No time to waste...

Today I started my plan to balance work and triathlons. I'm not one to sit still and ease into it, I'm either "all or nothing" and "now or never".

One cornerstone of my plan is to keep things balanced by scheduling my time, similar how I train.

I'm drawing on my training experience and applying it to career.

When I train, I have daily scheduled workouts with time durations. The schedule doesn't tell me what time I should do the workout, it just says I need to accomplish it sometime that day.

I want to apply the same approach to my work. I've often found that if I "binge work", it's catches up to me, I tend to burnout or lose perspective. My plan is to allocate a fixed amount of hours in a day that I will work on a given task.

When the time is up, it's up, just like training. As much as I might have my head into something or feel good enough to push through, I'm not going to. I'm going to shut it down and continue on the next day.

To help me, I purchased a $10 piece of software call Vertabase Time and it's software that puts a "time clock" on my computer. When I start working on a task, I log in and it keeps track of my time. When I've put in the scheduled time, I stop and log out.

It's important to note that what my current work allows me great flexibility in the selecting the time and place that I can work on a task. Internet marketing is the career path I've chosen. I have a "passion for it" and it's "ideal for my lifestyle".

It's something I've been involved with for the past few years and have come to really enjoy it for a variety of reasons.

One thing that attracted me to it is it's not a 9 am - 5 pm, Monday to Friday job. It allows me to primarily work when and where I want and success is very measurable.

There is also constant learning involved. This past year I can't tell you how many hours I've spend listening to Internet Marketing podcasts as I trained. To me, it's fascinating stuff.

The one downside of Internet based marketing is you can easily become a "work-aholic". There is so much to constantly learn and implement that it is easy to "immersed" into something and not want to break away to train. I've had this happen.

I'm in the process of setting up my time in blocks. I don't think I'm not going to work more than 3 hours at one time without a healthy break in between. I may have one day a week which I'll call my "long-day". No different than a "long bike ride".

I'm even doing the same daily time allocation for my personal blogging and twittering. Family and personal time will be all the non-allocated time.

Another cornerstone of my plan is based on Parkinson's Law, which is defined as "work expands so as to fill the time available for it's completion." Some may argue that you CAN'T assume you'll accomplish something in a specific time, I disagree.

By knowing you have a "limited" amount of time a day, it forces you to focus on the most important tasks. Important tasks are defined by, "that which will make you the most money".

Right now I'm in the process of creating a "work training plan" that will be integrated with my lifestyle and goals. I just started recording the time I spend on different tasks and hope to have a schedule in place within a week or two.

Another benefit of Internet based marketing is my ability to shut off my computer. This is going to be "hard", but when my time is up, I'm going to shut down my computer and not turn it on until the next day or when the next task is scheduled to be worked on. For me, turning off my computer will not be an easy thing to do.

Changing gears, I went to a Chiropractor that specializes in Active Release Technique. He told me that I have a tightness in my ligament and figured it is a hold over from Matty-O's "peoples elbow" when we were wresting at the House of Payne Beer Run.

I told him about the marathon and that I'm fully prepared to take his advice as to whether or not I should do it. After his evaluation he said "he didn't see it causing major damage if I did the marathon, it would just postpone the amount of time it would take for full recovery".

Based on his "feedback", I am going to do the NYC Marathon. It's only 10 days away and I'll be doing a very limited amount of training. Maybe a few runs from now until then and probably not more than an hour per run. I also have 4 weeks that I didn't plan on training after the marathon to let hit heal properly.

During the next 10-days, the Doctor recommended I come to see him for therapy a couple times a week and go for a massage or two per week, and take warm baths and stretch often throughout the day. The goal is to get oxygen into the ligament area in order for it to heal.

My only "fear" about the marathon is the "pain and suffering" I'm about to face. I much prefer mild training-pain over severe racing-pain. With only 7 or 8 runs between Kona and the marathon, I predict I'm going to be hurting during and after the race. Although I spoke to "Coach Gord" today and he thinks my Kona fitness will carry over. Time will tell.

I also got final resolution to my Cogeco cable problem. I spoke to one Supervisor on Monday and didn't get a satisfactory answer and asked to speak to her manager. Yesterday, I spoke to the manager and finally got her to admit that they could have done something that night and "over road" the system and allowed me to order the UFC pay-per-view.

I knew it could have been done. I then asked her to have the supervisor I spoke to on Saturday night to call me and "personally" apologize to me. We'll see if that happens.

Finally, I got my Ironman Kona race poster back from plaque mounting today. I also had my finishers shot printed and framed as an 8 x 10. I've got to say, for print enlargements, Wal-mart is CHEAP, it was only $2.69 for an 8 x 10 print and it was ready in 5 minutes.

Oh, one last thing. I think I created a monster. This past weekend, I taught Reid that you can make a "flame thrower" with a match and a flammable aerosol can. I learnt about that technique when I was a kid and lit my mom's macrame plant holder on fire. It looks like he caught on and is now doing it when we weren't home. He took pictures I found. I sure hope he doesn't burn down the house.

No Training

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Today's video comes by way of Al Nolan and his words, and I quote were : Make a mention that I dedicate the song to MattyO, the running Ho!!