep on pushing, all the time, until we’re exhausted. Our vitality is a renewable resource, and to increase our endurance or breakthrough challenges we have to keep pushing.

It’s a natural instinct to want to slow down when our body is pushed. There is a threshold that once surpassed allows us to tap into great reserves of vital energy. I have yet to push past my resistance to jogging, even after only five or six minutes moving my breathing becomes erratic and I give in to my desire to rest. This however doesn’t stop me from trying at least a once per week. On the contrary, I love sprinting for short periods, and am even more enamored with the peace and energy flow in very long walks (10-22miles). We do battle with our own stubbornness when we push past comfort zones. But it is only in this unknown region where we can discover our true nature and limits.

The concept applies to much more than running and exercise. If you’re having difficulty grasping a new language, or a challenging concept, immerse yourself in the effort. Push yourself as hard as you can, for as long as you are able. Set aside an extra two hours each day to research information, review topics for a talk, or familiarize yourself with a novel approach to a complex problem. Interested in being a stronger writer? Go beyond reading your favorite authors heavily, compose your own draft and rewrite it again and again each day until you’re satisfied.

What else are we saving our vital energy for? Not using our gifts, is the fastest way for us to lose them.

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