Two years ago [I wrote about my experiment][eta] with trying [The Master Cleanse][master], which is a radical way to lose weight and/or cleanse your digestive system. As I said back then, I did it on a whim but learned a few useful things. Such as:
* Most of my unhealthy eating habits were based on mental cravings.
* My body knows what it needs, and if I supply it then the cravings go away.
* Eating healthy foods requires more thought because there are less "fast food" options for healthy food, and 99% of the advertising and marketing is for crappy food.
The problem for me was that, while I learned those lessons on the Master Cleanse diet, I didn't learn how to incorporate healthy eating into my life. So I quickly returned to my bad habits. And my weight kept creeping upwards.
I happened upon Kathy Freston's interview on Charlie Rose a few weeks ago, and heard her talk about her book The Lean. The idea is that to make a real shift towards healthy eating you have to "lean" into it. The name of the book is based on that principle. I got the book and started applying the principles, and found it incredibly easy to do (unlike The Master Cleanse).
Every day you do something new and healthy, only after reading Freston's explanation of why the new thing is healthy and helpful. Freston is an excellent writer; the book is devoid of the usual stern finger-wagging. She imparts good information that's easy to incorporate and she's often funny in describing the process.
For example, Day 1 is about drinking 8 glasses of water. Day 2 inspires you to eat a hearty breakfast (something like steel cut oats with walnuts). Day 3 is about learning to eat one apple every day. Then Day 4 you learn to snack on nuts instead of junk food. Those four things were enough for me to make the shift.
After a week of basically doing those four things I lost my cravings for junk food and sodas. I don't even crave meat, which is weird because I loved meat and couldn't imagine ever giving it up completely. My weight is dropping, but not quickly. Which is fine since I can see that I'm learning how to keep it off, so once it's down to the right level it's likely to stay there.
In addition to reading The Lean, I also read The China Study. This book was brought to my attention by a Wall St. executive whose youngest daughter read it. She became a vegan after learning about the importance of nutrition in avoiding major health problems such as heart disease and cancer. The Wall St. dad is not the sort of fellow to lightly take up the vegan lifestyle, but the book convinced him to go vegan. So, I was curious enough to read it (it was referenced once or twice in Kathy Freston's book). The book is easy to read, but will shock you. Fortunately, I had already made significant changes to my food intake. If I hadn't read The China Study I'd probably be tempted to go back to eating meat once in awhile.
Some people will dismiss these books and the information that they put forth. I probably would have too, except that having done The Master Cleanse I was made aware of what it feels like to be free of mental food cravings. Our minds are the ultimate gate-keeper when it comes to new information. Right now, my body is telling me what it likes. Weirdly, meat and cheese aren't on the list.
I have no doubt that nutrition plays a pivotal role in personal health, more so than genetics and environmental factors. Food is our staple fuel, and if you put bad fuel into your engine for twenty or forty years, it's going to have a corrosive effect. The number of overweight Americans is staggering (66%), and steadily rising. Obesity is at 33% of the population, and that's rising too.
I was bordering on being overweight. And this despite doing yoga regularly. Why? Because I was steadily consuming a lot of bad fuel. That's changed without a lot of effort and in a very short time.
Now, I feel as good as I've ever felt in my life. And the only thing I've had to do is pay attention to what I eat and make strategic shifts towards different foods. The shift isn't hard because there are lots of good foods that are healthy and taste good. Will I never again eat a piece of meat or partake of dairy products? No, but it won't be a common occurrence. I don't crave things any more, so it's been amazingly easy to drop the unhealthy stuff.
What I crave is being healthy and feeling good. And now I've found a way to satisfy that craving.
]]>The book is a deep dive on paperless workflows for the Mac, iPad, and iPhone. The book includes screenshots, interactive images, and short movies. Not only does this book tell you how to go paperless, it also shows you. Trust me, you can do a lot with this book. I can't believe it only costs $5.
(Oh, and it's a large file so don't panic if it takes a little longer than usual to download).
]]>Do you want to learn to take your law practice to a new level of efficiency? Becoming paperless is the path you want to take, and it's not as hard as you'd imagine. Dane Ciolino and I are going to do a 3 hour live CLE seminar in Lafayette, Louisiana this Thursday from 1 – 4 pm (April 19th). So, if you're able to attend, please click here for more details on the topics we'll cover, and to sign up.
If you're not able to attend, then you can still watch our free online videos. If you're a Louisiana attorney and want CLE credit then you can pay us and we'll get you credit for watching the videos, two of which supply Ethics credit. We have many more free videos on advanced paperless processes over here.
Information is power, but knowing how to process digital information is like having "superpowers." We teach people how to acquire these superpowers (and lawyers get CLE credit). Wouldn't you like to learn how to become paperless and take your practice to an amazing new level of efficiency?
]]>Clay Shirky astutely points out that what have have isn't "information overload," but rather "filter failure." We've had more information being produced than any one human could consume in a lifetime for centuries. So, the question isn't "how much information is out there?" but instead: how much of it do we want (or need) to consume?
If you don't want meaningless information to cloud your life then learn how to filter. Start by examining all of the information sources you access (e.g. TV, radio, print media, Internet etc.). Which programs and information sources are you accessing out of mindless habit? Which ones are delivering interesting and useful information that you tend to act on?
Next time you watch a local TV news broadcast and they're blabbering about some misfortune that happened to someone who lives across town that you don't know, ask yourself: is this information actionable? That is, how will it help you in a specific way?
The answer is it probably won't. Most news is really just mindless gossip. And the weird thing is many of us pay attention to this gossip even though we don't know the people involved. It's like that experiment where they put soap operas on a TV in a cage full of monkeys and guess what? Yeah, the monkeys started watching the soap operas.
Do monkeys need to watch soap operas about another species? Is this relevant to their lives? Will it help them forage for food? No, but if you are stuck in a cage and bored you'll watch anything.
You're probably not stuck in a cage, and yet you might be letting a lot of useless information into your life. If so, then don't complain that you are suffering from information overload. Filter out the useless junk. You'd be surprised how much of it there is.
]]>The Master Cleanse is interesting, and I'm glad I did it, but I'll never do it again and I can't recommend it to anyone who wants to make a lasting healthy change in their diet. It's too radical, and too hard.
The other day I saw Kathy Freston on Charlie Rose, and she was talking about her new book The Lean, which is about how to make a gradual shift into healthier food choices. I liked what she had to say, and I was already aware (from my Master Cleanse experience) that my body doesn't really want most of the junk that I tend to feed it.
So I bought the book and have started her 30 day program, which is easy and already is making me feel better. The first step is so easy, and yet so powerful. Weird how giving your body most of what it needs restores balance quickly.
I'll let you know how I fare with the whole 30 day program, but I can see that if you just do the first 3 things over 3 days you'll be making a significant shift. Did I mention how easy this program is? I'm all about making a good change that's easy.
]]>Very few attorneys really understand this kind of thing. But it'd be nice if someone (besides Dr. John) could explain it in plain English. If you have time on Tuesday, May 15th Tom O'Connor can explain it to you. At least to the point where you'll have a fighting chance when you have to confer with an E-Discovery vendor.
I've done many CLE programs with Tom and he earns my highest rating for knowledge and trustworthiness. The lecture will be at the Launch Pad at 643 Magazine Street in New Orleans on May 15th from noon – 1 pm, and light lunch will be available. Space is limited, so RSVP to julie.hackler@avansic.com soon if you want to attend.
]]>I've given over a hundred presentations using slideware programs like PowerPoint or Keynote (Apple's software). Every one of those was run off of a laptop. Except for the last two.
Those last two were done off of an iPad using Apple's Keynote app ($9.99). Those presentations were so much easier to set up and run that I will never use a laptop again. Okay, maybe in a rare case. Otherwise I'm sticking with the smaller, lighter, easier-to-set-up device. Most people who present should immediately ditch PowerPoint and get an iPad and create presentations on that device. Here's why.
Getting a computer set up for a slideshow is still a daunting proposition. I'm tech-savvy, and it always sets me on edge when I have to set up. Over the years I've gotten good at trouble-shooting, but danger is always close at hand.
The main problem is getting the display settings right. Then there's the trick where you have to find the Play button on the laptop which is bridling with new display settings and making it harder for you to find things after they've been resized. The iPad doesn't present any of these issues.
Here's how it works with the iPad. You plop it on the podium; you connect the VGA connector to the special iPad adapter (~$30 from Apple); you press Play on the iPad. If you've charged your iPad there's no need to supply electricity; it has plenty of juice for hours of presentation.
The most recent version of Keynote for the iPad is plenty powerful for some really sophisticated presentations. I usually embed movie clips in my slide. Keynote on the iPad handles this flawlessly. The last slide deck I used was over 110 Mbs; no problem.
Sadly (not really) you can't run PowerPoint files on the iPad. But you can use the desktop version of Keynote to convert them, and that's what you should do. Now. Before your next presentation. PowerPoint stinks. And running it off of a laptop is a sign that you're not right with God.
Okay, I'll have to confess the iPad isn't perfect. Two problems: (1) the audio out jack seems not to work when you're showing a movie clip that has sound; and (2) you can't use a portable clicker to advance the slides.
But there are workarounds. For the audio issue I just let the iPad external speaker play and hold a mic near it. That works perfectly, and gives me precise audio control (by moving the mic closer or farther). The remote advance is not solvable to my satisfaction, but the benefits of the iPad are so great that I don't care. To advance slides remotely you can use the iPhone Keynote remote ($.99) but this isn't elegant. At least not to me. So, I just stand at the podium, or walk over to it, when I want to advance a slide.
More benefits? Yes indeed.
The iPad displays the time at the top of the screen, and will also display notes or the next slide. You set this up easily and quickly (more so than on a laptop) from the presentation screen. Also, jumping ahead to a slide several slides farther down is a snap. You just tap the left hand side of the screen to pull up a slide tray and then tap the slide you want to jump to. The audience never sees anything but the next slide (as though it was the one next in line and a natural transition occurred).
To advance slides naturally just tap anywhere on the screen (except the leftmost side, which pulls up the aforementioned jump tray). You can swipe if you want to go back, but it's usually better to use the slide tray.
Getting used to the iPad to actually demo takes a little practice. Getting used to setting it up takes no effort at all. And dispensing with the the trauma of potential pitfalls is the reason that most presenters need to investigate this new tool ASAP! Seriously. The iPad rocks for presenting.
]]>Thinking in new ways is hard for us, or so say the psychologists and cognitive scientists who study the human brain.
My sense is that this ingrained "pattern thinking" was fine when we were hunter-gatherers and the world was less chaotic than it is now that we've got technology spewing out all over the place. Technology is making everything different at a much faster pace. Using old thought patterns for problems created by technology isn't a trivial issue. Especially, since our social groups are much larger and the nation-states that these groups identify with.
I've been reading a lot about how habits constrain human thought, and it explains a lot of our struggles. What's weird is how oblivious the majority of us are to this insidious problem. It could make for a really interesting (and enlightening) TV news feature. But mass media is the beneficiary of some of the most useless mind-habits, so I'm not sure they'll really probe very far when they do stories on this.
Changing any kind of habit is challenging. You have to make a dedicated and continuous effort for at least 21 days, which sounds easy, but apparently isn't. Changing your mental habits probably doesn't take any longer, but it involves using the mechanism that makes decisions to do it.
Is it possible to change one's self-image for example? If you think of yourself as weak and unattractive, can you alter that self-image in 21 days? Most people would say no, or be very skeptical. And most people would not even try. The problem with self-defeating mental habits is that you have to ignore all the thoughts that plant seeds of doubt; and the hardest ones to ignore are the ones you create internally.
Meditation is one way to create some "space" where you can begin to take control of your thoughts, but there are other ways too. I've read first hand accounts of famous people who say they've done it, and that it changed their lives. I've known non-famous people who've said they were able to do it.
Is it possible for you? You can either trust the doubters or you can strive to create a belief that something that "seems" unlikely is actually quite possible. Which word do you like better? Yes or no.
]]>If you're not able to attend, then you can still watch our free online videos. If you're a Louisiana attorney and want CLE credit then you can pay us and we'll get you credit for watching the videos, two of which supply Ethics credit. We have many more free videos on advanced paperless processes over here.
Information is power, but knowing how to process digital information is like having "superpowers." We teach people how to acquire these superpowers (and lawyers get CLE credit). Wouldn't you like to learn how to become paperless and take your practice to an amazing new level of efficiency?
]]>