Archive for the 'Productivity Tools' category
Someone emailed me a couple weeks ago, wondering how things are going with the treadmill desk. Am I still going strong? (YES) Do I use a pedometer? (SOMETIMES) How has my weight changed? (lost 25 pounds so far!) So I figured it’s time for a treadmill desk update.
Simply put, the treadmill desk has been life changing for me. I finally found an exercise program that fits seamlessly into my life. No stopping what I’m doing to run to the gym. No hoping it doesn’t rain or get too hot to walk outside. No childcare issues. No boredom.
It has been absolutely amazing and so unbelievably easy. All I do is climb on and start walking. Because my mind is occupied with work, the time just flies by and the miles add up. Usually I walk 5-6 miles per day, although on occasion I’ll do as many as 10 or more miles. Very seldom do I miss a day — it’s such a part of my life now that if I do skip a day, my body misses it. And you better believe the next day I will do 10 miles!
Last month I started to feel like my body was getting used to the routine, like the pace was too easy. I stepped up the pace a bit, but you can only go so fast and still be able to type, and the idea is to walk at a pace you can maintain for 4-5 hours. I had forgotten the treadmill had an incline feature, and one day accidentally hit the incline button and there was my answer! I’ve gradually increased the incline and now am at level 5 (the max is 15). I can definitely tell the difference — it gives my legs and butt more of a workout without having to increase the pace.
As for the weight loss, it has been slow and steady, 25 pounds so far. I don’t deprive myself of anything, but I am eating healthier than before. There’s something about exercising and drinking lots of water that makes you crave fruit and healthy food, not junk. Maybe it’s the endorphins, I don’t know, but knowing that I’m doing something so good for my body makes me not want to eat junk.
As a matter of fact, a few weeks ago I made a major effort to eliminate sugar, which I’ve found is darn near impossible if you eat any commercially prepared foods. Sugar is in everything! The only way to totally eliminate it is to cook everything from scratch. I’m not quite willing to do that at this point, but I have drastically cut back on it, limiting myself to a cup of frozen yogurt every night after the kids are in bed. Knowing that I have that to look forward to, I can pass on it during the day.
I learned a long time ago not to deprive myself of my favorite foods. That’s why so many diets fail and people put back on the weight they’ve lost and then some…because dieting that way is like holding your breath — you can only do for so long. You have to be able to eat your favorite foods and the exercise has to fit into your life. This works for me — I can see myself eating this way and walking while working for the rest of my life. Good thing the treadmill comes with a lifetime warranty. (It’s the Smooth Fitness 5.25)
BTW, the treadmill desk movement is spreading — Mike Young sat next to me on a plane trip to Orlando and now he has his own treadmill desk — read about it on his blog. And everywhere I go I tell people about it, especially now since people are starting to notice that there’s less of me!
So there you have it, straight from the Triplet Mompreneur’s mouth — my treadmill desk was the best investment I’ve made in myself in a long, long time. If you can’t find the time to exercise and have the spreading derriere and waistline to prove it, think about getting your own treadmill desk. You will love it!
Categories: Productivity Tools, Life
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My treadmill desk is up and running!
Never heard of a treadmill desk? Neither had I until a few months ago, when I saw a story on 20/20 that featured Dr. James Levine, a Mayo Clinic obesity researcher in Rochester, Minnesota.
The whole time he was being interviewed he continued to walk on the treadmill, very slowly. He explained the concept of NEAT — non-exercise activity thermogenesis, or the energy spent on physical activities of daily living. Dr. Levine said that 90% of Americans don’t work out regularly and at least half of workers sit in front of a computer most of the day. So most people don’t get enough exercise, as evidenced by our thickening waistlines and ever expanding backends (Ha! There’s a backend you don’t want.)
When you spend most of your waking hours in front of a computer, there’s very little “NEAT” to speak of, unless you make a concerted effort to exercise. That can be tough when you’re a mother and have enough things to do as it is. I always wished I could exercise while I work, and when I saw Dr. Levine being interviewed while walking on a treadmill, I knew immediately that this was the answer.
I went online and found several people that had setup their own treadmill desks. After much thought and debate over whether to get a cheap treadmill, I decided to go for the treadmill that Joe Stirt and Thomas Niccum both use, from Smooth Fitness. It has a lifetime warranty and since I’m going to be on this thing every day, I want something that will last, or have a bulletproof warranty in case it doesn’t. Another guy who built a treadmill desk had used the Smooth 5.15, so I figured that Smooth was the way to go.
I bought the Smooth Fitness 5.25 for $995 and that included delivery. The 5.15 had been discontinued and replaced with the 5.25, although I did find it on ebay for $699, including delivery. I wanted to think about it but when I went back it was gone. So I got the 5.25 and now that I have it, I’m glad I got this model instead. The treadmill platform is about 8 inches longer than on the 5.15 and when I’m walking my feet end up about 5 inches from end of the belt. So if I’d gotten the 5.15 it may have been too short.
Next, I had to decide on a laptop. This took longer because I couldn’t decide whether to get a cheapie or a desktop replacement. Finally I decided to go for something that I could use for a few hours a day and not think of it as a desktop replacement since I’ll alternate between my regular desk and the treadmill desk. I ended up getting an HP Pavilion DV8309 from Fry’s, with a really cool docking station.
Even before buying the laptop I had found the perfect way to mount it to the treadmill — the leaf insert from our dining table fit perfectly over the treadmill rails. There’s a handle that protrudes slightly and the leaf fits snugly under it so there’s no wobble, and even if a kid leans on it, it stays put. It worked out perfectly, couldn’t have planned it better. It’s as though it was built for being part of the treadmill desk.
At first we setup the treadmill on the other side of my desk, on the right side of my office, but from a usability standpoint it really needed to be a few steps from my desk so I could go back and forth easily. So we re-arranged things and placed it a few feet from my chair so that it became an integral part of my office.
Ok, so last Saturday I woke up determined to buy a laptop. No more thinking about it, reading reviews, pondering prices. I was going to Fry’s to buy a laptop. The DV8309 was sturdy enough for part-time work and was on sale for $799 (after a $50 rebate). With docking station and sales tax it ended up being around $1,250.
I wasn’t sure I needed the docking station (it was $250!), but turned out to be a wise purchase because it allowed me to move the screen up about 8 inches higher than it would have if it was just sitting on the table. Which would have been about 8 inches too low. It also included speakers, a wireless keyboard, and wireless mouse. Really cool.
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Anyway, got it all setup and it worked perfectly. Every day I walk while checking my email, listening to audios, watching DVDs, listening to conference calls, talking on the phone…all the stuff I do at my regular desk. The time just flies and before I know it, I’ve done 2 or 3 miles. It’s so much better than schlepping over the gym. When I get tired of sitting on my butt, I get up, take 2 steps, and I’m walking while working.
Today I’ve done over 12,000 steps, more than 5 miles and it’s not even 6 p.m. And I feel great! Will post updates in the future…
Here’s an article about Dr. Levine
Categories: Productivity Tools, Life
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Author: Brian Tracy
Year: 2002
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
ISBN: 1576751988
Yesterday we took the kids to Border’s Bookstore so they could redeem the gift cards they received for Christmas from their Uncle Paul.
Now that they know the value of a dollar, it was quite funny to see them calculating how much could buy with the card vs how much they wanted to buy. Of course their wants far exceeded the value of their gift cards, so eventually they resorted to bargaining with Mommy, Daddy, and each other for advances, loans, exchanges, etc.
I sought refuge from the begging in the business aisle, and as I rummaged through the shelves, this title caught my eye: “Eat That Frog!”
“What in the world could eating a frog have to do with business”, I wondered. Curious, I picked it up. Here’s the subtitle: “21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time”
It was written by Brian Tracy. It’s a thin book, a little over 100 pages. I started reading it right there in the aisle and couldn’t put it down. I bought it and continued to read it on the way home, after I got home, and into the night.
You see, I had already resolved to make 2006 MY year, and dedicated the first few days of the year to planning and goal setting. I committed my goals to paper, made them measurable, and gave myself deadlines.
So with all of the goal setting and planning fresh in my mind, this book really spoke to me. I’m still reading it but decided to take a break and tell you about it.
Some of the eye-opening passages that I have highlighted:
”…you are never going to get caught up. You will never get on top of your tasks. You can get control of your time and your life only by changing the way that you think, work, and deal with the never-ending river of responsbilities that flow over you each day.”
And…
“The ability to concentrate single-mindedly on your most important task, to do it well and to finish it completely, is the key to great success, achievement, respect, status, and happiness in life.”
And for insight into the title of the book…
“It has been said for many years that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.”
It has also been said that “If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first.”
And…
“If you have to eat a live frog, it doesn’t pay to sit and look at it for very long.”
It’s a fun and easy read. I haven’t even finished it yet, but already it has helped me to FOCUS, which is always a big struggle for me, as I imagine it is for you.
I highly recommend this book. You can find it on Amazon.com or probably any other bookstore.
Categories: Productivity Tools, Life
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Google is always coming up with something new (have you tried Google Analytics—amazing!).
The cool thing is, whatever the product or service, it’s usually free and a thousand times better than the paid products that do the same thing.
Google Suggest is no exception. As of today it’s still in Beta, but I was playing around with it last night and it’s great. It works like browsers and cell phones in that, as soon as you start typing something, a menu pops up with suggestions of what words to search for.
This works for phrases as well, and the suggestions seem to be based on information Google has saved from previous searches. In other words, these are words and phrases that people ae actually looking for. The results seem to be in order of number of searches, so if one of the results has a low number of competing pages, well that means it’s not getting much competition.
Here’s a search I did on the term “public domain”:
Then if I zero in on “public domain music” I get this:
Hmmm. Are you seeing the power of this? If you aren’t, think harder! Better still try it out…
Google Suggest
If it’s not there, it may be out of Beta – just do a Google search for “Google Suggest”, you’ll find it.
Categories: Productivity Tools, Internet Marketing, SEO Tools, Keyword Research
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I have used various anti-spam programs in the past and the only one I used for any length of time was Mailwasher. The problem with Mailwasher was that every account you wanted to “wash” of spam had to be setup individually. You had to enter the userid and password just as if you were setting it up in your email client.
This wouldn’t be so bad if you only had to do it once, but every now and then, the program would somehow become corrupt or just stop working. Maybe I missed an upgrade or something, I don’t know. But eventually I got tired of having to re-install and re-setup the software, so I went back to the usual “delete, delete, delete” routine of filtering my email manually.
In September 2005 I happened across a program called SPAMfighter. It only works with Outlook and Outlook Express, and I had recently migrated back to Outlook Express from Mozilla Thunderbird, so I decided to give it a try. I don’t remember why I decided to try it, usually anti-spam programs are more trouble than they’re are worth to setup and to use. But for whatever reason, I gave this one a try. It was free for a month, and even after that, it’s free, but they put a little ad in every outgoing email.
The cool thing about SPAMfighter is, it works without you having to do anything. Regardless of how many email accounts you have setup, it automatically filters them somehow and puts the crap in a special SPAMfighter folder. Every now and then you need to check the folder to make sure it didn’t accidentally put something in the folder that you wanted to receive. If there’s nothing in the folder you want to keep, click “Empy Spam Folder” and all of the emails in it go into your deleted folder.
When I first installed SPAMfighter, I had to close Outlook Express and re-start my machine. I think I got distracted or something and forgot that I had installed it. Maybe a day or so went by. Then all of a sudden it dawned on me that I wasn’t getting much spam. Hardly any in fact. That’s when I remember I had installed SPAMfighter and went looking for the folder, which had a nice little collection of spam emails in it, ready for me to delete. Cool!
Like all software programs, SPAMfighter has its problems. It does a good job of detecting spam and putting it into the folder, but it falls down sometimes when you tell it to “Block” an email. This is what you do if an email makes it into your Inbox that you don’t want, and you want to block future emails from that person—you click the “Block” button at the top of your OE screen. More often than not, the email you want to block remains in your mailbox, but another email in your inbox will end up in the SPAMfighter folder. So you have to go to the folder and “Unblock” the one it accidentally put in there, then delete the one you wanted to block in the first place. A little annoying, and hopefully they’ll fix this one day.
Also every now and then the SPAMfighter buttons at the top of the screen get grayed out and you can’t use them. Don’t know why this happens either, usually at this point I’ll just close down Outlook Express and restart. In all fairness, I’m a “heavy-duty” PC user, with many programs running on my desktop, so it’s not uncommon for me to have to re-boot my system for a fresh start.
Anyway, I’ve been using SPAMfighter for 4 or 5 months now and I like it better than anything I’ve tried. After my free trial expired, I paid to Upgrade to the Pro version (about $30 for a year) so I could keep using it without having an ad appear in my outgoing email. I consider that to be money well spent.
Categories: Productivity Tools
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