Jamie Fellrath | Practical Mindfulness

"SET SOME GOALS!" The advice that we frequently see (and rightly so) to create a path to success, is to "set some goals and work toward them."  Totally awesome advice, no doubt about it.  But... there's a further problem.  What's the best way to create goals?   The acronym S.M.A.R.T. , frequently attributed to Peter Drucker and his management by objectives concept, is a great place to start with creating goals.  The five attributes of this acronym are:   Specific - nebulous goals like "I want to get my finances under control" are going to be less effective than "I will reduce my credit card debt by $2000 by March 1."   Measurable - the goals need to be something that can be defined specifically.  Saying "I want to lose weight" is not measurable, but saying "I want to be 180 pounds by Sept. 3" is.   Attainable - the goal must be something you can see yourself doing.  "I want to run a marathon" ...

I'm just starting day three of my standing desk experiment and so far I really like it - though a couple of challenges are showing up. As you may recall, I pulled one of my cubicle cupboards off the wall a couple days ago and am using it as a standing desk platform.  It's wide, deep enough, and more than sturdy enough for the limited use I put it through up there.  Also, I keep all that storage.  So win-win-win.  I'm fortunate that it's at exactly the right height for my purpose.   So here's how it's developed over the past couple of days.  My monitors are set apart about 16 inches and that's nice because it gets my neck moving back and forth more.  I was having some issues with my neck/back between my shoulder blades being tight and causing me headaches, and that has gone away.  I think that having my attention locked onto one place all day was not helping there, and setting them apart more has made me move it more.  Granted, I ten...

It's been in the news a lot over the past couple years: how sitting is one of the worst things we can do for our bodies.  And it's not just because of the inactivity factor, the actual sitting position is not one that our bodies have evolved to take up. "What?" you say.  "We've been sitting forever! We sat around the campfire, around the kill, to do our work, etc.  It's totally natural!" Well, no it's not.   In fact, it's probably killing us .  Those activities mentioned above are actually done in a squatting position, as I've talked about in past posts . I've wanted to do the standing desk thing for a while, and more of late as I've gotten antsy about sitting all the time at work, feeling more stiffness in my joints and back, and just really feeling the effects of all the sitting.  I'm an active guy, but sitting undoes so much of that exercise I get. It's very interesting.  I've found that I can wake up in the ...