I write this from my elliptical trainer. I suppose one might see pathology in someone squeezing his laptop into his elliptical trainer’s magazine rack, but at least my water bottle holder contains a bottle of actual water, not Coke Zero like yesterday morning. The real point for this post is that I don’t especially want to be on my elliptical trainer right now, and the only reason I am is because of the public resolution I made on the New Year’s Day either to work out 200 days in 2008 or pay $25 to some despised cause for each day below that. I have to work out 11 out of 20 days to meet that goal, and this will be my 12th goal star in 2008’s first 20 days, so I’m staying just ahead like the electric rabbit at a dog racing track.
What especially intrigues me here is that I went from having a vague idea for the resolution to making a public blog declaration in about an hour, and now I’m basically leveraging that hour of resolve to do something long-run-positive now that my short-run-focused self would be otherwise not inclined to do. It’s not even really an hour of willpower, either, since it wasn’t a matter of willpower then, as instead it was just Present-Jeremy signing Future-Jeremy up for something rather than trusting Future-Jeremy to do his druthers. Sort of like making an impulsive credit card purchase or agreeing to be on a committee just because saying yes right then feels easier than saying no, only in this case I actually engaged in a favorable kind of paternalism toward my future self, rather than the usual malignant sort.
BTW, stickK.com is a site where you can use a third party to make these kinds of contracts to bind your future self to a course of action–a third party that will go ahead and charge your credit card if you fail and everything. I’m not sure if Ulysses wouldn’t have needed to be tied to the mast if only he’d signed an anti-siren pact with stickK and given them his Visa number, but I can certainly vouch for the helpfulness of the basic idea for better aligning short-run incentives with longer-term goals.
Postscriptum for my detractors: Yes, I go slower when I am typing on my elliptical trainer. I go faster while I think of the next sentence, and then I slow down to write it. As far as workout quality goes, I have a goal distance on the elliptical trainer, and I don’t stop until I reach that distance, so I’m not rewarded for any slowness while surfing or blogging.
21 Comments
You’re amazing in your dedication to blogging/exercising. I’m pretty sure I’d fall off the elliptical if I tried to type while moving around on it.
BTW, the performativists should apply their craft to Jeremy and rational choice theory after they’re finished with financial markets.
IF I exercise today, I am up to 11. It is very cold. May have to just do a strength training no cardio day.
LBN, I’m on the 10K steps/day plan so I go walking regularly. Once Winter came around, I realized this was never going to happen unless I joined a gym. If you have an NU gym membership (or were considering getting one) then we could walk the track together and chat. While often I enjoy the solitary aspect of it all, sometimes it would be fun to have some company and that can be additional motivation.:)
“I write this from my elliptical trainer.”
Right out of that Woddy Allen movie _Bananas_. What did they call that product designed to let executives exercise while at the desk? Execuciser?
my detractors
I think the accepted usage these days is “teh haters.”
How’d you determine the appropriate distance goal (and, if you don’t mind sharing, what is it)? I use time+heart rate goals, but am not convinced this is the best approach.
Kieran, you’re correct about the accepted usage, though it’s not new. In the Old Testament, for example, it was “teh haterz.” (At least when smitin.)
http://www.lolcatbible.com/index.php?title=Deuteronomy_13
Is the practice of execucising a form of Taylorism?
Investigation has produced information that Whole Foods scones are indeed on sale at $1.29 each until Feb. 5. So you can buy 2 every other day for roughly the cost of your daily scone and eat the additional one while on the trainer and blogging. That should all then create a grand state of equilibrium in your personal activities leading to economic balance between your Present Jeremy’s actions, your Past Jeremy’s regrets, and your Future Jeremy’s distain for scones in favor of Whole Foods’ sugar palmiers.
Sara: 3.5 miles, with the resistance set on level 6 on my machine (I have no idea if there is a universal measure of elliptical machine resistance I could use to express that more generally).
Kieran/ktel: I just asked someone about “teh” last week, when I finally adduced enough examples to conclude that it wasn’t some kind of persistent typo.
Barry: WF here has the sign saying they are on sale, but interestingly hasn’t stocked any scones in like four days. Instead they have this rack of vegan scores that taste awful and are like $2.50.
what is ‘teh’?
“teh” is a very semantically rich construction.
teh.
Maybe the lower scone price has drawn so many new scone buyers that they are sold out by the time you arrive. Or, it’s a bait and switch operation targeting trusting ex-farm kids into buying those overpriced vegan variations. Real Amurcans eat doughnuts, anyway, not like those white wine-drinking, Volvo-driving, scone eaters.
It says something about Wikipedia that it would have an entry about a typo, but at the same users are so adamant about deleting entries about academics and such. Don’t get me wrong, I think an entry about a common typo is fine. It’s the deletion fights that I find problematic.
Yes, but as far as I can tell, “teh” has advanced to a life much larger than a mere typo. “teh” = 55 million Google hits. “sociology” = 44 million.
On this topic (not teh) I need a better way to figure out when I will hit the day at which I must exercise every day. So, if I committed to 200 days and have done 10 (this is sadly accurate), I must go 200 minus 10 = 190, 366 - 190 = 176. So then, on the 176th day of the year, I would have to begin exercising daily to make the goal (is that right?) and, how the bother do I figure out what the 176th day of the year is? Please advise.
Do a search for “teh suck” and you get around 260,000 hits. “teh win” gets you 716,000, and “teh internets” 179,000.
“teh sociology,” on the other hand, gets you 52.
Thus ends today’s installment of “how to shoddily research cultural/linguistic patterns using Google.”
also — I love the idea that there are unverified claims on the wikipedia page for “teh” — how dumb is that?
lbn - the 176th day of the year is June 24, 2008. My calendar has a thing.
LBN: I numbered my star sheet 1-200, but I had originally thought about numbering it by the day at which point I would have to start exercising every day or paying $25 per day. Apparently June 15th would have been Day 1 by that scheme.
Ok thanks abatian — so I will start counting by subtracting a day from June 24th for each day I exercise and when (if) I hit a day that is the day I am on, I will know it is time to exercise every day. bleck.