This past weekend I went to Xterra with limited hope of a great run, as I am still definitely in the build phase of my speed back to being a good athlete. I had also been with mates the night before, which meant a few beers and a tequila (just one) but I managed to get good sleep in.

I ran a total PB and smoked just about everyone on the day. To look back and say it was all me is total rubbish. I am lucky enough to have the best equipment at my disposal to make the journey as easy as possible. This weekend was no exception. So when I came across this picture on the Xterra website, I thought to point out to you what the secrets are:

1. Whasp Green Gel. If you haven’t discovered the secret to instant speed, this is it. 100mg caffeine, Gaba, Green Tea, its all in there. It kicks like a mule and with a duelling 10km run up and down a mountain, I made sure to pop one ten minutes before my run started, as well as 20min into the run. I was just starting to fade when it kicked in and I ran the downhill in a blur.

2. Suunto T6c. The heart rate was not one to report back on, and I opted to leave the footpod at home, but it was amazing to keep the heart rate virtually at max for 41 odd minutes and I couldn’t do it without my trusty Suunto. From Ironman intensities to these kind of run till you vomit efforts, Suunto is the way forward. When I was slowing down I could see it on the watch and just kept on going on, especially on the downhill. I am proof that your heart rate can be higher on a downhill than on an uphill. You might not walk the next day, but its possible.

3. Orca is my wetsuit and tri race apparel sponsor. They make the best, no doubt. Another magic product they do are these running shorts. They are the perfect length, the perfect material, and they are so light you might forget you have them on. If you don’t own a set already, make sure you do. Perfect for trail running, perfect for the sidewalk, or even to chill in post 7 hour Ironman training ride.

4. Puma and I have come a long way, and their shoes have come on in leaps and bounds. The new Speed Racer is an incredible shoe. Tough enough for the slopes of Grabouw, and durable enough for me to run 21.1km in, I LOVE these. The weight saved over a regular trail shoe is huge, especially when its your 12459th step up the mountain. 180 steps a minute x 41 minutes x 50g saving per shoe = 369kg less carried by my legs over the run the other day. That’s a lot of weight less I had to lift with my legs over that short amount of time.

So, PB’s are available, if you are kitted out right, and you are willing to have the same look as I have there, which would be to run like a 200kg angry, slightly injured werewolf is chasing you.

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The legend of brewmaster Jack Black dates back to Prohibition, a time when beer was outlawed in America. Against all odds, Jack Black dedicated himself to bringing the finest lager to beer drinkers everywhere. Today, Jack Black Beer is brought to you in the spirit of his enterprise and the quest for the perfect lager.

Inspired by tradition, crafted with quality, Jack Black Beer is proud to bring you one of the world’s best tasting lagers.

hmmmm…

hot off the Press , Urban Ninja has teamed up with Jack Black Beer to do some strategerizing of the highest kind. I know many of you are Cape Town based and even though we are fiercely proud of our wines in the area, very little is known about a local company making amazing beer right here, on our doorstep.

I have known the brand for a while now, and its wonderful to announce a formal relationship with the brand (that being, the opportunity to consume more beer, more often, with more people).

You can find it on tap and in bottles at your local favorite – Caprice, Mount Nelson, Daddy Cool. Its also available at your local bottle store, and then, if you want more, give me a shout and maybe we can arrange a case or two for you.

How yum is that?

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A year ago I launched Urban Ninja into the blogosphere with a very limited idea of what it was going to be. It was far more personal diary and far less what I am told it is today. This is a continued debate within my limited scope of what words seem to be able to do. I meet people all the time who tell me that what I write here has a real effect on the way they anticipate each day, and the way they go about their day.

Before I go any further, however, I wanted to send out the biggest thank you ever. To you. And you. And you. I cannot believe how you have taken to the drivel I write at times. I try not to analyse that too much but thank you for coming back time and time again, to read my drivel. Ok back to the story…

My usual reaction is “whatever dude” and I will never forget the first time someone brought the blog up in conversation, completely oblivious that the editor was sitting next to her. I blushed and was shy as she told me about how I seemed to understand what was going on in her head, and was surprised that there were lots of people going through the same stuff as she was.

I started on a different platform but the switch to WordPress was a great one, and the theme I am using now is still in essence the same one, just high modified. I spent hours learning the real (read: very) basics of CSS and learnt how to adapt my posts, add links and even YouTube movies. WHOOOOOAAAHH!

Slowly I seemed to get into the writing side of things, especially after my trip to Kona, where I seemed to work through a lot of demons on an empty tummy for 10 hours in the lava fields. I was empty when I got back and filled myself with ways to be better in the long run. I have since been so busy with opportunities that its tough to keep track of what’s going on at the best of times.

In the middle somewhere there have been 2 magazine covers.

One was for Eish Magazine and the amazing Sarona Reddy got hold of me through the site, she loved it (bless her) and wanted to do a story on balance. If you are in KZN, pick up the magazine, its an amazing read and a very passionate publication.

Then I wrote an article for the local Triathlete Magazine and the story was to coincide with a great cover around the theme of social media. I got to be on the cover with my boy Collin Allin, but the actual connection with Triathlete Magazine has not been great. All my articles have been partially edited and there are always mistakes, and as was the case with this issue, the tie in between the cover and the story wasn’t there, as well as various mistakes made while editing the article. I love the magazine and I hope they manage to clear the glitches in the coming issues.

Then came the biggest surprise – I got nominated for the SA Blog Awards enough time to crack the top 10 in 2 categories. Out of 4000 blogs nominated, I managed to be in the top 10, twice??? WTF? On the night of the awards I was in Port Elizabeth supporting my loyal athletes in their lead up to Ironman South Africa 2009. I heard nothing until the Sunday and thought I just didn’t feature.

In fact, I managed a 2nd in the sports category and just missed a podium in the original writing category. The sports one was again, totally unexpected. 2nd, ahead of many of the top blogs in the country. I am still so humbled when I think of this, and I urge my communities to rally around this fact, and I hope you will keep sending my articles to friends, make them visit here, and keep this growing.

I would like to send out a big thank you to the sponsors who support my triathlon, wine and beer habits. You make it all easier and possible to train as smart as I can, drink the best wines, and recovery after hard runs with a cool, crisp beer.

Kleinhoekkloof Wines
Puma
Orca
Jack Black Beer
Rockets Compression
Whaspgel
Suunto
Then to the people who have supported this initiative from the start. I salute you all.

As Buzz Lightyear said “To infinity….. and beyond!” I hope to keep taking this blog into the future, to give you better information, not just for triathlon, but for your whole life.

Assume nothing, pursue everything, experience now…

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One of the major problems I have with the self help industry (yes, its an industry now) is once you`ve read 7 books, filled your Google Reader with useful blogs and sites, and gone for breathing classes and yoga, its quite time consuming and very complicated to help yourself…

Which defeats the point totally. In my opinion, they are missing the toilet seat totally and the answer to all this is so simple its silly. Which is probably the reason it was overlooked in the first place.
While there are many great systems out there — GTD, Zen To Done, Extreme GTD, The Power of Less, and more — it always takes a lot of work. You want to focus on the doing, not the upkeep of your productivity system. I don’t want you to be focusing on hitting goals for every minute of the day, and the day totally runs away from you.

Look no more. I have come up with the holy grail of all this productivity, self improvement and (insert stoned capetonian accent here) like deep spiritual self awareness bru…

This is all you need to know about productivity, all you need to know about getting amazing things done, doing important work … in three simple steps.

Now, I am so full of belief of this system, that I will wager a lunch on it. The secret to being busy and finding the motivation to hustle all day is done in these three easy, simple, failsafe steps:

1. Find Something Amazing to work on. Seriously — amazing. Not just regular tasks, but something that you’ll feel good about, that excites you, that will have a high impact on your job and goals and life, that will make a difference. Do this at the beginning of each day, or even at the end of each day so that you don’t have to think about it the next morning — you already know what you’ll be working on. If you do this, at the end of the day, you can even prepare all the materials and tools you’ll need first thing in the morning, and clear your desk so you’ll be ready to go. Google do this successfully by implementing the 4 day work week, with Fridays being allocated as time for work on “pet projects”. This gets employees motivated to do things properly Monday through Thursday, so that they can work hard on Friday on their pet project.

Get excited about this work. You’re going to accomplish great things with this part of your work. This is your future.

2. Hole yourself up and just work on the Something Amazing. Focus on it and think only of it while you work on it. This is the key. Well, aside from the first step, because if you don’t do the first step, this step isn’t going to work as well. And also the third step (below) is incredibly important, more than you might think, so don’t skip that one. But aside from the first and third step, this is the most important step in the system.

Here’s how it works: clear your schedule for a good chunk of time — maybe 30 minutes if that’s all you can spare, an hour is better, and 2-3 hours or more are even better than that. Schedule this chunk of time first thing in the morning, or at least early in the morning, if you can, so it doesn’t get pushed back by other things during the day. This is your time to singletask.

Then clear away ALL distractions: notifications for email, IM, Twitter, and anything else that might pop up or make a noise, your phones, all mobile devices any clutter in front of you (just shove it in a drawer or put it on the floor to clear away later), and most importantly, The Internet. Yes, turn off the Internet. Well, not the whole Internet, as other people might be using it, but just your connection to it. If possible, go somewhere where there are no distractions and no Internet connection. Tell everyone you work with that you will be incommunicado for an hour or three working on an important project. If you can, make this a regular thing on your schedule — 2-3 hours in the morning every day, when people know you can’t be disturbed.

Once you’ve holed yourself up, don’t work on anything except the Something Amazing. Seriously. Resist any urges to switch tasks or check on something or get up and talk to someone. Those urges will come up, trust me. It’s like an addiction — you just have to get through them. Steel yourself, and just sit there breathing deeply (with your head between your legs, if that helps) until the urge passes. Then get back to work on the Something Amazing.

Focus on that one thing until you’re done. Really, just the one thing. There is no other thing in your life right now. Your girlfriend – she can’t wait. If she supports you and believes in you – she can shut up and cope for 3 hours without an sms.

3. Take a nap. Or reward yourself some other way — take a break and walk outside, or play WII, or check the email you’ve been itching to check, or read through your brilliant Twitter messages, or go for a run (not everyone’s idea of a reward, perhaps, but I love it because its quick, easy and leaves me with a high – especially with a trail or two involved.). And celebrate your accomplishment! You’ve gotten something amazing done.

Now repeat Steps 1-3 until your workday is over.

But … what about all the other tasks and things I need to do? How do I track them and get them done? What if I don’t get to them all?

Unless your name is Barrack and your minor tasks include “The Nuclear Problem in Korea” the world will probably not even notice if your small tasks don’t get done. Its nothing personal and its not that the world doesn’t see you or your efforts, its just that they don’t make a measurable difference to the overall big picture, and most people only care about their personal big picture. Keep on trucking big guy.

Second, keep a running list of every task you think of (if you are swiss, a Excel spreadsheet is recommended as it gives you endless opportunities). When you’re done doing your Something Amazing, take a look at the list and see what really needs to be done. Maybe it’s another Something Amazing, maybe it’s just a routine task that needs to get done. Maybe it’s a bunch of smaller tasks that you can get done all at once before moving on to the next Something Amazing. Also look through the list and cross off things that don’t really need to get done — usually things you’ve been procrastinating on for awhile.

This system isn’t as comprehensive as other, more complicated, productivity systems, I’ll grant you. But it’s simple, and it works. Try it today, and let me know if it doesn’t make a difference. Remember – I bet a lunch that it does.

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So, a week or two ago, I won, in some absolute freak accident, the coolest new WordPress theme to be released by the boys from um…. From The Couch. Obox is their other business and this side focusses on design of uber cool stuff.

They also make great tea.

So, quietly, behind the scenes right now (imagine picking up your screen and looking into the back of the screen and there were tiny little men fixing this page) I am busy with an incredible redesign of Urban Ninja. Thats also one of my choices.

Watch the video to see the winners get announced, and particularly, when my name comes up. Marc can almost not believe it. They wanted to get a theme to me, but couldn’t cheat the system. It was pure fluke… I won a #1, or Hash One, if you wanted to know what it was called.

or was it pure, unadulterated destiny? fate?

maar is dit kuns?

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a while ago this arrived on the doorstep of Safehouse 2.0

what could it be?

is it some new sort of recovery beer?

all to be answered on wednesday!

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Research now shows that the lack of natural talent is irrelevant to great success. The secret? Painful and demanding practice and hard work

(Fortune Magazine) — What makes Tiger Woods great? What made Berkshire Hathaway (Charts) Chairman Warren Buffett the world’s premier investor? We think we know: Each was a natural who came into the world with a gift for doing exactly what he ended up doing. As Buffett told Fortune not long ago, he was “wired at birth to allocate capital.” It’s a one-in-a-million thing. You’ve got it – or you don’t.

Well, folks, it’s not so simple. For one thing, you do not possess a natural gift for a certain job, because targeted natural gifts don’t exist. (Sorry, Warren.) You are not a born CEO or investor or chess grandmaster. You will achieve greatness only through an enormous amount of hard work over many years. And not just any hard work, but work of a particular type that’s demanding and painful.
Buffett, for instance, is famed for his discipline and the hours he spends studying financial statements of potential investment targets. The good news is that your lack of a natural gift is irrelevant – talent has little or nothing to do with greatness. You can make yourself into any number of things, and you can even make yourself great.

Scientific experts are producing remarkably consistent findings across a wide array of fields. Understand that talent doesn’t mean intelligence, motivation or personality traits. It’s an innate ability to do some specific activity especially well. British-based researchers Michael J. Howe, Jane W. Davidson and John A. Sluboda conclude in an extensive study, “The evidence we have surveyed … does not support the [notion that] excelling is a consequence of possessing innate gifts.”
To see how the researchers could reach such a conclusion, consider the problem they were trying to solve. In virtually every field of endeavor, most people learn quickly at first, then more slowly and then stop developing completely. Yet a few do improve for years and even decades, and go on to greatness.

The irresistible question – the “fundamental challenge” for researchers in this field, says the most prominent of them, professor K. Anders Ericsson of Florida State University – is, Why? How are certain people able to go on improving? The answers begin with consistent observations about great performers in many fields.

Scientists worldwide have conducted scores of studies since the 1993 publication of a landmark paper by Ericsson and two colleagues, many focusing on sports, music and chess, in which performance is relatively easy to measure and plot over time. But plenty of additional studies have also examined other fields, including business.

No substitute for hard work

The first major conclusion is that nobody is great without work. It’s nice to believe that if you find the field where you’re naturally gifted, you’ll be great from day one, but it doesn’t happen. There’s no evidence of high-level performance without experience or practice.

Reinforcing that no-free-lunch finding is vast evidence that even the most accomplished people need around ten years of hard work before becoming world-class, a pattern so well established researchers call it the ten-year rule.

What about Bobby Fischer, who became a chess grandmaster at 16? Turns out the rule holds: He’d had nine years of intensive study. And as John Horn of the University of Southern California and Hiromi Masunaga of California State University observe, “The ten-year rule represents a very rough estimate, and most researchers regard it as a minimum, not an average.” In many fields (music, literature) elite performers need 20 or 30 years’ experience before hitting their zenith.

So greatness isn’t handed to anyone; it requires a lot of hard work. Yet that isn’t enough, since many people work hard for decades without approaching greatness or even getting significantly better. What’s missing?

Practice makes perfect

The best people in any field are those who devote the most hours to what the researchers call “deliberate practice.” It’s activity that’s explicitly intended to improve performance, that reaches for objectives just beyond one’s level of competence, provides feedback on results and involves high levels of repetition.

For example: Simply hitting a bucket of balls is not deliberate practice, which is why most golfers don’t get better. Hitting an eight-iron 300 times with a goal of leaving the ball within 20 feet of the pin 80 percent of the time, continually observing results and making appropriate adjustments, and doing that for hours every day – that’s deliberate practice.

Consistency is crucial.

As Ericsson notes, “Elite performers in many diverse domains have been found to practice, on the average, roughly the same amount every day, including weekends.”

Evidence crosses a remarkable range of fields. In a study of 20-year-old violinists by Ericsson and colleagues, the best group (judged by conservatory teachers) averaged 10,000 hours of deliberate practice over their lives; the next-best averaged 7,500 hours; and the next, 5,000. It’s the same story in surgery, insurance sales, and virtually every sport. More deliberate practice equals better performance. Tons of it equals great performance.

The skeptics

Not all researchers are totally onboard with the myth-of-talent hypothesis, though their objections go to its edges rather than its center. For one thing, there are the intangibles. Two athletes might work equally hard, but what explains the ability of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady to perform at a higher level in the last two minutes of a game?

Researchers also note, for example, child prodigies who could speak, read or play music at an unusually early age. But on investigation those cases generally include highly involved parents. And many prodigies do not go on to greatness in their early field, while great performers include many who showed no special early aptitude.

Certainly some important traits are partly inherited, such as physical size and particular measures of intelligence, but those influence what a person doesn’t do more than what he does; a five-footer will never be an NFL lineman, and a seven-footer will never be an Olympic gymnast. Even those restrictions are less severe than you’d expect: Ericsson notes, “Some international chess masters have IQs in the 90s.” The more research that’s done, the more solid the deliberate-practice model becomes.

Real-world examples

All this scholarly research is simply evidence for what great performers have been showing us for years. To take a handful of examples: Winston Churchill, one of the 20th century’s greatest orators, practiced his speeches compulsively. Vladimir Horowitz supposedly said, “If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, my wife knows it. If I don’t practice for three days, the world knows it.” He was certainly a demon practicer, but the same quote has been attributed to world-class musicians like Ignace Paderewski and Luciano Pavarotti.

Many great athletes are legendary for the brutal discipline of their practice routines. In basketball, Michael Jordan practiced intensely beyond the already punishing team practices. (Had Jordan possessed some mammoth natural gift specifically for basketball, it seems unlikely he’d have been cut from his high school team.)

In football, all-time-great receiver Jerry Rice – passed up by 15 teams because they considered him too slow – practiced so hard that other players would get sick trying to keep up.

Tiger Woods is a textbook example of what the research shows. Because his father introduced him to golf at an extremely early age – 18 months – and encouraged him to practice intensively, Woods had racked up at least 15 years of practice by the time he became the youngest-ever winner of the U.S. Amateur Championship, at age 18. Also in line with the findings, he has never stopped trying to improve, devoting many hours a day to conditioning and practice, even remaking his swing twice because that’s what it took to get even better.

The business side

The evidence, scientific as well as anecdotal, seems overwhelmingly in favor of deliberate practice as the source of great performance. Just one problem: How do you practice business? Many elements of business, in fact, are directly practicable. Presenting, negotiating, delivering evaluations, deciphering financial statements – you can practice them all.

Still, they aren’t the essence of great managerial performance. That requires making judgments and decisions with imperfect information in an uncertain environment, interacting with people, seeking information – can you practice those things too? You can, though not in the way you would practice a Chopin etude.

Instead, it’s all about how you do what you’re already doing – you create the practice in your work, which requires a few critical changes. The first is going at any task with a new goal: Instead of merely trying to get it done, you aim to get better at it.

Report writing involves finding information, analyzing it and presenting it – each an improvable skill. Chairing a board meeting requires understanding the company’s strategy in the deepest way, forming a coherent view of coming market changes and setting a tone for the discussion. Anything that anyone does at work, from the most basic task to the most exalted, is an improvable skill.

Adopting a new mindset

Armed with that mindset, people go at a job in a new way. Research shows they process information more deeply and retain it longer. They want more information on what they’re doing and seek other perspectives. They adopt a longer-term point of view. In the activity itself, the mindset persists. You aren’t just doing the job, you’re explicitly trying to get better at it in the larger sense.

Again, research shows that this difference in mental approach is vital. For example, when amateur singers take a singing lesson, they experience it as fun, a release of tension. But for professional singers, it’s the opposite: They increase their concentration and focus on improving their performance during the lesson. Same activity, different mindset.

Feedback is crucial, and getting it should be no problem in business. Yet most people don’t seek it; they just wait for it, half hoping it won’t come. Without it, as Goldman Sachs leadership-development chief Steve Kerr says, “it’s as if you’re bowling through a curtain that comes down to knee level. If you don’t know how successful you are, two things happen: One, you don’t get any better, and two, you stop caring.” In some companies, like General Electric, frequent feedback is part of the culture. If you aren’t lucky enough to get that, seek it out.

Be the ball

Through the whole process, one of your goals is to build what the researchers call “mental models of your business” – pictures of how the elements fit together and influence one another. The more you work on it, the larger your mental models will become and the better your performance will grow.
Andy Grove could keep a model of a whole world-changing technology industry in his head and adapt Intel (Charts) as needed. Bill Gates, Microsoft’s (Charts) founder, had the same knack: He could see at the dawn of the PC that his goal of a computer on every desk was realistic and would create an unimaginably large market. John D. Rockefeller, too, saw ahead when the world-changing new industry was oil. Napoleon was perhaps the greatest ever. He could not only hold all the elements of a vast battle in his mind but, more important, could also respond quickly when they shifted in unexpected ways.

That’s a lot to focus on for the benefits of deliberate practice – and worthless without one more requirement: Do it regularly, not sporadically.

Why?

For most people, work is hard enough without pushing even harder. Those extra steps are so difficult and painful they almost never get done. That’s the way it must be. If great performance were easy, it wouldn’t be rare. Which leads to possibly the deepest question about greatness. While experts understand an enormous amount about the behavior that produces great performance, they understand very little about where that behavior comes from.

The authors of one study conclude, “We still do not know which factors encourage individuals to engage in deliberate practice.” Or as University of Michigan business school professor Noel Tichy puts it after 30 years of working with managers, “Some people are much more motivated than others, and that’s the existential question I cannot answer – why.”

The critical reality is that we are not hostage to some naturally granted level of talent. We can make ourselves what we will. Strangely, that idea is not popular. People hate abandoning the notion that they would coast to fame and riches if they found their talent. But that view is tragically constraining, because when they hit life’s inevitable bumps in the road, they conclude that they just aren’t gifted and give up.

Maybe we can’t expect most people to achieve greatness. It’s just too demanding. But the striking, liberating news is that greatness isn’t reserved for a preordained few. It is available to you and to everyone.

credit : CNN Fortune Magazine

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I am big on choices. My dad drilled them into me throughout my childhood and the concept might not have clicked until a few years ago. Thanks dad for persevering with that one.

I love choices because they come from making good decisions, time and time again. When we make bad choices, we limit the options and choices we have going forwards. Its a simple give and take system the world has come up with. Very few people manage to manipulate their way through life by making the wrong choices time and time again. Even they make the right choices to do the wrong things or the things which limit other people over and over. I would like to think they all enjoy a bit of karmic malfunction at some point, but that is another discussion entirely.

We, focused on living a life of meaning, we strive to make the right choices, all day, everyday. Here are a few:

I choose to wake up early and exercise according to a plan, before making the choice to have a healthy breakfast, and choose to start my work day on purpose, with passion, and with a plan.

I choose to skip late nights out for the next 3 months in lieu of an performance which might seem to others as “above my ability” at Race X. I choose to limit the wine intake in this period as well.

I choose to not give in to the desire-based relationships the world has on offer. I choose to trust my partner/lover in all situations and I choose to not let MY jealousy and insecurities affect what could be an amazing relationship.

I choose to be focused on my goals so that someday, I can live in a house like this , in a setting like that.

I choose to be a listener, as well as someone who gives unbiased advice, so that others may achieve their goals.

Whatever your choices, they are yours and nobody can ultimately affect your choices the way you can. I have found that by taking a few moments longer (much to the dismay of the people rushing around me) to make a decision, I am able to make a better decision. As an ex egotistical maniac, I still have the ability to make really bad decisions. Stopping and having a moment to clear the left over smog is just what the doctor ordered.

I urge you to make the better, slower choices that are aligned with your goals and vision for yourself. I salute you if they are hard to make, and I have a big hug for you if you made it in spite of disappointing others, in order to be true to those goals.

Whats today? Best day of my life…

Tomorrow – the same. That’s my choice. Right now.

Let me know about your choices – I want to hear success stories and I know there are people out there dying to make tough decisions, but who might be too scared. Your decision could inspire another person to take the step which might save 1000 lives.

you never know… be an inspiration to others.

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just a hint of things to come…. I will tell you more about this amazing product as the week goes on. Let’s just say I’m hooked.

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