Self-Improvement – Page 22 – Noel Lynne Figart

January 10, 2008

I can has work and I swimmed!

Ya! Got some freelance writing work. This makes me happy.

Every dollar I earn from my writin’ chair is worth two (emotionally) dollars earned leaving the house. Yeah, I know, I’m a weirdo.

I was also a Good Girl^TM and swam this morning. It felt good. Thing is, I’m still having a hard time getting over being the heaviest woman in the gym at a given time. Early mornings are harder because it’s all the sleek athletes and hard-cores in then. Then here’s me. I know I need to bloody well get over myself and be done with it. No-one really cares but me and I know that, too.

I’m thinking about saving up to get my life guard certification, or possibly even my WSI. I’ve checked over the requirements, and I’m plenty capable of passing them, though it’s been over twenty years since I was last certified. I actually did use my training once, about ten years after I’d gotten my certification.

A mother with two kids (all of whom were inexpert swimmers) got into rough surf I would hesitate to swim in. As a matter of fact, I’d just been griping about the dangerous surf red flags and the fact I’d be spending the day on the sand instead of in the water.

The mom was playing in the surf with the kids, holding their hands, and lost a grip of one of them. He was being pulled out. I was nearby and charged in to grab the kid. The lifeguard was about six seconds behind me and according to my parents, was shouting at me (I couldn’t hear it. I was busy) when she saw me use a standard lifesaving technique to get the kid in — the reach and grab. It’s a method of getting someone without getting too close to a panicked person who can drown you, but is a very firm hold. The guard got the mom and the other kid in and started chewing her out for getting in the water during red flag surf. (You really should stay on shore when the red flags are flying). The guard thanked me and told me that even though she was glad I was able to get the child in, I should be careful with that sort of thing. Well, okay, she was right. I’m not ocean rescue trained. That’s some specific and rigorous skills and I know it! Still, the kid was being swept away, the mother and other kid were in trouble and the lifeguard would have had to choose who to help.

I hope I would have had the sense not to try to swim out after the kid if we both got swept off our feet and out into the deep water. And that’s why ocean rescue is a different sort of training than your standard Red Cross Pool lifeguarding. Conditions are harsher and change a whole bunch faster. The reach and grab in a pool when you’re on deck and there’s someone flipping out within your reach? No biggie. You’re on steady ground, there’s no current or waves to deal with, and you can focus on getting the person out of the pool. In the ocean? Different story by far! Waves are a lot stronger than people, and you can be knocked down while you’re trying to use that very simple technique. Combine that with rough surf, a lot of wind and an outgoing tide (the exact conditions of that particular day), and things change fast.

When I was a kid my dad told me something that I’m not sure if he actually knew the stats on or not, but I’ve never forgotten it: Strong swimmers drown more often. Why? They get cocky and take dumb risks. I don’t know if this was to caution a little girl quite prone to get cocky about her own physical skills or if it was a real statistic. But I figure the caution is fairly useful.

January 9, 2008

I swimmed

I was a “good girl” and swam today.

I think I may wind up being a little sorry tomorrow. I’ve been lazy for the last few weeks and I swam half a mile this morning.¹

Still, it felt good.

I find that swimming early in the morning does have several positive effects. I get exercise out of the way early, so I start the day feeling like I’ve accomplished something. Because I go so very early (pool opens at 5:30 AM) I’ve worked out, am showered, dressed and ready for my coffee by the time the rest of the house gets up. I can accomplish more between 6:30 in the morning and eleven than I can the whole of the rest of the day. Being up that early kind of gets me going better.

But, boy oh boy, can I tell I’ve been slacking. Usually I’m not creaky or sore until the next day when I’ve worked out well. Today? I’m feeling it good and proper — especially in my butt.

Common theory is that swimming isn’t so hot for the legs because it’s not a weight-bearing exercise. It’s one of those fuzzy things. You do work your muscles in your legs just fine, swimming. What it’s not good for is preventing osteoporosis. You really do, no kidding, need to do weight bearing exercise to keep up the bone strength. Walking, running, standing calisthenics, free weights²… But building muscle? Hell yeah, swimming does just fine. Do a few hundred yards of kicking drills. You’ll feel it all through your legs if you’re doing it right.

I’m still trying to figure out how I’m going to fit in lifting if I’m going to swim every morning. I don’t know that I really wanna go back to the gym most evenings to do my weights. I may go back to dumbbells for that, though a bench with a squat rack is starting to look attractive…

¹ Yeah, yeah, you hard cores can roll your eyes and tell me that’s really a warm up!

² I say free weights specifically, because you have to exclude any machine where your weight is being supported if you’re looking for the bone-building benefit. Nothing where you’re sitting down will be good for this specific need. That throws out leg extension machines and those things for the supine hamstring curls. Yes, they’re useful for strength, but they’re not what you need for bone-building.

January 1, 2008

Intelligent Goal Setting

Multi-talented people (which I would bet money includes most of you reading this), because they can do anything sometimes feel that they should do everything.

You wanna find yourself spinning your wheels and not getting much useful done, this is the way to do it.

I’m doing an experiment this year. I’ve got four basic year-long goals. If an activity does not apply to one of those goals, it does not belong on my to-do list.

This is not to mean that I am not allowed to do things that don’t apply to my goals. What this means is that I’m not allowed to do things that do not apply to my goals first.

My goals for 2008 are to lose 2 lbs a month, triple my monthly income doing what I love (less impressive than it sounds. I’m still waaayyy in the early stages of my business), make sure my friends/family understand I love and appreciate them, and get the PolyWorks Fund fully up and running with a specific goal dollar amount as our first year’s giving. Hardly onerous, but certainly a solid, productive year.

This is easy to break down into monthly, weekly and daily goals. At the beginning of each month, I decide what I want accomplished by the end of it. At the beginning of each week, same. This helps me set appropriate daily goals, which is where the real work is done. Other than planning sessions, I do my best to keep myself focused on the day at hand. I probably won’t give December 31, 2008 another thought until sometime next December. I know where I want to be, and the steps to get there. The steps are the important part now.

Notice “declutter the house” is not on the list at all. Does this mean my house will fall to rack and ruin in 2008? No. If it were in danger of doing so, I’d’ve had a housekeeping goal for this year and dropped one of the other ones. What it means is that unless I’ve accomplished what I set out to do for the day, I’m not to be cleaning out closets. If I get a wild hare across my butt to do so after I’ve accomplished my daily goals, that’s all good. I’m just not allowing myself to spend a lot of time on things that have nothing to do with what I’ve decided to accomplish. (Obviously, there is cleaning and organizing that does directly relate to getting my work done. Gotta maintain the files, etc. These things do make my to-do list).

I try to keep my to-do lists relatively short, too. Before I put it in Outlook (yes, I use Outlook as my task-tracker, etc.) I ask myself is this really productive, or is it make-work? I’ve noticed the very, very busy seem to be just awfully proud of being busy rather than actually accomplishing stuff. Anyone who has worked for someone who likes busy for the sake of busy knows what I am talking about! It’s an easy trap to fall into when you’re self-employed and feel guilty that someone might think you’re being “lazy”.

I know all this planning sounds like wheel spinning. I find that it is not at all. Every hour I spend doing it seems to save me about two when it comes to getting stuff bloody well done.

December 10, 2007

Just Because I Impress Myself

I said this in reply to someone on another group talking about working out of a black mood hole:

You are in control of your actions.

You can influence your emotions by your choice of actions.

You can make choices of actions that influence you in itty, bitty positive ways. Consistently choosing small things to influence your mood for good will start to snowball — VERY slowly at first, but it’s like lifting weights. At first you struggle to life ten pounds. By going and trying a little bit consistently, you get stronger and a year later, you’re tossing around 100 lbs like it was nothing. Then people who haven’t tried it get mad at you and say you’re just “naturally strong” and don’t understand what it’s like to find it hard to lift ten pounds.

*wrygrin*

November 22, 2007

In Praise of Dumbbells

Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers!

The gym was closed today, and it’s weights day today.

Being a holiday, of course I can choose to skip a workout. I chose to skip one earlier in the week due to sleep deprivation¹, so on a day I was well-rested, not all that busy and the weather being gray and gloomy, I did want to go ahead and get in the mood enhancement of a short workout anyway.

When I started lifting, I started with a set of adjustable dumbbells. I made great progress and was happy with them. I figured though, since I’d “graduated” to a big ole macho gym workout that today would be light.

HA! I had a wonderful, sweat pouring off me workout quite as good as any I get in the gym.

Friends, if you cannot afford a gym membership and want to lift, do save up and treat yourself to a cheap set of adjustable dumbbells, no kidding. Mine are a set of Athletic Works that come in a case with 40 lbs of plates in the set, but each bar can take closer to 75lbs if you have the plates for it. I don’t, nor do I need them yet! (The heaviest weight I put on them is about 35 lbs for a total of 70 lbs for dumbbell squats). The original set cost me about $30, and I may have spent an additional $30 on more plates. Plates are relatively cheap.

Now, do I like the gym? Good lord yes! The feedback and the motivation is wonderful, and exploring all the neat gadgets, machines and whatnot is all kinds of fun. But they’re not necessary. If I’m in a situation where I can’t afford a gym membership any more, my good friends the dumbbells will always be there for me.

And if you don’t believe me, check this out:

All Dumbbells, All The Time!
Dumbbell Exercises
The Complete Dumbbell Workout

¹Up with a child having an asthmatic attack. He’s fine now, thank goodness!

November 3, 2007

The Ten Rules of Bodybuilding

In between my writing sessions, I’m looking up stuff on bodybuilding.

When you throw out all the stuff that’s clearly been paid for by supplement companies of dubious worth, it seems this is the basic advice:

Lift heavy shit.
Make sure every muscle in your body gets involved in lifting heavy shit.
Make sure that when you’re lifting heavy shit that you don’t lift shit that is too heavy and tear something so you can’t lift heavy shit for awhile. (Your body will hunt down your ego and punish it if you forget Rule One¹).
Make sure that you give your muscles ample recovery time from lifting heavy shit.
If you want your muscles to get bigger from lifting heavy shit, feed them enough protein
If you want enough energy to lift heavy shit, make sure you get enough carbs.
If you want to make sure your systems function properly while lifting heavy shit, you have to get enough fat, but not too much.
While lifting heavy shit, make sure you get enough water.
If you want to look like Mr. Olympia, you have to inject hormones while lifting heavy shit.
You can’t be healthy only lifting heavy shit. Get your heart rate up for a bit a few times a week not lifting heavy shit.

That’s it. They don’t have to publish fitness mags any more. There’s all the info you need. So, howzat for simple?

¹Don’t be a fucking idiot.

September 21, 2007

The Four Hour Work Week

Several friends have pointed me in the direction of the Four Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss. I’m not linking to it, because you can get it from your library easily enough. In fact, in a week or two, I’ll give my copy away for the price of the postage. A lot of the info in the book is available free on his blog, anyway.

I have to wonder if the author (who does, indeed remind me of a young Woody Smith) had read “The Man Too Lazy to Fail” early in life and then decided to choose a way to put it into practice.

Overall, it’s a good book — loaded with information and written in a blog-like style, so the concepts are easy to digest.

I found the title a little misleading. No-one capable of doing this has the personality to sit on his ass most of the time, and the author doesn’t. Though I confess I take his claims of greatness and achievement with a slight grain of salt. Good self promotion requires a bit of yarn telling ability and glossing.

In spite of the occasional raised eyebrow, “naughty boy” smirk, and headshake at the “Dig me” stuff, the concepts in the book are quite sound, and the underlying theme is the most important part:

Live Consciously, because you do not have to be superrich to have the life you want.How do you want to spend your time?

Travel? There are ways to do that without spending much money, and he give some interesting ideas.

Family? He gives some strategies that can work for some people to reduce time in the office. (You’ve gotta be willing to be a bit of a rule breaker for some of them. Just sayin’). I happened to have a job that requires my ass in the office from 8-4:30, so well.. I quit and am doing something else. (Yes, I’m insane. Tell me something I don’t know).

Self-development? Okay, this guy acts like he’s “rode out West on a covered wagon, shot a wild Indian and shook hands with the Prez”. Still, even allowing for a certain bullshit factor, the guy really has packed a lot of living and learning into less than 30 years.

“But what if I don’t want a four hour workweek. What if I want to work long hours on what gives me deep satisfaction, as per Heinlein’s definition of happiness?”

Well, that’s part of living consciously, now innit? I mean, jeez, I wouldn’t want my writing limited to four hours a week!

August 17, 2007

Occupational Hazard

A big problem I have when I’m working on a first draft is weight gain. I tend not to be as fitness-oriented when I’m hammer and tongs at a first draft. You know how it is, your mind is on the book, and you’ve got a million other things to get done. The last thing you want to do is take time out to work out.

I’m actually really bad about it. I’ve not been working out like I should.

Thing is, if I’m going to have a sedentary profession, I really, really need to make sure my physical needs are taken care of. After all, you do think more clearly when your body is healthy. It’s the brain that’s the important thing as a writer, right?

I do have a pool membership and have decided to store my bathing suit in my locker there so that I have No Damn Excuse not to get my lazy butt into the pool on my lunch break and get all red in the face good and proper!

While I do have an Otterbox and waterproof earphones, I’m laying off using them in favor of using the time face down in the water to work on Stoneflower, getting my brain in gear for the night’s writing. I figure it’s a decent moving meditation. When I was a kid, I would often plot stories while riding my bike around Kennedy’s Pond, then beg permission to go out into the woods behind my best friend’s house where I’d soak my feet in the stream and actually write the story. (Oh god, if only I’d had a laptop or my Palm and keyboard then! I never did much like writing longhand).

I know of lots of writers who like to walk, and often use the time to work out stories in their minds as they do so.

I also like weights because I’m lazy. It doesn’t take very long with a pair of dumbbells to get in a decent strength-building workout. Heinlein, if I recall correctly, liked to do stone mason type work around the house to keep in shape, but still often bitched about the fact it was easy to get out of shape while working on a novel.

It’s rough, sometimes. What I really want to do is to park my butt in my writin’ chair with an appletini to get my writing done. What I really need to do is make sure I eat right and work out so that my body supports that brain I need for work. I ain’t slender and I’m naturally pretty sedentary. A serious writing project makes it that much worse!

34,016 / 120,000
(28.3%)

August 15, 2007

Cookin' Cheap

I’ve really become distressed lately at this idea that cooking/eating healthily is expensive.

Let’s give Ramen a score of ~$0.50 a package. (I’ve seen it on sale for less, yes)

For $.50 a serving, I can have (according to this week’s local grocery story circular):

Two Apples, or
A serving and a half of fresh broccoli or
Two servings of rough cut oatmeal or
Five ounces of chicken (if I’m willing to cut it up rather than buying pre-cut parts, and that’s gonna keep you full longer than the fucking ramen)
Four servings of brown rice or
A serving of flavored yogurt or
Four ounces of grapes (which is a lot of grapes)

Sorry, I don’t buy that a crap diet is cheaper. I’ll grant that there are plenty of people who don’t understand how to make a menu, or how to use leftovers well, or how to employ home-made soups and a freezer to prevent product waste, or don’t understand how to use fat healthily to promote saiety (read: Olive oil is your friend). But I don’t buy the idea of a crap diet being cheaper.

November 8, 2006

You've Gotta Be Kidding Me

I was going to write this short little thing to Bob Green (Oprah’s trainer, author of Making the Connection and some other stuff).

He feels like swimming is a lousy exercise for losing fat. I was going to point out swimming has been my major cardio, list how much I’ve lost¹ and say “Nya, nya, nya”.

When I write an article, I often do as much as five whole minutes of research to find a website that supports some smartassed comment or other I make.

What do I find? Mr. Green is working with McDonald’s. Now, I’ve read Making the Connection and I know Green believes in a low fat diet. No, if you’re going to eat that way, McDonald’s doesn’t have a great deal to offer. Some, but not much, and no, not an Egg McMuffin without the cheese. BZZZTT!

I don’t respect this. It ain’t that I think a low fat diet is all that. I don’t. I eat low carb, high protein, and don’t sweat the fat. It’s what works for me. But it would be like me, after getting fit by what I’m doing, being a spokesman for an aerobics center that used as its marketing technique pink dumbbells, low weights, high reps and played into a fear of “getting big”.²

In other words, corporate whoring.

¹ 28 lbs since the beginning of July. A rate of about a pound and a half a week, which is a fine rate of fat loss.

²For those of you who may never have read any of my fitness articles, I believe in moderate cardio, and lifting hard and heavy. Putting on muscle is a great way to lose fat and get fit fast. Women won’t “get big” without special training and illegal or quasi-legal supplementation. Promise.