In the last 12 months, I cut out working with 7 clients to work exclusively with New Media Labs. Initially, this cut my income by roughly 30%.  I hear the cries of why…

I made the changes to feel more successful.  Time will tell if I actually am more successful. Right now I am starting to see the success, but I have a longer term plan.

As you may know, personal freedom is essential to me. I ride, run and play outside as an expression of this freedom.  However, I’m searching for more than the freedom to do what I choose.  To create a sense of well-being, I’ve noticed that I need:

• A couple hours of daily exercise (1 hour twice a day seems to work best for me);
• Connection to a community (that would be you); and
• A sense that I am spending my time effectively (if I don’t, I tend to implode).

Working merely to buy more stuff I want and don’t need, being overly busy and creating busyness for myself, multitasking and the rest, these things cause me undue stress in large volumes. That said, creating space so that I can sit around in a coffee shop all day, doesn’t leave me satisfied. I did that for ages and I know quite a few people who do this currently and it creates a growing hole. I need a mission that I can do well.  It’s why I am suited to endurance athletics and project based consulting. An essential realization for me, because this in turn shifted my career from being a salesman to managing projects.

So essentially, have a mission, be a part of a community and do it well. Those 3 elements are key things to ensuring my happiness.

In my life, exercise is my meditation – it integrates my thoughts with my body; let’s me release stress/noise and stimulates my brain.  When I listen to others talk about prayer, it sounds a lot like how I feel about my training.  I have a huge connection going when I am stress free. A connection to the world around me and how conscious I actually am to what is going on around me.

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The following passage comes from a blog I am a passionate fan of.

The first tip that I’ll offer is a question I ask myself every-single-day. How would I live my life if I knew that I was going to die? As I think about that (trick) question, I remind myself:

Acceptance – I will not be able to get everything done in my life.  That’s OK, I’ve acknowledged that being busy works against my personal goals.

Choose – Because I won’t be able to get to everything, it is wise to make choices.  Given that “doing well” is important for my sense of well being, I’m going to identify the #1 goal that I can do well.  Given that setbacks are inevitable, I’m going to pick a defensive goal as well.

Priorities will change and shift over time.  What’s useful for me is: limiting focus; being clear about what I am seeking to achieve; and what’s required to achieve it.

Say No — we are lousy at saying “no” – to ourselves and to our communities. That’s why the first two steps are so important – realize that you can’t (and don’t want to) do everything then choose what you want to do. Then create a habit of saying “no” to attractive opportunities that distract you from your mission. My main strategies are avoidance and routine.

Write it down and share with people who are important to you. This gives a bit of backbone to your wishbone.

Most of our friends, clients and competition, will not be able to pull off what I outlined and that is OK.  However, when you come across people that can pull it off then keep them in your life — they are valuable additions to your peer group. Likewise, when it’s clear that someone isn’t fully aligned with your mission then you’ll want to phase them out — with compassion, as we never know where life will take us.

Don’t try to be perfect, just keep chipping away towards your goals.  When I find myself stressed out, I back off, rest a bit and remember my mortality.

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Great lessons in there today. There is a reason I am putting it out there too.

I am now accountable to you.

Backbone.

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That is how you finish the biggest mountain in the Tour. Right?

I have been excited lately to do things right, and I mean really giving it everything. I am going into a block of time where not giving everything is just not going to cut it. Big races, big work projects and exciting prospects loom ahead in the next 12 weeks, so I am finding the following and hoped you could use one or two things to help you too.

1. I am having to think slowly. TheHousemate always says “less haste, more speed” and this rings super true for me, especially as I get busier. I have to take extra time to write emails, proposals, respond to questions, plan my day ahead (sometimes involves packing 2 sports bags and pre-making lunch and and and…). Taking the extra few seconds or minutes to do things slowly, think about the things slowly can often result in hours saved.

2. New sensations. The harder I train, the more fragile I get & the more regular sleep and simple food I need. I am more prone to stomach bugs, sinus infections, flat out fatigue and the one which hits me the hardest is my tolerance for alcohol. I generally have a very good tolerance. I find that after a certain volume of hours training, I just can’t do more than 2 glasses of wine. Overz kadoverz. The same goes with sugar and all stimulants. Where I would hardly feel a red bull, where I am now training wise, it knocks me for 6.

3. Peace. I am very chill at the moment. Things are on track and I keep hearing comments about looking peaceful. Planning and execution of that plan correctly is clearly good for the soul. Sleeping regularly and eating real food will make all the difference. People will see it.

4. Mood awareness. I am someone who does not do the combination of hungry and tired very well. I am very calm in general but combine the two and I might rip the arms off a small child if it asks that question again. Being busy often leaves me tired, often hungry and quite often, both. This is just how it is. I have to be very aware of my mood and how I react in the office or to email when you add in that it might be Monday and I have trained 12 hours over the weekend.

Hopefully something in there that you can use this week.

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As we get more technical, more specialist, more niche the smaller differences make the biggest differences. The Tour de France is won on a difference in strength of a 1 year old child. Not alot in it, basically. So to find the most out of your position on the bike, your equipment, your nutrition, your recovery, can make the biggest change.

The drive by manufacturers for the best equipment is easily then justified. A new frame might win a rider a big tour, get them onto the front pages of all the magazines on their bike, giving them millions of dollars of exposure. This, with the right back-up, leads to sales.

The top of any game is separated by minute changes to differentiate those who make it big, and those who make it. The effort required to gain those tiny improvements becomes more and more hectic as the level of competition/skill/power grows, with the commitment level having to increase exponentially as well.

Here is where 10 000 hours comes in again. The first couple thousand are easy, the improvements made are huge, the fun factor is still there. Once you get to about half way, the changes become much smaller, but the hours you need to put in become much greater for that small change.

Not quite what you want to hear, but its the truth. Varsity, first couple years work, then a lucky break. That’s merely phase zero. Phase 1 comes after that with it only getting harder from there. Knowledge bases become leveled. Time becomes irrelevant, its the process that becomes the key.

If you can grasp this success will come your way. This is why its so important to focus your efforts, do not become a guy with 3 000 hours of skill in 20 different avenues. You are a jack of all trades, wealthy man of zero. Nobody cares, and the guy who has put in his 8 000 hours into one avenue will be much further down the line than you are.

Have a great day. The video obviously relates to the tireless process for seconds. seconds. not minutes.

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for a follow up on yesterdays post, I thought to write about changes again, as its the time of the year to think about what we want to achieve before the Xmas presents come out. So often one of my athletes, or someone I hardly know (they tend to find me lately), will ask me how to make changes in their lives that stick, as they seem to wander off track so often.

Now that you have the Cheatsheet, how do we go about practical examples?

Part of living in a one stop, instant satisfaction society is that we expect everything NOW. Our perception of patience, is as such, a little warped. We expect that if we make a change today, it should last forever, but in reality, we need to reinforce these changes every day.

For me there are a few key factors that I need to make effort on, on a daily basis, for at least a few weeks, when I want to make a change in my life. Here are some constructive real world examples:

1. A while ago I wanted to lose 7kg in 7 weeks. I had to talk to myself every time I wanted something sugary, or something full of wheat, which meant that at least 10 times a day for the first 4 weeks, I had to make the hard decision to NOT go for the short term satisfaction. The result; people tell me I am too skinny now, which means I am right on track. For the record, I am still under my Ironman race weight and nowhere near MTB race weight.

2. I wanted to make the change to becoming a better cyclist (point 1 is a part of this), as it was, and still is, the weak link in my triathlon armor. So I undertook a 3 year plan. Yes, not a 12 week fix, but a 3 year plan. This is year 2 at the moment, and the big changes came in year one. Now, to get to where I want to with cycling, I have reinforced training and committed to challenges (like Cape Epic) that will give me a boost in year 2, and hopefully, in year 3, I will have that breakthrough performance. My aim was to make my cycling up by 14%, but to get there, I would have to spend 3 years working at it, so that my run could stay the same.

Yes, I could probably go and ride what I want to now, but I would walk half the marathon in an Ironman afterward, which is not the way to make the lasting change. Once I am at this new level, it will be almost impossible to go back, because I have done it in the right way. Here I am talking about a realistic plan. Set out a long term plan and constantly benchmark is along the way, as you might need to back up, or slow down a little, to meet the plan’s goals and objectives.

3. I wanted to find more time in my life. I had to take a very real outlook at the long term application of how I was going about my daily days. I found that I spent loads of time doing things which were not of any productive value. I set out my day into 30min slots and found SO many of them to be useless. So I started cutting out 30min slots, until I had a few more hours a day. When it still wasn’t enough, I took the change to start my own business, so that I could have more productive time. I cut out alot of “mental junk food” and now, I have time, every single day, to sit and think. I also have around 30min to sit and do nothing, think about nothing, and in essence, reboot my mind. But I had to slow my life down to get there. Going slowly, is the first step to going really fast.

Hope that all makes just a smidgen of sense to you today. Its merely a follow up on that amazing post yesterday.

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yesterday, Leo from Zenhabits had this post up. It had me thinking, as he always does…

We’re in love with stuff — with shopping, with acquiring, with owning, with collecting.

Let’s lust after life instead.

Our obsession with stuff has become unhealthy. When we have a void in our lives, we buy things. When we have problems, we buy things. And these things are becoming more and more expensive, bigger, shinier … more wasteful.

This obsession with stuff leads to owning a lot, having a lot of clutter … and yet this stuff doesn’t fill our lives with meaning.

It leads to deep debt, from buying so much, and needing bigger houses and storage spaces to contain everything. Financially, we’re worse off than ever, because of this obsession with stuff.

We buy things when we’re depressed, we buy things for others to show how much we love them … and in this way, stuff has separated us from actually dealing with our emotions, blocked us from truly connecting with others.

Let’s replace that lust for stuff with a lust for life.

Some ideas:

* Rediscover a passion for life. Get outside and feel nature, appreciate the beauty of the world around you. Get active, do some gardening or yardwork, play a sport, go for a walk, take a hike, go for a swim, ride a bike. Feel the life coursing through you. Breathe it in.

* Give experiences as gifts, not stuff. Instead of shopping for someone come birthdays or Christmas, think of an experience you can give them instead. A date with you, doing something fun, hanging out, cooking, playing, talking, exploring. A fun time at a park or beach. Something other than everyday. An experience is much more meaningful than an object.

* Connect with others. In real life. If you haven’t hung out with a friend recently, give him a call and go hang out. Get your kid away from the TV or video game player and take her outside to do something. Go on a date with your partner. Visit your mom or grandparents. And be present while you’re with them — really listen, really be there.

* Deal with your emotions. If you have a need to buy things, to shop when you are having emotional issues, be more aware of this. Then deal with the underlying emotions, rather than using shopping as a way to forget about them. If you’re depressed, or anxious, or lonely, deal with those. Find solutions, figure out what’s causing them. Good news: experiencing life, getting active, and connecting with others all help you deal with those emotional issues.

* Disconnect your attachment to stuff. Sometimes I find myself reluctant to give something up, even if I don’t really use it. And that’s when I ask myself, “Why?” What is holding me back from getting rid of this possession? Sometimes, the item has an emotional connection, but then I realize that it’s just an object, it’s not the emotion or the actual source of the emotion. Then I’ll take a picture of the item, upload it to my computer, and get rid of the object. I feel liberated, because I’ve broken an attachment to a physical object (but saved the memory). If you are attached to an object, figure out why — it’s not healthy in the long run.

* Realize that life, not stuff, is what matters. Objects are just objects — if you lose them, if they get stolen or destroyed … it’s not a big deal. They’re just objects — not your life. Your life is the series of moments that is steaming through your consciousness right now, and how you use those moments and what you fill them with is what truly matters, not what you fill your home with. At the end of this short journey, you’ll look back and remember your experiences, the people you loved and who loved you back, the things you did and didn’t do. Not the stuff you had.

shot Leo, thanks for the inspiration!

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People always remark how busy I am. After I watched this today it made me wonder if I am one of those people who are addicted to being busy.

What keeps me busy?

1. Work – current and future projects.
2. Coaching athletes – its far more time consuming than you think.
3. Urban Ninja – this site is time consuming.
4. Relationships – nuff said. relationships, with humans, requires time.

What have I done to cut down on commitments to time and energy?

1. Kept my projects down to a bare minimum. I used to have 6 ideas I was working on. I currently have 2.
2. Reduce social media time. Are you addicted to Facebook? Do you wake up and look at twitter (to see what other people are doing) before tending to the amazing person lying next to you?
3. Reduce mental junk by planning properly.

Am I addicted to being busy?

Not at all. In fact, I am working hard so that I can be permanently unbusy once I have children so that I can be a full time dad. That’s the most honorable job I can think of doing, so that’s what gets me up in the morning.

Can you sit, and be quiet? I know many people who cant sit in a restaurant waiting for 10minutes for someone to arrive without tweeting, facebooking, checking email, sending 3 sms’s and calling someone. Unless all these things don’t relate to your BIG THING, big picture and hugest ever goal achievement, maybe you should be sitting for 10 minutes and just be totally amazed at how the world doesn’t fall apart around you every day. Watch the people and realise they each have their own world going on around them, and if they are addicted to being busy, watch them and see how it destroys their inner peace, their reason for being a beautiful human being and blurs their reality.

So, are you addicted?

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I often get asked why I train so hard, so much, or specifically, for what? Its hard and alot of people dont understand the investment we are making in ourselves when we are out there pushing the limits. For some athletes, its a daily fix, but for an extended group of people like myself, we are making a long term investment into our health, so that indeed, when we are 60 years old, we dont give up and become fat lazy old people who`re uncomfortable, immobile and suffering with all sorts of ailments.

I want to be an old guy full of vitality and life, brimming with the urge to discover new things continuously, smiling with the essence of life flowing through my veins.

Make no mistake, I dont train enough to get to my physical potential. I hover in the 15-18 hours a week training arena. I work a full day and I have to deal with people as my work, which is a draining enough experience on its own. To get to full potential, I would have to go through a process something like this: (more…)

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