Life in Orlando

It's been almost forever since I wrote anything up here, but things have been somewhat crazy in my life lately.  Since my last post, I graduated and have moved down to Orlando for a while with the Disney College Program.  I'm working as a Photopass Photographer in Epcot and I'm loving it so much.  By the end of my work week, I will have officially earned my ears and have finished training, which is super exciting.

But the real reason that I'm starting this blog again is that I'm finally going to start taking the whole getting into shape thing seriously.  As a freshly graduated 21 year old, it's time for me to get my life together and figure out what's really important to me.  I have, basically my whole life, hated the way that I looked but have always been too lazy to do anything about it.  Starting now, that all ends.  No more complaining about stuff like that when I can start working out and eating somewhat better.

Today I'm starting my daily gym trips.  Since I'm in the Disney apartments, we have gyms in our apartment complexes as well as pools.  Most of the people hanging out in the pools aren't swimming for exercise, so I'm not really gonna plan on swimming laps for a little while.  Until I get the urge to do that, I'm going to be doing cardio in the gym.  Today, I spent 25 minutes on the elliptical machine, so running 2 miles, and then did 150 reps of some arm workout using 30 lbs.  

My plan is to update this daily with my progress just as a way to help keep myself on track with my goals.

Final Things Before Graduation

In the next three weeks, I have a bunch of school stuff to get done, but as soon as that's over, I'll be a college graduate.  Honestly, that's kind of terrifying me.  Not to say I'm not looking forward to it, I'm just not really ready to leave everything at this college.

Progress So Far

Since I started this blog just a few days ago, I realized that it'll probably take me more than just a week to get completely comfortable with each of these things.  So I'm gonna master these ones before I move on to the rest of them.  The thing I've been having the most trouble with so far is the whole checking email only two times a week.  With all the stuff that I have with the sorority, they expect us to check our email multiple times a day, and then punish us if we are not completely on top of everything.  Since it's Greek Week this week, we've been getting multiple emails during the day that, if we don't respond to quickly enough, we get mocked and ridiculed for not checking.

The other thing I haven't been doing exactly every day is reading for thirty minutes.  I've decided to let studying for thirty minutes be an acceptable substitute for that one.  I know it's not the same, and no where near as relaxing, but with graduation around the corner, that's what I need to be doing with my life.

On the Road to Graduation

In the next month or so, I will finally be walking across the stage and getting the college diploma which I have been looking forward to for as long as I can remember.  But with that in mind, this begins the most terrifying stage of my life: the real world.  Starting in June, I'll be working in Florida at Walt Disney World as a photographer, but who knows what will happen after that?  By January of 2013, I'll have to be grown up and figure out what I'm going to do with my life.  Before I do that though, I feel like I need to do some things for myself, just so I can start being more of the person that I want to be.  In order to do this, my plan is to follow a list of stuff that I stole from a friend's blog.

Health habits

1. Exercise 30 minutes every day. Especially if you don’t do much movement while working, it’s essential that you get some daily exercise. 30 minutes every day are the minimum recommended for optimal health.
2. Eat breakfast every day. Breakfast is the more important meal of the day, yet so many people skip it. Personally, I like to eat a couple of toasts in the morning along with a fruit beverage.
3. Sleep 8 hours. Sleep deprivation is never a good idea. You may think that you are gaining time by sleeping less, when in reality you are only gaining stress and tiredness. 8 hours are a good number of hours for most people, along with an optional 20 minutes nap after lunch.
4. Avoid snacking between meals. Snacking between meals is the best way to gain weight. If you are hungry, eat something concrete. Otherwise don’t. Update: for clarification, I mean don’t eat junk food between meals, but eating real food it’s ok.
5. Eat five portions of fruits and vegetables every day. Our body and brain loves getting vegetables and fruit, so I highly recommend eating as much of them as possible. Five portions is the dose that’s usually recommended by many health associations.
6. Eat fish. Fish is rich of omega 3 and other healthy elements. At least one meal per week of fish should be enough for getting all these nutrients.
7. Drink one glass of water when you wake up. When you wake up, your body is dehydrated and needs liquid. Make the habit of drinking one glass of water after you wake up in the morning. Also, drink more during the day.
8. Avoid soda. Soda is often one of the most unhealthy beverage you can find. Limit your consumption of soda as much as possible and you’re body will be grateful for that.
9. Keep your body clean. I don’t advise spending your day in front of the mirror, but a minimum of personal care does never hurt.
10. If you smoke, stop it. There’s no reason to smoke anymore, and quitting is possible.
11. If you drink, stop it. Same as above. Don’t think that alcohol will solve your problems. It never does. The only exception is one glass of wine per day during meals.
12. Take the stairs. This is just a hack that forces you to do a minimum of exercise. Instead of taking the elevator, take the stairs.

Productivity habits

1. Use an inbox system. Make the habit of keeping track of all the ideas and things that comes to mind. You can use a notebook to do this, and then sync everything on your computer.
2. Prioritize. If you have a list of things to do, where do you start? One way is to prioritize your list. If you are in doubt, ask yourself: “If I could only accomplish one thing today, what would it be?”
3. Plan, but not too much. Planning is important, and you should decide in advance what you are going to do today or this week. However, planning for more than a few weeks is usually inefficient, so I would not worry too much about that.
4. Wake up early. Waking up early in the morning is a great way to gain extra time. I personally like to wake up at 5 am, so that by 9 am I have already accomplished what otherwise would have taken me many days..
5. Check your email only twice per day. Email can easily become an addiction, but it’s usually unnecessary to check it every 10 minutes. Make an effort and check your email only once or twice per day, see if the world will still rotate as before after you try this.
6. Eliminate unimportant tasks. Being busy all day does not mean you are doing important stuff. Eliminate every activity that’s not important, and focus on what really matters.
7. Clean off your desk and room. Having a clear room and desk is important to maintain focus and creativity.
8. Automate. There are a lot of tasks that you need to perform every day or every week. Try to automate them as much as possible.
9. Set strict deadlines. When you do something, decide in advance when you’re going to stop. There’s a rule that states that you will fulfill all the time you have available for completing a task, so make an habit of setting strict deadlines for maximizing your productivity.
10. Take one day off per week. Instead of working every day, take one day off per week (for example sunday) where you are not going to turn on your computer. Use that time for doing recreational activities like going for a walk.

Personal Development habits

1. Read 1 book per week. Reading is a good way to keep your brain active. With just 30 minutes per day you should be able to read one book per week, or more than 50 books per year.
2. Solve puzzles. Quizzes, word games, etc. are all good ways to exercise your brain.
3. Think positively. You are what you think, all the time.
4. Make fast decisions. Instead of thinking for one hour wherever you are going to do something, make your decisions as fast as possible (usually less than 1 minute).
5. Wait before buying. Waiting 48 hours before buying anything is a tremendous money saver, try it.
6. Meditate 30 minutes per day. A great way to gain clearness and peace is through meditation. 30 minutes are not a lot, but enough to get you started with meditation.

Career habits

1. Start a blog. Blogging is one of the best way to put your word out. It doesn’t have to be around a specific topic, even a personal blog will do.
2. Build a portfolio. If your job is creating stuff, building a portfolio is a great way to show what you are capable of. You can also contribute stuff for free if that applies to your work.

Now, looking at this list, it's pretty intimidating.  My plan for now is to try to do one thing from each category a week, building on the past weeks until I've started doing all of them.  For this week, I'm going to be working on numbers 1 and 10 from the "Health Habits" section, number 5 from the "Productivity Habits" section, number 1 from "Personal Development Habits", and number 1 from "Career Habits".  Over the weeks, I'm going to try to keep my progress on these things and keep moving through the list until I've conquered the whole list.

One of the things that is not on the list is drinking a cup of hot tea every day.  This is something else that I'm going to start doing.  My goal is to start each day with a nice hot cup of tea to wake up, but I know that's not going to happen right away.  So I'm not going to restrict myself to my one cup in the morning, it will just have to be at some point during the day.