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The Energy Plan

This book on eating smart was recommended to me by my wonderful physio Laura Jamieson. 

The author James Collins has worked with elite sports people to help them to learn how to get the right nutrition to feel their best all the time. I like the way The Energy Plan is explained as a lifestyle rather than a diet. Like many people, I have tried a great number of diets with varying degrees of success. But I’ve found that feeling and looking good isn’t about being on a diet. It’s about planning, learning and being realistic about what works for you. 

James talks about planning your intake around your activity, which really makes a lot of sense. But this does call into question some of our eating habits - for instance why have your largest meal of the day in the evening, when you are only going to sit on the sofa and watch telly for a couple of hours and then go to bed. I’ve found this a challenging habit to change, not least because my other half likes to have his main meal in the evening. Some tweaks I’ve introduced, that do help to reduce the density of dinner, are reducing the starchy carbs, increasing colourful vegetables and focusing on healthy proteins. The biggest learning has been that office workers like me, with only a moderate level of physical activity, really do not need to eat as many carbs as we do. In fact as I tend to do my workouts before breakfast, I should really focus on having a decent level of protein, healthy fats and nutrient rich fruits for brekkie to help repair my body after exercise. 

This book has really made me think about what I consume and when. The hard part of this is actually doing something about it on an ongoing basis!

#jamescollins #nutrition #health

[joosiloosi-blog1]

The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Glad I finally got round to reading Jane Jacobs’ seminal work on the state of American cities and the general downsides to urban renewal.

This book is from 1961, and to some extent the urban milieu back then seems pretty different from the cities we know today. But then again Jane’s point in writing the book was about preserving variety in terms of mixed uses, and what we see in most cities today is the result of that not happening. So many cities are carbon copies of one another - the same shopping centres with the same shops, industrial units banished to the outskirts, older properties demolished and new, bland apartments built in their place....you know the places I mean! Certainly back then many of the shops and services Jane was talking about seem very different from those we have now. There were generally more specialist stores, small theatres / venues and bars mingled in with housing and small industrial premises. Although the move to large out of town supermarkets was already well underway in the early 60s.

One of the most depressing parts of the book to me was about the dominance of road traffic dictating how cities are designed and how they work. This really did come to fruition. In fact don’t you think that now we see the priority of cars in cities as normal? One of the really thought provoking elements of the book was how dogmatic and inflexible our planning bodies are. Jane was saying that it totally doesn’t need to be like this - we should encourage diversity and new thinking. I know we need guidelines, and to some extent enforcement, to try to keep balance and consensus in how development happens. But we do seem to live in a ‘computer says no’ world. I expect I’m not the only person who just assumes this is how it needs to be. It doesn’t does it?!

In summary I really enjoyed this book - it’s a mixture of history, sociology, urban geography and even philosophical thought. It’s as relevant for the UK and anywhere else as it is for the USA. Well worth a read if you are interested in urban environments.

#JaneJacobs #urban #planning

[joosiloosi-blog1]

Off The Clock

Just finished this book, which is about how to feel less busy whilst getting more done. The main crux of the piece by Laura Vanderkam is about focusing on where you can get value out of the 24 hours available each day. The author keeps a log for every half hour of every day, which sounds a bit full on to me! I did really like one of the main tenets of the book which is that you need to figure out what your purpose is, and focus on activities that will help you to meet it. When you really focus on what you spend your time on, it’s enlightening and liberating to be determined about eliminating activities that don’t give you joy, and sometimes take joy away from you. For me those joy thieves are things like commuting to the office when I don’t need to be there (it’s a 4 hour round trip) and procrastinating (I can put things off for months and worry about them all that time). 

Some of the other key takeaways for me are the importance of making life memorable - creating events that stand out in your mental log, rather than just letting time pass or always doing the same things. Also powerful is giving yourself permission to linger, dawdle, ponder and mull. I love this - give yourself permission to get immersed in activities that you enjoy and that allow you to enter a flow state. It’s so common these days to think that you have to rush through activities and be doing several things at once, but surely that hinders your true enjoyment of them?

Finally Laura’s quote that ‘people are a good use of time’ made me realise I need to invest more in time with my friends and family. This could be a great opportunity to create some of those memorable experiences together.

I enjoyed this book. It’s written in an accessible, conversational style and is illustrated with lots of practical examples. It has also made me write my first book review on here, which was the main reason I joined Tumblr about a year ago!! 

I find many books that I read also lead me onto other books. The recommendation from this one was to read something by Gretchen Rubin, so I have reserved The Four Tendencies and Better Than Before through Hampshire Libraries. More on those to come!

#laura vanderkam

#life lessons

#time management

[joosiloosi-blog1]

Blended Learning and Me

I’m in Week 1 of Blended Learning Essentials. My first aha moment has been to realise just how much blended learning I already have experience of. I’ve worked in IT for over 20 years, so it should have been obvious to me how pervasive technology has become in our learning experiences over the last few years. Some recent BL examples from my learning journey are prework and post-course discussion in our Microsoft Teams collaboration platform, an online MOOC I am taking in Coaching Habits, various online courses to certify in required skills for my job at Microsoft and an excellent Business Acumen course in took on LinkedIn. One of the things I really love about this type of learning is that you can go at your own pace, which is difficult to achieve in traditional classroom based, teacher led learning