Z-Health Master Trainer Jen Waak is a self-described “recovering management consultant”. These days, she helps other “Keyboard Athletes” improve and maintain their bodies and stay healthy even when they’re stuck behind a desk all day. What surprised me about reading Jen’s advice on “what you should do at your desk”, was that it sounded a lot like what she did last year to get ready for a climb up Mount Kilimanjaro.
Pro: My Car Broke Down and I Was Actually Happy about It I guess I need to explain that a little more. I wasn’t really happy that it broke down. I was on the way to Maine to teach the tai chi group in Farmington, so that sucked. And it was the clutch the completely died, so I knew it was going to be a few dollars to repair. But that was actually part of the silver lining.
Claude Hopkins, in Scientific Advertising: A Rapid stream ran by the writer’s boyhood home. The stream turned a wooden wheel and the wheel ran a mill. Under that primitive method, all but a fraction of the streams’ potentiality went to waste. Then someone applied scientific methods to that stream – put in a turbine and dynamos. Now, with no more water, no more power, it runs a large manufacturing plant.
Check out this talk from 37Signals co-founder Jason Fried at TEDx Midwest, specifically at 5:13 when he starts comparing sleep and work:
It got me thinking about other “phase-based” activities, like Tai Chi or Qigong practice. Most productive practice happens when you can allow yourself to move through several stages of settling in and keep a continuous practice thread going for an hour or more. Over the last 6 years of running 3 hour-long classes back-to-back-to-back, multiple times per week, I’ve gotten a pretty good feel for these phases.
