Tag: productivity

Fitness

Desk Jockeys Need Deskercise!

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Desk-Jockey-American-worker

Every Desk Jockey understands the stiff and sleepy feeling that hits around 2:30 nearly every afternoon. Sitting all day staring at the screen and banging away on the keyboard is exhausting and potentially hazardous to your health.*

To save us from looking like the guy pictured above, I made a video of a very short and simple routine you can do at your desk to loosen your stiff muscles, increase your blood & oxygen flow, and wake you out of the afternoon coma.

Stretches

Neck Roll

Shoulder Roll

One Arm Hug

Overhead Side Stretch

Triceps stretch

Shoulder Blade Squeeze

Spinal Twist

Hand/ Wrist Stretch

Quads & Hammy Stretch

Strength

Desk Dips

Desk Pushups

Seated Leg Lift

Chair Squat

Forward Lunge

Tippy Toes

One Leg Balance

Wall Sit

Coach tips:

  1. Set a recurring appointment on your calendar every afternoon for 10 minutes to go through this routine. It is sure to help you power through the rest of your day.
  2. Invite your cubical neighbors to join you. Though I don’t think it looks silly to do these moves on your own, it will be super cool to have a small group Deskercising together. All the cool kids are doing it!
  3. Skip the caffeine fix and sugary snacks. These will spike your blood sugar for 20 minutes, but then you crash again which makes you feel more tired and hungry than before. Instead, go for a big drink of water or a piece of whole fruit for your afternoon snack.
  4. Remember that healthy and alert employees are more productive. In fact, your health is part of your job. Don’t feel guilty about taking this short break because you are too busy. Your boss will thank you for taking care of yourself so you can keep doing quality work.
  5. Deskercise is a great help to the afternoon slump, but it is not a replacement for regular exercise. Target 30 mins of moderate to intense exercise 4-5 times a week for best results. Get access to 100’s of world-class fitness programs from yoga to dance to weightlifting that you can do at home by clicking HERE.

*While some research suggests that “sitting is the new smoking”, other research argues that maybe sitting isn’t as bad as we think. However, virtually all research agrees that people in general are far less physically active than previous generations and we need to move more to optimize our health. I agree. Let’s get moving people!

Fortitude

Invest in Yourself – Good books for Personal Development

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reading books

“There are no great limits to growth because there are no limits of human intelligence, imagination, and wonder.” – Ronald Reagan

The ultimate underlying goal of personal development is to be the best version of you possible. Here is a selection of books that have been impactful to my healthy living journey.

Discipline & Self Awareness

The difference between the people that achieve their goals and those who don’t boils down to good old-fashioned discipline.

Strength Finder 2.0

The Road Less Traveled

7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Guy Stuff

The most difficult and challenging yet rewarding role men play is husband. And it’s not a game. We should be reading about how to be a better man and husband and then actually apply what we read.

Discovering the Mind of a Woman

Every Man’s Marriage

The Man in the Mirror

When Work & Family Collide

Husband After God

Motivation, Goal Setting & Achieving Goals

Goals give your life purpose and direction. Goals put you on the path to achievement and fulfillment. Goals tell you where you’re going so you can take the right steps to get there.

The Best Question Ever

Just Do Something

Pyramid of Success

Drive

Soul Food

Your soul is with you for all eternity. We should feed it, care for it, and strengthen it even more than our physical bodies. Besides the Bible (which I highly recommend reading daily), these books have been very impactful to my spiritual journey.

Radical

The Purpose Driven Life

The Lazarus Life

He Loves Me

Gospel Treason

Mere Christianity

Forgotten God

The Prayer of Jabez

Secrets of the Vine

The Naked Gospel

Communication & Leadership

You have to be able to adapt your communication style to the person you’re talking to, the subject you’re discussing, and the environment you’re in.

The Anatomy of Peace

Love Works

Leadership & Self Deception

The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team

Next Generation Leader

**Disclaimer – I recommend these books because they have a message, or theme, or even a tidbit that has encouraged me and helped shape me to who I am – and who I aim to be.

That does not mean that I agree with EVERYTHING every one of these fallible human authors has written. I’d love the chance to discuss your thoughts on any of these books and to hear about impactful books you have read.

One final thought: I admit that it is easy to read & study influencers about their tips and strategies to be great at (fill in the blank) as if learning about it is really something. Learning is just the start. The key is to take action from what you learn. Reminds me of this bible verse from James 1:22 “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” #notetoself #takeaction #practice

Fortitude

I Took a Social Media Sabbatical – Here’s What I Learned

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giphy kramer

Whoa! What am I crazy or something?!?

That’s what I thought too when I first had the idea to take a break from social media.

Could I really do it?

Am I addicted to social media?

After contemplating the idea for a couple weeks I decided it was a healthy living challenge I needed to accept. So on August 1, 2017 I pulled the plug. Man that sounds old school. There are no plugs! These are wireless times. I hid the apps from my phone and removed the tabs on my laptop Google page. I’m going cold turkey. I told my wife that I was actually looking forward to the break, especially since much of my social media engagement is for my fitness/ nutrition/ healthy living business and I was feeling a bit burned out. I also fretted a bit because I knew my business would suffer without engaging people virtually, but then I thought, “Would anyone even notice that I’m offline?” I know. I’m weird like that.

In no particular order, here are a few things I learned during my sabbatical.

  1. I WAS addicted to social media.

Not addicted REALLY bad that I salivate when someone mentions the Facebook news feed, but I admit to catching myself reaching for my phone to check Facebook or Instagram out of habit (& boredom honestly, or is it ADD?) only to remember that I’m purposely disconnecting. This happened a couple times the first day or so, but after that I was pretty happy to be free from it. I even left my phone behind when I went places so I wouldn’t be that guy who checks his phone all the time when in the company of other live humans.

  1. I realized I don’t NEED social media.

Crazy as it may seem, but I thought I would feel lost without knowing what all my peeps were up to. I don’t watch the TV news and I don’t do radio much, so I had relied on social media to fill me in on the “important news,” LOL. I didn’t miss it a bit. Turns out that I don’t need to know what so-n-so is up to everyday. What a relief.

  1. I realized that no one really needs to know what I’m up to everyday either – and they likely don’t really care anyway.

It’s kind of a blow to my frail male ego to first believe that there were crowds of people who wait for every insightful post, comment or photo that I share only to realize that others are probably just like me. They don’t ACTUALLY care what any particular “so-n-so” posts – including me. If it’s in their news feed they may read it, or not. If I’m not in the news feed, people move on with their life no problem. Shocking.

  1. Social media isn’t evil.

I sound very negative toward social media so far don’t I? It’s not all bad. There is good news transmitted there if you can get past the emotionally charged intolerant political posts – oops, keep it positive here Chad. It is nice to keep up with family & friends, connect with old friends or make new friends. Social media can be a forum to find great deals or local events too. It’s also an important tool for business.

  1. Without the distraction of social media, I can think about important stuff.

Yeah, this is probably the greatest benefit to my social media sabbatical. As I hoped, I was able to use my extra time to think, pray, study, write, dream, plan, and spend more focused time with Angie & Brandon. I realized how much I need such time and how much I enjoy it. It’s refreshing. I double dog dare you to try it.

The bottom line is that I’m really glad I took my 4 week social media sabbatical. I will change the way I engage it from now on. In my opinion, there are so many better ways to use my time than to mindlessly scroll the news feed constantly or to agonize over the text and photos I want to share to “change the world.” I think of social media in a similar way to work in that at the end of life no one will say, “I wish I spent more time on Facebook.”

What about you? Are you addicted to social media? Take a 30 day social media sabbatical and see what it does for you. I’d love to hear about it.

Fortitude

Delayed Gratification

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14708332_1598476677123887_2044047726869028885_n

I recently read a classic book – “The Road Less Traveled” by M Scott Peck MD, and right out of the gate he says, “Delaying gratification is a process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with. It is the only decent way to live.”
So what?
So do the hard things first and get them over with. Early morning exercise? Yep. Fill up on veggies before cookies? Yep. Work on budget forecasting before sorting email? Ugh, yep. #preachingtomyself
Generally speaking, we expect a quick fix to everything, particularly with our health/ fitness. That’s why the latest pills, potions, magic water, etc. sell like crazy. They promise the quick fix with no effort on our part. We are unwilling to delay the gratification of achieving optimum health by doing the work and eating right. We want it now! NEWS FLASH: pills, potions, get-fit-quick schemes don’t work long term. Ever.
If you want to be your best self in any part of your life, you need to do the work. Period. Short cuts and easy buttons don’t work long term. #theend #offmysoapbox #firstthingsfirst

Fortitude

Interview Yourself

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describe yourself1

On your personal journey to becoming your best self, one important activity to consider is the dreaded self assessment. This exercise takes the idea of “apply within” to a whole new level. Fret ye not; it’s not as bad as it sounds. Start by asking a simple question.

How would you describe yourself? Here’s an opportunity for a little personal reflection. Take a few minutes and WRITE DOWN your answers. If you are like me, the description is probably really nice, with some honest yucky stuff in it too. Now here’s the hard part. Ask someone close to you to describe you honestly. Be sure to tell them this is a ‘judgment free’ exercise and they are free to be honest and you promise not to be upset with the responses.

Remember, this exercise is designed to reveal the gaps between how you see yourself and how others see you and ultimately help you to be your best self. There are lots of ways to use the intel you gather, but lets keep it simple and positive.

1. For the descriptions provided by your friend, look carefully at the ones you did NOT identify yourself. Contemplate how you can further cultivate this descriptor, or mitigate it by some behavior change. Remember, this is how others see you. Whether you agree with their assessment or not, “perception is reality” and you’d prefer people to see you as you see you.

2. Celebrate the descriptors you matched with the ones provided by your friend. You know yourself pretty well. Even if some negative descriptors matched, at least you know what to work on.

3. Check in periodically with your friend and ask how you are doing with whatever trait you are interested in. This routine check up will go a long way to helping you be your best.

Need some help to get started? I found Tom Rath’s “Strengths Finder 2.0” to be especially helpful in learning who I am and what I’m good at. Another resource to try is 360Reach, which takes a fun twist on peer assessment with questions like, “What kind of cereal describes (you) and why?”