Archive for March, 2010

2010-03-31

5 minutes x 30 days

Today is day two in a personal 30+ day experiment. I was recently reminded of 30 day experiments by Scott Young‘s prompting.

Basically I have set a short term goal of finite duration with well formed outcomes and well formed process goals. This particular experiment is to (re)develop my exercise routine. I’m dedicating myself to throwing kettlebells every day for 30 days as my momentum goal.

Oh, wait. I don’t think I’ve publicly talked about MnM goal setting (nothing to do with the candy!). Hmmm, I think I’ll save that for a later post. Today is about 30 day experiments.

For this experiment my nada goal is a daily 3 minute warm up, 100 swings in 5 minutes with a 16 kg ‘bell, and 8 brocades as my ”cool down” afterwards. The monster for this experiment is 100 snatches with 24 kg in 15 minutes.

Yesterday I did 100 swings @ 16 kg in about 5 min with a Tabata style cadence: 10 swings in (approximately) the 20 seconds maximally active then 10 seconds rest. Grip it, rip it, and repeat. I did about 3 minutes of stretching/loosening before diving into the swings and just walked it off while catching my breath afterwards.

Today I was still feeling the little aches that tell me my swing form wasn’t ideal so I decided to do cleans instead (to at least distribute the aches across a few new locations!). Similar deal as the swings: 10 cleans as fast as I could (approx 20 seconds), 10 seconds rest, 10 cleans w/other arm, 10 seconds rest. I doubt I’ll be doing that exact sequence again because my hands were getting torn up by the poorly designed handle on the adjustable ‘bell I was using. (I either need to round out the handle or wait for my Kiwi friend to come back to the states so I can test one of my other adjustable kb handles I loaned out.)

What does all this girevik geekery mean for the non-RKCs? It means public accountability. I wouldn’t bother making up this level of detail if I hadn’t done it. It also gives you a chance to see how small the commitment can be (less than 10 minutes a day so far) and still have significance.

Your mission for today is to choose an area of your life where you’re willing to run a 30 day experiment — health, relationships, money, learning, etc and share it in the comments below. Tomorrow we’ll talk about well formed outcomes and process goals so you can run a 30 day experiment through April.

Posted by Wayne Buckhanan | No Comments »
2010-03-28

What are you testing?

If you aren’t testing anything you should start…NOW.

Whether you are simply testing a new driving route or a different brand of soap your brain (and by extension your body) need new stimuli. Desensitization or over-sensitization happens when you always have the same thing for dinner. This applies to your thoughts too.

I have seen unattributed statistics that at least 90% of the thoughts we have today are the same as we had yesterday. (This may be where people come up with 21, 30, or 45 days to change habits, but that’s a post for another day.)

Where might you be desensitized in your thought process?
Where might you have developed an overly sensitive pattern in your thoughts?
What new thing are you going to do (and think!) today?

FYI: I’m testing a new tool for posting to this blog. It allows me to write posts on my phone which removes a ton-and-a-half of excuses. Watch for more posts!

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2010-03-21

Meet my co-authors in the newest Conversation

age3coverIt’s been rather quiet around Life, Love, & Learning lately. Mostly because I’m head down writing on my PhD proposal.

So this will be a quick note to let you know that soon and very soon we’ll be releasing another volume of Age of Conversation. Once again I submitted a chapter and all the profits will be going to charity.

And without further ado my co-authors:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Wayne Buckhanan | 1 Comment »