Okay, so I registered for a sprint triathlon (400m swim, 11 mile bike, 3.1 mile run) in August. Maybe that will turn out to be a really stupid idea, but I’m going to see if I can at least finish. 
So I need some good workout music, because my current tunes are getting tired. What songs get you pumped up when you’re exercising? Here’s some tunes that work for me:
- Blink 182
- music from the Mortal Kombat soundtrack (hey, don’t mock it until you try it!)
- “Ready Steady Go” by The Meices
- The Mountain Goats
- Foo Fighters
- The Killers
- sometimes the Pixies or the Ramones
How about you? What workout music goes into your playlist mix and gets you ready to exercise?
The overwhelming winner in my 30 day poll was “Bike to work” so that’s what I’m doing during the month of July. In the third week of July I’ll be out in Boston to speak at SIGIR, but any time I’m heading into the Googleplex during July, I’m planning to bike there.
Is there something good for yourself that you’ve been meaning to do? Why not try it for 30 days this month? The month will end whether you try something new or not, so why not tackle something new?
30 days is enough time to build a habit. Last month, I started trying to walk 10,000 steps a day for 30 days. I didn’t walk 10K steps every day, but I did keep at it until I’d walked over 10K steps for at least 30 days. In the process, I discovered that walking to the grocery store can be a relaxing way to unwind and get some exercise.
I’m just now wrapping up an effort to not watch any television for 30 days. I started on May 22nd (right after all the season finales finished). I learned that other than a few times at night, I don’t really miss the television–and I ended up reading a lot more books. I’ll still watch some TV after this experiment, but I think I’ll watch less. I also noticed when I watched TV after a month off that when a pizza commercial came on, I started to hanker for pizza. Search ads have wonderful, trackable ROI–but branding ads can be effective too.
So now the question is: what project should I attempt next? I wrote down a few ideas ranging from hard (read 15 books in 30 days) to near-impossible (no email for 30 days). I’m curious to hear what you think I should try:
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If you have other suggestions, leave them in the comments!
Just to let you know, I’m on vacation for a week or so. If you send me email or tweet in my direction, don’t expect a reply for a while.
(I was rooting around and found this leftover post from 2006 and figured I’d throw it out here.)
It looks like blog tag has come to the search bloggers. I’ve been tagged by so many people that I yield and surrender obscure facts about me.
- When I was growing up in Eastern Kentucky, there wasn’t always a lot to do. In high school, we once played Car Tag. In real tag, you chase people around until you can catch them. Car tag is played the same way. In order to win, you have to touch your car to the other person’s car. As I recall, I won at car tag. Please do not try this at home. Now we have things like the web to avoid boredom.
- My first computer was a Timex/Sinclair ZX81 that my Dad assembled from a kit. When we maxed out the 2K memory, he bought us a 16K expansion module. My second computer was a Commodore 64. I was a Commodore fan long after it was clear that IBM PCs would dominate that decade of computing.
- Growing up, my mother was an evangelical Christian and my father was a physics professor. As a result, I learned to have a healthy respect for people with different opinions and perspectives.
- In my freshman year of college, I was the eight-ball champion for my dorm. There was another guy who was better than me, but he had bad luck in the final game. On a good day at Google, I could sometimes beat Google Fellow Jeff Dean, who is a sharp guy with a pool cue. Now I haven’t played in years, so I probably suck big rocks at pool. Huh, Danny likes billiards too. Danny, we’re clearly just going to go a bowling/pool frenzy when you make it back to the valley.
- One of my cats, Emmy, likes nooks and crannies. Her favorite is curling up in a box or bag:
Note: Back in 2006 I was going to tag a few people, e.g. Jim Allchin, but Allchin has left Microsoft and probably has better things to do now. That’s the hazards of doing blog posts ~3 years too late!
