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When I was younger, I used to run a lot. I was a pretty good citizen runner for years.

Sometimes while running I’d chat with other runners, I realized lots of them were getting ready for this or that race.

I ran in a few races but mostly I just liked running. The people who’d be training for a race usually wouldn’t continue running after the race day.

It’s the difference between having a goal and having a system, it’s the framing you use (or need) to approach something.

The cartoonist Scott Adams put it this way, “…goals are a reach-it-and-be-done situation, whereas a system is something you do on a regular basis with a reasonable expectation that doing so will get you to a better place in your life. Systems have no deadlines, and on any given day you probably can’t tell if they’re moving you in the right direction. My proposition is that if you study people who succeed, you will see that most of them follow systems, not goals…”

For example, If you want to be healthy and are interested in running, then planning to run the NYC marathon is a goal and being active everyday is a system. The difference in how you frame of what you do probably affects how long you’ll stick with it.

Here’s another framing option. Aren’t adults more likely to say, “I can’t”, rather than, “I haven’t learned that yet” (I can’t swim, I can’t cook, I can’t use a computer). That’s how I tend to frame things. Maybe it’s too uncomfortable for adults to be seen as trying something that they might fail at.

What about this? Changing “is” to “could be,” and looking for “an answer” rather than “the answer.” This lets you think in conditionals instead of absolutes.  Everyone likes to be right, but using these different ways to frame something might make your life easier.

Unnecessary stress comes from letting the perfect get in the way of the good enough. Striving for the likely unattainable “ideal” is OK, but at the same time realize that what you’re likely to achieve is the “good enough.”

Models are really skinny so they won’t be sexually attractive. Otherwise, they’d distract attention from a designer’s clothes.

Designers may not consciously be aware of it, but that’s how it seems to me. Here’s why.

Across cultures, whether status comes from being slim or big, the “hourglass” shape is the preferred sexually attractive form for women. If a model is hyper thin and sticklike she’s eliminating any focus on her and keeps the focus on the clothes she’s wearing.

When glancing at this woman on her way to the beach, you probably didn’t initially take in that she’s wearing a polka dot white bikini and an orange swimsuit cover-up.

Visual stimulation is key. We’re aroused by arousal. It’s complicated.

Here’s an example from one part of the sexual spectrum, heterosexual men. Most of the time, straight men watch porn featuring men and women. Men seem to be aroused by seeing another man on screen who’s aroused by the woman he’s with. Sort of, a non gay, penis appreciation. If this wasn’t the case then straight men would generally prefer to only watch lesbian porn, with no men in sight. It’s complicated, right? But the visual component wherever it falls on an attractiveness spectrum is always there.

Because skinny models remove sexual interest from the models and puts the focus on the outfit, designers fuel the market for skinnier models. That’s probably oversimplifying the situation, but I think it’s a big part of why models are really skinny.

My sister doesn’t travel far or often. She’s a middle-aged mom who feels like she needs to bring things like band-aids and extra hair ties, “just in case.”

When she recently traveled to visit us in Mexico for a week, I got her to travel with just one carry-on bag. It worked out fine. She didn’t need a band-aid or an extra hair tie, although we have ’em if needed.

She could move faster and easier with her big over-the -shoulder bag. She almost missed a connecting flight. She was the last person to board the plane. Running the concourse to get there, she wouldn’t have made it with a bigger wheelie bag.

Once she arrived she had everything she needed with her and didn’t miss the “just in case” stuff. And she had a great time.

Travel light to travel better.

Dr. McGuff is an ER doc. He’s seen lots of accident case and created a list of things to avoid   based on his years of observations in the ER. I’ve excerpted it here for you and as reminder to myself.

1. Drive the biggest vehicle you can afford. Your greatest risk of death comes from a motor vehicle accident. In a two car accident, the person in the larger car always fares better. Also, if your plans include a motorcycle or sports car, realize that you might avoid old age all together. It goes without saying to wear your seat belts.
2. Never get on a 4-wheeler ATV. These are the most dangerous vehicle that I know of. ATV’s have produced more quadraplegics than anything else I’ve seen.
3. Do not road cycle or jog on public roads/roadsides.
4. Do not fly a plane or helicopter unless you’re a full-time professional pilot. If you are a  well-to-do professional do not get a pilot’s license. Expertise in one area of life does not transfer to piloting.
5. If you are approaching a group of loud and apparently intoxicated males, cross to the other side of the street immediately. If anyone tries to start a fight with you, the first step should be to run away.
6. If your gas grill won’t start….walk away. Never throw gas (or other accelerant) on a fire.
7. Never dive into a pool or body of water until you’ve checked it out feet-first.                        8. Never get on a ladder to clean your gutters, or on your roof to hang Christmas lights. Do not cut down trees with a chainsaw. I’ve seen too many middle age men die from these activities. Generally, any house or lawn work that’s hired out is money well spent.
9. If you are retirement age and plan on moving to a new home…think twice. The stress pushes many seniors over the edge. If you do, buy an existing house. Many retirees have died of heart attacks from the stress of custom-building their retirement dream home.
10. If anyone tries to force you into your car or car trunk at gun point, don’t cooperate. Fight and scream all you can even if you risk getting shot. If you get in the car, you will most likely die (or worse).
11. If you are in any personal or professional relationship that exhausts you or otherwise causes your recurrent distress, then end the relationship immediately.
12. Don’t play the lottery…you might win. Lottery winners and Sports/Movie stars share a common bond of disproportionate rates of depression, addiction, and suicide.

People generally want to lose weight along with getting fitter. What they really want is to change their shape.

In my experience, they often gain a bit of weight as they build muscle mass. And they generally hang on to some of their stubborn belly fat. My advice is that they need to alter what they eat, mainly cutting way back on sweets and processed foods. That’s what works.

Here’re some highlights from a recent NYT article covering recent research indicating that exercise is less effective than diet if you just want to loss weight.

Unfortunately, exercising seems to excite us much more than eating less does.

… exercise improves outcomes in many domains. But that huge upside doesn’t seem to necessarily apply to weight loss… the added weight-loss benefit from activity was small.

Far too many people complain that there’s just no time to cook or prepare a healthful, home-cooked meal. If they’d spend just half the time they do exercising trying to make a difference in the kitchen, they’d most likely see much better results.

I also don’t mean to make it seem that weight loss with diet is easy and exercise is hard. They’re both hard. The challenge of a slowing metabolism, and the desire to eat more, occurs in both exercise and diet change, although dietary change still works better than exercise.

So if you’re keen to lose weight focus more on how you eat more than what you do for exercise.

Artists usually acknowledge borrowing or even stealing ideas. It sounds better to say “imitation is the highest form of flattery.” Who had the original idea? It’s hard to know because we’ve been “flattering” each other forever.

Maybe there are just very few new ideas. Is it important that an idea’s current iteration came without an awareness of an earlier form or it’s just a recasting of an earlier idea,if the impact or relevance is still there? An attribution is mainly of interest to academically minded folk or someone impressed by the fame of the originator.

Here’s what got me thinking about this. These are some quotes I noticed in my clippings file, a file of ideas I like and jotted down. I noticed they share a common thread about what works in life.

Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. – Aristotle d. 322 BC

Be as you wish to seem. – Socrates d. 399 BC

Make your fighting stance your everyday stance. –  14th Century Japanese martial artist

Celebrate what you want to see more of. – Tom Peters

Excellence gets rewarded. – unknown

How aware would a 14th century Japanese martial artist have been about a Greek philosopher’s ideas from more than a thousand years before? And who, if anyone, was on the radar of Aristotle during his time? Socrates probably knew Aristotle’s work.

Is it borrowing, stealing, flattering, or just hard won knowledge? Hard to know.

Some scientists may think about the world as a dynamic mess of jiggling atoms, but for most people the world is made up of stories.

While you’re waiting for something to load from the internet, there’s usually one of two things you’ll see while you wait.

Sometimes there’s a continuous ticker showing the ever increasing percentage as the page loads.

Ay other times while waiting for a page to load on your computer, you’re sometimes told a little story as the time passes. That story is told with little phrases like “we’re preparing,” “it’s loading,” “we’re working on it,” and “we’re almost done,” after which the page opens for you.

Which one do you prefer? I prefer the little story about what’s happening, probably because people relate to stories.

Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. But what about time wasted doing something you don’t enjoy, like trying to figure out a software problem? You have to waste a certain amount of time when something isn’t working on your computer and you don’t know exactly how to go about fixing it.

Last week there was a glitch in the blogging platform I use. The body of writing and the toolbar would not appear. It was there but wouldn’t show. By the end of the week I got it straightened out. Episodes like that help me appreciate how well most of the systems work most of the time.

For almost every photo, I prefer color over black and white.

Now that most people take pictures digitally it’s easy to convert them to black and white, but I rarely see any improvement after the conversion. I guess I prefer seeing photos represent the world more closely to the way I actually see the world.

This is especially true for images from the older past. In black and white, older times seem more different than they were. Black and white is harder to relate to, even beyond the fashions and other cues of the time, because seeing the color makes the scene at that time easier to imagine yourself in.

Here’s an example, seven minutes of color film in Berlin in 1945, just after WWII ended.

It doesn’t seem that long ago while as you watch it. Most of the buildings are damaged, everyone is slim, and there aren’t many trees, but people seem to be going about their lives – walking, riding bikes around, or taking a trolley. Some people are smiling while others are shy.

The color in this footage isn’t oversaturated like it can be in older films. So the feel transports you. In black and white the same footage would feel very old and difficult to image yourself in.

Color rules.