Hello all!

Take a sledgehammer and wrap an old sweater around it. This is your "shovelglove." Every week day morning, set a timer for 14 minutes. Use the shovelglove to perform shoveling, butter churning, and wood chopping motions until the timer goes off. Stop. Rest on weekends and holidays. Baffled? Intrigued? Charmed? Discuss here.
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kai
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Hello all!

Post by kai » Sat May 28, 2005 8:49 pm

I haven't been keeping up with the mailing list digests (33 unread!), so I'm a little late to the game here. It's about time we got a message board! This is way more convenient. Thanks Reinhard! :D

I've been bad. Life got really busy and I stopped shugging completely. :cry: I was doing so well too! Something like six months, 5 days a week without fail.

I got a pull up bar too, which was a humbling experience. :lol:

- Kai

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reinhard
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Post by reinhard » Sun May 29, 2005 9:45 am

Welcome to the new board, Kai. I think you'll find it's easier to stay on top of than the yahoo group digests.

Six months of 5x a week shows serious discipline, but obviously the end goal is not a show of discipline, but a lifelong habit. I'm happy to hear you're giving it another shot. These things can take a few attempts to get down right, and that was an impressive attempt. Is there anything specific that occurs to you that you might do differently this time around to stick with it? Try to learn from the experience.

I've found that making it completely non-optional, the one thing I absolutely have to do every day has been enormously helpful. Excuses are tolerated for skipping anything else before shovelglove. What if there's an emergency, something genuinely far more important? I think hard: will 14 minutes really prevent me from dealing with this emergency? Won't the physical and mental satisfaction of having shovelgloved better prepared me to meet this challenge, in fact? The answers are usually an obvious, "no, yes." Just posing the question pretty much guarantees them.

If you think it's optional, you'll be more inclined to ignore the alarm clock and sleep late. If you skip it one day to get to work on time, you'll probably skip it again, and again, and again. If you bite the bullet, do your routine, and come a few minutes later to work or class one day, it's like the crack of the whip over your animal habit, you'll take the alarm clock more seriously the next day, and most likely become a better shugger *and* a more punctual worker. At least, this has been my experience, don't sue me if you get fired!

The "no make up" rule helps with this. I have, on rare occasions, traded s days for the purpose of diet. But never that I can remember for shovelglove. The knowledge that I have only one chance to do each day right is a hugely powerful motivator, much more valuable than the (very) occasional un-made-up loss of a day that this policy entails.

Not sure if this speaks to your particular problem, just wanted to get the juices flowing...

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