I just finished watching Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead on Netflix. It’s a documentary about a guy who decides to reboot his life by going on a juice only fast for 60 days. He lost weight and everything you would expect from such a drastic change in lifestyle. He was energized, didn’t rely on his medication, and had a better outlook on life.

After many years of overworking and not paying attention to my diet, I think age has finally caught up. Today, I struggled to remember words, concepts, and experiences as I was responding to an email. Just a few years back, I would be able to do that while tweeting, listening to music, watching a movie, and drinking a soda.

For me, I’m naturally a small build. I can eat massive amounts of food and not gain significant weight. Instead, it all affects my mood and arteries. So, starting today, and my defacto New Year’s resolution, I will be going on a hybrid juice diet. I’m not going to give up eating all meals, but will replace at least 50 – 75% of my meals with juice.

Using data to analyze my progress

As a technologist, I love tech toys. In the health world, there is a lot of tech to monitor virtually everything. The advantage of doing so is the amount of data I can collect over time versus my periodic checkup at the doctor’s office.

I’m currently using:

1. a Fitbit to track activity level (flights of stairs, steps taken) and sleep quality (number of times awoken at night). The app also has a form to manually track body measurements.
2. DNA sequencing from 23andme. This is a little creepy but I sent in a saliva sample a while ago and they sequence part of the DNA and correlate it to survey data from participants.

I would like to track:

1. Weight – I would like to try the Withings wifi body scale. It tracks weight, fat mass, and BMI and transmits it via wifi.
2. Blood pressure – Withings also has a blood pressure monitor that could hook up to my iPhone.

As an analyst, I spend my days working with data, defining business requirements, calculating, pivot tables, graphs, and analytical work. With an underdeveloped right brain, I set out to figure ways to integrate my creative artistic abilities into my analytical work. It started out with a discussion with a friend over coffee about how she’s using her right brain and I’m using my left. We concluded that I should figure a creative outlet. With that, I went to Target and bought a classic Crayola 64 crayon box. It has yet to be used.

As a management consultant, I’m called upon to explain complex topics to executives and directors and to communicate results to the lay reader. My organic chemistry notes in undergrad were all pictures. I used a lot of picture to illustrate some convoluted concepts.

After stumbling upon a few websites through my regular blogs, I came across VizThink, a visual thinking community blog. After a few hours, I read all their posts and dug through each one.

• Dan Roam’s Back of the Napkin
• Dave Gray and Sunni Brown’s Gamestorming
• David Sibbet’s Visual Meetings
• Nancy Duarte’s Slide:ology and Resonate

I also ran out and bought things to help me practice my new skillset:

• Sketchbook Pro for Mac and iPad
• Wacom bamboo tablet
• Two whiteboard and two acrylic boards
• A lot of butcher paper and many sharpies

At first, my work products were terrible. My handwriting was awful and my drawings were terrible. But with all things, it just takes practice, practice, and more practice.

I’m not there yet. I’m still honing these skills.

In June, I’ll be attending Edward Tufte’s course on Presenting Data and Information. I hope to have him sign my iPad.

In September, I’m taking a course through The Grove International on Principles of Graphic Facilitation and Workplace Applications.

Are you a visual thinker or graphic facilitator? How did you get started? Who inspired yet?

Have you learned something completely outside of your field and applied it? How did you do it?

There’s many studies out there on the difference between writing notes and typing notes. I’ve done both, primarily handwriting during my K-16 years, and typing in my graduate studies years. Anecdotally, I can say that I comprehended and remembered more when I wrote my notes by hand. My handwriting will never be able to capture notes verbatim as my typing can but I find that I remember more when I write.

Lifehacker wrote a great piece that includes links to several studies on why you learn more effectively by writing than typing.

As a personal experiment, I’ve been migrating toward using ink and graphite as an alternative to these nice keys on my Mac Book Air. Conceptually, it makes sense. Writing a “p” or a “d” is significantly different than pressing those keys. The peak of my comprehension and memory from notes came from my chemistry class in undergrad. My notes were full of doodles and imagery. They weren’t verbatim recordings of the professor’s verbal speak. They were synthesized thoughts that summarized the concepts and ideas of the lecture.

To commit to this, I signed The Doodle Revolution manifesto by Sunni Brown.

The path to personal wealth follows a simple equation:

Wealth (Income) = Revenues – Expenses

There’s only two ways to change this equation. First, increase your revenues or sources of income. Second, reduce your expenses. If you live above your means, you are in debt. If you live below your means, you have savings. Living below your means over time will equate to savings.

There are many ways to increase your revenues.

1. Increase your pay – Whether you are an employee, business owner, or freelancer, you must find ways to get paid more. Working at McDonalds does not a wealthy man make. This can be accomplished either through putting in your dues and climbing up the ladder or investing in yourself through education/training and making yourself more valuable in the marketplace.
2. Invest your income – Your pay alone is guaranteed to be what you expect it to be. Investing it in the stock market, bonds, or other investments creates opportunities for your money to work on your behalf. Retirement accounts can be used to reduce the effect of taxes.
3. Create cash generating sources – Your primary income through a job is your first source of income. Other activities can generate additional streams of cash. For example, rental income, writing a book and creating sales, creating a side business that generates cash.

There are also many ways to reduce your expenses.

1. Spend only what you need – Reduce the money you spend on things you don’t need. Be frugal. Watch your subscriptions and automatic expenses, they easily add up. Cut your cable. Eat at home more often. Do less costly activities.
2. Reduce your debts – Interest expenses are money out of your pocket for no purpose. If you had to go to debt to purchase something, you shouldn’t have in the first place. Pay off your debts with vigor.
3. Change your lifestyle - You’ll be surprised how little someone can live on. In fact, most people live on very little. They won’t have luxurious vacations. They don’t eat out. They won’t go to bars. They live very frugal because they must.

Also, save an emergency fund, no matter how small. When you have little, any of life’s misfortunes can quickly bury you back in the hole again.

Eliminate debt with passion. Debt is the shackle and chains of the modern era (and the past as well). Debts in all forms, mortgage, credit card, student loans, hold you back from your dreams. Listen to yourself. Debt locks you into your job, whether you like it or not. Debt keeps you from moving to a new location. Ask anyone that’s underwater in their mortgage. Debt keeps you poor while the rich only get richer.

Build a huge pile of cash. Many will tell you that money that’s not working is wasted money. However, Mark Cuban disagrees. Money that’s fully invested in the stock market will follow the waves of the market, controlled by large institutional investors. Money dumped into an overpriced home can easily tumble as many have unfortunately learned. Money that’s available can be dispatched to buy your dream home at the bottom of the housing market. Money that’s available can be used to buy investments at the bottom of the stock market. These once in a decade events rarely occur but windfall comes to those who have patience and the cash waiting at their side.

Finally, my best advice to anyone is to not follow the advice of anyone. No one cares more about your money than you. Hold it tight. Stop wasting your money buying advice. It’s free, whether online, through this post, or at the local public library.

This is a beautiful video made by Tanya Davis on how to be alone. I personally have a fear of watching a movie at the theater alone or eat along at a restaurant. The first I haven’t done yet but the latter I have.

With the availability of mobile technology such as smart phones and wifi hotspots, we’re always connected. The moments of downtime that our brains used to process thoughts are now filled with mindless filling of games, apps, blog, and messaging. By filling in all these moments in the day, we are doing the equivalent of not “sleeping.” Some of the free moments include (what other moments are there?):

• Waiting in line
• Sitting in traffic
• Waiting for food at a restaurant
• Drinking coffee
• Eating breakfast/lunch/dinner

In fact, this same mentality is brought into the workplace. We force our employees to “work” by doing something rather than letting free space and free time inspire innovation, creativity, and ultimate increase productivity. This backwards mentality creates overworked employees who don’t have the “bandwidth” to do anything other than the mindless tasks in front of them. If we create a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being a doing job to 10 being a creating job, as we go up the scale, employees require more free time to develop and process.

Happy 1/11/11 @ 11:11 AM

I like to be mobile. The idea of a fixed office desk with tacked on photos and personalized crap is not appealing to me. My goal is to have my entire office packed up in one bag. Where possible, tools should be multipurpose.

Alkr bag – This bag is designed for Apple products.

• MacBook Air – amazing for lightweight travel.
• iPad – I prefer to read webpages and books on my iPad.
• iPhone – with MyFi for those times without wifi.
• Solar Joos Orange – to charge my iPhone/iPad. This will be useful when I’m away from a power plug.
• Square – to accept credit card payments.
• Pilot Pen – great for jotting down notes.
• Moleskine – my go to notebook for doodling.
• Belkin Power – extremely useful at coffee shops with limited power plugs. It has three plugs and two usb power ports.
• Flip Mino – just in case I need to make some video.

I also keep a mixed bag of cables and miscellaneous office supplies.

Here’s my wishlist for additional tools:

• Portable scanner
• Pico projector
• Mifi dedicated internet
• Memory card reader

No explanation needed. Go to informationisbeautiful.net for more great infographics.

Photo by Anthony AlbrightIn our digital word, it’s possible to never pick up a pen or pencil and write something. In fact, I recently found out that my handwriting is all but gone. Typing has replaced the typical letter writing. Even my hand markings are now digital with my tablet. One of my 2011 new year resolution is to go back to analog to be better at the digital world.

Typewriter – I bought a couple Remington Travel-riter mechanical typewriters. These are old typewriters that don’t plug in. There’s no backspace, spell check, or formatting. As a result, it requires focus, attention, and care when crafting a document.

Handwriting – I’m going back old school and working on my “font.” What we learned in elementary school actually applies as an adult. First, write big letters to work out the stroke. Then, start reducing the size until its an adult size.

Calligraphy – Part of my Zen training classes include Japanese calligraphy techniques. I’ll continue to use this to improve my handwriting and also be able to make more ornate text as well.

Sketching – I will be taking visual meeting and graphical recording courses to learn to be a visual facilitator. In an all digital world, all these default stencils and shapes all start to look alike. I’m finding that analog can come a long way.

Photo by Richard ParmiterIf things slow down for you during the holidays, take a moment to change your passwords and enhance your security. Lifehacker posted a great list of tutorials. Their latest breach in security left a lot of usernames and passwords vulnerable. Make sure to use different logins for your financial accounts vs. a social networking account.

Enhance Your Security This Weekend via {Lifehacker}