When you do something you have to do it good! That’s why I’m proud to present not 1 but 2 new blogs from me. Who needs sleep anyway.
My first new blog is called iJorg where I can finally talk about my knowledge about the internet. Hence the ‘i’ before Jorg. One of my passions has everything to do with cloud computing and all related topics. Think stuff like: cloud computing, social networking, mobility, SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, search, innovation, augmented reality, etc, etc.
The next blog is about another passion of mine: Life Skills. In my role as an (IT) manager I’m always searching how I can improve the team. And everything I recommends has first to be tried out on myself ofcourse. In short: how can you improve in what you’re doing. Besides writing a lot about developing business skills, I try to bridge the gap and talk about Life Skills. In these days and age, work is no longer seperated from your life, so trying to make the whole one synergetic experience is one of the main goals of this blog.
Most of my writings, if not all, on the internet are in English, but this time I decided to do the blogs in Dutch. The market where I position myself in is mainly Dutch speaking territory (yes, if I can find customers in the Dutch Antilles, I would go). But of course you can always use google translate to view them (translated links: iJorg / Life Skills). Enjoy reading!
Again, here are my 2 new blogs:
Yesterday I talked about sprinting. One of my sprinting goals in the next 4 weeks in 109,9 and it means that I want to loose some weight and going down to a healthy 109,9 kilo.
I already lost 8 kilos in the last months but now it’s time to add another 9. Yesterday morning I weighted in at 118,9, so I want to loose 9 kilos in 4 weeks. That’s a lot, but it should be doable.
What’s is the plan? Again healthy eating and drinking and enough physical activity should do the trick. I’ve split up the schedule per week, to make goal tracking easier. So here we go.
My plan for the first week is to eat 4 times a day a small meal which consists of protein and carbohydrates. Protein sources I will be using are fish, chicken and eggs. Carbohydrates are limited to vegetables and beans. For drinking I will be switching again back to water. I used to have the rule to drink no calories, so light sodas were also permitted, but I’m guessing this is not working for me as well as I hoped, so back to my roots; water it is. Yesterday it was the first day and it all worked out pretty good. I craved for some soda in the evening, but I managed to hold off on that one.
Physical activity for this week consists of the following:
3 x fitness: bench presses (done yesterday), squats and deadlifts. Those are the only exercises I’ll do, each of them in a separate session so that the time in the gym will be very limited (max 30 minutes)- 3x cardio: swimming and running for 20 to 40 minutes. Today I will probably go running.
- 2x freediving: Thursday some pool freediving and Saturday we go into the deep again.
I’m not going to weigh myself again everyday. So next update on that one will be on Monday again. I should weigh in at around 116,5 to stay on schedule. Good luck to me!
In the last few days I’ve been looking back into the year. What have I done, what did I plan, what didn’t I do. All in all it hurt a little, because I’ve been focusing a lot on the important stuff, but not always on the non-urgent stuff that comes up.
Focus will go easily to the urgent important things in life. But one has not to forget to put most of your time in the non-urgent important stuff, because that is the quadrant where it is all happening. (I just love this Stephen R. Covey quadrant thinking)
So, while I have 7 weeks left, or 49 days, it is time to make a shift. I need to finish some non urgent important stuff in my live before the countdown has reached zero. And the best way to do this is to sprint!
Everybody has experienced a tight deadline. Normally when you have a project which will take you a complete week to finish, you start on Monday and work everyday until it’s finished on Friday. The best way to do it normally. But sometimes it’s crisis and you just don’t have the time to follow the planned way of doing something, then you have to make a sprint at the end. You start on Thursday evening thinking it’s not possible to finish the project on time, but somehow you manage to finish it anyway, after doing an all-night-er.
That’s sprinting! And while it’s not recommendable that you do it every time, sprinting keeps you fit and healthy and you know what speed you’re truly capable of reaching.
For me the time has come to sprint! I’m going to sprint on a few different things for the coming 4 weeks, starting today. And they are:
- 109,9
- keep to my writing schedule
- finish project ‘Startup D’
- get some clear steps done in project ‘MM’
- learn how to program in the cloud
- finish project ‘GANJ’
28 days of sprinting! Lets see the speed I can reach. Ready, set, go!
This week will be a busy one. I’ve set myself a deadline to get something done within the end of this month and I really have to put some work into it. What that something is, will be revealed later. All in all it will be an interesting two weeks coming up.
And to further push things; this is the week I’m launching my new dutch blogs; one will be about cloud computing and everything that is related to it and the other one is about business skills. Of course they’ve got my special own opinion sauce over it to make it somewhat more interesting. Like I said; it will be in dutch, but google translate is doing a pretty good job these days if you really want to read my ramblings about those topics as well. When the sites are live I will post it over here.
About the rules I’ve set for myself: I think I have to keep an eye on rule 84/4.
The last of ten rules that I try to master in the program I’m following. And a very interesting as well as challenging one!
My goal with this rule is to keep connected to my friends. Friends is a definition that is highly arguable in these times. For me it means the people who I’ve got a personal relationship with. People with whom I talk about my family, hobbies, etc. It is no longer people who I’ve met in real life in this digital age. I also got friends who I have never seen in real life.
Different tools for different circumstances; my preferred way is of course a face to face talk to keep connected, but a simple phone call will work good as well. If that isn’t really an option, due to time differences or other reasons, I can always take the digital tools and send them a message on facebook, twitter them or use the plain old, but still best, email function.
Having friends around you that can help you grow and whom you can help them grow is a very good thing! Have friends who you can trust, have friends who have certain knowledge, have friends who are fun, … there are so many different people! Just enjoy the company of people and talk.
Only 9 weeks to go and still so much to do, start, experience and learn before I turn 33 years old. But still, things are rolling, rolling hard! Here’s a small update on how things are going at the moment.
Sport is going great! Not only do I know sport regularly, but if I don’t I miss it. Just like the old days. Currently I’m doing 3 fitness sessions a week. Very short sessions! Only one exercise eacht time for around 6 sets; bench press on Monday, squats on Wednesday and deadlifts on Friday. One time a week a pool freediving session and one outdoor freediving session. And then I try to do 3 cardiovasculair workouts. The only thing that’s not going well is the running. Every few weeks blisters come back on my right heel. Will see how it goes in the coming weeks.
Nutrition is finally at a level that I’m following the new eating style without any problems. Four meals a day. Dinner I eat the same as the family and the rest of the time it’s only vegetables, meat, fish and eggs. I don’t drink calories anymore and don’t take supplements. This morning I weighed 118,6 kg and that is after one week of vacation. So pretty happy with it!
Furthermore I’m busy with several very interesting projects. Unfortunatly some of them I can’t talk about yet, because of some agreements that have been made. But the stuff that I can talk about is that I’m finally writing at the speed I would like. Besides regularly updating this website, I also manage to post a daily post on shark-freediving.com and a few posts a week on shark-bait.com. And to make things worse I’m almost launching 2 new websites. For me it will be very interesting too see how those 2 will work out, because for the first time I’m going to write for the Dutch market. The rest will be revealed soon enough…
For the rest I try to follow my own rules as much as possible and it’s working out pretty well. Enough rest, physical health, mental challenges, social life, etc make it all feel pretty good. Let’s continue this growth path!
Today we came back from a week of vacation with my family. My son Rody (8) had a great time, especially in the swimming pool, and my daughter Indy (3) has felt like a little princess while dancing every evening on stage on all the music. My beautiful girlfriend Helle (since 1 year, 2 months and 10 days) took us on a holiday for her birthday and I must say it felt really good being together with the family like this again.
Hectic times sometimes prevent me from being with my family as much as I really want too, but weeks like this make it up big time. It’s also the foundation of my rule set; family comes first. If you have a good family foundation, things are so much easier. And I know from experience on both sides.
If you have people around you who understand what your passions are, who love you and support you, you are a very rich man. Things go so much easier when you know your family have you backed up on every action you take.
What’s the reason I’m here? Why do I spend so much time trying to improve? In short it all comes down to the fact that I want to be a good father for my kids and give them as much as I can (education and experiences). Thanks to Helle, she makes the most responsible job in the world a lot easier for me! Thank you, Helle!
Again, you have to set your priorities straight, and this is the most important one, that should form your foundation. At least it is for me.
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!
In Rule 84/3 Train Mind I talk how I can improve myself. One of the ways is to read. As an autodidact I read a lot. 2 books a week is normal, but I try to read around 500 pages a week, but for sure there are some weeks that I read more then 1000 pages. Why do I read? Mostly to learn. Because when I learn I get new knowledge and I can use this knowledge in my own life for improvement.
If I look at my own library which consists of around 500 books I’ve categorized them in the following main topics:
- Sports: Weight training, Track & Field, Running, Cycling, Swimming, Triathlon, Scubadiving, Freediving, Stretching, Coaching/Training, Martial Arts (around 200 books)
- Nutrition (around 50 books)
- Autobiographies (around 50 books)
- Psychology (around 150 books)
- Travel/Topography (around 50 books)
One of my favorite things to do is searching for new books to read. I can spend hours in a library or book store. Books are a good investment! If I could choose to do a psychology course of 5000 euro or to buy 2000 euro worth of psychology books, my choice would be easy!
If you want to improve, you just have to read books! Knowledge in its best form.
The next blog is about another passion of mine: Life Skills. In my role as an (IT) manager I’m always searching how I can improve the team. And everything I recommends has first to be tried out on myself ofcourse. In short: how can you improve in what you’re doing. Besides writing a lot about developing business skills, I try to bridge the gap and talk about Life Skills. In these days and age, work is no longer seperated from your life, so trying to make the whole one synergetic experience is one of the main goals of this blog.
