Things That Made Me Happy This Week.

I know this isn't a particularly useful post for everyone, but I wanted to share a couple of things that made my week a little better.

My employer got a subscription to GetAbstract.com a little while ago and I started getting into that.  It is a service that gives the abstracts for different books.  I think it will be very handy to get the gist of what is going on in a book and determine if I would want to buy it.  Also, it is a handy way to get the main takeaways from some very powerful books without necessarily reading the entire book.

Next, on my list of likes, I started reading "The Pragmatic Programmer".  I decided that in the next year I want to read the "classics" of software development, The Pragmatic Programmer is high up on the list.  While I didn't get too far into this one, I was actually taking notes in the first few chapters.  A lot of this stuff I had heard before from different sources, but getting these knowledge bombs dropped one after the next is pretty cool.  I will probably write a book review on this book.  I'm sure there are other reviews on this book that will be better than what I can do, but  I'll do one anyway because it will help me capture what I've learned.

In other good news, Pluralsight just put out an Android learning path.  I've been having a hard time figuring out how to get up to speed on Android development.  This won't come as a surprise to anyone on my team, but I'm currently a horrible Android developer.  I've been trying to choose my own training, but having a curated training plan is very exciting.  I have used the training path for C# and it was extremely helpful, though I wasn't fully horrible at C#.  I'm already a few courses in and I am really enjoying 

Lastly, I got my standing workstation!  I bought a VARIDESK Pro Plus 48.  I am only one day into using it so I can't rave too much, but I've been eyeing this bad boy up for about a year.  After all, Sitting Is the New Smoking plus there is a TED Talk.  Thus far I am very happy with it and hopefully, it'll help me be a little bit healthier.

I will be taking a break from blogging next week for Thanksgiving so I'm not going away, I'm just taking a vacation.

Gratitude Practice: It's Not Just For Thanksgiving Anymore

Have you ever gone to a Thanksgiving dinner where everyone was asked to say something that they were thankful for?  If you take that idea and make it personal and do it every day, that would be a gratefulness practice. One of the simplest definitions I found was from Teens Health.

1. Notice good things, look for them, appreciate them.
2. Savor, absorb, and really pay attention to those good things.
3. Express your gratitude to yourself, write it down, or thank someone.

I'm sure this sounds like a bunch of "woo", but tons of successful people swear by it and some science even shows that it work. The Science Behind Gratitude

Gratitude practice is the new hotness. The gist of gratitude practice is to take time every day to think about the things you are grateful for and reflect on them.  The theory behind why it works is that thinking about things you are grateful for changes your brain.  I won't claim that it's hard science, but I will say it works for Tim Ferris, Oprah Winfrey, Richard Branson and others.

Now there are different methods where you take different amounts of time and reflect on things.  This could be done by writing down X number of items in a gratitude journal.  It could be just thinking about the things you are grateful for.  One could also say a prayer to thanking God for the things they are grateful for.  If you are inclined, you could actually express gratitude to those in your life you are grateful for, in person or in writing.  Check this out How to Practice Gratitude

Now you might say there isn't anything in my life I am grateful for.  If you are reading this, you should probably be grateful that you have your eyesight.  If you don't have your eyesight, you might be grateful for the people that enable you to consume blog content like this through software.

This is not necessarily to take the time to be thankful for how perfect your life is.  It can be for small things, or big things.  Even in the toughest times there are things to be grateful for.  You can be grateful for your significant other, your parents, your children, your job. However, if you don't like those things or don't have them there is surely something you are grateful for.  Even if you are an angry internet troll who hates everything, odds are good that you can be grateful the internet exists so you have an outlet for all of your vitriol.

This is also an easy way to practice mindfulness.  It lets you take stock of your situation and reflect on what is in your life right now.  You take a break and see yourself existing and find the inputs that you are glad you have.

My personal method is to take 5-minute Pomodoro break and use that time to come up with a list of at least 5 things that I am grateful for today.  I sometimes write them down, but mostly I take a little time to reflect on these things/people.  Then I just go about the rest of my day in a much better state of mind.  Again that's just what I do, you'll need to figure out what works for you.

I'm grateful that I have this blog to communicate my ideas as well as the ability to do that, and I'm thankful you are reading it.

Productivity Try This: Pomodoro Technique

First off, let me give credit, I did not create this, and many of you have already heard of it.  It was created by Francesco Cirillo and here is his site.

Secondly, because I'm sure a lot of you have heard of this, I don't want to cover the steps in detail.  I know people have been talking about this technique for a long time and in great detail.  What's different about this post?  I'm suggesting you actually try it.

The Pomodoro Technique

1. Decide on the task to be done.
2. Set the pomodoro timer (traditionally to 25 minutes).^[1]
3. Work on the task until the timer rings. If a distraction pops into your head, write it down, but immediately get back on task.
4. After the timer rings, put a checkmark on a piece of paper.^[7]
5. If you have fewer than four checkmarks, take a short break (3–5 minutes), then go to step 1.
6. After four pomodoros, take a longer break (15–30 minutes), reset your checkmark count to zero, then go to step 1.

       -Wikipedia Pomodoro Technique

The Pomodoro technique is so simple.  Actually doing it, on the other hand, is much harder.  The difficult part is actually fully focusing on one thing for 25 minutes without breaking concentration. There is no shortage of applications and plugins and gizmos to help you out, but they are all useless if you don't do your part of focusing and doing the work.  This is not to say that the tools are bad.  Different Pomodoro tools can be useful, but they are just a tool, not the technique.  Running a Pomodoro clock while you browse Facebook is not making you more productive (assuming you don't browse Facebook for a living).

Just do it, but do all the steps.  I can tell you from experience, as I have messed up the technique in pretty much every way you can think of, that all the steps are needed. If you don't have one task, you will get side tracked.  If you don't set the timer you'll over or under work (25 is a recommendation, if you need more or less adjust accordingly.).  If you don't take the breaks you'll burn out too fast.  All the pieces are synergistic and need to be in place to get the most out of the technique.

You need to find out what works for you and make it your own.  I like to have a physical sheet of paper to write down distractions and to make my tactile checkmarks, but I imagine some of you just don't use paper.  The important part is to figure out what works for you.  I use over the ear  headphones to block out as much sound as possible and also to discourage interruptions.  Again that might not be for you, but I'm terrible at ignoring conversations.  I use RescueTime to block distracting websites, so even if I tried to get sidetracked it prevents me from going anywhere. Finally, I actually have one pomodoro every morning of taking care of all the little administratrive tasks that I need to do for my job and all other miscellaneous tasks.  I know some of that stuff could probably go into my break times, but I like to have as clean of a working slate as I can and little todos will bug me all day.

One of the big tips I've read and tried is to set targets for daily and weekly completed Pomodoros.  This will give you an accurate idea of how much actual work you are getting done, and how much work you can get done.  We all know that the hours you spend at work are not really a good reflection of how much actual work you get done.  Pomodoros on the other hand, give a much better estimate of actual productive work being done.

"So, yeah, that seems slick and all, but what's in it for me?"  The real reason why I think this technique is awesome is not to increase the amount of work you get done.  That is a nice side effect.  The real reason is that by concentrating your productive working time you actually create more free time.  Getting in higher quality working time will get more done faster. This means you can use the time you would have previously been doing low quality/high quantity work to concentrate on other things.  What could you do with a few extra hours a week?

More information.
Get Started Pomodoro.com
John Sonmez Simple Programmer

Top Secret: The Most Effective Exercise Program Ever

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TL;DR The most effective exercise program is the one you will do.

Exercise Selection: Do what you enjoy.

Yep, it's that simple.  The exercise that you enjoy doing is the best exercise.  Exercise should not be suffering.  If you don't enjoy your exercise, it won't take much to get out of the habit.  We need to set ourselves up for success, not build in excuses (like misery).

There are limits to this of course. If your favorite form of exercise is snorkeling around coral and you live in Wisconsin like I do, you may not get much exercise.

Your goals are also important in choosing your exercise.  If you want big bulging biceps, daily jogs will not do you much good.  If you want to run a marathon, powerlifting 3x a week won't get you there.

If you have a very general goal of just getting into better shape, there is pretty much no limit on what is useful. If you don't have a lot of experience exercising, you may need to experiment.  Try things out and see what sticks.  Just to name a few, hiking, biking, lifting, strongman, CrossFit, swimming, yoga, tennis, basketball, rock climbing or paddling.  It really doesn't matter, they are all far superior to couch surfing.

Motivation: Customize your environment to what drives you.

The real tip I'd like to give here is to figure out is which of the four Rubin tendencies influences you when it comes to exercise?

• Upholders respond readily to outer and inner expectations
• Questioners question all expectations; they’ll meet an expectation if they think it makes sense
• Rebels resist all expectations, outer and inner alike
• Obligers meet outer expectations, but struggle to meet expectations they impose on themselves

-Gretchen Rubin

If you are an upholder, you only need to set an expectation and most likely you don't need any help.  Questioners need to answer the question "Why should I do this?".  If you are an obliger, you will need to set up an external obligation such as a class, partner or at least an accountability partner who you check in with.  Rebels, as usual, are extra difficult.  One recommendation would be to find something unique as your exercise modality (e.g. one-handed bodyweight exercises) to shows how you are different.

My personal example would be the following.  In most things, I'm a questioner, but when it comes to exercise I'm an obliger.  I love lifting weights but don't much like running.  My current goal is to lose bodyfat, so adding in more cardio will be very helpful.  So what I've done is, I have a like minded training partner for lifting. This means I don't miss any weight training days because he expects me to be there.  For the running, I've set up after work running group. As the organizer, I am extremely obligated to attend. In both of these cases, I've used my obliger tendency to blast right past any excuses I might have for skipping a workout.  My goals and enjoyment map the route and my tendency is the ignition that gets me started.

Execution: Putting it all together.

The finding your personal combination of goals, enjoyment, and motivation style is a great way to get off your butt and get after it.  You may have to do some experimentation and introspection to figure out exactly what you enjoy and what gets you going, but it will be worth it. After that work is done, you won't have to exercise, you'll want to exercise and enjoy it.

Set yourself up for success and go kick some tail!