Stryde

According to Science Daily, 10 minutes of skipping rope is about equivalent to running an 8-minute-mile.

For almost the past 3 weeks now, I’ve been getting up early in the morning, going outside and working out. Everyday for 3 weeks.

Even though I’m lifting weights to gain weight, I start every day with cardio. Typically 10-15 minutes of jumping rope.

I do this for multiple reasons, and there are even more benefits to it on top of the ones that have made me incorporate into my workout.

It’s a great warm up

When you jump rope, you can involve pretty much all your muscles. While it mainly tones all your leg and butt muscles, you can definitely include your core, back and arms by holding the rope a certain way, with varying intensity and swinging faster or slower. It also gets the blood flowing and your heart racing. Jumping straight into a less cardiovascular intensive exercise, such as weightlifting, can help increase your endurance and calories burned.

It can be just as effective as jogging

I hate running. Especially if it’s just for the purpose of running. It’s I’m playing a sport, running is just part of it, but running by itself is torturous for me. Depending where you look, you’ll usually find that jumping rope is a little less effective if not equally as effective in burning calories as running.

It’s better for your joints and bones

Running, beside being boring, has another big problem. As if I needed another reason to dislike running, running is also worse on your bones or joints. The impact of your legs hitting the ground increases bone density and puts pressure on your joints. Jumping rope has a lower impact intensity than running and typically has two legs to absorb the impact instead of just one. Studies have shown that just regular jumping is one of the best ways to increase bone density.

It’s easy to keep it fresh

You can jump in varying rhythms, different speeds, and in different jumping patterns. It’s easy to jump rope to the beat of music or do a HIIT workout. I can have a different jump rope session every time.

Those are the main things I love about jumping rope. How do you feel about jumping rope or even running?

“It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom.”

– Aristotle

All my life it has been super easy finding people who hate mornings. Nobody likes waking up early or going to work or school early. Everyone just feels like their prescious sleep was stolen from them. Mornings for most are filled with tiredness and grumpiness.

As I got older, I realised that most of these people that hate mornings also have one big thing in common.

They have no aspirations. They have no ambition. They are not motivated. They are not productive. They are not very successful.

Even looking at myself, I see a massive change in myself from the days I wake up early vs the days I wake up late.

I try to wake up 6:30am every morning. That’s not to say I always get out of bed at that time or that I don’t hit my mental snooze button. When I get up before 7am, I have plenty of time before work. I go workout for about an hour, take a relaxing shower, have time to write my blog, get lunch ready, eat a full breakfast and even relax a little. If I even take away just that one hour and get up after 8am, I have time to workout, shower quickly and get lunch ready for work. That’s it.

I’ve found that for myself, and most people, there is a big drop off in productivity from the morning to the afternoon. I am fairly confident it is because people are exhausted, physically or mentally, from work.

That’s why being productive before work is important. You won’t have energy to do it later. You won’t want to do it later.

When you wake up you should have the most energy you have throughout the day. You just got a ton of rest. And if you don’t, there is probably a problem with your sleep schedule.

I understand it can be nice to be up late. I find the night relaxing. Most people are still up, businesses that are still open typically see less people when it’s closing time, and some good TV shows or movies might be on.

Nights are for fun. Mornings are for productivity and success.

To be expect different results, you must take different actions. Wake up early because there are less distractions, you have more energy before work, and because everyone else won’t.

“Find three hobbies you love:

One to make you money,

One to keep you in shape,

And one to be creative.”

– Unknown

Someone once came up with the idea that everyone should have atleast three hobbies. One to make money, one to keep you healthy and one that acts as a creative outlet. All three of these are important in today’s world.

Poverty and obesity keep spreading like it’s a virus. There are tons of homeless people, too many people on food stamps or cash assistance and too many that are unemployed. There are also plenty of people that take the elevator at work because they don’t want to be sweaty and out of breath after taking one flight of stairs.

The fact that these problems exist may very well be a result of not enough people having a creative outlet. Maybe if one person, that is probably watching TV right now, found a creative way to fix one of these problems, everyone would be off better.

Or maybe they don’t have the energy or money. Everyone has the same amount of time in their day. That excuse only comes from people who are avoiding the responsibility of prioritizing.

If it’s a lack of energy, get up and workout. Right now. Get up! Almost everyone is smart enough to know that being healthy as more benefits than negatives. Yet they are complacent being an unhealthy blob. All it takes is eating what you know you should. All it takes is about 2% of your day for a 30 minute workout. Even if it’s just walking. Do something active. Eat healthy. The cleaner you eat, the cleaner and more energy you have.

Sure there is no immediate solution like there is for all other of today’s problems. You never regret doing it with the end on sight, but you always regret not doing it. Even if you don’t regret it right after. It’ll catch up to you.

If you don’t have the money, what are you doing? Chances are you don’t have a job or your job isn’t good enough. Are you pursuing another job or education to then pursue your dream career? For a large number of people that’s a big no.

Opportunities are not seized. Opportunities are created. Create your own opportunity. Find another job. Get a better education so you can pursue a greater career. Create your own business. The internet is at almost everyone’s disposal and it’s a great tool. Do something besides complaining about not having enough money and fix it.

The happiest people have one hobby to keep them wealthy, healthy and creative. For some one hobby may accomplish more than one of these. And for some, one hobby does all three.

“Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Watch your words, for they become actions. Watch your actions, for they become habits. Watch your habits, for they become character. Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”

– Will Bowen

I recently watched a very good but also long video in my training for a new job. Its a speech by Will Bowen who is an author and starter of the Complaint Free movement. He talks about the reasons people complain, the negative affects it has on us and how you can stop. If you would like to watch the video click here.

So first let’s discuss why complaining is bad.

It sets a bad precedent. Something bad may have happen or you’re annoyed. When you complain you choose to spend your energy worrying about. If you’re familiar with the law of attraction, when you put negativity out into the universe, more comes your way.

Not only that but your words can become your thoughts and those thoughts will become your reality. The same way positive affirmations work and you can speak your success in existence, you can harm yourself. Your bad thoughts are responsible for a good amount of the bad that happens to you. You are responsible for your bad thoughts.

But to be able to stop complaining it’s good to know why you do it and know truly what it is. This way you can take the step to conscious incompetence. My last blog talks more about that.

Complaining is expressing dissatisfaction or annoyance about something. Merely stating facts is not complaining.

If you’re at a restaurant and the waiter asks how your food is, and it is cold, asking if they can heat it up is not complaining. However, if after doing their job, and asking how everything is (waiting on you), you say it’s good and later tell the manager what a poor excuse for the restaurant this is, that’s a complaint.

But why do we complain? Will Bowen came up with an acronym to help us all remember.

G.R.I.P.E.

Get Attention

Everyone loves attention. We all want something to talk about and sometimes what’s easiest to talk about is something bad.

Remove Responsibility

This is when people complain about rules or the structure of something to say it’s not their own fault something happened. But it is their fault. This is saying it’s not worth trying to do something because it won’t work anyway.

Inspire envy (brag)

People will brag by complaining about someone else. This person does this one shitty thing. I, however, would never do that. I’m such a good person.

Power

Politicians’ advertisements don’t put the other candidates down to win your votes over. They just want to gain power but discouraging you to vote for them, so you don’t vote at all.

Excuse poor performance

After having done something poorly, some people find an excuse for why they did poorly. Typically it’s never a good reason but their excuses maybe endless.

Will Bowen started a challenge to try to go 21 days being complaint free. He has a nonprofit organization that sells wristbands that help you keep track. Every time you catch yourself complaining, switch your bracelet to the other hand. When you switch your bracelet, your 21 day counter starts over. This typically takes people 4-8months to get to 21 days straight, but then it becomes an unconscious habit. You can get a bracelet here.

“I am, as I’ve said, merely competent. But in an age of incompetence, that makes me extraordinary.”

– Billy Joel

Whether you are trying to break a habit, form a new one or even learn a skill, there are 4 psychological stages we go through on our journey.

If we are learning a skill, there is some point where we first figure out that we can’t do it or are not good at it. And when it comes to a habit, sometimes we are unaware that we do it. This stage is called unconscious incompetent. We do not yet know that we can’t, or that there is a change we need to make.

Then as we try to learn the new skill or break the habit, and we are actively trying to, we find that it can be rather difficult. This stage is called conscious incompetent. This stage is where most people give up. Here lies the difficulty and frustration we face. We know we suck.

If we get through that stage, we will slowly be getting better at the skill and have successful runs of breaking free of our habit. This still requires thought though. This stage is call conscious competent. We can perform but we still need to think about it.

And finally, we get to a point where the new skill is ingrained in us or a new habit is formed to replace the old one. But now, we don’t worry about it or think about doing it. This stage is called unconscious competent. Everything becomes automatic.

Much like throwing a ball or a punch. Learning good form can take a while and a lot of repetition, but once we got it down, it becomes second nature.

Habits take 21 days to form. But that shouldn’t be 21 days total. It should be once you can do it 21 days in a row. This can often take multiple months. But working on yourself ensures you can help and support not just yourself but everyone else around you. If you don’t want to do it for yourself, do it for your family, your significant other, your friends, or even just to make the world a better place. One small step at a time.

“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.”

– William Penn

When people are looking for new jobs, and they start working on their resume and having interviews, most people mention they are great at managing time. Seeing as most jobs pay you based on time spent working, this is very important for employers. They want efficient workers. Who can blame them? Time is, after all, the most finite resource we have.

But most people are actually horrible at managing their time. Most people may work quickly or manage to get to work on time, but what makes their time management skills lackluster is that they suck at prioritizing.

Let’s say you have a list of 8 tasks to complete. These tasks roughly take 16 hours to complete but you only have 10 hours to work on them. You know from the beginning you can not finish them all.

There are a couple common strategies for tackling time restricted problems like this. Admitting defeat, not trying and whining, and trying to give yourself more time are not options.

One strategy is doing the tasks in whatever order they were written down. They’re numbered for a reason right?

Tasks completed: 1,2,3,4,5

Another strategy is to try to complete the highest number of tasks. Doing the quickest tasks first. The more the better right?

Tasks completed: 1,3,4,5,6,7

The last common strategy is doing the biggest tasks first. More time equals more importance.

Tasks completed: 2,6

But there is one method that tops them all. It utilizes the 80/20 rule (I talk more about that here). Pick the tasks that are of utmost importance and do those first. If at the end of the day you had only completed one task, which one would you lose the least sleep over. Start with that and continued to the 2nd, and then the 3rd most important.

Short tasks can be seen as unimportant because of how quick they are, large tasks can be seen as busy work or time wasters, and the order of a list, especially on this case, is typically unimportant.

Imagine task 8 was the most important. Using any of the first three methods, task 8 did not get completed.

Schools typically use weighted grading systems. Tests could account for 90% of your final grade while homework accounts for only 10%. Even if you fail 100 homework assignments, you can pass the class if you pass the one and only test.

Do good on what matters, and do it first.