General

German Volume Training and Initial Diet

Posted by abraham.williams@gmail.com on in General
When I started GVT, I started with a 2400 calorie diet plan with 30% protein, 40% carbohydrate, and 30% fat. My weight went up and my body fat stayed about the same as measured by the Withings scale.  A note on using any scale that measures body fat by conductivity…anything that’s not conductive is counted as body fat. So, one has to measure with consistency prior to consuming food and after excreting.

It seemed that things were progressing in the right direction. However, working at a startup requires brain power over time, consistently. With this mix, I would crash at about 2pm. It took me a few days to recognize I was under eating. As a result, I moved my calories up to 3000. Unfortunately, my body fat percentage went up. So I backed down to 2700. I was still massively sleepy so I changed the ratio to 30% protein, 30% carbohydrate and 40% fat. This looks like it’s working since body fat is stabilizing and I can work without crashing around 2 pm.

No more toil

Posted by abraham.williams@gmail.com on in General

Past

If you take a look at the previous posts on this blog, they have been all over the place. That’s largely because I have been all over the place. While I continually focus on making my family and work happen, my dreams have been like the weather…seasonal with occasional swings up and down in temperature and moisture. 

When you aren’t clear on what you want, anything looks good. The ideas and whims of others can stir you like soup in a pot. Even worse, when you are just focused on getting things done and checking off your todo list, you can lose sight of of the big things that need doing. I would even procrastinate by doing the small things instead of the big things. This is toil. I’m glad to know this now, and I’m done with it.

Present

I’m not toiling anymore. My key things get 50% or more of my attention. Other non-critical items are declined or relegated to the “another time” category.

Future

I’m intend to flourish. One can get lucky and just have things happen, but I’m for directing as much of my life as possible. I want my kids to see me go for life instead of toiling. 
Going forward, I’m…
  1. cultivating the sparks I see in my girls into explorations
  2. helping my wife recover from breast cancer and working to eliminate her chronic stress to what ever level I can
  3. taking some great experiential vacations
  4. putting on muscle for the foreseeable future
  5. getting off the employee track
  6. and adding more income generating assets
This definitely takes work. However, I’ve found each of them so far to be rewarding and re-enforcing. 

Reconfiguring bad mental associations on just about anything?

Posted by abraham.williams@gmail.com on in General 6 Comments
I’m always digging into my psychology. Specifically, how I can continue to have new experiences and growth…mentally, physically and materially, and keep out of negative self-doubt cycles. When I say materially, I mean strong wealth for security in advanced age and not mansions, boats or range rovers. There are some situations that I’ve learned what I can from about what I need to change yet they repeat in my mind and waste my time before I catch them.

A trick I have just discovered is to revisit a previous bad experience and reimagine it as a cartoon or some kind of humorous event. For example, if the experience was with a person who put you down or rejected you, imagine the person as a walking turd with all the physical properties of a turd. Or imagine the person with huge ears twice as big as their head. It might sound nuts, but my mental effect of the situation changed when I did this. Maybe it wont’ last, I’m not sure yet.

However, I have tried applying it to current difficult situations and it just makes me laugh inside. Maybe it’s weird, but I like it. I’m going to play with it. Weird is also more fun than constant seriousness which I bet raises my cortisol levels and shortens lifespan.

Small businesses have symbiotic relationships with other businesses whether they like it or not

Posted by abraham.williams@gmail.com on in General
If you are considering opening a small business and you will depend on foot traffic, make sure you know how your business will fit in with the surrounding economy. Will you be complimentary or a big draw? If you are not the draw, then be near the draw or part of it. If you aren’t really the draw, then creating shopping opportunities is crucial. It’s very important to know this going in. 

Have you ever seen a nice restaurant next to a bar next to a burrito place and wonder how they can be so close to each other when it seems like they are competing? How about a movie theater, a chicken restaurant and an arcade? In the case of the former, wealthy clientele come to the nice restaurant. The employees go to the bar after closing and then get burritos at 11pm. In the case of the latter… 

The arcade is failing now, but it used to be great. People would come for a movie and have dinner at the chicken restaurant. They would wait and enjoy the arcade in between dinner and when the movie started. Now the movie theater is run down and doesn’t get the latest movies. The chicken place is doing OK, but the arcade is dying. If the movie theater upgrades, the arcade revenues will increase. Unfortunately, pleas to the movie theater to upgrade from the arcade owner have fallen on deaf ears.

In another case, I saw a failing boutique shop. I watched it all day. A total of 30 customers came in and only 6 bags came out. It was the only boutique shop in the shopping area. It was next to a bunch of small, fast lunch shops and a dry cleaner. People come to have lunch and drop things off. They do not come to boutique shop. This boutique had better locate to an area where people hang out…or where other boutique shops are. When people go boutique shopping, they go to a place with lots of clothing shops nearby. The owner wanted to stay in that location and “stick it out”. 

Another example is an Italian restaurant next to an Italian restaurant. I looked at this and thought these people must be crazy to be next to each other competing for foot traffic. They looked very much the same on the outside, and they both looked dead at noon. After checking a few things…the hours of operation, the menu and watching them both for about 3 to 4 hours, it became clear that they had adapted. Business began to pick up at one place just after noon and the other livened up at about 5. I spoke to the businesses about how they operated. 

  • Italian restaurant #1: They do lunch and dinner. The people who come to lunch are accountants and real estate agents bringing clients or having “Power Lunches”. Really, they were dressed for power lunches. I thought it was right out of a movie. Then, the whole place switches to dinner to accommodate families. They do pizza and spaghetti very cheaply with lots of coupons. 
  • Italian restaurant #2: This place opened at 3pm and was an upscale wine bar; however, you wouldn’t know that looking at it from the outside. It looked just like the other Italian restaurant. They clientele was more like the lunch crowd at #1, but there were also many younger folks who looked like they were looking for amorous connections. The atmosphere was for a much younger social crowd.


You can see this with large shopping centers as well. Do you know why Petco, Michaels, and Big Lots are often near each other? Because people go to buy those things in one stop. Either one can be the draw and the others create shopping opportunities by proximity. 

These are key examples of symbiotic relationships of Small Businesses. If you look around, you can see this at play in any retail or commerce zone. 

6th Graders Saving Wolves and Snow Leopards from Extinction

Posted by abraham.williams@gmail.com on in General
My daughter Sascha and her friend Kyle have been painting pictures of their favorite endangered animals (wolves and snow leopards) this year with the goal of raising money.
I’ve loved watching how these two got interested in endangered animals many years ago, have supported and encouraged each other, have been willing to stand on corners to talk to passersby about the animals and their plight, and now are becoming such good painters. Here are cards Sascha created from her pictures of wolves. 
If you’d like to encourage these two, you can purchase their greeting cards. You can reply to me, or go to their Etsy shop. 
And, here’s a note from Sascha: 
Hi, 
This is Sascha. I was wondering if you would like to support my friend Kyle’s and my efforts to raise money to help save wolves and snow leopards. The organizations we are giving money to are: California Wolf Center, Snow Leopard Trust, and the Ethiopian Wolf Project. All the proceeds from our efforts will go to these organizations.
To raise money, we’ve painted pictures that we turned into greeting cards.
We find it important to save these animals which symbolize the wild and have been abused because of old myths. Large predatory animals are often associated with bad things because people fear them. Most of these animals will never hurt anyone unless provoked. These predators have been misunderstood and have been hunted to extinction. Now, reintroduction programs have started to bring them back, and we want to help these predators have safe environments to live in. When wolves were brought back to Yellowstone many other species who hadn’t been seen in a long time were able to return too.
We have set up a shop on Etsy where you can buy my cards, Kyle’s cards, or mixed sets. Each set has 10 cards and is priced at $20.
Thanks so much for reading,
Kirby and Sascha