A basic home bike fit

The perfect position varies depending on what you are looking for: power, comfort, aerodynamics or injury avoidance.
Phil Burt

Finding your optimum position on the bike is an essential factor in being fast. A good position is different for each individual based on their goals, body shape, and flexibility level. However, according to Phil Burt, author of Bike Fit, and Head Physiotherapist of British cycling and former consultant for Team Sky, there is a bike fit window.

There are three contact points with the bike; the saddle, the handlebars, and the pedals (five if you count both hands and feet). You can adjust each of the contact points based on your body proportions, flexibility, and needs. A proper bike fit is probably the best money you can spend to improve your riding experience and speed, but some basics can get you started.

Start with the saddle

Saddle height: heel to pedal method

Saddle height is the holy grail for power. It is often argued that it is the most important cycle-position setting, and I have to agree – many other positioning recommendations (say of the handlebars or pedals) are actually trying to correct a suboptimal seat height. So it makes sense to start here.
Phil Burt

The optimum saddle height is a goal to work towards as it is often restricted by your hamstrings’ flexibility, if it is too high for your level of flexibility, you will get pain in the back of your knee. If it is too low, you will not be able to get power through the pedals. A simple way to set your saddle height is to adjust it, so your heel touches the pedal with your leg straight the pedal at the bottom dead centre.

Saddle setback: knee over toe

Once you have your saddle height, you need to adjust the saddle’s setback. The KOPs method involves dropping a plumb line or using a straight edge down from your knee when the crank is in the 3 o’clock position. The verticle line from your knee should be in front of the peddle axle but not beyond the toe. If the saddle is too far forward, you will get pain in the front of your knee below the kneecap.

Handlebars

To get a sufficient reach length for handlebars, put your elbow against the saddle front, your extended arm and open hand should fall about an inch short of the handlebars.

The handlebars should be between three and eleven inches (2.5 – 8 cms) lower than the saddle. Where you set yourself in this range will have to be by feel, making sure that your hands can sit comfortably and relaxed on the hoods with your elbows slightly bent for the duration of your rides. Start conservative and gradually lower your bars to a more aggressive position over time as your flexibility improves.

Pedals

To set up the pedals, align the foot of the foot with the pedal axle’s centre line and replicate your food’s turn out to match the way you walk. Aim to move both your walking and pedal position towards a foot straight-ahead style over time.

Improve your flexibility for a better bike fit

Burt suggests working on your flexibility directly after getting off the bike or after your shower. Starting with 30-second stretches, three times on each side and build up to 90 seconds as it becomes more comfortable and your form improves. Foam rolling should be done for ten repetitions each lasting 3 seconds up and 3 seconds down, pausing on any tight or sore areas.

Stretches you should perform are the Bulgarian squat (I prefer the couch stretch for quads), the Indian Knot. You should foam roll your ITBs, your glutes, and thoracic spine. Google these for demos.

Pick up Phil Burt’s Bike Fit: Optimise Your Bike Position for High Performance and Injury Avoidance. If you are interested in speed, get a bike fit from former National Time Trial champion Matt Bottrill.

Make useful videos, publish them once or twice per week, and do this for two years

Many people have predicted that the future of work is in portfolio jobs made up of multiple income streams, including online courses. This week YouTuber and Junior Doctor, Ali Abdaal released his 2020 income that gives information on what that portfolio might look like and how someone might get there. Ali’s income revolves around his Youtube channel, which currently has 1.3 million subscribers.

Ali Abdaal’s 2020 Revenue – £1,013,000

A full-time job as a doctor £22,100 (First seven months of the year only)
Youtube Adsense £100,695
Affiliates £132,471
Sponsors £136,000
Skills share courses including affiliate links £350,000
Online Part-time YouTuber Academy course £220,000
Alumni inner circle membership £53,000

The online part-time Youtuber Academy course and Alumni Inner circle membership

Ali recently launched his first online cohort-based course. The course lasts four weeks and starts at $1495 for the Essential Edition. Premium and Executive editions cost $2495 and $4995 and provide additional features including lifetime access to future courses and further access to Ali and his team. The course’s first cohort had three hundred and sixty students enrol for a total income of £220,000. Ali chose to charge this amount to provide a premium service that would deliver meaningful change in his students. In the video, he explains that people need accountability and community to help them learn from a course in today’s world of unlimited online content. By charging a significant fee for a four-week part-time academy, he can get heavily involved. He delivers sessions live, provides access to himself and his team, and can do much more to help his students make it as creative entrepreneur’s on YouTuber.

If you build an audience over a long period of time who, know, like, and, trust you, then when you start charging real money for a product which is actually good, people will be happy to pay that money and pay for access to you.
Ali Abdaal

The course was so successful that the students asked for ongoing access to the community and Ali. An impressive one hundred and twenty-four students (34% progression rate) have signed up for membership of the Alumni inner circle service. Features of the Inner circle include a monthly coaching call with Ali, guest workshops, additional content, and weekly and daily events.

This idea of building a following via YouTube and social media and then providing access to you via an online course is an interesting one compared to the University model. Large institutions leverage their longstanding reputations and Government protection to attract students and charge them significant amounts of money to provide them with the content, accountability, and community Ali refers to. Courses like this one are beginning to develop sophisticated delivery models and provide motivated students with the skills they require to succeed at work. Will we start to see academics pursuing a portfolio job, working part-time for Universities while building a YouTube follow that they then use to deliver courses directly to students?

Building a portfolio job

Most of us rely almost entirely on a single source of income. This should scare us more than it does. For several years, Ali has asked his coworkers if they would continue to work in medicine if they won the lottery. Half respond they would leave immediately, and the other half say they would go part-time. When asked why they do not become part-time now, the answer is usually related to money. The video gives some useful advice for anyone wanting to start becoming a creative entrepreneur and making some, or all, of their living from the internet.

…If you want to seriously want to get to this level…of making money online, you have to put in large amounts of work over a very long period of time. But the good news is that all of this is really, really fun so it won’t feel like work hopefully.
Ali Abdaal

Ali’s full-time job is a tiny fraction of his full income, and he can hire two full-time employees and another part-time to help run it. He notes that all his various income streams result from posting useful videos to his YouTube channel, twice per week for the last three and a half years.

Like every good thing in life, the progress is slow, but if you keep at it consistently over a very long period of time, then hopefully things will start to compound.
Ali Abdaal

Google Adsense income from short video adverts and banner ads on Ali’s YoutTube videos. Monetising a YouTube channel through Adsence requires a minimum of 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time. He provides the annual growth of this income:

2017 – 59 videos – 1,600 subs – £0
2018 – 88 videos – 120k subs – £12,329
2019 – 62 videos – 450k subs – £33,186
2020 – 98 videos (307 total) – 1.3M subs – £100,695

Once the channel grew and the subscriptions and watch time increased, affiliates through Amazon affiliate links and similar, and sponsorship income started to grow. Again, Ali stresses that this income relies on the success of the YouTube channel. Ali also introduced several Skillshare courses in areas including productivity and study skills that are currently his highest income stream but rely on a massive scale driven by his YouTube channel’s popularity.

Success = work x luck x unfair advantage.

Work in this equation involves consistently publishing content that is as useful as possible. Ali mentions that he is routinely spending upwards of six hours per night, developing his skills, researching, and producing content and has been for the last fourteen years. The luck is the type that comes from putting lots of work to take advantage of the opportunities when they arise. This luck includes the YouTube algorithm. Most of his videos get viewing figures around 20% of his subscription numbers, but his videos’ small fraction will often earn significantly more views. The challenge is there is no knowing which videos will go viral and which will get baseline figures. Unfair advantages are the things that you bring to the table that others can’t. Ali provides the example of when he started making videos and was studying medicine at Cambridge University. He used being a trainee doctor and Cambridge University’s reputation to attract people to his channel before proving himself as an individual. He made videos that played off these two elements to build his early subscriptions. Ali suggests that any new YouTuber works from their unfair advantages to help get their first views and subscribers.

So the challenge for any aspiring YouTuber: Make useful videos, publish them once or twice per week, and do this for at least two years, and you will get success.

Watch the full video on YouTube and subscribe to Ali Abdaal’s channel. Get in touch with me on Twitter to let me know what you think.

A new year needs a new challenge: Introducing project 4W/kg

My challenge to become a better endurance athlete by running 2000 miles in a year is now complete. I want to take what I have learned and apply it to road cycling. I am not a beginner on a bike and based on my two Ironman 70.3 performances, I am more suited to cycling than I am running, but running has taken over this year, and I have never been a great cyclist. My choice of an arbitrary annual distance as a performance goal was to produce consistency in my training; I want to take this consistency and use it to achieve an outcome goal and get fast.

So, I have an incomplete problem: I want to get fast on the bike. But what is fast, and how can I measure it to create a plan to get there?

In planning and policy, a wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. It refers to an idea or problem that cannot be fixed, where there is no single solution to the problem; and “wicked” denotes resistance to resolution, rather than evil. Another definition is “a problem whose social complexity means that it has no determinable stopping point”. Moreover, because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may reveal or create other problems.
Wikipedia

An effective way of addressing an incomplete problem is to use the principles of Problem-Based Learning (PBL). PBL is a team-based teaching practice, so I will create a team using friends who ride bikes or have useful knowledge for collaborative research. Inspired by the Change through challenge course, I will time-bound this project to a common university module’s size of 200 hours (20 credits) and give myself five months. Problem-Based Learning begins with trigger material, such as a case study or journal article and has four steps:

Step 1: Define the problem
Step 2: Draw up the plan
Step 3: Implement the plan
Step 4: Evaluate the plan

Trigger material

The following is an article by Dr Andrew Coggan, the co-author and scientist behind the book Training and Racing with a Power Meter. The post defines fast based on a scientific approach to an average joe’s natural potential.

If the average Joe works their ass off how far can they get?: 3.9 W/kg
The average healthy but sedentary, college-aged male has a VO2max of approximately 45 mL/min/kg. However, I have seen it argued based on studies of, e.g., aboriginal tribes (and there are population data from Europe as well as military inductees here in the US to support the conclusion) that the “default” VO2max of the average human male is closer to 50 mL/min/kg, and the only way to get below this is to assume a couch-potato lifestyle, gain excess weight, etc. (and/or grow old, of course). So, I’ll go with that latter number.
With short-term training, VO2max increases by 15-25% on average, with another perhaps 5-10% possible (on average, anyway) with more prolonged and/or intense training. That gives a total increase of 20-35%, so I’ll go with 30% just for argument’s sake.
So, if VO2max is, on average, 50 mL/min/kg and increases by, on average, 30%, that means that the average Joe ought to be able to raise their VO2max to about 65 mL/min/kg with training. Indeed, there are many, many, many, MANY amateur endurance athletes with VO2max values of around that number (not to mention the fact that athletes in team sports with an endurance component – e.g., soccer – often have a VO2max of around 60 mL/min/kg, something that is also true in other sports that you don’t normally consider to be of an endurance nature, e.g., downhill skiing or motocross – i.e., motorcycle – racing).
The question then becomes, how high might functional threshold power fall as a percentage of VO2max (again, on average), and what does this translate to in terms of a power output? The answer to the former is about 80% (LT, on average, being about 75% of VO2max in trained cyclists), which means that in terms of O2 consumption, a functional threshold power corresponding to a VO2 of 65 mL/min/kg * 0.80 = 52 mL/min/kg could be considered average. If you then assume an average cycling economy of 0.075 W/min/kg per mL/min/kg, this equates to… 3.9 W/kg.
Dr Andrew Coggan

Defining terms

V02Max or maximum oxygen uptake is the oxygen uptake attained during maximal exercise intensity that could not be increased despite further increases in exercise workload, thereby defining the limits of the cardiorespiratory system
Hill and Lupton (1923)

Functional Threshold Power (FTP) represents your ability to sustain the highest possible power output over 45 to 60 minutes, depending on whether you’re a trained athlete or not. As a result 95% of the 20 minute average power is used to determine FTP.
Wattbike

The cycling economy (CE, W·LO2 –1·min–1) was defined as the ratio of the power output to the oxygen consumption (LO2·min–1)
Faria et al. (2005)

Simply put, your watts per kilo (w/kg) is your power to weight ratio. Watts per Kilo is your max power output, in watts, divided by your weight in kilos. For example, someone with a weight or mass of 80kg with a sustainable power output of 280 watts will have a power to weight ratio of 3.5 watts per kilo (3.5W/kg).
Wattbike

Based on the trigger material, to achieve ‘fast’ as considered possible by an average person, I need to maximise my V02Max, maximise the percentage of my V02Max I can hold for 40-60 minutes, maximise the percentage of that power I can translate to moving a bike forward, all while minimise my bodyweight.

The Challenge

Over the next five months, I will spend 200 hours getting to a cycling Functional Threshold Power (FTP) of 4 W/kg.

This is an ambitious goal, and even with my endurance and cycling background, it is likely to be a far stretch within the timeframe I have set myself. But the idea is to create a mark that requires more than just following a training plan but a lifestyle shift and total commitment. Plus, if it were easy, it would not be fun. If you have ideas on achieving this challenge or want to join in, get in touch on Twitter.

The greatest miler in history

I finished the biography The Golden Mile: The Herb Elliott Story today. His mental and physical training would best be described as character building. If you like to run, think that modern methods are a little tame and want to read about how the best athletes trained in the ultra-amateur era of athletics, this book is a must-read. Once you are finished with this book, pick up a copy of Why Die: The Extraordinary Percy Cerutty ‘Maker of Champions’ to learn more about the famous Portsea camp and Cerutty’s coaching methods.

Camp activities followed a fairly regular pattern. A typical day went like this: 7 a.m.: A five mile run before breakfast in any direction our whim took us, followed by a dip in the ocean. 8 a.m.: Breakfast of uncooked rolled oats (without milk) sprinkled with wheat germ, walnuts, sultanas, raisins and sliced banana. Perhaps a few potato chips to follow. 9 a.m.: Swimming and surfing or outdoor chores like chopping wood, painting and carpentry. Noon: Training and lectures at Portsea Oval, followed by another swim. 2 p.m.: Lunch – fish and fresh fruit. 3 p.m.: Siesta. 4 p.m.: Weight lifting. 5 p.m.: Ten mile run along dirt roads ending once more at the beach. 7 p.m.: Tea and a general discussion led by Percy on a wide variety of subjects. 11 p.m.: Lights out.
Herb Elliott

Herb Elliott, the 1500m gold medalist at the 1960 Olympics, is regarded as one of the greatest middle-distance runners of all time. The Percy Cerutty athlete saw running as the ultimate expression of the human body and embraced his coaches methods of natural eating, long runs in the mountains, sprints up dunes, sea swims, and weightlifting to develop extreme levels of strength and conditioning. Besides his physical abilities, mentally Elliot was a highly intelligent savage who through reading philosophy and embracing suffering, cultivated both unwavering confidence in his running performance and a will to win that saw him unbeaten in the mile and 1500m in his short adult career.

Most athletes imagine themselves at the end of their tether before they’re even seventy-five per cent exhausted. I was so determined to avoid this pitfall that if at any time I thought I was surrendering too soon to superficial pain I’d deliberately try to hurt myself more. In apparent conflict with this self-inflicted scourging was Percy’s theory that running should be a free expression of the body; that my body in motion, in the words of the song, ought to be doing what comes naturally. I trusted that my intelligence and enthusiasm would produce a happy compromise between this theory and my striving for perfection through pain.
Herb Elliott

While reading this book, I found my mindset changing towards heavy training. I started to see my quality sessions as an opportunity to push hard and embrace the pain a little more, driving with my arms and lengthening my stride when it started to hurt. I have begun heavy deadlifting and overhead pressing again on the journey to a double bodyweight deadlift and bodyweight overhead press, the standard that Percy Cerutty set his runners. And I have picked up my old copies of Stoic philosophy books and started to listen to Classical music from time to time including Beethoven’s Tempest III Allegretto when I need some inspiration.

1,000 True Fans and the Portfolio Life

In the book, The 100-year life, the authors introduce the idea of a portfolio job. To provide an individual with autonomy in their working life, they step away from full employment in a single position to take on several smaller roles that together make up the required income and creative outlets that person desires. A portfolio job requires the individual to have developed mastery in a field that they can then exploit for revenue through various products and services. It is an attractive idea for those of us that have worked hard to develop a level of mastery in our chosen fields, but it is a step away from what most of us learned in school. For knowledge workers, the two big questions are who are our potential customers and what kind of products are services can we offer them?

1000 True Fans

Kevin Kelly, the founding editor of Wired Magazine and author, wrote an article in 2008 titled 1,000 true fans in which he argued that to be a successful creator and make a living, you only need a thousand true fans. Kelly defines a true fan as someone that will buy anything that you produce and a living as earning $100,000 per year. To make $100,000 per year as income, you must create enough to earn $100 profit from each of these true fans and then sell them directly. This calculation assumes that it is better to sell more to your existing fans than it is to find new ones and that you get to keep all the purchase price from any sale instead of giving away a percentage to an intermediary.

The target of 1000 true fans is a number that is manageable for most people, that could be as simple as one per day for a few years. You can play with this formula depending on your field, so if you can earn more per true fan, you need fewer of them to hit the $100,000 mark. These true fans will also work for you through word of mouth marketing and attract regular fans that may purchase some but not all of your product so focusing your attention on them is far more valuable than other marketing approaches.

Kelly highlights two areas where this formula is becoming accessible to a larger group of creators. The first and more obvious reason is the internet has made it far easier to connect, build relationships, and have financial transactions directly to a vast pool of consumers. The second and less obvious reason is how network effects amplify the discoverability of niche products and put them one click away from that best selling ones.

Selling your creative output is an easy idea for traditional creatives such as musicians or artists, but what about knowledge workers?

The Full-Stack Freelancer

Tiago Forte has built a portfolio business as a freelancer in Forte Labs and suggests seven types of product that can make up a portfolio income in his blog post ‘The rise of the full-stack freelancer.’ These income streams can mix products and services, digital and physical, and passive and active income.

Social Media
Blog/subscriptions
Public workshops
Online courses
Phone coaching
Corporate training
Consulting

A portfolio of income streams takes advantage of opportunistic addition; doing each of these in moderation can add value and minimise the diminishing returns experienced when focusing exclusively on one area. Each of the products or services feed off each other and create a marketing funnel from free content to the higher value offerings. True fans can be developed in one direction through this funnel or move through multiple streams and back again with a monthly subscription to a premium blog, purchasing one-off highly interactive courses, and receiving a free monthly newsletter for example.

Creating a portfolio life

The idea of discovering and cultivating a relationship with a collection of individuals who will then purchase what you produce to give you a steady and comfortable living is exciting. A place to start could be to build a presence on social media such as Twitter or Instagram and begin to cultivate an audience, and an email list, through free longer-form content on blogs or podcasts. Once you have a following, you will introduce revenue-building products or services such as a book or an online course. Whatever route you choose, the portfolio life is an attractive one, and the internet has made it easier than ever to cultivate.

Have a conversation with me about this post on Twitter; I am interested to hear your thoughts.

A Christmas to remember

Traditions are funny things. Christmas has been celebrated across the Christian world since the forth century, taking the place of winter solstice celebrations on the 25th of December. The winter solstice in the northern hemisphere is the point in the year when the North Pole is at its maximum tilt away from the sun producing the shortest day and the longest night of the year.

I started the day with a run to the top of the highest hill near my house and back, a distance of seven miles and around 800meters of climbing. This run was special for three reasons, we had glorious weather, I managed the run in under 60 minutes for the first time ever, and it marked the completion of my 2000 miles of running challenge for the year.

The rest of the day was spent with my wife, cooking and eating great food, video calls with family, and a cheeky few glasses of champagne with the couple next door over the fence in the front garden. It was not the Christmas we had planned but it was a day to remember.

In England, we have some tough months ahead. The rate of infections are up and increasing, the cold winter will come, and we are likely to enter a heavier lockdown in the next few days. But just as the winter solstice marks the turning point towards longer days and shorter nights, there is a vaccine, a trade deal has been agreed with the EU, and the winter will give way to the spring in a few short months.

Merry Christmas! I hope you and your family and safe, have full bellies and warm homes.

Problem-based learning: the solution to the skills gap?

In the 2019 QS Global skills gap report, the top five skills that employers identified as a missing in most graduates were:

problem-solving
communication
teamwork
data skills
resilience.

Research in Canada suggests that undergraduate students increase their problem-solving skills in year one but then see no increase in their course’s second and third years. University lecturers can introduce active learning methodologies such as problem-based learning to narrow this skills gap and better prepare graduates for the workplace.

Problem-based learning is a student-centred approach to learning and teaching. Barrows and Tamblyn introduced the method in the 1960s to teach students at the medical school at McMaster University. Students use trigger material to identify an open-ended problem that they then attempt to solve. The process teaches students to take responsibility for their learning, acquire knowledge independently, communicate, work in a team, problem-solve, and present information.

In problem-based learning (PBL) students use “triggers” from the problem case or scenario to define their own learning objectives. Subsequently they do independent, self directed study before returning to the group to discuss and refine their acquired knowledge. Thus, PBL is not about problem solving per se, but rather it uses appropriate problems to increase knowledge and understanding.
British Medical Journal (BMJ)

The students are required to determine their own goals to the presented scenarios or problems through group discussions. Once they have defined the problem, they map out what they know already that will help solve the problem and attempt to determine what else they need to find out. Students then identify how and where they can find this information through research articles, journals, web materials, textbooks and set off individually to collect it. The group then comes to bask together to organise their research, produce a solution to the problem, and then present it.

The teamwork element is key to the methodology. Students work in groups of 8 to 15 to collect each individuals knowledge and ideas, differing perspectives, perceptions, and come up with multiple solutions to the problem. Discussions, both online and face to face are essential, and collaborative research methods are crucial.

Introducing a new teaching method is challenging for both the lecturer and the student, especially when shifting from a tutor-led to a student-led way of working. Students are comfortable with their current role in the classroom and lecture hall and have developed the skills supporting the traditional delivery methods. The resources and space required for collaborative learning and the access to research materials can also stress the university infrastructure. A common issue for students when introduced to problem-based learning is information overload. Students need help to identify the boundaries of their research, or they keep going. Sweller and Cooper in 1985 suggested that students should first learn through worked examples and then gradually be introduced to problem-based learning with a gradual ‘fading’ of support given by the academic.

The problem-based learning process

Problem-based learning is a clearly defined method with a set process.

The Maastricht seven-jump process:

Clarify terms
define problems(s)
Brainstorming
structuring and hypothesis
Learning objectives
Independent study
Synthesis

Let me know on Twitter if you have tried or are going to try problem-based learning.

Change through challenge: the university course in running a marathon

Bobby Maximus, a strength coach and author, says it takes 130 hours to build a base level of fitness. He developed this idea through training high-performance individuals to achieve impressive feats of strength and conditioning. In his book, The Maximus body, he provides two examples of how one hundred thirty hours can be completed; through one meaningful hour per day, five days per week for six months or over twelve weeks, two hours per day Monday to Friday and one hour on Saturday. The vital part is 130 meaningful hours of training, and some attention paid to quality nutrition and recovery. Budget your time, set your schedule, and do the work.

A college business module learning to run a marathon

Andrew Johnston, a GRIT and Business faculty member at RRCC and marathon runner, developed a similar idea but with a different target audience. Johnston created Change through Challenge, a 22 Week course for students that had never run before, with a final exam of running the Arizona Rock n Roll marathon. With a classroom session, a group run, and three individual runs per week; the training commitment probably came close to 130 hours.

In Johnson’s introduction to business class, his students asked local business owners for their keys to success; the most frequent answer was developing character and life-skills including a passion for work, work ethic, persistence, determination, and grit. According to Angela Duckworth, who wrote the book by the same name, grit is passion and perseverance for long-term and meaningful goals. As a keen distance runner, Johnston decided that his students’ best way to develop grit was to train for and then complete a Marathon, a challenge that, if you do not put in the necessary work and training, you are not going to finish.

Starting a business is a big goal that often requires the creation of a detailed, written, and time-denominated business plan that breaks it down into small weekly tasks to achieve the goal… That’s identical to a marathon-training plan.
Andrew Johnston

Each of the 22 weeks has a Monday classroom seminar, a Saturday morning group trail run, and three runs per week that students do independently to achieve the weeks running goal. The Monday night seminar covers three elements; Diet, training, and the discipline of the week. The twenty-two disciplines include goal setting, the power of consistency, and dealing with setbacks. Each is then related to the students’ schoolwork, business, and life. The Premiss of the course; all the life-skills needed to succeed in education and business can be acquired and mastered through training for a marathon.

My Change through challenge module

These two examples of time-based courses have me thinking about my next challenge. Can I package a physical challenge into a module? In my work, we typically package modules into 200 hours of learning, and I like the idea of going beyond the base level that 130 hours suggests and achieving something more significant. As I will be teaching myself, it makes sense to make this a problem-based learning module where I start with an open-ended problem and work through a series of steps, with other people to solve it. As an endurance athlete, I will set myself a training target of at least 10 hours per week, giving me around 20 weeks to complete the challenge I set myself—more on this to come.

You can learn more about Change through challenge through Andrew Johnston’s Tedx talk. Let me know on Twitter if you want to start your 200-hour Change through challenge module, and we can all create a group.

Make time for what is important

I like a level of routine. Without some routine in my day, I can quickly waste away days in front of the TV. A simple way to get around this, particularly now while having a stay at home holiday, is to have at least one ‘highlight’ each day. The todo might be small, like go for a run or something fun like having a long call with a friend or family member, but something each day.

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.
Seneca

In their book Make time, Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky of Google sprint fame, share a framework for designing your day around what matters. The four-step process focuses on choosing a highlight for the day, something you want to use to answer the question ‘what did you do today?’ and then gradually testing out tactics to help get this thing done. Over time you will test and adopt tactics that together build a daily system tailored to your life and priorities.

We want you to begin each day by thinking about what you hope will be the bright spot. If, at the end of the day, someone asks you, “What was the highlight of your day?” what do you want your answer to be? When you look back on your day, what activity or accomplishment or moment do you want to savor? That’s your Highlight.
Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky

The four steps

Highlight – start each day by choosing a focal point
Lazer – Beat distraction to make time for your highlight
Energise – Use the body to recharge the brain
Reflect – Adjust and improve your system

The most important step is choosing your days highlight. The book suggests asking yourself each morning ‘what is going to be the highlight of my day? Choose an activity that takes around 60-90 minutes, it can contain multiple steps and might be work-related, personal care or even something from your honey-do list. Before you go about your day, select the time you will do this highlight and protect it. Add it to your calendar and let people know that you are busy at that time.

Once you get to the scheduled time, you need to make sure you can focus on that one task and nothing else. Becoming distraction-free might require you to turn off any technology not needed in your task or go somewhere away from your usual setting. To make sure you have the energy to do the things you want the book suggest a load of tactics from taking care of your body with regular exercise, good sleep patterns (naps!), and healthy food, to the strategic use of caffeine before your task for a quick pick up.

Each evening, the authors suggest taking a few notes on how well your new system is working. Did the tactics make time for your task, focus on it, and have the energy to do it work? If yes, keep them, and if no, ditch the ones not working and replace them with new tactics to test.

Try it tomorrow

Tomorrow morning, get up and write down a task you want to do that will take around an hour and choose when you will do it. Make it something that you really want to do but might not make the time for usually due to the day’s natural run. When that time comes around, make a coffee, turn off your phone, and do it. In the evening, think about how you got your highlight done, your energy levels, when you scheduled it. What could you do better to get tomorrows highlight done? Simple, but maybe not easy.

Pick up a copy of Make time: how to focus on what matters every day to find the full explanation of the process and an extensive collection of tactics to help you build your system. Let me know on Twitter what tactics work for you.

T’is the season for rest and recovery

Today was the first day of my two-week break and the start of my recovery week after yesterdays half marathon. With Christmas plans cancelled by Boris, I spent the morning finishing my shopping and getting the presents wrapped and sent off with the last Christmas post. Not so restful, but I will do better tomorrow. I slept poorly last night as my mind would not shut off after my solo race. I have had a bit too much coffee but cooked a nutritious dumpling casserole, had a couple of glasses of red wine, and put my feet up in front of Die Hard (It is a Christmas movie).

Rest: cease work or movement in order to relax, sleep, or recover strength.
Oxford Languages

Recovery: a return to a normal state of health, mind, or strength.
Oxford Languages

I am already thinking about the next step, but I am forcing myself to take the week to relax and let niggles I am carrying recover. Sometimes it is essential to take time to rest and recover even when we think we do not need it. I will do a light run and a longer post tomorrow.

I hope you are all having a break.