Fat!
Apparently not, according to my wife, although she’s definitely biased.
The truth is that I’m not fat, but I am the heaviest I’ve ever been, weighing in at 12.5 stone. But there are days when I feel like I’m fat.
Why?
I’m pretty confident that I’ve got it nailed down to two reason:
The food I sometimes eat
Lack of exercise
The food I eat is a hundred times better than it used to be. I now have a rounded diet. I’m not going to win the best meal plan of the year, but I’m doing alright.
Bottom line… I like eating, but would rather someone else does the cooking.
This means we eat out occasionally, and even worse, I will frequently eat crisps.
Yes, I love snacks in all shapes and sizes, and I’m very reluctant to give them up.
Which brings me to point two, exercise.
I need exercise.
It’s not just about losing weight, although that’s important, it’s more about my mental health. I have a rowing machine, and the days when I’ve done rowing I feel a hundred times better about everything.
The days when I’ve walked the dog and done rowing, well… I feel pretty chuffed with myself.
But the days when I planned on rowing, and didn’t do it (like today) I feel shit. It’s a double whammy, I didn’t do the exercise and I failed in the discipline to do the exercise. In this case it was work, and then fixing my mums computer, then lunch got late so I planned on rowing after lunch, but then other things caught me up so I was going to row before dinner, and now I’m writing this because it took a while to get the kids to bed and if I row before dinner we won’t be eating until 10pm at night,
That’s just how it goes some days, but it’s amazing the impact it can have.
** note to self, you must do your rowing session tomorrow!
Pretty much everything I’ve just talked about relates to one thing:
Mental health.
And let’s be honest, food and exercise is probably the simplest thing we can change that gives the biggest impact.
But it’s difficult.
There’s a common thought that it takes 30 days of doing something to change a habit, but they lied to me! I was told recently by somebody who is far more knowledgeable in this than myself, that it actually takes nearer 90 days to truly change a habit.
90 days of doing the same thing in order to get it into the muscle memory of your body.
It makes me feel a bit better, because I know damn well that if I do something for thirty days (which is only 12 times if I’m exercising three times a week) I will still be able to easily drop it.
I haven’t got to the ninety days yet, but I’ll let you know.
Interestingly, when I was at drama school I went to the gym religiously every day for an hour, and I loved it.
There were two reasons.
The first is that I had the time, once I finished school for the day I had no other commitments.
The second is that I was exercising every morning at drama school, it was part of my daily routine, and I made the afternoon session part of my routine as well (which was easier because I had no other commitments).
I’ll keep you posted when I make it to 90 days!
I just typed “if” and went back and changed it to “when”, I’m going to make those 90 days.
*********
Time management.
It’s something I like to think I’m quite good at.
The reality is that I’m not really that good at it!
What I do is work fast. This means I can get through a lot in a short space of time. But this isn’t the same as time management.
Over the years I’ve used this speed of work in place of proper time management. And when I say time management, I mean stopping something when I intend to, rather than continuing to work longer.
Working on things longer than I intend to means that I don’t get to do the exercise I want (like I mentioned above). It means that I don’t get to spend as much time with the children. It means I miss out on doing a lot of things I want to do.
And these things, quite frankly, are way more important to me than working.
So I have to ask myself… why do I find it so hard to cut off?
I don’t have the answer.
Maybe you can help me. Maybe you have the same difficulty. Maybe you’ve found a solution and would be happy to share it.
Let me know by dropping me a message.
*********
I had a lightbulb moment recently. It was around my horse racing software company. And it’s so simple I struggle to understand why it’s taken me over ten years to have it. But there it is, I guess there’s a reason.
It’s going to change everything.
I’ve got no idea whether ultimately it will be for the better, but obviously I think so otherwise I wouldn’t be doing it.
When you start getting some brain space to let the mind relax, it then begins to wander. When it begins to wander it starts piecing together disparate bits of information that are floating around. I think of it like a vacuum in space with these bits of knowledge floating around that start to get connected to each other.
That’s when great things happen.
Nothing great happens when you’re tired and stressed.
This lightbulb moment was the connector for me. Suddenly everything started drifting together. So I’ve begun a plan, I’m going to test a whole bunch of the ideas out in different markets.
I’ve already got one test running in the “internet marketing” niche. This is a niche I have mixed feelings about. There are some great people in it, but there are also some sharks.
Which I guess is really the same in any market.
So why choose it if my feelings are mixed?
Very simply, because it’s easy to advertise in and there’s a huge range of products and sub-niches within it.
This makes it very easy to run tests of ideas in.
At the moment the test I’m running is based on an age-old marketing principle combined with a much newer one. I’ve mixed the two together into an approach that may (or may not) work.
It’s an approach that I’ve been playing around with in my mind for a while. Once or twice I’ve even dabbled with testing it, but I’ve not fully committed to the test.
If you don’t fully commit to the test, there’s actually no point in testing it. You waste time, money and get frustrated.
This time I’ve committed to the test fully, it’s been budgeted, there’s a plan, there’s a goal, it will last for a minimum of three months, but has the possibility to be extended, and I’m excited.
It’s been built specifically with two things in mind:
The approach must be quick to implement and simple to use
It must have the potential for rapid growth
There’s an added benefit (if it does work) in that it will work as a stand-alone business model, even though that’s not how I’m intending to use it, in any market where it’s easy to advertise.
Let me know if you’d like me to keep you posted on it!
*********
This is a big week for me. It was Lyra’s birthday on Tuesday, and depending where you are in the world that may be yesterday, today or tomorrow!
She was three, and it only seems like yesterday that she was born.
We had a, generally, great day. I put ‘generally’ in there because, and you’ll know this if you’ve ever had kids, it’s almost impossible at this age to go through an entire day without a tantrum of some sort. Particularly when you have a big brother who won’t let you play with your presents.
I mean, it’s kinda fair enough in those situations, but the waking up at 5:40am and not going back to sleep definitely didn’t help the situation.
Then Wednesday, which is today for me, Max starts school.
Whaaaaat!
We’re very happy with the school he’s going to, and hope that it proves to be everything it seems to be once he’s there.
However there are some strange things about school. The strangest being that they finish at 2:55pm.
I can only assume this is a hangover from a bygone era when women weren’t allowed to work, and were available to collect the children at any time of the day.
Because let’s be honest, who the fuck finishes full time work in time to collect children at 2:55pm every day!
If it was just the collection then it wouldn’t be a problem, but collection time also means your working day is done as well. You can’t really pick them up and then shut them in a room while you crack on with the job when you get home.
Maybe you can do that when they’re older (I’ll let you know when I get there), but at four years old that’s not going to work.
Part of me loves the idea that Max will be home early and I get to spend time with him. But there’s a part of me that also realises there aren’t enough hours in the day at the moment, and if I work while he’s at home I’ll get pangs of guilt for not spending time with him.
It’s a difficult conundrum, one I will be navigating over the coming weeks and months.
And at this point I will bring this email to a close. It’s been a few weeks since my last one, and that’s because there’s been so much going on over the summer that it’s been hard to get time to sit down and write.
However, holidays are over, work is back, and I’m looking forward to my next email.
Who knows, I may be writing it from a laptop while watching Vivo on Netflix!
Over ‘n out.
Michael Wilding
P.S. If you haven’t seen Vivo, you really should. It’s a cartoon, with all the music written by Lin-Manuel Miranda and it’s absolutely amazing. Everyone we know loves it, adults and children.
Hi mate, new here. Great collection of thoughts 👍
One thought for you:
The answer to, "So I have to ask myself… why do I find it so hard to cut off?"
is in the section directly above it:
"There’s a common thought that it takes 30 days of doing something to change a habit, but they lied to me! I was told recently by somebody who is far more knowledgeable in this than myself, that it actually takes nearer 90 days to truly change a habit.
90 days of doing the same thing in order to get it into the muscle memory of your body."
You've been working that way - as have I - for a LOT longer than 90 days, which is why it's hard wired into you. When you figure out the optimal cold turkey route, be sure and let me know!
See you for a beer soon, I hope.
Matt
I am 5'6", I have arms 4" longer than a man of 5'6" and my chest is 4" larger than a man of 5' 6", I should be 5'10". My legs just don't realise !
A man of 5'6" should weigh around 10.5-11 stone, I am 12.04, I am not vastly over weight (ok, maybe a little).
A true story, when I was in my middle teens I became interested in meditation and had it in mind that maybe everyone had a limited number of heartbeats in their lives and when that number was reached one dies..
So, I decoded that if I lowered my heart rate I would live longer (seemed logical at the time) so I attempted to lower my heart rate through meditation.
Lo, and behold, it worked !
The number of times that Doctors have blamed faulty equipment when they have tested me is countless. Proof came when I was in hospital for something, not heart related, when when I went to sleep I kept setting off the monitor alarm at 45bpm. My resting heart rate is around 49-51 (Olympic athlete rate) and I am no athlete !
My knees are are knackered through sport but I keep them going by thinking about them, how good they are as they are doing the work of someone who is really 5'10" !!!.