Gratitudes of the Day

1. I'm grateful to have this guy around. He brings me an insane amount of laughs.

2. Grateful to Denver Public Schools for opening up the track at North High School to the public. They recently laid down and entirely new SportGrass field as well as a rubberized track, but were keeping it walled off from the public. Now that they're keeping it open as long as there isn't a school event going on, I have someplace to go to get my track spikes out and do some sprint work again. Between that and the rugby pitch at Glendale, what more could I ask for in terms of training spaces?

3. Grateful for the benefit that one of my friends from DU is putting on tonight to raise money for the Lao Buddhist Temple, which burned down in December. Terrible thing to have happen, and since me and the Buddha have a good understanding, I'm heading over to check it out and give some good money to the cause. Please have a look.  http://www.facebook.com/#!/events/307931839258732/

Gratitudes of the Day

1. I'm grateful for the upcoming market holiday on Monday. Option expiry has been a brutal one for us, and an extra day to recharge a bit is gonna be excellent. My only fear is that, with the German news that their president is stepping down, a long weekend for US markets is a good time to announce something ridiculous. Plus I get to do all that awesome stuff that doesn't get done during the week, like laundry!

2. Grateful for my training partners for changing my squat form. My squat has started moving again after being stale for about 6 months. Very fulfilling (and slightly weird) to see that moving up as my bodyweight moves down.

3. Grateful to my core group of friends. A friend from work last night said "You have got the weirdest group of friends I have ever seen." I think we should all be so lucky as to have a group of "weird" friends. I count among my closest friends two aerial dance performers, a consultant, a director for the New Teacher Project, two energy traders, a real estate developer, a cleantech startup president, a fashion and makeup blogger, two pro strongmen and an event planner. I like to think that they keep me on my toes because any conversation feels like I'm getting my learn on at the same time. One dimension is fine for cartoons, but you gotta live in three!

Gratitudes of the Day

1. I'm grateful to catch up with old friends last night. A friend (well, we dated for a little while) just returned to Denver from two years of living in Amsterdam and we caught up after I finished training last night. We got to swap some war stories and she showed me some cool pics from her time in Europe. For whatever reason, I have a decent-sized list of exs that have stuck around in my life as friends. I'm not sure what that says about me, but I'm sure it says something.

2. I'm grateful for the friends and relationships I've built on Twitter. I'd previously made a conscious effort to pull back a bit from Twitter and Facebook and refocus on the current world. I view it as a personal stream, but it's also an extension of my "brand". When the pendulum swings too far in the "personal" or "professional" directions, I like to shut it down for a little while until my focus returns to center. So you might see me more active on the Twitterz in the future, hopefully for the better!

3. I'm grateful for the last girl I dated and the number that she did on me. No details needed here, but suffice to say that it isn't good. In the past I had just "let things go", but I would still resent people for their behavior and there wouldn't be any closure. I'm (finally) learning in my 31.5yrs walking the Earth that sometimes you need to draw that line in the sand and just say "No, I am not cool with this". Shame it took this long!

3 Gratitudes of the Day

1. I'm grateful that my friend Eric's wife was out of town for Valentines Day. Because of this, I got to go to a Great Divide beer dinner hosted by Beatrice and Woodsleys. I'm working with a nutritionist right now and I'm pretty sure beer isn't part of the plan, but this was an opportunity that I felt I couldn't pass up. 12 people and one of the brewers from Great Divide just sitting around, talking food, beer and life. Met some very cool people, ate some insanely good food and drank some phenomenal beers. It was an excellent, excellent night.

2. Incredibly grateful that my back is finally coming around a little. I had microdiscectomy in 2005 and it still gives me an issue or two now and then. I woke up yesterday feeling like my SI joints were totally out of whack, so the order of the day was some foam roller and adjustments. Even after sitting in hard chair for 4 hrs last night, all seems right in the world this morning. Which is good, because tonight's workout is a heavy one.

3. I am incredibly grateful that pictures like this exist in the world.

3 Gratitudes of the Day

1. I'm grateful for the kiddos at Judi's House, where I volunteer a couple nights a month. This house is full of some of the most joyful kids you will ever meet, as well as some stories that absolutely break your heart. You want to learn about being joyful and full of life in the face of adversity? These kids have cornered the market.

2. I'm grateful that I've had the means to hire people to write me training and nutrition programs. The productivity and time gains from this (not to mention the big improvements I'm already feeling in body comp and performance) have definitely already paid for themselves. I've written about this in previous blog posts and I HIGHLY encourage anyone to look into online coaching. It is affordabe and easy to seek out the best trainers online so as to avoid ending up with Timmy the Trainer from your local 24 Hr.

3. I'm incredible grateful that the biggest concern on my mind, as I sit and type this, is "What the hell else am I grateful for?". 

Gratefuls of the Day

This is a three week exercise that I picked up from a Ted talk on happiness and work (http://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_better_work.html). I'm writing down three things per day that I'm grateful for in an effort to see if it shifts anything with regards to my thought processes at work. I'm doing this first thing in the AM before I leave for the office.

1. I'm grateful that I got to hang out with my mom yesterday. I did the math on this and I've seen her more times in the last four months than I had in the previous five years.

2. I'm grateful for being able to freeze my ass off at Denver's first ever Cupid's Undie Run this past Saturday. Proceeds benefitted the Children's Tumor Foundation and I think Denver raised somewhere in the neighborhood of $40-50k. Pics here; I'm told that I'm not in any of them, but I haven't scanned them myself. They are potentially NSFW and absolutely hilarious.

3. I'm grateful for the deliciousness of Novo coffee in my cup this morning. Every few days I brew a french press so I have a cup waiting for me when I first wake up, which is usually somewhere in the neighborhood of 430-500am.

More Fun With Math and Online Coaching

To explore the concept of online coaching and time-dollars a bit further, let’s use my previous example (5 hours per week spent planning, time is worth $20/hour):

By hiring an online coach, this is an extra 260 hours per year of time not spent researching and writing your own training/nutrition. Let us suppose that a coach charges $500 for 13 weeks of programming. At the aforementioned $20/hour, it’s going to take you 25 hours of additional work (or $ saving/sacrifice) to afford this plan. In return, you will accrue a net gain of 40 additional hours of your life. 13 weeks is one quarter of a year, and we already established that you are gaining 260 hours per full year. 260*25%=65 hours, 65 minus the 25 extra "hours" you need to work = 40. At $20 per hour, that's an additional $800 time-dollars you've netted.  

To extrapolate: at $2,000 for an entire year of programming you would work an additional 100 hours @ $20/hour (or one extra hour per day for 20 weeks, a half hour per day for 40 weeks, etc). For the commitment of 100 extra hours per year, you receive a full year of programming and a net gain of 160 HOURS OF YOUR LIFE that you aren’t reading, plotting and planning. 160 * $20 = $3,200, or a 61% return. 

At some point, this is no longer a cost effective endeavor. I would argue this, because there are excellent online coaches who are very flexible and work with you on payment plans or reduced rates. But we do need to draw a line somewhere. One way to sort this out, using totally new values:

Let’s say you spend one hour per week (52 hours per year) with programming and your time is worth $20/hr. Your hypothetical annual “budget” is $1,040 or 52 hours. Any total programming that doesn’t break this price point or the number of hours expended is accretive to your life through time-dollar savings. A $1,200 annual plan is a net loss of (15%) in time-dollar terms since you will need to work 15% more hours (60-52/52) and thus “spend” more money (1,200-1040/1040) than you would be saving.

There are some caveats to consider with this math. The less time you already devote to planning nutrition and training, the less you will derive from this activity since you are investing very few time-dollars in the first place. Also: this is purely an exercise regarding planning. I've given no considerations to the actual training/exercise time, nor have I discussed results. I'll save those for later, but I think that is also a compelling argument. I believe the math behind training time may illustrate why Crossfit has such an intriguing value proposition, despite the high "cost" for box membership.

I did all this in a fairly short amount of time, so feel free to check my math and ask me if something seems off; I ALWAYS forget to carry the "1". The point I'm trying to make is this: your time is EXPENSIVE. By putting your time into dollar terms, i'm trying to illustrate the fact that you're spending money every second of every day. A little basic math can help you make choices that offer higher potential returns with lower risk to the downside.