Sometimes easy things are harder than they need to be. In this case, the easy thing is “keeping track of data about my exercise routines”. The hard thing is “making the diverse ecosystem of exercise data gatherers and providers work for me.” It has taken a few attempts to find a collection of equipment and services which meet my needs, so I thought I would share in case it helps others.
Have you ever found yourself reading a long email and struggling to decipher what message you should be taking from the words? Or sitting in a presentation wishing the presenter would get to the punchline already? Or perhaps reading a report and wondering how on earth the author came to the conclusions they did based on what little detail was included?
In an increasingly hybrid working world, effective communication is more important than ever. In particular, we’re sending more written and asynchronous communications, which increases the chance for someone to misunderstand, misinterpret or dismiss something they struggle to read. We owe it to the recipients of our messages to make their lives as easy as possible.
Since starting to work from home every day, I’ve wanted to simplify working across my various machines when working at my desk with a large screen. Cue VNC, Mac Screen Sharing and Remote Desktop. Everything was going swimmingly, until I tried to remote desktop into my Surface tablet. Every attempt to connect was thwarted with an error about an “Unknown user name or bad password”. I could log in fine locally, so why wouldn’t a remote desktop connection connect?
About 18 months ago, my wife suggested our family take a weekly Pilates class with a local instructor. The intention was to do something together as a family, something fun and beneficial all around. Whilst I agreed, if I am honest, I was sceptical. I was very happy with the family and togetherness part, that was great. What I was sceptical of was the value of Pilates as an exercise discipline. However, I try not to pre-judge things in life, and as such the four of us were soon attending weekly Pilates sessions.
There is a chain of coffee shops in Shanghai (maybe all of China?) called SPR Coffee. I really like the slogan that they use on their paper cups – “No Full Stops In Quality”. It reminds me that, no matter how high your quality is now, or how good your processes and practices are that help achieve and ensure good quality, there is always something more you can do.
I love well kept lawns. Seeing a lush green lawn, freshly cut, with stripes that look like they were measured out with a set square and ready for the cup final at Wembley is a beautiful thing. The grass in my back garden has never looked like that. I am beginning to wonder if it ever will. But we’ll keep trying.
I am generally pretty scared of heights. Not all heights – flying doesn’t worry me, I was surprisingly OK with a hot-air balloon ride, and I can overcome the fear in order to ride large roller-coasters. I am not so good if you put me near the edge of a high cliff, on the roof of a building, or up a ladder.
Recently though, I have seen a number of online videos showing something that truly scares me – crane climbing. And by “scares me” I mean “cannot watch the screen without looking away A LOT scares me”, or “makes my insides go ice cold and makes me feel physically sick watching scares me”.
My last two blog entries covered the first 15 days of a 30-Day Primal Challenge. I had fully intended for there to be a third entry that summed everything up on the 30th day, as if reaching that point would be some magical revelation. I assumed I’d have a nice tidy conclusion to the challenge; the results from my 30 day experiment, if you will.
As of last night, I have reached the half-way point of my 30-Day Primal Challenge. Here is a brief update on progress.
In the past couple of years I have become very active and lost quite a lot of weight. Initially, a lot of running and cycling helped me lose about 30lbs, and then a switch about a year ago to more of a gym and cardio mix helped me build some strength. However, with neither approach have I managed to lose the excess body fat I am carrying. Despite being lighter overall, I still have about 25% body fat. I’d really like that to be lower, perhaps closer to the 15-18% range.