David Hollingworth

One of the most difficult things for me to do is to take a break from the keyboard. When I’m in the zone I just want to keep typing; but over the years this has had a detrimental affect on my neck and shoulders.

I even had a little message pop-up occasionally to remind me, “Every hour take a 15 minute break.”.

Did this work? Did it heck!

Then I came across Workrave. This little program is designed so that I have to take a break when it tells me to. It’s very flexible and can be set up so that:

• You periodically take micro-breaks of a short duration.
• Less frequently you have to take a longer break where you do some stretches or take a walk around.
• It will even limit the total amount of time you can spend on the computer each day.

So now I have a set up where:

• Every 8 minutes I have to stop using the keyboard for 30 seconds. This is a micro-break.
• Every 45 minutes I have to take a 10 minute rest break.

Because my day is very open ended at the moment I have switched off the ‘total time allowed each day’ facility.

When the break time arrives you get a audio and visual (pop-up window) reminder. If you ignore these then the pop-up starts to flash, first orange then red. However there’s no escaping your break because if you continue typing Workrave will add on the extra seconds you need to complete your stoppage.

The rest breaks advises you to get up from the computer and do something else. It will even pop-up a series of exercises to perform to help relieve fatigue and muscle stress.

You can, it you choose, postpone or even skip a break if you simply must; but then that rather defeats the purpose of running Workrave. I’ve been using it for less than a week and I can already feel my shoulders are less tense.

Oops time for a micro-break….

I’ve mentioned in recent posts that I’m over weight. I weigh 14st (197lbs to be precise) and my ideal weight for a man my height is 12st 6lbs. That’s 23lbs I have to loose if I’m to regain my ideal weight.

So the purpose of this post is to frame a goal to shed those pounds. Most of you will have heard of setting SMART goals to ensure that goals are met. I’m going to go through the steps of setting a SMART goal here to illustrate how a SMART goal differs from not-SMART goals and how it will help me achieve my goal.

Let’s begin with defining what we mean by a SMART goal. In case you haven’t guessed SMART is an acronym; it defines all the attributes a goal should posses for it to be achievable:

• Specific.
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Timely

So how do I make my weight loss goal into a SMART goal?

Specific
A specific goal names exactly what the goal needs to achieve. An example of a non-specific goal I hear quoted often is, “I’m going to be successful’. Successful at what? How do you define or measure success? This non-specific goal in too open to interpretation and needs to be stated in terms of something real, like finances for example.

My goal is to loose weight. Specifically I’m going to loose 23lbs in weight so that I weigh 12st 6lbs.

Measurable
I used to get this confused with being specific. If course if I’m going to loose 23lbs then it’s measurable - haven’t I just said it’s 23lbs?

Really this attribute is about having the structures in place to measure your progress towards the goal. I’m not going to wake up one morning and say, “Hurray, I just lost 23lbs” (well I might; but more fool me if I do). No, I need a pair of scales - something to physically be able to measure my weight with and so determine my progress.

I have scales at home so my goal is measurable.

Attainable
Goals are great; but they must be set within some sort of boundaries. For an extreme example I might set a goal to take lunch on Pluto - not really attainable is it? Another nice example I saw recently on another blog was a goal to be the next king of England. As the writer pointed out, unless you’re in the royal blood line or you’ve a huge army prepared to conquer England by force this goal is not attainable. You could argue that all goals are ultimately attainable; but here you have to look closely at your goal - are you prepared to devote the time and energy to attaining this goal? If not then it’s not attainable.

Loosing 23lbs is attainable. I put it on, I can loose it.

Relevant
How relevant is this goal to the overall plan? It would be great to have a goal to be the next king of England; but if the overall plan is to gain entry to a Buddhist monastery then the goal isn’t relevant to the plan.

Loosing weight contributes to my desire to live a long and healthy life and so contributes directly to this. Yes, the goal is relevant.

Timely
Goals must be given a time frame for them to become real entities in your life. If I have a goal to loose 23lbs; but don’t give it a time line then where is the motivation going to come from to actually make me take the effort to shed that weight. Believe me, it will take effort.

This is often the big blocker. Here I have to nail my colours to the mast and state by when I’m going to loose that weight. Here goes….

By Christmas 2007. I’m going to loose that weight by Christmas this year.

There, I’ve stated it publicly for all to read.

Let’s recap this SMART goal:

• Specific. I will loose 23lbs.
• Measurable. With the bathroom scales.
• Attainable. Yes, it’s within my abilities to do this.
• Relevant. Yes, it will contribute to my health and longevity.
• Timely. By Christmas this year (2007).

In a posting in the near future I will demonstrate how I’m going to achieve this goal.

The week went well. Target 3 days, accomplished 3 days.

The dog (Chester) has started to come along, which is OK so long as he doesn’t want to keep diving into the ditch; but most of the time he’s kept up.

How has this contributed to the (so far unstated) weight loss goal? Well so far it hasn’t; but at least I haven’t put on any weight this week, which is a good thing. Mrs. H., on the other hand, has lost 2lbs over the week, so many congratulations are due to her.

Next week will present some further challenges. On Monday I have an interview in Cork at the time I’m supposed to be walking, and on Wednesday I shall be in the office at midday. Both will attempt to derail me from my target so I must try to work around these obstacles.

Will let you know how I get on next week.

My good lady wife was often cajoling me to, “Get rid of the clutter” and for a long time I didn’t really heed her advice. Until, that is, I decided I was going to de-clutter my home desk.

My desk at home serves as both my home office and my personal PC space. It was cluttered! As well as all the PC equipment on the desk I had:

• Code print outs from work
• Reference books
• Non-work related books
• Music CDs
• Software CDs
• Ornaments

You get the picture? One day I realized how crowded I was feeling. Not only could I not find the stuff I wanted; but the stuff I didn’t want kept falling on the floor. It was time to get organized.

The next time I sat down at my desk it was a joy to open my laptop. My wife commented afterwards that I’d looked more at ease and more confident as I started work that morning. I felt much more in control and on-top of things. I could expand my horizons by not being overwhelmed by irrelevant stuff.

Whilst Ive been writing these posts the last couple of weeks I’ve also been surfing around reading blogs by fellow travelers in the 21st century. Some of these blog sites I’ve found to be absolutely over loaded with all manner of:

• Google Adsense advertisements
• Feedburner subscription links
• Other advertisements (frequently blinking fast enough to induce a fit)
• Pictures of recent readers

So much stuff, in fact, that it becomes difficult to determine the true purpose of the blog as the real stuff, the content, gets swamped by all the extraneous material.

I think a blog is a an expression of the person. Why not de-clutter your blog and let the person shine through?

Well we did it.

My wife and I did our first days walk, something that’s to become part of the rest of our lives.

It felt good, the weather is sunny and warm, legs got a good stretch and lunch (a light ham salad and some fruit) tasted all the better for it.

Here’s to a life time of walking.