Keeping Track

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One thing I have found very beneficial is to keep track of your activities and the results.  This is very good for running or biking times and distances, other exercise activities, or also tracking general projects.  I started an Excel spreadsheet 3 years ago and have tracked every bike ride I’ve taken in those 3 years.  I have a cheap little cateye cycle computer and I collect total distance, average speed, total time, and max speed.  I like being able to see how I have improved my times, improved my number of rides per week, and things like that.  It gives me a great sense of accomplishment.  Tracking a project like a computer build, craft project, or car restoration is also a good idea.  Things like these can the be turned into interesting or tutorial web pages as well.

Track consistently

This is really the most important part.  When you have a nice long history of data it is great to be able to know what you have done and then you have a sense of accomplishment.  Get in the habit of recording your data as soon as you are done.  This will become natural and then you won’t have holes in your data.

Do something

It really doesn’t matter how you track, just keep track.  This can be a simple as writing it down in a notebook, keeping track in an Excel spreadsheet, or getting some specific software to help you track.  Obviously, if your end goal is something to display on the web then it makes sense to input it into a computer.  The format isn’t as important, however as data can usually be repurposed and translated to different applications once it has been entered on the computer.

Using the data

Make sure that you actually use the data.  Periodically go through your numbers and look at things like how often you did your activity, what improved, and what you could stand to improve.  If you have something that would make a great tutorial, publish it on the web and let other people enjoy and learn from your experience.

If you haven’t done anything like this before, I suggest you start today.  Yes, you may not have data from before which would be nice to have, but if you put it off more then you have even more data lost.  Make it important and simple, and keep with it!


Overcoming Inertia – 5 Ways To Motivate Yourself

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I needed help with this one today, thus it seemed like a good topic.  I have a few things that I keep in mind which help me moving forward and staying active.  Here is my list of 5 things to get you moving too.  Also, check out my Just Do It post for some other thoughts.

1. Know what you want to do

This seems obvious, but isn’t.  In order to get motivated to do something you need a clear idea of what you want to do.  Call this the planning step.  Figure out what you want to do and then come up with a plan.  Writing things down on paper or on the computer can help.  If you make a list of everything in your head it usually seems less daunting than when everything is floating around in a jumble in your head.  Also, once you have a plan you have already taken action and then it is that much easier to go ahead and execute your plan.

2. Schedule it

Don’t just think that you will make time; actually make time.  Put it on your calendar and when the time comes, don’t make excuses.  If it is something recurring, get into a schedule and then stick with it.  For example, I set a goal to add one new post a day to this site so I picked noon as my time to get it out.  If I miss my noon deadline, then I feel bad and that motivates me to get it done (even if it is late).  If you are running, biking, or working out you can help yourself by scheduling a specific day(s) and time and then stick to it.

3. Use the buddy system

This one works great.  If you want to do something like exercise then schedule it (see #2 🙂 ) with a buddy.  All last year I averaged one bike ride a week (usually during the work week), but this spring I started scheduling Saturday morning rides with a buddy and now my average has consistently moved up to two times a week.  This really helps for several reasons.  It is an extra motivating factor – you can both encourage each other.  Also, it adds a level of responsibility because you don’t want to let down the other person.  It is much easier to hit snooze or keep watching TV if it is just you by yourself, but if someone else is depending on you then that helps overcome the inertia.

4. Think about it

Take a moment to think about your life and see the direction you want to go.  Are you where you want to be?  Is there something – no matter how small – you could do to move you in a better direction?  By really thinking about who you are and what you want out of life it makes it much easier to get going on something that really speaks to you.  Last week I was watching Jesse James Is A Dead Man and something he said really stuck with me.

    I don’t know if you got the memo, but we’re all on a continuous march to death. I’m going to have as much fun as I can while I’m here before I die.
    [paraphrased from Jesse James – sorry; I’ll fill in the exact quote when I have time to re-watch it]

5. Change your perspective

Change the way you think.  Yes, this seems both obvious and ridiculous at the same time, but it is very effective if you can do it.  You have known yourself for your entire life, so sometimes you are your own worst enemy.  You hold yourself to the ruts and self-images you have about yourself.  Try changing your perspective on yourself.  This one is a little difficult to convey, so lets use some examples.

I grew up an introvert and always viewed myself as shy.  I kept telling myself that I was shy and I continued to believe it.  Once I moved away from my home town, I worked on having a paradigm shift and stopped telling myself I was shy.  I wouldn’t say that I am an extrovert, but I no longer consider myself shy and I don’t act like it either.

Another example came when I did a 10 day lemonade cleanse or lemon juice diet.  It was a great experience and I actually didn’t feel very hungry, but I really missed the action of eating.  Sort of like an ex-smoker missing the oral activity of having a cigarette in their mouth.  This was driving me crazy until day 3 of no food.  I finally had a serious talk with myself and just changed my attitude and perspective.  I got it into my head that I just wasn’t going to put any food in my mouth, and the rest of the 7 days went by like nothing.

Logan Challenge

So here is my challenge to you.  Find one thing that you have been putting off and get motivated to do it today.  I gave you 5 ways to motivate yourself, so you certainly can use them to do one thing today.  Be sure to post a comment with your results.  Good luck, and get off the couch!

New iPhone 3GS

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Well, I finally got an iPhone for myself and my wife.  I know iPhones have been covered like crazy everywhere on the web, and it seems like everyone has one, but I plan on talking about how I use (or want to use) it for living better – so it fits my blog theme.

Purchase Experience

It was a Tuesday night and all the AT&T stores in Austin were sold out of the 3GS, so we headed to one of our Apple stores.  I first did the pre-approval process online, but we would have had plenty of time to do it in the store while waiting.  There was a good line even at 6:00 at night so we ended up waiting about 45 minutes before getting called.  We both got the 16G black 3GS phones and our helper Nick was awesome.  I really get why Apple is popular.  They make really nice solid products with software that is excellent and treat the customers really well.  He was wearing a blue shirt, which I’m sure has some funky designation in apple-land.  Anyway, after talking with him for almost another hour, we left with our new iPhones.

Initial Thoughts

The iPhone certainly isn’t the panacea that it had built up to in my mind, but I am really enjoying it.  The interface is great once you figure things out.  The figuring out does take some doing, though.

Last night our biggest issue was setting up email.  We both use Yahoo email and this process was incredibly frustrating!  I ended up spending 45 minutes on the phone with Apple support before we got Yahoo mail connected and working.  The short story is that the built-in Yahoo email uses imap and apparently Yahoo doesn’t do this well at all.  We had to set up the Yahoo accounts under “other” and use POP3 mail instead of imap.  Since this was the main feature my wife wanted, I had to work on that instead of playing around with everything else 🙁  Anyway, now that is working and I’ve had some time to play around with it and I really like it.

Plans Going Forward

One of the main things I want to utilize is the ability to look up activities and restaurants while we are out.  Too many times we will be out on the weekends and not really want to go home, but not know where else to go.  Being able to look up activities on the go is my primary motivator for finally getting these.

I also plan on heavily using the camera for pictures and video.  This will enhance my blog with the ability to easily add images to my posts.  Having the Apple hardware and software all through this process should make it streamlined and easy once I get a system down

Conclusion

After being totally out of the iPhone craze for so long, I’m finally happy to have my hands on one.  I am excited about putting this thing through it’s paces and trying to figure out how to improve my life and my family’s lives with it.  Now I just need to not get too caught up in in that I spend all my time playing with the iPhone instead of being with my family!

My New Year’s Resolutions – Follow Up

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Since today marks the half way point of 2009, I thought it would be a good opportunity to look back at my resolutions from my New Year’s 2009 – My Resolutions post and check in to see how I’m doing.  While there is always room for improvement, overall I think I’m doing great.

Do more

I made this resolution because I have had problems being inert in the past and not really living life.  I have done pretty good here and this blog is one example.  I have had periods where it didn’t get updated as often as I wanted, but lately I’ve gotten back on track.

I want to keep the ball rolling with this blog and I also have ideas for two other sites.  Also, last year I had started the site drivemoregreen.com which has languished without any attention.  I’d like to revamp that and get it going again.

I resolve to continue doing more and keeping my momentum going for the rest of 2009.

Spend more time interacting with my kids

This one I have done pretty well.  I’ve really tried to focus on enjoying being with the kids (which isn’t always easy!) and finding more time to spend with them.  I have also spent more one-on-one time with my son.  We started watching Deadliest Catch on Discovery.  Yes, it is a little hypocritical for an ethical vegetarian to enjoy watching them pull so many crab out of the ocean, but it is exciting and has great talking points for conversations with my kids.  I just had to shoo away my daughter so I could finish this post 🙁 but overall I’m still doing better.

I resolve to continue spending more time interacting with my kids.

Stay in shape and maintain my weight

This one I’ve done great at.  My ideal weight is 175 and I don’t like going over 180.  So far this year I’ve only been over 180 once and have stayed between those two numbers the rest of the time.  I have been biking about two times a week, which is up from last year’s one time a week average.

I resolve to continue staying in shape and maintaining my weight.

Get stronger

I don’t have an official or proper program for this yet, but about a month ago I started doing pushups every day.  I have seen an improvement in my arm muscles and I’m really happy about this.  I plan on continuing with the push ups and will consider adding in more strenght training if I can figure something out.

I resolve to continue working on getting stronger.

Conclusion

This has been a good excercise to write down my resolutions and track them.  I highly recommend it – and even though it isn’t New Year’s right now, you can make a resolution right now and start trying to live better.  Do you have a follow up for your resolutions, or something you want to start doing better now?  Be sure to post a comment and let me know.

Why I’m *Still* A Vegetarian

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Now that you know my story of how I became a vegetarian, this follow-up looks at why I have continued this lifestyle.  I strongly believe that not eating animals is the single most important thing anyone can do to help save our planet.  Eating animals contributes to the terrible suffering of animals, personal bad health, the obesity epidemic, and the worsening of our planet.  It is completely spot on to say “go vegetarian, save the world”!  I’ll kick this off with an excellent quote from Paul McCartney on GoVeg.com.

    “If anyone wants to save the planet, all they have to do is just stop eating meat. That’s the single most important thing you could do. It’s staggering when you think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty.”
    –Sir Paul McCartney

Animals as Meat

I strongly believe that there would be many more vegetarians if people were more aware and involved in the process of turning animals into food.  If people had to witness or participate in the slaughter of animals it would make them think differently.  Having to see a carcass cut up and turned into “food” would make people stop and think about it.  Today it is just far too easy to get meat wrapped up in nice cellophane packages or order burgers from fast food places.  Chicken fingers and nuggets are so far removed from the suffering of those poor birds.  Chickens are the most abused animals on the planet and their treatment and lives is stunningly sad if you are aware of it.  This chicken story at goveg.com has more details.

If you missed it from my last post, be sure to check out PETA’s calculator that tells you how many animals you have saved (if you already are vegetarian) and how many you can save in your lifetime if you continue to avoid eating meat.

If you need some further convincing, please check out some of the terrible undercover video that has been shot inside slaughter houses.  The video at meat.org is a great starting place and they have links to other videos.

Health

Being vegetarian is just plain healthier.  People are not designed to eat meat.  Animals that eat meat have very short digestive tracts so the meat doesn’t stay in them long and have the chance to rot.  Ours on the other hand is over 20 feet long!  Do you really want that animal carcass slowly moving through your intestines and decaying as it goes?  Also, meat eaters have sharp teeth at the front of their mouth to tear the flesh, which we humans lack.  If none of that convinces you, try it and see for yourself.  I suspect you will feel lighter without the heavy weight of meat going through you.  My daughter was  accidentally served spaghetti with meat sauce once when she was about 4 and her body almost instantly rejected it and she threw it all up.  This was before she or we realized the mistake, so it was purely her body talking!

Environment

Being a vegetarian is great for the environment.  Raising animals for food is extremely resource-intensive.  Eating lower on the food chain is a great way to do your part to save the environment.  I have a great post from Earth Day that covers the terrible environmental impact.

For me it started out as a personal health thing, but over time all three of these reasons – personal health, animal cruelty, and the environment – have all become excellent reasons that justify why I have continued to be a vegetarian and why I don’t forsee changing for the rest of my life.

Why I’m A Vegetarian

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I recently realized that the story of how I became a vegetarian and why I am still a vegetarian after 17 years would make a good article.  I’ll start with how I became a vegetarian and follow it up with why I’ve remained vegetarian.  Hopefully you find this at least entertaining, if not thought-provoking.

The Beginning

In my first year of college, my roomate was a vegan.  This was in the early 90’s and the dorm cafeteria was terribly un-vegan friendly.  For every meal, his only option was the salad bar and he usually had to pick out the bits of shredded cheese that had gotten mixed in with the lettuce.  Often I sat across from him eating a hamburger and poking fun of him grazing on a salad.  He talked to me about the benefits, how he felt healthier, and how it was better for the earth to not eat animal products.  None of it had much impact on me at the time.

The following year we took a week long road trip.  At the beginning of the trip I agreed to eat what he ate for a week and thus began my vegan/vegetarian experience.  Eating vegan on the road is incredibly hard.  Eating vegan on the road with a college student’s budget is even harder.  I have a distinct memory of crouching in the bread isle of a convenience store somewhere in Ohio reading the ingredients of all the loaves of bread.  Just about every loaf eventually had a dairy product somewhere near the bottom of the list.  Surprisingly, Wonderbread Wheat was vegan so we picked that up and some peanut butter and jelly and had sandwiches for several days.  We did eat better than just PB&J, and by the end of the week I was hooked.  I felt better, I felt lighter, and the ethics of not eating animals was starting to get into my head.

No Turning Back

That was January of 1992, and I haven’t (willfully) eaten animal flesh since then, with the exception of fish occasionally which I’ll get into later.  I’ve had my ups and downs, I’ve been overweight and lost weight, but I am happy to say that I am still a steadfast vegetarian.  Using this handy calculator on the PETA website, I can proudly say that by not eating meat I have saved the lives of 4,760 animals.  Adding in my whole family shows we have saved almost 15,000 animal lives!  That is pretty cool.

Do you have a story about how you got turned on to being vegetarian or vegan?  Are you currently a meat eater, but considering changing?  Be sure to let me know.