I'm a big fan of Asian Efficiency, I read a similar article years ago (maybe it's the same one?). Clearing to neutral has definitely given me positive results.
Stop Procrastinating by “Clearing to Neutral”
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Re: Stop Procrastinating by “Clearing to Neutral”
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just counting steps isn't very effective. You need to walk for a good long while at a time to use up your glycogen (stored sugar energy) and make your body dip into fat reserves. So if you spread out getting your steps you are less likely to do that. Similarly, there are heart rate complications. If you don't walk fast enough or throw in some interval work to get your heart rate up, you aren't getting as much exercis…
I don't have the equipment to test your hypothesis, but I think I can test an easier one: running a mile a day in addition to doing 10K steps in a certain period of time around the neighborhood. Crude, but predictable.
Try doing your walking first thing in the morning before breakfast. Lot's of bodybuilders use this technique when they are cutting for a contest. It's also a popular method because unlike cardio, walking has almost no detrimental effect on weight-training later in the day. I'd love to hear your results after keeping track of this.
Re: Stop Procrastinating by “Clearing to Neutral”
#33A variant (I think) of this idea that I've been using for years: when I stop coding, I jot down what I was doing, whatever problems I was dealing with, and what I felt my next steps were going to be in a little Emacs buffer. It would probably be even smarter of me to take 20 seconds to figure out exactly the right set of Emacs tabs/frames to keep open alongside them, so when it was time to start up again, I'd get suc…
A related trick I find valuable is to do the exact opposite of what the article suggests. Never finish anything at the end of your workday. Leave yourself a small mess to clean up, or some simple and finite wrapup task that you can afford to postpone. Bonus points if it's going to be fun or interesting to work on. The idea being, it'll be much easier to get back into the groove the next day if you aren't confronted w…
This is a trick Hemingway used when writing.
"The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day … you will never be stuck. Always stop while you are going good and don’t think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start."
I often create fun little mini-projects for myself to do and store them for later. I find that completing a small and fun project motivates me to work on whatever actual task I should be working on.
Re: Stop Procrastinating by “Clearing to Neutral”
#34The effectiveness of these mind games tends to be fleeting.
Nike nailed it: Just do it.
Re: Stop Procrastinating by “Clearing to Neutral”
#35Nice hypothesis, but where's the lab result? I highly encourage people to think skeptically and scientific as well using the self quantitative approach to self improvement, even when they're certain when their theory is right. For example, I am measuring blood pressure, steps count, weight, blood sugar level, awake and sleep time everyday. I also just recently concluded that walking 10K steps have almost no effect on…
I found your article interesting. A quantitative approach to health worked very well for me. I used loseit.com to track calories, macro-nutrients, and exercise. By sticking to calorie limits, eating less than 20 net grams of carbs a day, and running three times a week with Couch to 5K I have lost 90 pounds over the last 11 months. My BMI went from 38 to 24.8. I have tried to lose weight many times before, but a quantitative approach made everything much easier for me. The real test however is going to be not gaining it back. I have just accepted that counting calories is something I will have to do the rest of my life because I am completely clueless about nutrition without numbers. I think you are on the right track. Health is different for every person, and unless people objectively look at what works and doesn't work for them individually, they will have a very difficult time finding a healthy lifestyle.
Anyway, good luck with your experiment!
Re: Stop Procrastinating by “Clearing to Neutral”
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
> walking 10K steps have almost no effect on my weight If you're going to change and track something to test its correlation to weight, please consider calorie intake instead. 10k steps is really not going to burn many calories (my marathon running friends use the "1 mile = 100 calories" rule of thumb). Additionally, many people starting cardio see an increase in appetite and if they are not already used to carefully…
I thought that until someone explained to me that the 100 calorie figure includes ALL the calories burned during the time the run takes. If you run 10 miles in 1 hour that's about 1000 calories. But lying on your back burns up 100 calories per hour. So running only accounts for 900 or 90 per mile. and also the number of cals burned is proportional to your weight to some extent. EDITED to correct some bad arithmetic :…
On the flipside, exercise increases your metabolism during the rest of the day, typically more than offsetting your math. This effect is well-correlated with exercise intensity. Also, 100 calories/mile at 6 minute/mile pace is quite efficient unless you are very light (e.g., 140 lbs).
Re: Stop Procrastinating by “Clearing to Neutral”
#37This article got me thinking about places in my life where there's friction. My computer stands out as a huge source of friction. I already try to close unnecessary windows/tabs, but after reading this, I realized that, because I use it for so many different habits, my desktop fails as a friction free starting point for work. So I've identified a few ways I use my computer and I'm setting up a user account for each o…
A less radical approach is to use multiple screens/desktops, but all under one account. Under OSX, they're called "Spaces," and I can't remember what the Linux term is. I'm not sure if Windows has them.
They are called "desktops" on Linux.
Re: Stop Procrastinating by “Clearing to Neutral”
#38I think a lot of this applies to me, I have a bad habit of leaving windows open for things I am not actively working on even though I know this can really bog me down mentally. However, while I think there is a lot of value in clearing your workspace to remove friction, someone also gave me some really good advice to help with getting started in the morning that is a little bit contradictory. The advice is to leave s…
Just do a code review in the morning to warm up, instead of hurriedly finishing yesterday's work and then tossing it aside to start something new.
Re: Stop Procrastinating by “Clearing to Neutral”
#39This article is completely ignorant of scientific research into how procrastination actually happens.
Re: Stop Procrastinating by “Clearing to Neutral”
#40Nice hypothesis, but where's the lab result? I highly encourage people to think skeptically and scientific as well using the self quantitative approach to self improvement, even when they're certain when their theory is right. For example, I am measuring blood pressure, steps count, weight, blood sugar level, awake and sleep time everyday. I also just recently concluded that walking 10K steps have almost no effect on…
> walking 10K steps have almost no effect on my weight If you're going to change and track something to test its correlation to weight, please consider calorie intake instead. 10k steps is really not going to burn many calories (my marathon running friends use the "1 mile = 100 calories" rule of thumb). Additionally, many people starting cardio see an increase in appetite and if they are not already used to carefully…
>(my marathon running friends use the "1 mile = 100 calories" rule of thumb)
Weight also impacts how many calories are burned. (http://caloriesburnedrunning.org/; not sure how accurate this particular site is, but I've seen similar results from other sites). A 6'6" person with a healthy BMI weight of 215 lbs would burn around 175 calories per mile at an 11.5 minute mile pace.
Despite this, as a tall person who runs a lot, I've found that a diet change is still really important if one wants to lose weight. (But after this is done, it is nice to go for a ten mile run on the weekend to cut a half pound that can be used as weight loss or to allow more eating throughout the rest of the week.)