Failure

I've listened to two separate podcasts lately that dealt somewhat with the issue of failure. The first was the Nerdist podcast with Tim Ferriss. In the podcast he said that he learned at a young age to view failure as feedback. That's an interesting perspective. Instead of failing and giving up look at failure as a way seeing how not to do a certain thing. Like Thomas Edison talking about working on the electric light bulb; "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

The second podcast was Tapestry with the designer Bruce Mau. One of the things he talked about was how most people think about creativity and the finished product. Most of us think that the finished product leapt into the world fully formed. The process that leads to a finished painting, play, song, etc is loaded with failure, sometimes more failure than success. He says "Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child)."

These are great perspectives for me as I have a tendency to give up when faced with failure. Is there a point though, after failing over and over at something where you decide "Maybe this isn't for me?", "Maybe I can't do this?". Are we meant to succeed at everything we do? Do we start certain things and then realize after failing that maybe we don't want to do whatever it is?

Anyway, I'm off to do some failing! Hope my boss doesn't mind....

Small measurable changes.

One thing I learned from Tim Ferris when he was on The Nerdist is that you need to make small changes in your life if you are to have success at whatever it is you are trying to do. Don't try and make too many big changes at once or you'll just give up. Don't try to go from being a sedentary junk food eater to a finely tuned athlete overnight. Start by making small changes to your diet, maybe cut out drinking pop. (Yes, actually, if you drink pop and you are fat, stop it. Pop is full of sugar and helps you be fat.) I'd also add "measurable" to "small" when talking about changes. If you are trying to get into shape, take your measurements or get a body composition test now and then do it again in a month to see how you are doing. (Tim might have mentioned the measurable part in the podcast or somewhere else).
Alright, here's my small measurable change. I'll take my measurements and start consuming 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of getting up in the morning. Tim Ferriss (I am not employed by nor do I receive any financial compensation from Tim Ferriss. I'm not in love with him either.) recommends this and has seen favorable results so I'm going to give it a try.

Goals for the week of May 2

In the interest of being accountable for the changes I want in my life, here are my goals for this week. I'll post at the end of the week to see how I did.

1. Consume 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking up, everyday.
2. Two 20 minute interval runs
3. Two 1 km freestyle swims
4. Four 30 Minute shred workouts
5. Read 2 chapters from Common Ground
6. Read 2 chapters from Start Late, Finish Rich

Ads?

How annoying are ads on a blog? Would you think I was a douche if I put the Adsense gadget on my blog? Do you actually make any money? I like money, it's useful stuff, but are ads on my blog the online equivalent of that guy who sells Amway and always tries to get you into it?

How do you do it?

How do you successfully write a blog? I don't mean how do you make money from your blog or gain thousands of followers. How do you consistently keep on blogging? How often do you post? Do you set aside time every day or every week or just write whenever? Any tips would be appreciated.

Here I go again...

I have decided to try my hand at blogging again. I am notoriously bad at it. Usually I only make two or three posts and then give up. A couple of things have happened lately that made me want to get back to blogging and really give it a go. First, I keep hearing, or seeing, or reading about really cool / interesting / challenging things and I wanted a place to talk about them. Facebook didn't seem right for some reason. Secondly, this morning I listened to The Nerdist podcast #73 with Tim Ferriss. In it Tim talked about making yourself accountable for the changes you want in your life. For example if you are trying to lose weight you could take a picture of your food before you eat it and post it online, I suppose so then your friends who know you are trying to lose weight would know what you were eating. If you are not accountable to anyone and you fail there are no real consequences, you just have this vague sense of failure and you reinforce in your mind that you can't do anything. If everyone knows what you are trying to do and you fail then everyone knows you are a failure. These are the reasons I decided to blog again; to generally nerd out about stuff I like and to let people know the channges I am trying to make in my life so I am accountable.