Minute of Strength #31

Bangers & mash & kettlebells

Our training background is predominantly martial arts with approximately 35 years combined training and teaching experience. We have tried most forms of training not limited to, but including- gymnastics, power lifting, all round weight lifting, strongman training, grip training, cycling, climbing and yoga. Our core philosophy is that you will not get very far in life reading one book. However, some books are better than others and in the fitness game, the kettlebell must stand above most other products based on our personal experiences with them.

After using a drop ship service for delivering kettlebells to our clients and customers we decided to take the inevitable big step as a small business and import our own kettlebells. The main benefit of this move was to take full charge of delivery times and stock control. The beauty of this was that we were able to slightly modify those sold by our supplier to meet the needs and demands we expected from our kettlebells. We have one of the few powder coated kettlebells in the UK with a super smooth finish so that the handle does not cause blistering or friction when training for high repetition work or competition. The kettlebells also have a nice big flat base so they can easily be stored to take up minimum space.

We currently run kettlebell master classes in and around London which cover the foundation moves of the kettlebell (swing, clean, snatch, press, windmill and Turkish get up). These are proving very successful, especially with fitness professionals as we have one of the only UK courses that is accredited by the register of exercise professionals- REPs. REPs are a government appointed body that monitor the fitness industry and their backing means that our courses carry continuous professional development (CPD) points for fitness professionals and other trainers that require them.

Our future plans are very broad and far-reaching as we firmly believe that long and short term goals in many diverse areas are needed to ensure that we continue to deliver variety to our customers, continue to develop our business and continue to develop ourselves as company directors, trainers and more importantly- individuals. Among these plans is the long term goal of opening a kettlebell based gym where we can run seminars and classes for martial arts and if size allows- a space to contain the various training systems we both love and enjoy.

Consistency is the only road to success.
Train hard!
The LKB crew
www.londonkettlebells.com

Getting Things Done… with radical common sense.

There are hundreds of organizational and personal productivity systems on the market. Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is one of the most popular examples. As a young, green Engineer at General Motors, I had the opportunity to attend a corporate sponsored 7 Habits seminar. On a high level, 7 Habits suggests that you should create a personal mission statement and soul search to explicitly uncover your core values. The system is based on the noble idea that you should organize every action to align with these personal values.

I first studied 7 Habits in my early twenties. My biggest life issue at the time was picking a bar that might contain a girl who might talk to me. I wasn’t ready for 7 Habits and most of the information went in one ear and out the other. By my early thirties, I had found that girl, gotten married, bought a house, embraced a demanding career, and produced three children. It was time for a re-read. This time 7 Habits deeply resonated with me and I set out to master it.

While I believe the way of life described in 7 Habits is a worthy goal, I again failed to implement it. Lots of folks have similarly tried and failed. For many of us, the little daily catastrophes and unexpected fires make it difficult to focus on lofty personal mission statements and core values. I recently discovered a wonderful book, Getting Things Done, by David Allen that better fits my needs. I recommend this book to everyone. It’s a quick read and there are great nuggets of wisdom that can be immediately used without adopting some full, complex system.

Getting Things Done (GTD) focuses first on the most mundane of your daily tasks and issues. Allen says we must get control of the craziness in our daily lives before we can effectively contemplate our core values and mission statement. Getting the thousands of unstarted tasks, worries, and “stuff” out of your brain is the central theme of Allen’s system. As I read about this philosophy, it instantly struck me as radical common sense.

Allen talks a lot about the evils of “open loops” floating in your subconscious mind. These are little details such as the dirty pile of laundry next to your bed and large issues like the need for a career change. Most of us carry thousands of these details in our heads, but we haven’t defined a clear next action to address them. Your subconscious mind is forced to keep track of all that stuff… and from that perspective, it ranks each item with equal importance. You may have lived your entire life with all that mental noise. Imagine how focused and productive you might be if you could silence it!

GTD suggests a formal brain dump. Simply spew it all onto paper… every detail, concern, and task from your personal, home, and work life. If you really put some effort into this, you’ll experience a few delicious moments of that mental silence. For me, it was incredible. Of course, it also left my desk trembling under 500 pounds of paper! Never fear, GTD offers a great system to organize all those open loops and keep them out of your head.

Once you file and organize that pile, you’ll be ready to take a hard look at your daily practices. How many emails are sitting in your inbox on average? I took a quick poll of my co-workers and found that many people have over 200 emails stored in their inbox. Several people had over 2000! Your brain can’t contemplate a list of more than 20 items. You are storing all those emails because you haven’t taken the time to truly read them and act on them. You haven’t assessed them properly and are holding on to them with a fear that you might need to act on them in the future.

If you ever do need to dig up one of those emails, it’s like finding a needle in a haystack. Your brain knows that, so it doesn’t let go of that email’s existence and rough location. It becomes just another open loop clouding your mind. Worse, your brain sees that mountain of emails as a painful project and resists searching through it. Enter procrastination! If all you do is read my short article on GTD, try this little nugget of wisdom: End every day with an empty email inbox. Stick with it and you’ll notice a huge impact on daily productivity.

Tips for dealing with inbox items:

• Decide if you need to act on it, store it for later, or delete it.
• If it calls for an action that takes under 2 minutes, do it now and delete it!
• If it requires future action, get it on a “next action list” or calendar and delete it!
• If it’s purely reference material, move it out of your inbox and into a reference folder. Make sure to categorize these reference folders intuitively.

How many papers and envelopes are scattered around your desk, windowsill, and floor? These are all open loops just like the stuff in your email inbox. GTD offers a great system for quickly assessing these items when they hit your desk- immediately filing them as reference or establishing required next actions to deal with them. If you don’t decide next actions and don’t truly trust your organizational system, all of these scraps of paper sit both on your desk and in the back of your mind as open loops.

I particularly enjoy the GTD distinction between “To-Do” and “Next Action” lists. Many people set out to keep To-Do lists and find them ineffective over time. They fail because most items on the list look like this:

• Tires
• Suzy’s recital
• Workout stopwatch
• The Jefferson account

What about tires? If you spent 5 seconds thinking about it, you’d say, “I need to get my tires rotated”. You might be inclined to scratch that out and write, “Rotate tires.” Better, sure, but it’s still not a true next action. The real next action is “Call Joe’s Garage to schedule an appointment for tire rotation.” If you filled your list with true next actions, you’d be much more likely to accomplish the list! Again, this is radical common sense. Your brain resists dealing with a traditional To-Do list because it is full of items lacking established next actions. I recommend you implement this nugget of wisdom today. Make it a habit and see how much more you get done!

Hopefully you’ll get some value from the tips in this short article. I’ve only touched the surface of GTD and recommend you purchase the book today. It is very down to Earth, easy to read, and full of practical insights that you can quickly implement. Once you clear your mind and find a better way to deal with the mundane, you’ll be in a much better position to take on more philosophical pursuits such as personal mission statements and core values. So, what’s your next action?