Jorg's Brain Log

Sometimes my weeks are so filled with stuff I tend to forget the important things. For example to have fun! You can plan your weeks completely full with work and other activities but sometimes it’s good to just have some fun.

It’s good to just take some time off and do something fun, but I don’t mean only taking time off. Try to have fun while you do your work is probably even more important. Doing a 40 hour work week with work you don’t like to do is probably the most stupid thing you can do. You drain all your energy out of you with such a job. And when the 40 hours are over, you don’t have the energy any more to do something fun.

After some years of trial and error, the last years I finally found my passion in work and I’m only doing that kind of work I like and turning down stuff that doesn’t fit in my passion scope. Because of this, I can say that I reached the eternal cliche: if you like what you’re doing you never have to work.

Where I sometimes would do 80 hour workweeks, I now try to delegate or outsource some of it. My time is precious and I like to spend as much time with my family and friends as I can. While the famous 4 hour workweek is probably a little bit too little work for me, the general idea to outsource as much as possible and concentrate on the important is very true.

Creating something new is always fun to do! You can look at a great photo, but it will make it even greater when you’ve made the photo yourself. You can listen to a great piece of music, but it will make it even greater when you’ve played the music yourself. I find my personal creativity best in writing.

I still have a lot to learn about writing, but just writing several blog posts a day for some of my websites makes me feel incredibly creative. When you write you have to think what you’re going to write down. You have to organize you thoughts, do some research, write down the whole stuff, reorganize it again.

If at times I’m somewhat unclear how to tell something with great passion and clarity, I first write down a small article about the subject and afterwards the clouds are gone. Clear sky from here on. It then becomes so easy to tell with passion and clarity about the subject. And one of the main objectives to have while telling, is that people hear your passion in your voice, which you can’t have without clarity.

All in all it comes down to a simple thing: once you written an article, you’ve made something that didn’t exist before. Therefor you’re a creator! Powerful stuff isn’t it? And yet oh so simple. Now go an write something!

What an appropriate rule to write about. Currently I’m on vacation with my family. Nothing gives me a bigger reset and rest then being in another environment. The Take Rest rule is of course referring to a well deserved vacation, but also to a lot other things. Lets list some rest moments in my life.

• Nightly sleep: pretty clear of course. My 5-6 hours of sleep that include falling asleep and waking up
• Power-nap: sometimes I take 20 minute mini sleep half way the day to energize me
• Night out: going out for dinner and/or see a movie gives my mind a quick fix
• Day away: visiting a zoo or fun-park is always fun. Most of the time I come back tired and need to relax in the evening after this
• Night away: not sleeping in your own bed gives you always a vacation feeling.
• Weekend vacation: Even when I have to work from Monday to Friday. I can still take a small vacation by leaving on Friday evening and returning on Sunday evening

All the above are pretty obvious rest moments, but don’t forgot my micro rest moments:

• 2 minutes rest between different exercises during fitness
• 1 minute rest between sets during fitness
• 2 minutes rest between static attempts or constant weight dives during freediving
• 10 minute rest after every 50 minutes I work or study

All in all, you need rest for recovery. Recovery for the mind and recovery for the body. Processing all the stimulus mind and body receives and preparing for the next battle.

Live like you will die tomorrow, learn like you will live forever

I’ve made my choice to improve, improving by training many aspects of life. Training my mind to improve is a very important part of it.

A friend of mine once said; “Jorg, I sometimes wished I was just happy with a beer and watching TV, that would would make live so much easier.” So true in many aspects. One of the things that come with a great sense of self reflection is the fact you want to improve in what you do.

So how to train my mind, one of the parts I want to improve? My learning comes from several ways:

• Experience
• Observe
• Read
• Discus

What makes us human is that we have the ability to look at ourselves from an outside perspective. No other species can do this. My experiences during my life and self reflection that happens afterwards are therefor what makes me human. I experience something and then I can observe this experience from another view. The precise reason why I can improve and learn from what I’m doing. Furthermore I can add knowledge to fill in the blanks of my own observations by reading and by discussing.

So what exactly am I training my mind in at the moment?

• Language: I’m fluent in Dutch and English, but I also have 7 years of French lessons behind my belt. I didn’t do anything with it since school, but I really want to pick it up again. Got some other wishes on this front, but first focus on French again.
• Human Physiology: I was and still am very much interested in the human body. Learning new stuff about it is always interesting
• Psychology: Everything about human actions.
• ICT Technology: Especially interested in innovations with regards to cloud computing, social web, augmented reality and some other high tech stuff
• Business skills: stuff like how to manage, how to give a presentation, how to be a good salesmen, etc. The basic skill set you need to have to be a good leader.
• Sports: Especially weightlifting, cardiovascular work, stretching, underwater sports, periodization, training methods, coaching, etc.
• Nutrition: The latest nutrition developments and general knowledge are always interested.
• Others: everything that will keep my mind at work is interesting, think autobiographies, quantum mechanics, history, topography.

There is always something interesting to train my mind with. In general I try to read 2 books a week, which normally isn’t really a problem.

If anybody got any good book recommendations in the above categories, please let me know. Always looking for something interesting to read!

As things are moving along, you sometimes have to change some basic stuff. I just moved my website back to the Netherlands, as most of my visitors come from here. So hopefully most of the users will experience that the website will get faster.

At the same time I moved my blog from the root of my domain name to the directory /blog so that I have some more possibilities to develop, test and expand.

This blog is going to change a little and a new one will soon arrive (yes another one, I know…) So keep an eye on the website and keep entering the site at www.jorgjansen.com because soon you will find something new over there instead of just a redirect to this blog.

One of the best feelings in the world is the feeling you have after you’ve done something that you were scared of doing and it worked out. The famous adrenaline rush keeps your mind and body filled with excitement and emotions.

For me personally I’m not as much of an adrenaline junk anymore as I used to be. But still I need my daily cravings of it. Some days I get a good shot, on other days not so much.

So what gives me a good adrenaline shot? When I’m in the squat rack with a 250 kilo barbell on my neck. When I’m doing a salto on my sons trampoline in the garden. When I jump off a stair with my inline skates on. When I rush down the mountain with my snowboard on. When I’m holding my breath and do some no limits freediving. When I jump of the kitchen roof into the garden. And the list goes on and on.

These are all things I do regularly and not fictional. It just feels great. In the next weeks I’m going to try some new stuff to get the adrenaline going. Got any tips? (maybe it’s smart to ask for serious tips, but what the hell)

By only eating right you already cover a great deal by taking care of your body. My you also have to give it the right stimulus to keep it in shape.

I always did a lot of sport since I was 6. So it comes natural to do a lot. In the last years I developed a way of sport that is low in volume (for me) and high in intensity. Sometimes I did 1,5 hours weightlifting per day. Let alone the cardio, stretching and other stuff I was doing. Those times are over.

In short these are the physical activities I’m doing or want to be doing:

• Weightlifting
• Running
• Swimming
• Cycling
• Freediving
• Athletics
• Inline skating and skateboarding
• and some more…

In the first 4 weeks I’m going to focus on only a few of them so I will be doing them right. That is: weightlifting, running, swimming and freediving.

For weightlifting I’m getting back to the bare essentials: squats, deadlifts and benchpresses. Those are the only exercises I’m going to do. Doing them once a week for 30 minutes (including warmups) will take me around 1,5 hours and give strength and explosive power

Running is my main form of cardiovascular work. I try to have 1 cardiovasclur moment per day. So I aim for 3 to 5 runs a week. 20 to 45 minutes, depending how I feel and what I want to do that way. This will help improve my cardiovascular ability and improve stamina. Total running time per week around 2 hours.

I try to swim twice a week. One technique training and one continues crawl session. Total time around 1 hour per week.

And last but not least freediving will give me the fun and training I need to add a specific sport to reach some goals with. More info about my training in this sport on the Sharkbait website. But in short: 1 pool training of around an hour and 1 outdoor per week of 1 hour. So 2 hours per week.

Total time spend on physical planned activity 6,5 hours. Pretty good and solid for now. And I don’t even count the inline skating and freediving drywalks I’m doing now, because they aren’t planned, those are just done when I want them to do.

In short here’s is somewhat of my schedule I try to keep in mind:

• Monday: Run, Weights
• Tuesday: Swim
• Wednesday: Run, Weights
• Thursday: Swim, Freediving Pool
• Friday: Run, Weights
• Saturday: Run, Freediving Outdoor
• Sunday: rest and recover

Number 1 on the list to focus on is that I should take care of my body. In short it means that I have to train it and feed it. So what am I doing in these 84 days with that? Let’s discus this in 2 different posts. Here’s in number 1

Lets start with the food part. I’m still on the paleo diet, that’s becoming more and more of a lifestyle. I made some changes to make it all somewhat easier and acceptable. Discipline but it has to be fun. In short here are my eating ‘rules’:

1. Eat 4 times a day – I used to try and eat very small meals 6 times a day, like a lot of people are advising. I’m just too busy to do that. So I set it back to 4 and I try to eat around 10, 13, 17 and 22 hours. If it’s somewhat later or earlier, it doesn’t matter.
2. Eat paleo food – legumes, vegetables, meat, fish, eggs. Normally that also includes fruit, but I backed away from that, to see if I’m really as sugar sensitive as I think I am.
3. Drink no calories – so no fruit juices or milk. Just water, light soda’s and any other drink that doesn’t contain calories.
4. Eat what you want – After a non-cardio training like lifting weights or some freediving your body needs calories in every form. It’s one of those moments where your body really can use everything you give to them. So before dinner, when our family eats together, I try to do a workout so that I can eat the same as the family.
5. No supplements! – this is a big one for me. I’ve used supplements in the form of multivitamin and protein shakes since, .. well forever. Time to spend the money I save on this on some other stuff. Like real meat!
6. Take a day off – Eat whatever I want on that day. It spike the calorie intake in by that keeps the metabolism going.
7. Don’t count calories – I used to do that a lot. It just becomes to must work and it’s not necessary if you eat the foods I listed at nr 2.
8. Prepare – I’ve taken this a step further. We now do groceries only one time a week. I have to think about the whole week and what I want to eat and need to buy. This works great because now we don’t have wrong food in house that I can take. At the same time, I prepare my food for 2-3 days ahead. instead of cooking 4 times a day.
9. Don’t make it difficult – I looked back at my logbooks and the time that I best hold onto my diet was when it was simplest. I remember the time that I ate chicken and rice six times a day, 6 times a week.
10. Mistakes happen – Okay, so I’m out and at the restaurant and I eat something wrong. so what? Doesn’t really matter as long as I can apply the 80/20 rule to them. 80% eating right costs me 20% of the energy to get it done. While trying to eat the last 20% of the time also right it will cost me 80% of the energy.

all in all some simple rules to keep track on. So this was the part were I feed my body, next post will be about how I train it.

I’ve said it many times before, but time really does fly! 84 days left before I turn 33. I think I started this countdown some time I was 20-22, more then 10 years ago now. When the countdown has reached 0, it’s time to look back and talk about this journey.

For now let’s focus on the journey. 84 days, that’s exactly 12 weeks left. What to do with these last 84 days, so that I will remember them forever?

I’ve thought about many things lately and how to set this up. Before writing a very long post again, it’s maybe better to divide it in the coming days and weeks. It’s more interesting to talk short and more frequently then to talk long and once a month.

So to start I’ve decided to break the 12 weeks in 3 and talk about the first 4 weeks over here. In the first 4 weeks I’ve set some goals that continue where I was left before going on snowboarding vacation. To be short I want to create a good combination of discipline and fun again in my lifestyle. Both keywords can’t exist separately in my life.

10 things to focus on:

1. Take care of Body
2. Create Adrenaline
3. Train Mind
4. Take Rest
5. Make Music
6. Read Books
7. Write, Write, Write
8. Have Fun
9. Family Love
10. Connect with Friends

In the first 4 weeks I try to find and optimal schedule that counts in the ‘I’m human and so is everybody around me’ factor. Setting up some regular and returning events in my schedule that will train my discipline and give me my regular fun.

I’ll talk about each step and what its setup will do for me in the next posts over here. Time to get to bed and take care of point 4.

As the rest of my life is getting more into structure again, the urge to put my head underwater was to great. I just wrote a post for our Team Sharkbait website explaining what I’m going to do again with freediving.

Furthermore I also found the inspiration again to do some posts for Shark Freediving! I’m not promising that it will be as regular filled as before, but who knows.

And now that I’m thinking about it, it’s also time to do a scuba dive again! That’s also a long time ago. Damn, my schedule is filling up rapidly like this!