Joel Kehle's Blog

May

2009-05-14T09:53:00.001-07:00

May is the month were I figure out the three most important things I want to accomplish in the day each morning when I start my day. So there.

April...

2009-04-29T22:16:00.000-07:00

Yes I am woefully behind on my blog (and my improvement program).
April has been the month of slack. I'm not sure whether this is from over-training, changing my diet/supplement regiment or plain ol' burnout. A three month run was pretty good but I'll see about getting back on the saddle in May.

March Reviewed

2009-03-31T22:19:00.000-07:00

I most definitely did not do what I said I was going to do in March. So what have I learned from my failures?
1. Pick one thing and one thing only - especially for compliance reporting.
For some reason I had assumed that you should/could build on tracking the habits you are developing. This doesn't work for me. Instead it results in habit development burnout. I'm really tired of writing about the habit that I learned in January. What's interesting is I don't think anyone explicitly suggested I keep adding to my compliance list. In fact Benjamin Franklin explicitly did not do this - In Ben's self-improvement program he only focused on one thing at a time. Henceforth, I'm going to do the same.
2. Even though I'm failing, I'm still winning. So I haven't mastered the art of getting to bed by 11 each night. I'm still becoming a more present person by meditating every day, developing as a singer on a daily basis, and getting in great shape by working out 6 days a week while following a strict diet. I'm made some major behavioral changes in the last three months and now they (mostly) feel like old hat. Also, I am getting better at the 11pm thing. I've quit drinking caffeine after noon. I am insisting that I get 8 hours of sleep which means that if I don't get to bed at 11, I don't do my singing exercises in the morning before going to work. I'm playing games with my brain until I figure out what works. The rest of the nighttime routine is a piece of cake, so I am almost there.

Tomorrow is the beginning of April. I need to pick my April healthy habit soon!

March's Healthy Habit - Nighttime Routine

2009-03-04T23:23:00.000-08:00

I have been taking on a lot of new habits lately which I can list in a later post. The habit I need to create for myself is the thing I am not doing - getting to bed on time.
I am waking up every morning at 7 and I really need to try and get 8 hours of sleep - especially with my sleep apnea problems. If I'm not well rested, all other good habits and achievement become unpleasant and difficult and more importantly - I become unpleasant and difficult.

I'd like to get to bed at 11pm every work night (Sunday through Thursday).

There are some things I need to do before going to bed so in this post I am declaring that I will follow a "Nighttime Routine".

I will do the routine at the same time Sunday through Thursday.
I will do the routine on Friday and Saturday - at some unpredictable time.

Here's the routine:

Finish Food Diary
Write Entry in Compliance Blog
Get Computer Ready for Morning Breathing Exercises
Groom
Brush Teeth
Do Tongue Penance
Go to Bed at 11

Comments:
I know the blog entry about doing the routine is in the middle of the routine. Tough. It's convenient.
I know brushing teeth is part of grooming. Tough. It's the "trigger" for doing "Tongue Penance."
What's Tongue Penance? It's an exercise I have to do for my voice lessons.
Isn't this a lot of be behaviors to be taking on at once? Maybe - but I have been doing this set of behaviors for weeks - just starting them too let to get to bed when I want to.

That's it. Wish me luck. Gotta get moving to get to bed.

February's Health Habit - Meditation

2009-02-16T18:11:00.000-08:00

I think I waited so long to pick a healthy habit because the two leading candidates: meditating on a daily basis or picking the three things I was going to do during a day, just seemed like too much of a commitment. I didn't think I could do either of them every single day. My solution to this problem was taken from Jill Bolte Taylor's "My Stroke Of Insight". When Jill talks about relearning things after her stroke, she says that things were successfully learned by chopping them into discrete steps where the complexity of each step was manageable by her mind. In the realm of habit creation I take this to mean make the new habit simple enough to be workable.

I had thought that meditating daily meant finding 20 minutes out of my day, every day to meditate. That is so not workable right now. So I thought about 15 minutes, 10 minutes, 5 minutes. All were a no go. What I settled on was committing to counting 10 breaths. In the particular form of meditation I practice, you count your breaths from 1 to 10 and then repeat the count indefinitely. So I am effectively committing to doing 1 unit of meditation. While this main seem like a cop-out, I maintain I will end up doing more meditation by setting this commitment. If I were to commit to 20 minutes a day and knew I couldn't do it, I would just skip that day's meditation. But since I am committing a counting 10 breaths, I really have no excuse not to sit down and do it. It's too easy to not do every single day. And since its the minimum, I might fall into a routine of doing 5, 10, or 15 minutes a day. The point is that I will do something everyday. That will give me a daily foundation from which I can build. My goal is to sit for 20 minutes but will get there one set of breaths at a time.

Speaking of goals - why meditation? What do I hope to gain from it? In the particular form of mediation that I practice, you always start with out the vow "No matter how many sentient beings there are, I vow to save them all from suffering". This is a very nobel sentiment. I am going to sit with a goal that's a little more modest. Having seen myself meditate and not medidate over the years, I believe I am a lot more fun to be around when I mediate. I am more relaxed and easy going. If I don't mediate, I can get really cranky (think godzilla). So the reason I am sitting is to save the people around me from suffering! They shouldn't have to put up with 'sir-cranks-a-lot'. So this one goes out to all my friends...

Look for a daily update's on how I'm doing at http://joel-accountability.blogspot.com/

New Accountability Blog

2009-02-16T17:39:00.000-08:00

In my efforts to create 12 new healthy habits this year, I have discovered that there really is value in doing a daily checkin. I don't really want to do that on this blog. Daily checkin entries seems like too much noise. My solution is a new blog http://joel-accountability.blogspot.com/ . I can't imagine anyone will want to read it but the fact that it's public still generates the accountability that seems requisite for creating new habits. That's the theory anyway. Let's see how it works!

Healthy Habits Checkin

2009-01-27T22:36:00.000-08:00

In my January 9 post, I resolved to:

*each week print of 7 days of Alan's diet
*each day of the week circle my meals on the sheet and note any deviations.
*report on how I am doing every Monday

So how'm I doin?

*each week print of 7 days of Alan's diet Check.
Piece of cake.

*each day of the week circle my meals on the sheet and note any deviations. Almost check.
After doing this reliably for 16 days, I fell of the wagon this weekend. I had a non-routine weekend largely due to a photo shoot that went into the wee hours of the morning instead of wrapping up at the usual time. It's easier to do routine things when they are part of a routine.

*report on how I am doing every Monday Buzzz!
I clearly have not done this. I would have written three Monday post by now. The original recommendation was to report back to my witnesses on a daily basis. I now see why. It's not to be held accountable so frequently. It's a way to force yourself to reflect on the new behavior you are generating on a daily basis.

Some thoughts:
I didn't lose any weight. This was not a goal but had I followed the diet to the letter, I would have lost a few pounds. Instead my weight would drop and then climb as I would "somehow" manage to eat the calories needed to get me back to the original weight. This could include everything from incorrectly eyeballing portion size (looks like 6 ounces to me) to consuming extra calories from drinks during "special occasions". Also each time my weight would drop my anxiety level would increase. When I snacked my way to the heavier weight I would get calmer. These powers of self deception and emotional manipulation fascinate me and fill me with a new found respect for those invisible systems in my body that keep me at some homeostasis of its own design.

On a related note, it's pretty clear to me that choosing this goal was a "Head Fake" ala Randy Pausch Right now I'm learning to treat Obstructive Sleep Apnea with a CPAP machine. This is a little like strapping a leaf blower to your face every night before you go to bed. I believe that focusing on a diet has been distracting and gives me the illusion of control we all crave. I measure food in clear well defined units and eat it at defined times. I get results as long as I follow THE PLAN. Tricky Brain. I am amazed by your mysterious ways.

Creating Healthy Habits in 2009

2009-01-12T21:19:00.000-08:00

I like New Year's resolutions. In theory. Any activity that gets people to reach for their better selves is OK by me. In practice, I haven't gotten around to creating any 2009 resolutions until now. Two blog post got me moving.

The first is from Amy Batchelor over at Thoughts and Random Patterns. Her posting The Year of Living Alphabetically inspired me to act. In the blog Amy commits to posting a list of words each week of the year. The list of words in that first post are beautiful. If you need to be reminded of the poetic power of language, read the blog. I also liked that Amy decided to focus on her own unique strengths as a list maker. This act of embracing a skill that some might consider mundane and turning it into a super power was very inspiring. Finally I liked the concept of breaking up the New Year's resolution so that one thing at a time happened. A lot of the work I have read on achieving goals stresses the importance of dividing the goal into manageable pieces.

The second blog post echoed this theme of doing one thing at a time. The author, Tim Ferriss, writes about Leo Babuata's new book The Power of Less. In the post, Tim states "focus on one habit at a time, one month at a time, so that you’ll be able to focus all your energy on creating that one habit." The post also lays out the basic rules for each month: pick your monthly goal, announce your goal publicly, and report on your success on a (ugh) daily basis.

The second post was enough to put me in action. So I am now officially announcing my intention to create a new daily habit for each month of 2009. At (or towards) the beginning of the month, I will announce my goal. I will give periodic (frequency TBD) updates on my success.

For January, I am going to start following my diet. Last April, I consulted with the talented nutritionist Alan Aragon to create a diet and exercise plan. Over the next 5 months, I lost 5 lbs of weight (with a much larger loss in fat and a significant gain in muscle), improved my diet and level of fitness. The diet made a huge difference in how I looked and felt.

The diet was also reasonably easy. The "structure" of how many meals to eat in a day and what to eat in each meal was defined on a single sheet of paper. To follow the diet, I just kept a food diary by circling what I ate on the sheet of paper. In the event that I deviated from the recommended meal, I just wrote it down.

Sounds simple right? I was until I changed jobs and cities.

So it's time to start again. This means I will do the following:

*each week print of 7 days of Alan's diet
*each day of the week circle my meals on the sheet and note any deviations.
*report on how I am doing every Monday

That's it.

I'm keeping my first goal simple and inconsequential per Tim Ferriss's recommendation. I know I can keep this goal because I have done it before. The real challenge is publicly announcing that I am on a diet and promising to report on my progress. That feels really weird to me. Once I feel more comfortable with the methodology, I can look at bigger challenges.

In closing, thanks to my muses for inspiring me to play the goal game in 2009. And thanks to anyone who reads this for holding me accountable.

Happy New Year!

It's Friday

2009-01-09T20:10:00.000-08:00

It's Friday and here is my latest news:

I finally got Intense Debate working on this site again. Unfortunately some old comments were lost in the process. Apologies to the three or four people whose comments were affected. :-(

In other news, I am finally getting my CPAP machine! And not a moment too soon. I woke up today exhausted and proceeded to have a lame day at work. The lame day continued until I got good and caffeinated with all the irritability and over-focus issues that tag along with a caffeine high. At least you're getting a blog out of it.

Elsewhere Anthony is having a great candle show in Atlanta. Check out all of the scents here.

More Sleep Apnea Fun

2009-01-06T21:15:00.000-08:00

Today I continue my non-chronological sleep apnea report:

I went to my doctor and got my prescription for my CPAP machine. Before doing this I had to go in for a second study to determine the pressure maintained by the CPAP. This seemed odd to me because all of the research I had done indicated that static pressure CPAP's were old school. The newer machines would automatically adjust the pressure and use the minimal amount required for a successful breath.

I can't help but think that the sleep study centers have no financial incentive to cut the revenue they get from patients in half... but I digress

I left my doctors with a prescription stating "CPAP at 9cm H20 pressure".

Armed with the right to buy a CPAP, I decided to ask the extremely helpful Mike over at "SleepGuide: The Sleep Apnea Online Community" what to do next. Mike recommended I get the "Respironics M-Series with A-Flex or the ResMed S8II" from on online provider like Cpap.com.

Ahh - now we are back to the auto-cpap machine. Why is it that all the people I know with sleep apnea have an auto-cpap machine but I have a prescription for an old fashioned static CPAP?

Anyway, I followed Mike's suggestion and went to cpap.com. Good News! cpap.com will take my CPAP prescription and sell me an auto-cpap. Bad New! cpap.com does not take insurance and is not in my insurance company's preferred network. I have to pay them out of pocket for the machine and get a reimbursement from my insurance company. When it's all said and done, buying a machine from cpap.com will run me around $480 (plus the aggravation of paying out of pocket and time spent filing insurance claims).

If I shop from an in network provider, I have to get the static CPAP machine but I spend about $400 less.

Life's little tradeoffs...

I didn't want to spend the extra $400 (and I really loathe filing my own insurance claims) so I went with the static machine. We will see how I do with the static machine. I have to go take a class before I can use it.

I haven't gone into details but the getting this all squared away took about 4 hours of my work day - not including the time and money spent on the second sleep study where they figured out the pressure level for the CPAP.

This would have been so much cheaper had they given me one study to determine my apnea, prescribed me an auto-CPAP machine, and let me order the thing online.

Very inefficient health-care in my opinion.

Regardless, I am eagerly awaiting my machine so I can get a good nights sleep for a change.

Posting from phone

2009-01-03T16:33:00.000-08:00

Ok, with a modicum of effort, I can now send blog post from my phone.

My motivation for doing this was to write about my flickr account. For some reason my blackberry flickr uploader has not been working. All my photos from the holidays - captions and all have not been uploaded.

Grrrrrrrr.

Look for a flurry of photo uploads soon.

Happy New Year!

Test from blackberry mms

2009-01-03T16:28:00.000-08:00

Hello world!

Second Sleep Study

2008-12-20T11:42:00.001-08:00

Last night I went to my second sleep study to get my CPAP machine titrated.
Here are some pictures to the getup you have to wear.

Obama's Odd Choice

2008-12-18T22:11:00.000-08:00

President-elect Obama's selection of the prominent evangelical minister Rick Warren is disappointing to say the least. As much as I am delighted that Obama is headed to the White House, I can't help but agree with what Joe Solomonese of the Human Rights Campaign says in a letter to Mr. Obama:

"We feel a deep level of disrespect when one of the architects and promoters of an anti-gay agenda is given the pulpit of your historic nomination."

I can't help but think that the man who fought so hard to (successfully) take away my civil rights will have broader reach and more legitimacy than ever after the inauguration. This is very sad to me.

President-Elect Obama's Weekly Address

2008-12-14T12:35:00.000-08:00

President-Elect Obama has a weekly address that you can watch on YouTube. Check out the latest here.

Thankgiving ala Chef Kris

2008-11-27T18:50:00.000-08:00

The Menu:
Roast Turkey
Sweet Potato Salad with Candied Pecans
Green Been Salads with Roasted Shallots and Walnuts
Herb and Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Roasted Butternut Squash with Red Grapes and Sage
Cranberry Orange Relish
Cornbread Dressing with Turkey Sausage and Dried Cranberries
Herb Turkey Gravy

F***'n Awesome...

I'm just saying

Happiness is a Warm E-Mail Filter

2008-11-12T19:52:00.000-08:00

I am getting way to much email. Some of the email I receive is from lists that I subscribed to but cannot unsubscribe from. Oh I try. Some sites claim to unsubscribe me but don't. Some sites won't unsubscribe me because I can't give them the right email address. All of this adds up to way to much email.

Enter my gmail filter. For each unwanted email stream, I click a few buttons and voila! all new emails are delivered to my trash can.

Oh sure - I do feel guilty that I'm wasting precious computing resources but I figure at some point google will get smart and start blocking mail from sites that are filtered in this manner.

At any rate, I am looking forward to less noise in my inbox.

I love Vlingo - Voice Recognition that works!

2008-11-11T23:05:00.000-08:00

I just downloaded a new voice recognition app to my BlackBerry. It's called Vlingo and boy was I impressed. Every voice recognition system I have ever used has been terrible. If I am talking to an automated sales agent on the phone I always have to ask to talk to a real person. Now comes Vlingo - an application that I install on my phone.

You use Vlingo like a dictaphone. You press a button, speak and release the button. Vlingo then figures out what you were saying.

To test Vlingo I tried several test. For my first test said "Google World Peace". Vlingo figured this out correctly. My next try was "Google Whirled Peas". Ok Vlingo messed up on that one but it got my next request: Google Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" perfectly!

I then went on to test twittering, emailing, texting, creating notes, creating reminders and calling. When I wasn't trying to trip the system up with Whirled Peas, it worked perfectly.

My only complaint is that in some cases you still have to look at your phone and press a button in order for Vlingo to carry out your commands. This ruls out using the Vlingo when driving but this is still an impressive and useful speech recognition application.

Picture of Madrid in Schmap Guide Book

2008-11-09T14:58:00.001-08:00

One of the pictures I took in Madrid has made it into the Schmap Guide Book.
One morning, I left the hotel at about 6am and went wandering through the city with my camera. One of the pictures I shot was of the Atocha Train Station. After the trip, I posted my photos on Flickr. Much to my surprise, I was contacted by Schmap about using the photo in their guide. You can view the photo here. Given my photographic skills they must be desperate but I am pleased nonetheless.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

2008-11-09T13:50:00.000-08:00

Blue Brain Project

2008-10-19T17:56:00.000-07:00

The Blue Brain Project is a project to simulate the human brain using a super computer. This project holds the promise to give us insights into the function and malfunction of the brain. To learn more watch the video.

For more reading, check out this blog post:
Brain Stimulant: Blue Brain Shows Gamma Oscillations

Candle Delirium in the New York Times

2008-10-08T18:37:00.000-07:00

Anthony's been busy. :-)

Check out the mention of Candle Delirium in the New York Time's article Burn Baby Burn.

Delirium & Co. Launches Candle Line

2008-10-07T22:10:00.000-07:00

Just in time for the holidays, Anthony's new candle making company, Delirium & Co, has launched their first line. You can check it out over at Candle Delirium.

Congratulations to Anthony!

Candle Delirium in the News

2008-10-06T09:40:00.001-07:00

Wow, I seem to blog about human rights, robots and luxury candles. Who knew?
Just wanted to mention that Anthony's store, Candle Delirium, got a mention on Extra. Click here for the news.

Amy Goodman, one of four journalists arrested at an anti-RNC protest

2008-09-03T22:38:00.000-07:00

Looks like the police in St. Paul are illegally arresting journalist.

LA Times Coverage Here

Other than the LA Times article, there is a suprising lack of coverage from the mainstream media. If you would like send letters to CNN and NBC about this, click here.