Motivation

Like most people, I find it hard to stay motivated to exercise all the time. When a friend of mine worked close by, I had no problem meeting her daily for a quick run… rain or shine. But when she changed jobs, the struggle to stay motivated resurfaced again.

After some trial and error, I found three things that helped me the most:

1. Setting a specific time to run. Just as I did when running with my friend, I set a specific time each day that was dedicated to my workout. I noticed that if I didn’t do that, it was too easy to come up with a million and one projects that were more important to do first and all of the sudden the day had passed. Scheduling my workout in advance, preferably at the same time each day, has made a huge difference.


2. Adding books on tape to my ipod. Listening to music is great, and some songs get me going the minute I hear them. But after about a week of running, I noticed I would just tune out the music and get really bored on my run. Listening to a book on tape or an interview with an interesting person made a huge difference. It almost felt like chatting with a friend and, before I noticed, I had completed my full workout.


3. Nike+ gadget. This is that little sensor you can put inside your Nike shoes or simply attach to the laces on any kind of a shoe. While you run or walk, the sensor communicates with your ipod nano or itouch letting you know how far you’ve run, how fast you’re going and how much further you have to go to complete your goal. You can also set up a power song that, with a press of a button, can come on right when you need to conquer that hill. At the end of a workout you may hear Lance Armstrong congratulate you on completing your fastest mile or longest workout.
   
   But the real advantages of using the Nike+ system, at least for me, are the features that you have available to you when you sync up your ipod with your computer. They include:

• Keeping track of all your workouts


• Setting up goals for yourself


• Creating challenges – for yourself or joining other teams and contributing the miles you ran or walked to an overall team goal


• Creating a cartoon version of yourself (perfect opportunity to try out that pink hair color you’ve been thinking about) that can then become your screen saver and praise you when you workout or scold you (gently) when you don’t.


• Adding any of the above feature to your Facebook or MySpace page so that your friends can cheer you on – and maybe even get inspired to work out themselves.

Given a choice, I still prefer to have a friend at my side when I run. But with this little gadget, her and I can still share our workouts and keep each other motivated – even if it is in cyberspace.

Modern Gadgets and Ancient Medicine

I thought it would be appropriate to talk about technology in this first blog. Here I am practicing what is a 2,000+ year old medicine yet I believe that some modern technology is responsible for making me a better physician. Some of it is obvious – like the internet, of course. How did anyone live without it? What about something much, much smaller? Take for instance a pocket-sized keyboard, which opens up to laptop size, and allows you to type notes straight to your smart mobile phone – no laptop or outlet required. If you’re wondering how this gadget can possibly contribute to a better treatment for my patients, consider the following.

Each medical professional, myself included, relies on and is required to complete continuing education classes in their field. It is in these seminars that we learn from some of the best people in our respective fields. For me, it’s following the work of Kiiko Matsumoto by attending weekend seminars. Each seminar is about two days long and usually held in a classroom or a conference room.

The information we learn in these classes is advanced and cutting edge. The rooms we are in are not. On average the class size is anywhere from 25-100 people while the number of electrical outlet plugs is 2! Now imagine 25 people trying to use the same plug to keep their computer alive for 8 hours, two days in a row. Knowing this situation, most will opt for the old fashion pen and paper. But in my experience the notes you take the old fashion way often end up collecting dust somewhere in a box. Mine were always illegible, messy, and incomplete.

With the help of this relatively inexpensive gadget you can type on a full size keyboard that operates on a couple of AAA batteries. The battery life of BlackBerry or Palm far exceeds that of my laptop so I can sit anywhere in the classroom, type quickly, almost to a point of transcribing, and then with a quick sync to my own computer, have the notes available to me with a click of a mouse.

When researching patient cases I can find treatment ideas with a simple click of “Ctrl F” and immediately have access to several weekend lectures at once. No paper cuts. Having done this for several years now, I continue to be constantly amazed at treatment ideas that are in my notes that I simply did not remember from class.

So, as this weekend and Kiiko Matsumoto’s latest class approaches, I’m packing fresh AAA batteries and my little techno gadget and looking forward to learning about the ancient medicine that, with a little help from technology, will make my patients feel much better.