kwollity

photo credit: sickmouthy

Since I moved this month and was also out of town a fair bit I decided to make this month’s challenge super easy: to learn a new word everyday. All it involved was getting a daily email from dictionary.com.

1. Substrate – A Substratum – something that is spread or laid under something else; a stratum or layer lying under another.
2. Darkle – To grow dark, gloomy, etc.
3. Nebulize – To become vague, or indistinct
4. Braird – To sprout; appear above the ground.
5. Paralipsis – The suggestion, by deliberately brief treatment of a topic, that much of significance is being omitted, as in “not to mention other faults.”
6. Gammon – To deceive.
7. Aplomb – Assurance of manner or of action; self-possession; confidence; coolness
8. Inculcate – To teach and impress by frequent repetition or instruction.
9. Chichi – Affectedly trendy.
10. Bellwether – A leader of a movement or activity; also, a leading indicator of future trends.
11. Elegiac – Relating to the mourning or remembering of the dead.
12. Dilatory – Tending to put off what ought to be done at once; given to procrastination.
13. Panache – Dash or flamboyance in manner or style.
14. Fey – Possessing or displaying a strange and otherworldly aspect or quality; magical or fairylike; elfin.
15. Bacchanalia – A riotous, boisterous, or drunken festivity; a revel
16. Punctilious – Strictly attentive to the details of form in action or conduct; precise; exact in the smallest particulars.
17. Postprandial – Happening or done after a meal.
18. Pleonasm – The use of more words than are necessary to express an idea; as, “I saw it with my own eyes.”
19. Acme – The highest point of something; the highest level or degree attainable.
20. Irrefragable – Impossible to refute; incontestable; undeniable; as, an irrefragable argument; irrefragable evidence.
21. Rapine – The act of plundering; the seizing and carrying away of another’s property by force.
22. Copacetic - Very satisfactory; fine.
23. Lionize - To treat or regard as an object of great interest or importance.
24. Tchotchke – A trinket, a knickknack.
25. Sapid - Having taste or flavor, especially having a strong pleasant flavor
26. Gadabout - Someone who roams about in search of amusement or social activity.
27. Portend - To indicate (events, misfortunes, etc.) as in future; to foreshadow; to bode.
28. Woolgathering - Indulgence in idle daydreaming.
29. Votary - One who is devoted, given, or addicted to some particular pursuit, subject, study, or way of life.

And it looks like a missed a day somewhere? Oops

After watching the above TED talk by Matt Cutts (Google Engineer) I decided to follow the advice offered and take on a series of 1 month challenges.The video is only 3 minutes and worth the watch.

The idea is that each month you set up a challenge for yourself, and do your best to meet that challenge for the month. These aren’t huge, earth shattering challenges (although they can be) but rather small, simple things that you’ve never tried before, or would improve your life in some way.

My first month was simple enough. My challenge was to run to work and back 1 day each week (although I think doing something only 4 times over the month may be bending the rules a bit). Luckily, my office building has a shower so I don’t scare away my coworkers. After having done this for a month, I’ve decided to continue with this routine of running to work once a week. It’s a great way to get some extra training into my schedule, and forces myself to do a ‘two-a-day’, even if I’m tired at the end of the day (otherwise, how am I getting home?). I look forward to the days where I run to work in the morning, and am glad I’ve started this ritual.

So with a successful first month behind me, here are some of challenges I plan to tackle:

- Play the guitar for 15 minutes every day (August)
- Eat only vegetarian
- Eat only vegan
- No TV
- No caffeine
- No alcohol
- Write down 1 idea per day on how I can earn extra income (October 2011)
- Spend 1 month getting a side-business off the ground (from the above list).
- Take a photo each day
- Run 300km over the month (an average of 10km per day, every day)
- Write 30 thank you letters (an idea I got from this book)
- Learn a new word every day (September 2011)
- Become more optimistic (Before going to bed each day, write down 5 reasons why my day was awesome)

By brainstorming and borrowing some ideas from a Google search, in about 10 minutes I had this list which will last me more than 1 year.

The key to these little challenges is that they force you to expose yourself to something new. It may be something you keep doing (like me with running to work), or something you can’t wait to end (I can’t imagine I will enjoy being vegan for a month). The whole point is to step outside that comfort zone and try something new.

photo credit: Toban Black

Yesterday, Planet Money had a post which referenced a NY Times article on spending and happiness. A recent study has found that spending money on experiences rather than material possessions can make us happier.

One major finding is that spending money for an experience — concert tickets, French lessons, sushi-rolling classes, a hotel room in Monaco — produces longer-lasting satisfaction than spending money on plain old stuff.

“ ‘It’s better to go on a vacation than buy a new couch’ is basically the idea,” says Professor Dunn, summing up research by two fellow psychologists, Leaf Van Boven and Thomas Gilovich. Her own take on the subject is in a paper she wrote with colleagues at Harvard and the University of Virginia: “If Money Doesn’t Make You Happy Then You Probably Aren’t Spending It Right.”

Looking at the 62 items on my bucket list, only 1 of them relates to owning a possession (a Galaga arcade machine). The other 61 are experiences! I had never realized that before, but I think this is something I’ve been becoming more aware of lately as I’ve started to try to be more frugal with my money. For example, I love technology and gadgets, and I love the iPhone. But I’ve had my same old Motorola Krzr flip phone for years. It works fine. The iPhone came, then the 2G, then the 3G, now the iPhone 4. Instead of spending the money on a gadget I don’t really need, or would provide short-term happiness, I can put that money towards investments that will allow me to retire that much earlier, or towards buying an experience. The cost of an iPhone easily pays for, for example, the Wilderness Survival course I took last week. While an iPhone would come and die over a few short years, that experience will be with me forever. The skills I learned in that course enrich every backcountry experience I will have until the day I die, and heck, may even save my life someday.

The classic saying is that ‘money doesn’t by happiness’. I think that’s only partially true. Money can buy happiness through giving you a means to different experiences. Sure, you can have great experiences without money, but having money makes it easier undoubtedly.

And this reminds me of a book I read last year called the Economics of Happiness. In that book, there is a very telling statistic (and I forget the exact numbers without referencing the book) that average person’s happiness had slightly decreased since the 1950′s even though incomes per person have skyrocketed. So we have a lot more money than our grandparents, but we’re less happy than they were. Is it because we’re spending that money on ‘stuff’ instead of experiences? I would put my money on yes.

If you’re intrigued by this line of thinking, I’d recommend these books:

The Economics of Happiness, Mark Anielski
Your Money or Your Life, Vicki Robins & Joe Dominguez
Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer (the movie is even better )

Found this great video on TED a while back. Victor Frankl, holocaust survivor and author of a really interesting book called Man’s Search for Meaning, gives a presentation at Conference in Toronto with students for search for meaning in 1972. (Didn’t they have color video in 1972?)

photo credit: tnarik

Throughout high school and college I always had a hard time sleeping at night. I would always seem to ‘wake up’ in the evenings, and that’s when I would do homework, read, or otherwise just watch tv/ movies into the wee hours of the morning. The next day I would inevitably be exhausted, but nevertheless get through the day, only to perk up again come night time. It wasn’t insomnia, but I was definitely more alert, and my mind more active once the moon was out.

This all changed with the birth of my son 2 years ago. The demands of raising a little one now leave me exhausted by day-end and I usually pass out by 11pm or so.

However, last night I couldn’t sleep and I was reading a book I recently bought called Brain Rules: 12 Principals for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School, by John Medina. Brain Rules is a fascinating book about how the brain works (in layman’s terms) and how we can use our current understanding of the brain to help us be happier, healthier, and more productive. (I will post a book review once I finish it).

One of the topics covered in the book is sleep (Brain rule #7: Sleep well, think well), and I learned something very interesting. We all have different chronotypes “burned into the genetic complexities of the brain that govern our sleep/wave cycle”. We are either larks, hummingbirds, or owls.

About 1/10 people are actually hard-wired to be larks, or early risers. The technical term is early chronotype. These are the people who don’t need alarms, are up-and-at-them bright and early, and are most productive in the morning, with peak productivity coming before lunch. Definitely not me.

2/10 people are what are known as night owls, or late chronotypes. As Medina describes these people:

…owls report to being most alert around 6pm, experiencing their most productive work time in the late evening. They rarely want to go to bed before 3am. Owls invariably need an alarm clock to get them up in the morning, with extreme owls requiring multiple alarms to ensure arousal. Indeed, if owls had their druthers, most would not wake up much before 10am. Not surprisingly, late chronotypes report their favorite mealtime as dinner, and they would drink gallons of coffee all day long to prop themselves up at work if given the opportunity. If it sounds to you as though owls do not sleep as well as larks in society, you are right on the money. Indeed, late chronotypess usually accumulate massive sleep debt as they go through life.

That sounds more like me. I remember I used to set 2 alarms; the clock beside my bed, and my phone which I would put on the dresser across the room. Sometimes I would unknowingly shut off my alarm in the morning and drift back asleep, so I had to set up my phone alarm to ensure I physically got out of bed to turn it off.

The remaining 70% of people out there are hummingbirds, who function best during the regular hours of the day. So, what are the implications of this, and how does this help us? Well, if you know what chronotype you are, you can (hopefully) schedule your work around those hours. If you’re a night owl like me, that might mean leaving your most meaningful work for after 6pm or so, getting your work done, going to bed by 3am and sleeping in the next day. The problem is that the typical 9 – 5 jobs don’t allow this kind of schedule, and owls accumulate a permanent ‘sleep debt’ over their lives. Medina suggests businesses should be open later into the evening to facilitate owls, or that schools can offer night classes for owl students and teachers alike. Medina also suggests taking an afternoon nap if possible, as studies show this greatly increases productivity (by as much as 34% according to one NASA study).

The larks have the advantage because they are able to be productive in the morning and crash around 9pm, well within the normal operating hours of schools and businesses.

You probably know what chronotype you are, but if you’re unsure there is a simple online test here. According to this test I’m a ‘Moderately Evening Type’.

Which type are you?

What are some of your greatest life accomplishments? Think about it for a minute. What goals are you trying to achieve in your life right now?

Guaranteed, you did not achieve/ will not achieve those things without stepping out of your comfort zone.

In order to achieve positive change in your life you have to make yourself uncomfortable.

“Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.” – Brian Tracy

It sounds so simple right? But it can be so hard to do. Some people will take years to step out of their comfort zones to accomplish a goal. It can be difficult to face the risks and pain of discomfort; to step into an unknown. However, you can make a conscious decision to make yourself uncomfortable each and every day, which will lead you to positive change.

Right now, I can relate this advice to my marathon training. Each weekend, I have to push myself to run further than I have before at any point in my life. Yesterday I did 26K. My legs were burning, and I was wet, cold and dizzy. I wanted to quit, but I kept going. I finished the run, and now my legs and cardiovascular system are stronger and ready for a further distance next week. I needed to go through that period of discomfort to improve my fitness. But, the key is not just to endure, but to embrace the discomfort. The discomfort is your friend! When I reach that point where my legs get wobbly, I love it, because I know I’m making progress, and that motivates me to keep pushing.

“Comfort zones are most often expanded through discomfort.” – Peter McWilliams

The discomfort can be physical or emotional, but like anything, practice makes perfect. Here’s a few ways you can step out of your comfort zone:

1)      Take a new route to work
2)      Make that awkward phone call you’ve been putting off
3)      Start a conversation with a stranger
4)      Try a different type of food
5)      Listen to a new genre of music
6)      Sign up for a new course/class. Something you wouldn’t normally do (yoga, swimming, photography, anything)

The idea here is to break the pattern, the everyday routine. This will work to keep your mind alert and sharp, and away from that pattern where everyday is SOS (Same Old Shit). If you can, try to do something ‘uncomfortable’ everyday.

Don’t be afraid to fail, because you inevitably will sometimes. Risk of failure is what causes us to be uncomfortable (or the risk of looking foolish, or something along those lines). So, before you set out on your new task, accept the fact you might fail. Just be ready to shrug it off and try again. Again, embrace the discomfort.

You can even make it a challenge. What are you afraid of? Heights, spiders, pubic speaking, water? Pick a fear and challenge yourself. Take a small step toward conquering that fear. This doesn’t mean you have to go bungee jumping to conquer your fear of heights, but maybe you climb up 3 rungs of a ladder, to the point where you feel uncomfortable. Then tomorrow, do 4 rungs. Tackling a fear is the surest way to make yourself uncomfortable, even if you don’t ultimately ‘conquer’ it.

My girlfriend recently did this when she left a long-time job, without having a new job secure, during one of the worst global recessions in history! If that’s not stepping out of your comfort zone, I don’t know what is. Today, she has a great new job, and has done a lot of discovery on figuring out her long-term career goals.

Whatever you do, just step outside that comfort zone and accomplish what you want. Then you will be left with the fulfillment of your achievements, and all the discomfort and pain will be forgotten.

“90% to 95% of people will withdraw to the comfort zone when what they try doesn’t work. Only that small percentage, 5 or 10 percent, will continually raise the bar on themselves; they will push themselves out into the zone of discomfort, and these are always the highest performers in every field.” – Brian Tracy

So, what have you done lately to step out of your comfort zone?