Get a Grip, I Say

In trying to work on strength first so I can a.) be better at building muscle and b.) more useful in real life situations I am taking to heart the advice to work on my core and my grip.  This started with me doing hanging leg raises.  I also read up on some other ideas.

The one I tried to add first was finger-tip push ups, but I discovered yet again that I am a weakling.  This doesn't really bother me, however, it just gives me more games to play during my breaks after I do any bit of intellectual work for 25 minutes.  

My new game is to do regular planks for a bit then take one hand and plant it by the finger tips and then the other and do the same and try to do a finger tip this finger-tip plank. 

Let's pretend I make no progress on this, it'd still be a wonderful way to prevent me moping around during the times it is just too dang hot to go out.  I will never get tired of writing about my revelation brought on by the pomodoro system -- 25 minutes of intellectual work/play and do something physical for 3-5 minutes.  Right now, when a timer goes off, I choose to do a grip and core training 5 days a week (one day doing the hanging leg raises, the next the plank protocol from this post) and then I clean or tidy something.

But in reality, there is progress.  It is measurable and thus it is a game.  It gives a lot of hits along the way and eventually I (probably) get to enjoy a great result.

Go into Nature

Last week I wrote about going into the silence.  It truly is the best place to invest your time, whether in quiet thought, meditation, or writing.  Today I want to write about my favorite kind of silence: going into nature.

This doesn't have to be elaborate, like going to some nature preserve.  Instead, you can go to a park, or even slowly walk through your neighborhood, stopping ever so often to just focus on some detail of landscaping and to just  . . . listen.  Or, you can do my favorite method, garden in a way that lets nature in.

The benefits of going into nature as your means of going into the silence have been demonstrated by research.  (As a side note, this leads to one of the great paradoxes our age has not yet grappled with entirely: what to do when science and data vindicate a practice that doesn't seem to follow the rigid or analytic patterns of science.  But that's the thing: analysis the is the tool the human uses to improve life.  When there is a conflict between the system and the human, just go ahead and value the human).

Check out the webMD article on Eco-therapy or this website that clearly enthusiastic on the subject.  If you share my intuition that a connection to nature is the right thing for humans, you might skip the articles.

The real trick, however, is spending the time in nature.  To do that you have to giving yourself permission to spend the time in this way.  To give yourself that permission, in the short run, you might need to get more done in less time.  If you're in that situation, look into my time management tricks.

Nested Time Box Games

My default time management system is the pomodoro method.  This is because my normal blend of work is quite a bit of mental tasks to do with some routine physical things.

But like all good procrastinators, at some point routine tasks of all sorts pile up.  At this point I turn to the idea of a nested time-box, something I found on the All Japanese All-the-Time (AJATT) blog (which is now just a big advertisement . . . oh well, I still felt obligated to cite where I got the idea).

I made one additional tweak to the nested time box, and that is to make it a formal game.  The rules are simple: 1.) write down my tasks, 2.) estimate how long those tasks should take 3.) set my longer timer (30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour) and 4.) use another timer to see if I can make my time goals for the tasks.  I have a video on the process:






I only bust out this routine when I am buried by a lot of little things, but when I do, I get amazing results, and have good fun while doing it.

Learn about other systems with a timer.

First, Use a Timer to Get More out of Your Time

We all know that there are many things we can invest our time in to make life better in the long run.  That's not the problem!

The real problem is that you can be so jammed up that you don't have the time to work on those things.  You have to get past the short run to get to the long-run.  Here are three techniques to look into that using a timer (or timers) to make it so you can get more out of your time:

• (10+2)*5  This one is a good one to use as a "starter" system, or if you have severe ADD. 
• Nested Time Boxing I like this when I am overloaded with tiny things to do. Those pesky "mosquito tasks."  I get out a sheet of paper and turn it into a game
• The Pomodoro Technique In my opinion, the best way to do creative work that has a deadline.  

If someone was just overloaded (which is what people are by default in the modern world), my first piece of advice would be to follow one of these links, and use one of these systems to get some stuff done.  They'll get more done in the same time devoted to work. . . and perhaps just as importantly, they'll work in some fun into their work as well, which can help to stay motivated.

The next step is to NOT, I repeat do NOT add any more of the same type of the work.  Do the same work you've been doing in less time and then use the extra time to invest in exercise, planning, learning other productivity tricks, or other useful skills.

So this is step one for making your life better: pick a timer technique to deal with the problem of not having the time to learn how to save time. 

After that, who knows what is the limit?