PR, The 2 Hour Lifestyle

My mother made me run a 10k on sunday. It was fun...although highly unplanned (usually I like to target a race, build up to it, and then make it a goal to 'put the hurt on myself' during the run). Instead, I ran 13 miles and didn't eat the best of foods the day prior (damn you, Stacey's Multigrain Pita Chips). However, the Packard Summer Scamper 10k (inaugural race over at Stanford, benefiting the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital where my mom works) went quite well. I made a point to take it easy and to also reverse split --- both goals accomplished. I also set a 10k PR at 39:32, a 26 second improvement over my previous best. Discipline strikes again! I'm pretty sure that I can run a ~37-38 minute 10k given the right preparation --- hopefully there's a good one coming up soon (suggestions would be appreciated!).

On another note, I'm trying a new approach to discipline (well, I guess my entire life), which is to live it in 2 hour increments. Weird, huh? Well hear me out. I'm a very goal oriented person...and I'm also very impatient (served me well in some areas tho). Ideally, I'd be accomplishing something every second (this makes me feel good and serves as positive reinforcement to keep doing something). With something like this discipline off...results are slow. It's not glamorous and there are few events (monthly weight / body fat checks, races, etc) that show progress.

So I'm cutting my life into 2 hour chunks --- and this provides the continual push (and almost the necessary immediacy that I need to do anything). This is kind of related to a discussion in the book "The 4 Hour Workweek", which I highly recommend to anyone. Most of us are procrastinators and given no immediacy to do anything, we'll simply wait until it becomes important enough to do. By putting in artificial deadlines and short term goals, this spurs one into action (usually getting started is by far the hardest thing to do).

Here's an example of my 2 hour chunk today (from 8 AM to 10AM):

1) Drink a glass of water

2) Eat well (ate half a banana)

3) Pack my lunch for the first time ever (totally did it, so proud of myself)

4) Finish all work emails (done)

5) Blog (almost there)

And wham, I feel great that I accomplished my goals and want to keep the ball rolling for the next 2 hour's goals:

1) Drink a glass of water

2) Finish up a little work assignment (should take 30 mins)

3) Run 4 miles before lunch

4) Eat my awesomely packed lunch

And finally, the picture above has nothing to do with this post. Just found it funny.