Did you know that exercising can make you a happier person? Well it certainly has in my case. See, at the beginning of the year I made some crazy resolutions; this was called my “Personal Improvement Project.” I started working out a few times a week (the goal was 3 times) and then in the summer I joined a big athletic club down the street (rated one of the best in Colorado) and now visit it usually 4 or 5 times a week.

Let me back up. Potential-Nobel-Prize-Winner Scott Adams has come up with a pretty accurate description of happiness:

Sometimes you think you

I haven’t had time to check out the new hit show, Heroes, on NBC but I hear it’s pretty good. It’s a show about ordinary citizens that realize they have supernatural powers. Wow. Of course its a hit, X-Men was, too. Seriously, the Heroes blog doesn’t seem to appreciate people making the connection. If you ask me, the premise is identical. The reason people seem to enjoy this show a bit more is the overwhelming amounts of drama and lack of goofy superhero costumes. At least, that’s my guess.

I’d also venture to say people enjoy a show like this because it allows us to escape. We think “wow that’d be neat if I had some sort of power.” Why? Is there a reason we need an advantage over others? Do some of us feel cheated and need something that others don’t have? I wonder…

Instead of fantasizing over individuals with unrealistic powers why don’t we have shows highlighting amazing people who are the same as you and I? Would that make us feel insignificant? Are we incapable of doing great things and don’t want to be reminded of it? I wonder…

Personally, I don’t have these issues because I know I have a power. I destroy light bulbs. In the last 24 hours I’ve broken two light bulbs. Two lamps on my desk burnt out. I thought it was odd so I tried a bulb in another lamp. I underestimated my own strength and broke the bulb in my hand. The next morning I went to the garage and that light burnt out, too. Perhaps it’s not a superpower, perhaps I’m just so strong and scary the bulbs tremble when I’m about.

I guess I like to fantasize too…

As you should have realized by now, today we (well, most of us) celebrated the wonderful thing called Daylight Saving Time. In short, we gained an extra hour today. I woke up at 11am which was really 10am. I used my extra hour to sleep today.

But what about you? What are your plans for this extra hour? Spend it wisely, we only get this opportunity once a year. Today I took that extra hour and slept in. I’ve been extremely busy this week and didn’t get as many naps as I would’ve like (biphasic sleep*). I probably should have spent my hour working on something productive. I have a big accounting test this week. Oh well.

What if we had an extra hour every day? How would you spend your time? I’d probably use that hour to read a book. No matter how I try I have a hard time fitting time in to just sit down and read. It’s given me an idea for a company, more on that later.

Now what if we had an hour less each day? What would suffer? Would you sleep less? Maybe go to the gym less? I have no idea what I’d do. I already feel like my days are overbooked. I’m sure the same would hold true if we had 30 hours in a day. Like some fish, I feel we adapt to the size of our environment. If we had less time, we’d do less. This is why, although our lives are “more efficient” we seem busier than ever. We keep pushing and striving for more (craziness) in our lives.

Happy Daylight Savings.

* Someone made a biphasic sleep entry on Wikipedia based on my FAQ. For more information on how biphasic sleep affects my life feel free to search my archives.

While lots of people are changing a few lines of CSS I got up at 5:45am this morning to ‘Go Pink’ and help out. Denver hosts the largest Race for the Cure in the nation and I lent a hand this morning.

This morning I was volunteering at the finish line handing out snacks to over 65,000 participants. It was intense, to say the least. Plus, I got to work with some neat Boy/Girl Scouts.

Overall, it was fun. If you don’t volunteer you should. Really.

‘Nuff said.

This article may be misleading, when I talk about two-oh I don’t mean (Web) 2.0, I mean twenty, my age as of today. It’s a nice round number but that’s about all this birthday has going for it. Honestly, I can see why people stop looking forward to their birthdays as life goes on.

Twenty is a tease

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What do you do all day? That’s the question Noah asked and answered. I thought it might be fun to jot my schedule down and reflect.

So that’s it in a nutshell. Lots of my day is spent at work (intern, big telcom company). A few days a week I’ll also work at Six Flags at night… so 6:30-1:30 is spent at work. Long days for sure. Obviously my life isn’t as exciting as Noah’s, perhaps some day the world will overemploy me. For the time being, I’ll make some money with my internship (and 4 other jobs), go to class, and work on things online.

Now, if I had the perfect schedule it’d look more like:

Maybe I need to start finding something I’m good at so I can do consulting! ;-)

I looked at my website today and thought to myself: “Dude (that’s what I refer to myself as), you haven’t touched your blog in quite some time!” I quickly retorted, “Well, so? I drew a comic yesterday!”

I quickly decided that my level of achievement was acceptable. I also decided that the more balls I juggle, the more I’ll tend drop. When I become very busy (as mentioned previously) I get burnt out. In fact, we all do. I’m sure Noah can agree, he’s been the busiest guy I know. That’s okay though, he and I managed to record two podcasts this week!

So when Friday afternoon rolls around, I can tend to get a bit lazy. Saturday morning? Even lazier. Sunday? Well, let’s just say I woke up around lunchtime today. That’s not something I do very often given the fact that I worked 63 hours this week.

Do you ever feel the same kind of lazy? You know what I’m talking about, you had three finals in one afternoon or you just finished the biggest project of the quarter? At this point you just stop altogether, right? Good. We all need to master the art of lazy.

If I were to keep doing what I do I’d easily go insane. I looked at this weekend as so many empty days that I could fill with “productive tasks.” Here we are on Sunday and, put simply, screw that! Today I woke up, ate some Chipotle, checked email and then played tennis/worked out for three hours. That seemed like the truly “productive” way to spend today.

When you become stressed and keep subjecting yourself to that stress you start to hurt yourself. If I were to keep working on side projects this weekend I’d do more harm than good! Not only does stress start to cause problems with brain development (there was a new study I saw the other day, I should bookmark these things) but it causes so much agitation and friction in your life. You even start to affect all of those around you… don’t act like it doesn’t. I’m the first to admit my patience will wear thin; I’ve snapped at friends a few times. I’ve been snapped at too, I understand the reasoning!

So, my only advice is to take this 4th of July (Americans only, the rest of the world can remain stressed this week) to relax, forget about everything and just have some time away from it all. Think of how “simple” life was on the first Independence Day celebration… take away a bit of the complexities and just enjoy it.

Bonus: A quote from Scott Adams: The thing to remember about freedom is that it