Capitalogix

Fitbit Shows It Is Always a Good Time to Take Appropriate Action

Most people say they want to be healthy.  That's the easy part ... it's more challenging to do.

To be fair, life happens ... and it is hard to find sufficient time to exercise.  Nonetheless, in this case, procrastination can be a real killer.

Procrastination doesn't just happen with exercise.  Many things get put off while waiting for better circumstances, more data, or for it to be the "right" time. Well, it turns out that it's always a good time to take right action.

Here is a great video called "How Bad Do You Want It?"  It is inspirational and worth watching.  It's not just some exercise video ... there is a great message in there worth hearing about business and life, too.

 

 

 

How Badly Do You Want It?

Have you ever looked in the mirror and thought "how did that happen"?  Pictures of me on the beach resembled the image on the right.

Perhaps I should blame genetics.  My grandfather was a professional wrestler who tipped the scales well above 300 lbs., and my Dad spent plenty of time north of 300 as well.

A year-and-a-half ago I was Twinkie away from there myself. 

At 265 lbs., my doctor told me I had a 10% chance of having a heart attack in the next year.  That was my wake-up call. 

I'm down to 228; and I am committed to being healthy and vital. That makes all the difference.

 

You Manage What You Measure.

One of the things I really like about the Fitbit is that it's constantly monitoring and reminding me about the actions I take - or the amount of non-action I tolerate.

Here is a screenshot of my Fitbit home screen.  It's graphically pleasing and lets me quickly focus on the number of important fitness and activity metrics.

 

 

Notice that there is an activity graph that shows the amount and intensity of my activity in five-minute increments throughout the day.  It updates wirelessly, and automatically, without me having to press any buttons.

In addition, here is a graph that shows the days activity broken into intensity levels.

 

 

I use a graph like this to figure out whether I'm happy with what I'm doing.  At work,  I do something similar. I ask the team to think about whether we are 'walking', 'jogging', 'running', or 'sprinting'?  More importantly, to achieve what we want, what's the right mix?

It's one thing to tell yourself you're working hard; it's another to compare your levels with benchmarks or standards. Here's another area that Fitbit excels. This graph shows that last week my activity level fell in the 90th percentile.

However, this graph shows that recently my sleep patterns fell in the bottom 2%.

 

 

While I am competitive and want to increase the number of steps or the percentage of time I'm in higher levels of activity, the quickest way for me to improve my health is probably to get more sleep.

The point is Fitbit doesn't just focus on activity; it helps you figure out the right activities on which to focus.

There are lots of other things I could tell you  (like, it is about the size of money-clip) ... but the most important is to just go get one.  It is about $90 at Amazon. 

Being Healthy, Fit, and Vital ... that's Priceless.

 

Related articles

• Blog - The Perils of Sitting (technologyreview.com)
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• Gamifying Fitness Works: Doing More to Be Less (capitalogix.typepad.com)

Reflecting on Steve Jobs' Words of Wisdom and Insightful Questions

Steve Jobs deserves credit. He is a world-class innovator and showman.

 

 
Despite what the cartoon says, there is not an app for that.  Replacing Steve Jobs will not be easy.  He was one of a kind.

His latest accomplishment is that he figured-out how to get everyone to eulogize him while he's still alive.

Brilliant.

To be fair, these may be the last years (or days) of Jobs' life. But, as HBR points out, if so, Jobs no doubt knew that something needed to change. Perhaps it really is time for Jobs to go home, as he put it, to a "wonderful family" and an "amazing woman" and re-reflect on a few of the provocative questions (slightly altered) that he posed to the world in his 2005 Stanford Commencement Address.

Here is the video.

 

 

 

Here are some of the questions he posed. (click here for the complete text version of the speech)

• Have you found "what you love" to do in life?
• Are you wasting your life "living someone else's?"
• Do you "have the courage to follow your heart and intuition?"
• Are you nurturing a "great relationship," one that "just gets better and better as the years roll on?"
• Do you tell "your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months" or days?
• Do you make "sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family" when "the single best invention of Life" takes its toll?
• Do you say "your goodbyes" before it's too late to say them?

For almost four decades Steve Jobs has certainly tried his best to "put a ding in the universe."

If you are looking for more on Jobs' wisdom and insights, Umair Haque has a nice post on the Harvard Business Review site; it is called "Steve's Seven Insights for 21st Century Capitalists".

He highlights lessons that jumped out at him while looking through this compendium of Jobs quotes.

Here are two examples.

It Matters that it Matters. "Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugar water — or do you want to change the world?" That's what Steve famously asked John Sculley. Translation: do you really want to spend your days slaving over work that fails to inspire, on stuff that fail to count, for reasons that fail to touch the soul of anyone?

Do the insanely great. "When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you're not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it." We're awash in a sea of the tedious, the humdrum, the predictable. If your goal is rising head and shoulders above this twisting mass of mediocrity, then it's not enough, anymore, to tack on another 99 features every month and call it "innovation." Just do great work.

Those aren't the only lessons, nor probably the best lessons. There are lots to choose from.

Umair Haque challenges: Steve took on the challenge of proving that the art of enterprise didn't have to culminate in a stagnant pond of unenlightenment — and won. In doing so, he might just have built something approximating the modern world's most dangerously enlightened company. Can you?

What a great thing career he had.  He ends his Stanford speech with a quote that sums it up well. "Stay Hungry ... Stay Foolish."

Related articles

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Gamifying Fitness Works: Doing More to Be Less

How do you make it easier to find opportunities to be healthier in our busy lifestyles?

Lots of people say health and fitness are important to them.  Too often, that is an aspiration rather than a resolution. 

 

A Healthy Equation.

 

The key is burning more calories than you consume.  Yes, that is obvious ... but isn't easy.

How do you measure your real caloric intake, and accurately track the calories you burn?

Image via CrunchBase

 

I found a tool that helps.  It is called Fitbit; and it tracks your sleep patterns, eating habits and activity to help you become healthier.

It also wirelessly syncs that information with your computer, and presents it to you in a way that lets you compete to reach your goals and out-do your friends.  Yes, fitness has gone social.

 

Gamification is getting a lot of press recently. Apparently, it works.

Competition often brings out the best in people. There is a part of me that it doesn't believe it. Experientially, however, it's clear that I'm more likely to take action in competitive situations. 

In a way, you can  think of the Fitbit as a game where the challenge is to get at least 10,000 steps per day (and you can also get bonuses and brownie points for doing other healthy things).

The tracking and reporting component add enough competition to change behavior.

For example, there is a certain venture capitalist who is consistently kicking my ass by generating much higher numbers than I do. In addition, there is a short and portly industry analyst (old enough to be my father) who somehow took more steps than I did last week. These things cause me to get out of my chair and exercise.  It has become so persistent that I've started parking farther away just to add to my count.

The proof is in the results. Here's a graph showing my weight over the past two months.

 

 
The jump in the middle came from a visit to the Jersey Shore, where my will-power lost a battle to unlimited Philly Cheesesteak sandwiches and hot pretzels.

 
You Can't Get There From Here.

It was harder than you might guess to get started.

I remember hearing a funny story about someone asking for directions after getting lost in a city and asking for directions. The response was "you can't get there from here." Well, it turns out that my goal of taking 10,000 steps a day was impractical; I couldn't get there from where I was. 

In other words, even on a day when I exercised, my lifestyle didn't come close to an activity level of 10,000 steps per day.

Last summer, I celebrated the fact that I went to the gym three times per week. On one hand, I'm sure that's an improvement from not going to the gym three times a week. On the other hand, as I measured my activity levels and steps, that's a 5,000 to 7,000 steps per day activity level. By that, I mean that 5,000 steps is average, and I might be able to get the 7,000 steps if I really pushed myself.

As a practical matter, I couldn't get to 10,000 steps per day unless I changed something. For me, that meant jogging. And trust me, jogging was something that I didn't want to do. At a little over 240 pounds it was hard to drag my well-marbled meat suit around the park (especially in the Texas heat).

So, after going to the gym, I would reluctantly find my way to the park to waddle the extra mile. That increased my steps; and it also took me past the tipping point where I started to lose weight. That made running easier.  Soon, I was shuffling 2 miles. Now, 4 miles is within my comfort zone.

Again, the key is that once your activity burns more calories than you eat, weight comes off quickly.  Like I said, simple, "just not easy."

 

Intent and Focus Help Too.

 

The other area where the Fitbit has made a big difference is with the intent to be healthy. It's one thing to say that you will be healthy. It's another to vote with your feet and actually do healthy things.

The Fitbit helps bring the intent to the forefront of your consciousness. That means you will think about it more often. That also means you will notice more opportunities to be more active more often. As a result of the increased activity, you will burn more calories and lead a healthier lifestyle.

It's easy to manage what you measure. So making it easier to measure something can actually make it easier to achieve better results. That's where the Fitbit shines.

Get one here.

Related articles

• Four Simple Fitness Fundamentals (zenhabits.net)
• Cross Training for Fitness and Fat Loss (thepearlsofwisdom.wordpress.com)
• 60 Small Ways to Improve Your Life in the Next 100 Days (lifehack.org)
• The Good and Evil in Gamification of Incentives and Recognition (myventurepad.com)
• Worth It? The FitBit Pedometer (blogs.wsj.com)

A New and Simpler CPR Can Help You Save a Life

You never know when something like this can change your life or the life of someone else?

Every three days, more Americans die from sudden cardiac arrest than the number who died in the 9-11 attacks.

You can lessen this recurring loss by learning Continuous Chest Compression CPR, a hands-only CPR method that doubles a person’s chance of surviving cardiac arrest.

It’s easy and does not require mouth-to-mouth contact, making it more likely bystanders will try to help.

Here is a video showing you how it works.

 

 

Read more >>

If YouTube is blocked by your organization, you can watch the video on the Arizona Health Sciences Center site.

Visit the Sarver Heart Center for more information and resources on Chest-Compression-Only CPR.

 

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Here is a Simple Test of Attention and Focus I Bet You'll Fail

In my experience, managing attention is harder than it seems.

Let's start with something easy ...  Do nothing for 2 minutes. 

Here is a link to a website that will let you try to do that.

 

Focus can be pretty fragile if it isn't a conscious choice.

OK, Let's Try Something a Little More Challenging.

Controlling your body by doing nothing is one thing; but, controlling your mind is something else altogether.

To get a sense about this, here is a seemingly easy challenge ... simply listen to a favorite song.

The challenge is how you can truly do that without losing focus and having other thoughts intrude (for example, without thinking about your to-do list or other songs that you like, or who you're going to meet with later in the day, etc.)?  For me, the answer was not that long.

Sometimes it feels like modern life causes attention deficit disorder.

Attention Deficit Can Be Dangerous If You Aren't Aware of It.

Yet, losing focus while trading, in business, or even during a simple conversation - can have serious consequences.

When you are not aware of your focus, I bet it wanders.  Mine does; I get distracted easily. 

It didn't take long for me to realize that this happened to me while talking to my wife, while listening to a telephone call, even when ordering food at a restaurant. How can I lose focus on the waitress while I was ordering? Apparently, quite easily.

How about you?  When you're listening to someone talk to you, are you really listening to them - or are you checking e-mail, texting, browsing a website, watching TV, playing a game, or thinking about what you're going to say? 

Be honest with yourself; how often are you fully present?  For me, the answer was not nearly enough.

Practice Mind Control.

Try listening to one song with your full attention and focus. 

Now, imagine how different a conversation with someone important to you would be if you were consciously aware of your intent for them to experience being heard the whole time they were speaking to you.

Maybe it is easier to recognize how different it is for you when someone is truly present and focused on you when you talk with them?

If you want to explore more activities like this, pick up a copy of Dianne Collins' book "Do You QuantumThink".  It has dozens of clever ways to wake back up and operate on a higher level.

 

Does Your Health Depend On the Temperature of Where You Live?

It was over 100 degrees, here in Texas, as my son graduated high school. 

 

 
Our out of town guests weren't buying the "But it's 'dry' heat" line. So, much of the weekend was spent eating and searching for air-conditioning.

Sometimes it is just too hot to trot.

Exercise Frequency Goes Down as the Heat Goes Up.

The Economist recently printed a chart showing that people who live in colder states exercise more than those who live in warm ones.

 

 
A recent report by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention declares that only 64% of Americans surveyed can be described as physically active (defined as over 150 minutes per week of moderate exercise or half as much vigorous activity). Almost a quarter get no exercise at all outside the workplace.

The report offers a breakdown of exercisers by state. In general, it seems that people who live in cold states like Alaska are more likely to get their weekly work-out than those in sunny Florida.

The biggest outliers from this correlation are Hawaii, where 70% are energetic, and Tennessee, which has the lowest percentage of active people despite a lower average temperature than several other states.

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Great One Minute Video on the Power of Focus

“The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire, not things we fear.”

  ~ Brian Tracy

Focus On 1 Goal At A Time.

 

It is graduation time, and I've had an opportunity to talk with a number of new graduates. 

As a result, I've been thinking about what advice best helps navigate the vast opportunites as one door closes, and another opens ...

Here is a great nugget from Brian Tracy, who is a master at taking the complicated and breaking it down into simple easy steps.

Watch "How to Focus: If You Could Achieve 1 Goal In 24 Hours".

 

If you could only accomplish one goal, yet it would only take 24-hours to achieve, which goal would have the greatest positive impact on your life? 

What a great question!  After you answer it, set a deadline to accomplish that goal ... and (here's the important part) do something to work on it, or take you towards it, every day.

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I Tried Barefoot Running Shoes - Here Is What I Found

Have you seen the athletic shoes that look like gloves?

They started showing up at the gym I go to ... then someone in the office wore them when we worked-out together.  Part of me thought it was "pretentious", and another part thought it was "silly"; turns out ... they are worth trying.

Here's a confession; I'm now of an age where it made sense to judge a workout by how much my feet and ankles swell.  The well-cushioned athletic shoes that I have been wearing, do such a good job of masking impact that I wasn't noticing how my running form was hurting my body. Instead, I just thought the damage was simply a result of getting older.

Apparently, I just forgot how to run.  A few weeks in those silly looking barefoot running shoes has made a huge difference. 

Here is a video showing how barefoot running effects stride, bio-mechanics, and the stress you put on your joints.

 

 

Studies show that barefoot running prevents injury, and can even enhance performance!  A professor at Harvard led a research team that looked at the "impact collision force" (when the foot hits the ground) of runners in shoes compared to barefoot runners.  The impact was actually reduced by two-thirds by running in bare feet.  Basically the difference is in how the foot lands on the ground.  Barefoot runners land each step more on the ball, or the middle of the foot, which is more gentle to the foot. 

In contrast, runners in traditional athletic shoes tend to land more on the heel.  As a result, our thickly-cushioned modern running shoes may actually be causing stress on our joints and feet because we're not landing the way we were meant to do while running. 

If you decide to try out this age-old running style, it's best to gradually transition yourself for a few weeks.  Listen to the signals from your body.  Otherwise, you may feel sore while you get "back on your feet" - and start using muscles you probably forgot you had.

Certainly worth trying.

Resources:

• Books on Barefoot Running.
• Merrell's Barefoot Running Page.
• Vibram's FiveFinger Running Site.
• Barefoot Running Technique Video.

 

Related articles

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Snake-Oil? The Scientific Evidence for Various Health Supplements

Trying to lead a healthier lifestyle?  This data visualization can help you filter-out the marketing hype to help you find the vitamins, minerals and herbs that deliver tangible benefits ... versus those that serve only as a "Guaranteed Genuine Placebo".

This is an updated interactive model of the most current research data.

It is interesting because of the health research itself ... and also because models, like this, have far-reaching applications.  It comes from the site Information is Beautiful.

Click on the picture to play with the interactive version.

 

Kind of cool. 

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Great Video - "The Race" is an Uplifting Reminder of What's Possible

Worth watching.

 

Heather Dorniden, from the University of Minnesota, races the 600m at the Big 10 Indoor Track Championships. What happens reminds what a race really is about ... and, perhaps, what life is really about.

 

Here is the video.

 

 

We will fall. We can rise.  It is a choice.