Summarized using AI

How Getting Buff Can Make You a Better Rubyist

Rob Sanheim • September 29, 2011 • New Orleans, Louisiana • Talk

How Getting Buff Can Make You a Better Rubyist delves into the transformative journey of speaker Rob Sanheim as he connects health, fitness, and software development. Two years prior to his talk at RubyConf 2011, Rob faced various health issues due to his sedentary lifestyle and heavy weight, prompting him to embark on a fitness regimen that not only improved his health but also augmented his effectiveness as a developer. The talk emphasizes the following key points:

  • Personal Health Journey: Rob recounts his experience of being in poor physical condition, weighing nearly 270 pounds, and suffering from repetitive stress injuries. His realization of needing change led him to adopt running and dietary changes, resulting in significant weight loss and health improvement.
  • Connection Between Physical and Mental Health: The speaker discusses the mind-body connection, asserting that physical fitness enhances cognitive function and productivity. He mentions that after his transformation, he became more effective at work, accomplishing tasks in shorter periods and enjoying better focus and creativity.
  • Cultural Imbalance: Rob highlights the cultural issues surrounding health in the tech industry, citing the prevalence of unhealthy snacks and work habits that lead to burnout and health problems.
  • Actionable Advice: The talk provides several practical strategies for maintaining physical and mental well-being including:
    • Pomodoro Technique: Encouraging focused work intervals followed by short breaks to enhance productivity.
    • Incorporating Physical Activity: Suggesting varied forms of exercise, such as walking, rock climbing, or yoga, instead of traditional gym workouts.
    • Mindfulness and Meditation: Advocating for mindfulness practices to boost concentration and alleviate stress.
    • Nutrition Guidance: Simplifying dietary choices by advocating for whole foods and mindful eating, inspired by dietary principles from author Michael Pollan.

In conclusion, Rob Sanheim urges developers to embrace lifestyle changes that not only improve health but also enhance professional performance. By integrating practical health strategies into one's life, the tech community can foster greater well-being and productivity, ultimately making better developers while promoting a healthier culture overall.

How Getting Buff Can Make You a Better Rubyist
Rob Sanheim • New Orleans, Louisiana • Talk

Date: September 29, 2011
Published: December 12, 2011
Announced: unknown

Two years ago, I was about to turn 30. I was working constantly. And I was in the worst shape of my life. I weighed almost 270 pounds. My back, hands, and wrists ached constantly from repetitive stress and poor posture after working long hours. A full eight hour day or programming left me exhausted and irritable. I got on a plan to get in shape and lose weight, and given enough time and good habits, it worked. I lost a ton of weight and feel great. Along the way, a funny thing happened: I became much more effective as a developer, getting more done in less time. Work is more fun, my repetitive stress injury is gone, and eight hours of pair programming doesn't destroy me like it used to. This talk will discuss pragmatic ways to improve your health, reduce stress, and improve focus, all without a gym membership or dreadful treadmill sessions. We'll touch on modern science that demonstrates the importance of the mind/body connection, and cover some hacker friendly diet and exercise plans.

RubyConf 2011

00:00:16.220 my name is uh Rob San hunt I'm gonna be talking about a little talk about health
00:00:22.950 and fitness and getting buff I guess but first I'd like to get everybody to stand
00:00:30.690 up because John makarska old friend from Madison is going to lead things off with
00:00:38.520 some some sexy yoga time he did this said on Madison Rubicon and I thought it was great and a great wake up for the
00:00:46.590 afternoon so take it away John was anyone here at Madison Ruby 460 yoga
00:00:52.649 time was it a good time say yes all right well this was a big hit Madison
00:00:58.890 roomie we're going to help to do this at more conferences and thanks to rob my old friend from Madison for doing this so you don't really need to be standing
00:01:05.550 for this but will stand for the whole thing because it's good to stand every 25 minutes of Karina was it cornell
00:01:10.860 anyways first thing we're going to do is stop in the name of love stick your hand out and again never go too far just you
00:01:16.740 know keep it real easy nice and slow easy and then just kind of tug back and then you don't want to pull any
00:01:21.899 attendance or anything but we're just pulling back here this isn't just by the way we will tweet this jist as the
00:01:29.160 modern rubyists we do yoga just thought it all right and then we're gonna send
00:01:35.580 your pull down on your hand again never go too far just always just wear your ad is good enough we always got to start
00:01:41.250 where we're at we'll go ahead and stop in the name love with the other hand
00:01:46.610 again just pull back just the teeniest bit and then over time and if you breathe you
00:01:52.140 relax it will go further and further
00:01:58.820 doing yoga too we do yoga because Matt's thank you
00:02:08.690 thank you for playing well alright the next one these are your carrots you know the caret symbol well these are your carrots let's take your arm up and reach
00:02:15.650 down you're reaching for your back here you can see me your branding of the elbow and then you're going to just
00:02:20.780 slowly tug it you're trying to get stretch through here but again just always go slowly you never have to prove anything or stretch too far anything is
00:02:27.800 just just about being where you're at home here this kind of by your ear and
00:02:34.490 it looks like a carrot chad from thoughtbot tried to think of programmer
00:02:41.239 where it's raleigh's again not just with charms on their arm I'm going to try to
00:02:50.000 go through these little faster than normally would since we want to get to rob the actual talk this one is cool this is a knuckle roll to stick your
00:02:55.220 arms up you want to keep your elbows locked the whole time and then if you can see me I'm just rolling my knuckles here just rolling them outwards and then
00:03:02.000 keeping your elbows and keeping them pushed together the whole time you should really feel this to hear this is one of my favorite stretches roll it
00:03:08.510 forward a few times I'm going to roll backwards a few times I can't really
00:03:14.660 keep those elbows lock this is the one time you want to lock your joints stretching all right and then this is my
00:03:20.720 this problem I favorite out of all it's called the praying for so I make a prayer in front of your heart pray that
00:03:26.870 you pass all your tests or whatever slowly we're going to slowly push to your left and then just go to your head
00:03:33.890 you should really feel it through here just again just go to your edge then just kind of
00:03:39.810 these ones are all great all these are original ones up one through four are at the top there you can do sitting at your
00:03:46.080 desk you don't have to stand again just push the right now and just push your edge keep breathing keep praying you can
00:03:52.709 do this if you have a really slow test suite what I try to do is anytime i'm
00:03:58.739 leaning back in my chair to think I always try to pick one of these poses to do because Allah being in your in your chair all right neck and shoulder
00:04:05.489 goodness it's just stick your right hand reach to your left reach to your left
00:04:11.580 hip grab onto it with your left arm again never pull too hard just go a little bit and there you lean your left
00:04:16.799 ear your left shoulder real slow and then you should just feel that pull in to your neck and your shoulder you
00:04:23.040 should feel that goodness i'm standing in front of them instructions you can
00:04:29.010 just get through these quicker we're going to do it just come back out of that and reach your left arm to your right side you're going to pull you guys
00:04:35.639 see me at home in the right arm when you're leading your right ear to your right shoulder
00:04:49.370 this is one that Chad from Papa and open and close / ends you're going to separate your feet your hand on your hip
00:04:55.310 and then you're going to reach with your other hand to your other side so you're going to kind of reach like this so get
00:05:01.010 a good stable base go and then just reach just open that bread and then close that parental and you have to
00:05:08.870 bounce these just in yoga just like in program you have to keep your friends balanced real get us some kind of yoga
00:05:16.100 syntax hair the optional groovy yeah yeah these these are not optional
00:05:23.090 firenze then big puffy chest grabbing
00:05:29.600 hands behind your back attempt to straighten your arms and lock your lock your arms and your knuckles together straighten up arms and just roll your
00:05:36.949 shoulders back and then just stick your heart out of the joy come on up your heart and be joyful and be happy
00:05:45.889 stretching yoga programmers and thanking you for laying off your time thank you
00:05:55.700 so this will be a little bit of a different talk i think for recon as you can tell by john kicking things off but
00:06:01.470 i thought that was an awesome way to get get things moving in the afternoon
00:06:06.630 hopefully everybody is still awake today I'm sure tomorrow it'll be a little bit different in the afternoon knowing how
00:06:12.300 New Orleans goes uh what's up for the
00:06:19.380 yoga stretches uh actually it's conscious I I will tweet I'll to eat the
00:06:24.900 gist and hate you also follow lark for that so yeah I'm gonna be talking a little bit about how finding balance and
00:06:32.760 health and fitness will make you a better software developer will make you
00:06:38.790 a better rubios and I'm going to start things off with a very brief overview of my story and how I got here today I
00:06:46.110 guess and how some of the painful lessons that I've learned so I hope that
00:06:51.810 to hopefully prevent some of some of y'all from from repeating some of the mistakes that that I think I've made
00:06:57.800 started out with this compact portable when I was 10 does anybody have
00:07:03.690 experience with the compact portable quote unquote it actually weighed about 30 or 35 pounds supportable was uh was a
00:07:11.190 little bit of a misnomer but started out playing computer games and messing around on the dos command line at a very
00:07:17.370 young age which was which was awesome right I played a lot of space quests a
00:07:23.640 lot of a lot of reading in these games and a lot of learning a lot of literacy
00:07:29.910 and comprehension and problem-solving which obviously has applied tremendously
00:07:36.990 now in the profession of men in software at relevance so those things are all awesome you know I was always you know
00:07:45.450 did super well in reading in school and comprehension and all those types of things which which was great yeah here's
00:07:54.030 a quest for glory you guys remember this game but uh yeah this was before Sierra
00:07:59.550 went to the point-and-click interface and you actually had to type in commands and you know read responses from the
00:08:05.270 something from the game so that was great but when I was spending four or
00:08:12.199 five or six hours some nights after school playing computer games you know what was I not doing as I was growing up
00:08:18.139 I wasn't out uh you know actually playing a whole lot I wasn't out running
00:08:24.530 around all that much from from a pretty young age I was you know always been somewhat introverted which is you know
00:08:30.949 not too surprising for a room full of software developers but a lot of time spent like this hunched over a desk I'm
00:08:40.399 sure this this posture looks pretty pretty familiar you know it's it's one
00:08:46.730 thing to do this once in a while in moderation as you're growing up but I know that for me it definitely had some
00:08:53.990 pretty significant effects as I was growing up and you know having spending six or seven hours at school every day
00:09:01.790 and then coming home rushing through to get through get done with my chores and you know get homework done eat dinner
00:09:08.870 and then hop back on the computer every night for more time in that posture um
00:09:14.890 spend enough time in that posture and you'll end up with essentially your back
00:09:20.630 is working overtime so that that curve that everybody has in your back is kind of you know working excessively to keep
00:09:28.070 you to kind of keep your head above while you're you're hunched over your keyboard your hips if you can think
00:09:33.380 about how you are when you're sitting your hips get super tight and the opposite opposing muscles get weak
00:09:39.320 overtime your abs and your butt muscles get like very weak because they're they're used to they evolved to walk and
00:09:46.760 to keep your body mobile and you're spent you're spending eight or ten or twelve hours in a chair you can imagine
00:09:52.370 the kind of effects that that has on you over time and some of the yoga postures
00:09:58.610 that John showed is just one small thing you can do every day to kind of counteract that I'm actually still
00:10:06.709 dealing with the repercussions of like these muscular imbalances today like
00:10:12.170 with some sciatica and things like that which is a whole other story if you to hear that that kind of story we can
00:10:18.350 talk about that offline but fast-forward past all the computer gaming past
00:10:25.070 getting into indie software development you know weighed about 270 pounds here
00:10:34.490 in 2009 looking out over the lake gazing thinking wistfully of cheeseburgers and
00:10:42.880 culvers in Wisconsin has some pretty good cheeseburgers about this is probably my heaviest almost just about
00:10:51.770 hitting 280 and I kind of woke up one day and realized that you know i was
00:10:57.650 working eight nine hour days like normal at the relevance I'd come home and work
00:11:04.280 on side projects or work on open source or work on run code run a product we
00:11:09.500 were building at the time for another three or four hours at night so putting in you know 12 13 hour days that type of
00:11:16.250 thing I had constant pain through my through my wrists my forearms and my my
00:11:23.870 elbows not enough where I actually went to see a doctor or anything or did much more than took ibuprofen or you know
00:11:31.910 just tried to ignore it that type of thing and had constant nagging health issues and I realized I was just you
00:11:38.690 know I was sick of it and I fortunately had enough curiosity like from the past
00:11:44.450 and knew how to apply some things to myself to kind of turn it around and you
00:11:50.300 know have a massive change I did a couch to 5k and jumped on the vibram
00:11:56.920 fivefingers bandwagon for for quite a bit for running and lost about I guess
00:12:04.070 80 pounds over eight months or something like that so yeah running races and
00:12:10.760 stuff like that it's been an awesome improvement not only from the physical things which are great but also in how
00:12:17.450 much more effective I feel at my job like I feel like when I work and pair for like eight hours in a day it's I get
00:12:24.950 as much done as I used to get done in a 12-hour day you know just because I'm able to focus
00:12:30.529 and bring that much more of my attentiveness and focus to bear so I've
00:12:36.829 been submitting this talk to conferences for like the past year and I didn't
00:12:42.379 actually expect it to get expect accepted this year so I kind of threw it in into the Rubicon pool and I think the
00:12:49.610 the title is a little bit mislabeled I didn't want to say you know how being
00:12:55.670 healthy can make you a better reviews because that just felt kind of generic and and kind of lame I thought balanced
00:13:02.480 maybe is a little bit of a better word but wouldn't be quite as strong but I think that's really what I'm going for
00:13:07.550 is this conception of balance I mean I think our Western culture American
00:13:13.699 culture whatever you want to call the the culture that we're in is pretty crazily imbalanced this is the obesity
00:13:23.149 rates in 1987 and if you notice no country or no state is a over over
00:13:31.550 twenty percent I don't think any of them are over the this medium blue is fifteen percent and that's just that's not that
00:13:37.699 long ago and fast forward to 2010 and it's this crazy change where no states
00:13:43.009 are under twenty percent and now I think you know the numbers they throw around as a third of americans are obese a
00:13:50.720 third are overweight and then the other third are cracked out on diet pills every day or something like that so
00:13:56.559 things went crazy over the past 20 years which is a whole nother thing to try to
00:14:01.939 figure out and I'm not going to be all solve that problem today but our community of rubios of developers you
00:14:10.670 know we are all so imbalanced in not only all the ways we inherit from our culture but also from you know this
00:14:18.429 crazy work-life balance issues that we have how many people have had a meal like this in the past three weeks I can
00:14:27.620 raise my hand because our company brings in chicken biscuits friday mornings which is uh which is pretty awesome but
00:14:34.129 here's a picture it's a little might be a little hard to see but we not only do we have canisters of M&MS we then have a
00:14:42.399 seven pounds of reserved Eminem's you know just in case these happen to run out really
00:14:49.820 quickly we have that much in reserve and if you notice in the corner we've got the kegerator up there which fortunately
00:14:55.970 for me is almost always empty otherwise that would be a bigger temptation for me I think during during most work days
00:15:02.300 than the mms so this this is in like our company culture right a lot of small
00:15:07.610 startups a lot of small consulting companies like relevance you'll find these types of snack foods like easily
00:15:15.710 available it's just common it's like a constant temptation the caffeine yeah
00:15:23.210 I'm still incredibly addicted to coffee that keeps me functioning but it enables
00:15:29.780 you to work long long hours probably past the point where you really should be working you know when everybody else has gone home for example how many folks
00:15:37.550 have had to wear that for that kind of brace so to curiosity yeah when I was when I was I've had not had to wear that
00:15:44.660 specific one but I've definitely had to wear the elbow one for quite a while which of course will help you work
00:15:50.330 through it but it's also kind of masking the actual problem that's going on underneath I almost I really didn't want
00:15:56.240 to have that slide up there but my pair made me do it there's a you end up with
00:16:02.120 that surgery when they actually go in there and do the nerve if things get bad enough with the whole carpal tunnel
00:16:07.490 repetitive stress syndrome yeah so we've evolved somehow we're we spent tens of
00:16:15.380 thousands of years in that middle phase where we were walking you know my best
00:16:22.130 estimate somewhere between 10 to 20 kilometers a day and that's really what our minds evolved to do is you know all
00:16:28.700 this mobility walking escaping from jungle creatures hunting jungle creatures you know whatever then we
00:16:35.840 spent you know some amount of time out in the fields and that and then relatively recently in the past I don't
00:16:43.730 know 30 years or so 20 years 50 years we've spent 8 to 12 hours of our daily
00:16:50.720 life hunched over a keyboard we get in our car and sit again for a half hour or
00:16:55.910 hour home and then we we typically end up sitting a lot more at home after that so
00:17:01.819 there's this crazy work-life balance that's you know I think really out of whack when you step outside of it and
00:17:08.240 kind of look at it and there's this this mind body balance that I think is is out
00:17:13.819 of whack I think it all goes back to the philosophy of mind that you find in
00:17:20.630 Western culture back all the way back to Plato and decart and guys like that who you know thought that the thinking mind
00:17:27.199 you know your thought was the most fundamental aspect and then your body was just this thing that happened to be attached and you'd kind of drag it along
00:17:33.409 with you behind your magical thought bubbles from my intuition intuition and
00:17:41.210 experience that's kind of a false separation I mean it hasn't proved out
00:17:46.360 for me I mean I believe we all understand that acutely if I went out
00:17:52.280 last night on Bourbon Street and you know had 12 drinks and stayed out till four in the morning I wouldn't be able
00:17:57.919 to be up here talking with you guys you know I'd probably be still you know laying in bed in my hotel room trying to
00:18:04.280 recover if you guys have if somebody has an interview at Google tomorrow at
00:18:09.799 twelve o'clock and you drink three Express O's and three redbulls beforehand you're probably going to be
00:18:15.470 like just a complete gibbering mess by the time you get to the interview you're going to be all over the place and you
00:18:20.750 know too nervous to function even if you have the you know the actual
00:18:27.190 fundamentals needed to get through that interview so these physical things that you can consume or do to your body
00:18:33.169 directly influence what you're doing with your mind and we understand that in the short term but when you take that to
00:18:38.720 a long time scale we either ignore it or you know try to pretend it's not there
00:18:46.330 so this is just kind of a horrible cliche so I'm going to skip past listing your body I'd like to think more in
00:18:52.700 terms of feedback loops I'm sure we all know about feedback loops like test-driven development code reviews at
00:18:59.809 the the lower levels you know we do stand-up meetings and then at the higher
00:19:04.880 levels we have things like retrospectives and things like release cycles and those
00:19:11.179 types of things so what would the equivalent of those things be four you
00:19:16.399 know the whole mind-body connection that I'm talking about the first one would be
00:19:22.159 tension and pain or you know relaxation and knees you know when I was thinking about that pain that I was feeling back
00:19:30.110 when I was working in you know 12 13 hour days yeah I knew it represented a problem but I just kind of like
00:19:36.649 pretended that it was going to go away on its own or if I just kind of ignored it that may be oh it would stay the same
00:19:43.190 and I'll be able to work through it which you know really wasn't the case
00:19:48.730 anxiety and restlessness talked about the example with caffeine I got sick a
00:19:55.070 whole lot more back when I was you know just just generally out of sit out of shape would get colds like nothing when
00:20:02.570 fall hit and then were generally have a cold you know all the way through up till the next year or the next spring
00:20:08.590 the long term you have depression of
00:20:14.120 course weight gain or weight loss which you know you see at the opposite end when you forget to eat because you're
00:20:19.159 you're working and so heads down on your work and finally disease so our life
00:20:25.100 expectancy as a culture keeps going up but a lot how many of those last 15 or
00:20:30.470 20 years are you know where we're plagued with diabetes or heart disease and that weighed really heavily on my
00:20:36.860 mind I know when I was you know trying to to turn things around from for myself because my my dad and my uncle and my
00:20:44.629 grandfather and my great-grandfather all had diabetes so I knew that I was
00:20:50.600 probably going to have it you know myself by the time I was like 35 or 40 if I wasn't didn't get things turned
00:20:56.870 around so we really have to like stop and listen to our bodies and figure out
00:21:03.620 things that we can do to get back to a place where were you know kind of
00:21:09.769 respecting that connection and the importance of that that connection we
00:21:15.320 have so what does that actually mean like what practical things can we do so
00:21:21.590 the very first one is pompadour how many people do pomodoros daily study
00:21:26.929 curiosity so looks like maybe a third I'm going to be I'm going to talk about
00:21:33.799 pomodoros and then dive into why that can help you actually with this longer
00:21:39.289 breaks I'm going to talk about exercise but not on the treadmill because nobody likes that I'm going to touch on
00:21:44.809 meditation and then food and nutrition which is kind of you know you could
00:21:50.270 spend like a whole day talking about that but so pomodoros is 25 minutes
00:21:55.669 focused work five minutes break and then I believe the original template had the idea of every four pomodoros you take a
00:22:03.159 longer break but the original idea is you take that five minutes of break time
00:22:09.049 to just reflect on your work like you talk with your pear about how things are going you think about things that you
00:22:16.340 kind of jotted down during your focused work and kind of think about you know or you you know take that time to call your
00:22:22.970 significant other or something what I like to do or I try to do is you know
00:22:28.880 take the five minutes to stand up move around get away from the desk you know don't look at a screen if you go from
00:22:35.210 you know sit in front of your keyboard to just checking your iPhone over in the corner like it's not that much of an improvement so like put all your devices
00:22:41.899 away which I know for me is can be very difficult to do a lot of the time with
00:22:47.570 the the addiction and like walk away from the screen go like force yourself to talk to somebody else in the office
00:22:53.510 that you actually have to walk to or force yourself to go outside for five minutes or take the stretches that John
00:23:01.039 did you know the sexy yoga time and do those like in the morning and in the afternoon like just pick a couple times
00:23:06.500 where you can do those I think we really have to get away from the culture of you know pulling all-nighters being heads
00:23:13.730 down as seen as the way to get things done and really being getting back to an
00:23:19.490 idea of having of being more effective and spending our time wisely and you
00:23:24.860 know being able to get up and take breaks when you need it and being able to go and think about a problem for you
00:23:30.020 know half an hour or two hours or two days if that's what it takes to do it in
00:23:35.810 for way longer breaks we've got a great coffee shop in Durham that is about
00:23:41.270 perfect for the longer breaks that my team takes typically it's about a 10
00:23:48.170 minute walk there grab a coffee 10 minute walk back and you know we do that maybe two or three times a week in the
00:23:54.770 afternoon and I know like when you think about that break on top of lunch you know you might think well when do you
00:24:01.040 actually find time to get work done like if you're doing these five minute breaks and you have lunch and you have these longer breaks I find that this time
00:24:07.790 almost always pays off you know much more than extra time spent trying to
00:24:13.160 hack pack things out over a keyboard because typically there's some sort of topic that wasn't being discussed like
00:24:20.720 about the project at a higher level about the client relationship about something at the company that is
00:24:27.020 bothering people like that sort of thing you know taking these longer breaks gives that time to to breathe and to end
00:24:33.470 to talk about that type of thing and of course it's getting you out and walking and moving around which again is getting
00:24:40.340 you know the original idea of taking these breaks to get away from the screen
00:24:46.060 exercise or movement I hate the the treadmill as much as anybody so for me
00:24:53.960 it's always about like finding something that I can find in sort of exercise I can stick to you know I started out with
00:25:00.350 couch to 5k because I knew that it was a very graduated program starts out super
00:25:06.110 simple which is great you don't have to think about it when you install that app on your phone and it just tells you what
00:25:11.570 to do from the very beginning you know right now I've I pretty much back to just walking because I've had some back
00:25:18.620 issues and stuff that have kept me from running but you know I just try to find time to go out and walk you know two
00:25:24.530 miles a day or whatever rock climbing martial arts yoga like any of those
00:25:30.290 things appeal to you like grab them and you know figure out a way to work that in your schedule and if you have a team
00:25:36.860 or like a buddy that you can go and do these things with like all the better because it's something that's going to keep you accountable and keep you like
00:25:43.580 engaged in that sort of thing so the the
00:25:48.980 science be the connections between how exercise actually helps learning and memory is pretty pretty exhaustive when you look
00:25:56.310 into like the last ten years of neuroscience and I'm really just going to go over some of the highlights here
00:26:02.010 at it's very very high level they've looked at the risk of dementia and
00:26:07.410 Alzheimer's and the general consensus is that if you are exercising about three
00:26:13.950 to four times a week half hour for each each time it's going to cut your risk for dementia and Alzheimer's by about
00:26:20.310 half which is pretty pretty crazy when you think about that it's not a very significant time investment for you know
00:26:28.590 a way to cut your risk of that that type of disease but you're saying you like
00:26:34.050 i'm 20 i'm not worrying about that kind of stuff when i'm old like what about right now so when you're sitting here
00:26:41.310 and listening to talks and hopefully learning some things your brain is actually forming new connections between
00:26:48.660 neurons in your mind that's how they've you know actually seeing that learning happens and if you if somebody is
00:26:54.150 reinforcing a topic for you that connection between your neurons is getting reinforced and made stronger and
00:27:00.110 the chemicals that actually allow that to happen is called BDNF which is
00:27:06.510 brain-derived neurotropic factor so basically the the high level version
00:27:11.940 lists the i guess the layman's rehearsing because I certainly don't understand that the super technical science behind it either is the more
00:27:18.930 bdnf you have around the better you're able to learn and form new memories and
00:27:24.000 form new connections in your mind so basically the essential thing that we're doing what we're like learning a new
00:27:29.910 domain or new language or trying to solve problems and they've found that every time they do these experiments
00:27:36.840 with with lab rats or like other animals like that that the animals that are
00:27:42.780 exercising are always the ones that have very elevated levels of this miracle grow for your brain essentially and the
00:27:49.980 control groups don't have as much so there's clearly some very strong connection between movement and exercise
00:27:56.550 and getting your blood and oxygen levels up to your brain that then contributes
00:28:02.190 back to being able to learn things more more easily and and also in
00:28:07.370 a stronger way and then
00:28:12.920 neurotransmitters there's been a lot of links found for how effective exercises
00:28:18.890 for depression and anxiety and it's essentially like prozac in a lot of
00:28:24.800 people but without the a lot of the side effects and of course the the fact that you're taking a drug it basically
00:28:31.490 balances out all those neurotransmitters that when they get out of whack you know you end up with a lot of significant
00:28:37.130 problems and when you look at a lot of the research they've found that it's in
00:28:42.500 many cases as effective to prescribe exercise for somebody as a lot of the
00:28:47.840 most modern you know drugs that they're prescribing for folks so couch to 5k is
00:28:54.560 great look into that I jumped on the band this is a total bandwagon thing but
00:28:59.720 the Born to Run bandwagon is great if you like running you'll love this book it's you know totally all about the
00:29:07.820 science behind evolution and how we evolved for for movement and running and it'll make you want to throw away your
00:29:14.570 shoes and go running into your neighborhood without shoes on stuff so
00:29:20.870 meditation might be wondering like what does meditation have to do with like
00:29:26.750 this you know physical thing and for me it's all about kind of not only training
00:29:34.430 your mind for focus and attention but it's also very much a physical discipline it's very much tied into your
00:29:41.420 your posture and your awareness so I've noticed that it's easy to kind of like
00:29:47.170 when you're working heads down to kind of forget about the pains or the stress that you have like just even in your
00:29:53.210 your neck and your like your your wrists and that sort of thing and I sit for 10 minutes and you realize that all that
00:29:59.390 stuff comes up and you're like holy cow like like I'm totally like worn out from this for our pairing session today or
00:30:06.680 like holy cow I feel energized and I want to jump back into it like all those things that you might not realize
00:30:12.380 because you're constantly distracted by your work and buy your iphone and by you know all your other
00:30:18.820 obligations you realize those things coming up when you're able to just kind of reflect on it in a session of
00:30:25.330 meditation it doesn't have to be tied to any religion you know it's it's found
00:30:30.640 and basically it's found in every religion and a lot of you know secular disciplines as well and one of the best
00:30:38.470 comparisons I've found for it is when you're actually heads down you know in the zone you know inflow a flow state
00:30:45.549 essentially it's very similar to being fully engaged is basically the same thing as being fully engaged in a
00:30:51.549 meditative state it's basically practicing that state with something as trivial as like your breath which makes
00:30:59.650 it that much easier for you to get into that state when you're doing something like software so how do you start
00:31:06.010 meditation I mean that's a pretty big deal right it seems like such a like you
00:31:11.290 a foreign thing maybe if you've never done it before five minutes you know same time same place every day just you
00:31:18.010 know sit don't worry about how you're sitting just sit someplace that's that's comfortable and you know you focus on
00:31:23.710 your breath going out and that's that's all there is to it and just try it you know try it out and try it out for for a
00:31:30.820 week or a couple weeks and see how that goes so food nutrition is like
00:31:38.320 ridiculously complicated topic it's so overblown like every week the studies that come out and you know like omega-3s
00:31:45.820 are essential for you mega threes are killing you like caffeine is good for you caffeine's bad for you all this stuff it doesn't have to be all that
00:31:54.100 complicated you know I think if you take Michael Pollan's advice hero Tom me
00:32:00.520 Boris dilemma and the food rules book eat food not too much mostly plants
00:32:07.960 seven seven words that if you take that with you to like your your supermarket or take that with you when you go
00:32:14.230 looking for dinner it's great advice and when you break this down a little bit
00:32:19.570 because of course this is pretty high level so food food to him or you know a
00:32:26.020 full definition of food is something that you're your great-grandmother would recognize
00:32:32.200 as food so if you took a cliff bar to your great-grandmother she probably wouldn't recognize that if you took a
00:32:39.310 fruit roll-up to your great-grandmother you know she really wouldn't recognize whatever that is but if you took a
00:32:45.130 banana or a squash or a state you know that's that's real food another metric
00:32:51.610 for that is does it have five or less ingredients and can you pronounce all
00:32:57.250 the ingredients that are in it if it fails any of those tests you know that's not considered real food not too much
00:33:06.090 yeah that's pretty difficult to preach especially in New Orleans with the fact
00:33:12.190 that i was eating last night it was pretty amazing but one one thing that I
00:33:17.200 i have taken away and i think is what i've seen work for a lot of people is to pay more money for your food get better
00:33:24.220 quality food and you find that you don't need to eat as much so when you're eating higher quality food that you do
00:33:30.790 have to pay a little bit more money for you find that you're satisfied by less
00:33:36.130 of it and i think you know the numbers are something like americans spend like
00:33:41.680 five to six percent of our income on food whereas when you look at you know all those Western European countries and
00:33:47.650 everything they spend like twenty percent on their food but somehow they keep and they eat these crazy things
00:33:53.830 that look extravagant but they don't have all the same issues that we have with with obesity and heart disease and
00:34:00.970 everything mostly plants the benefits
00:34:06.430 around that again goes back to all sorts of crazy things like omega-3s and having
00:34:12.790 more omega-3 in your diet and it also has to do with the fact that when you're eating more plants you can't eat a lot
00:34:19.960 of other crap because you tend to get filled up more from from salads and things like that so yeah but we're a
00:34:27.880 roomful of hackers if you just want to hack your diet for two weeks while
00:34:32.890 you're reading one of Michael Pollan's books I would say to look into this do this for two weeks it's it's a fun diet
00:34:39.159 talk to your doctor first I felt I had to throw this in here because I know it appealed to me in my sense of
00:34:46.659 creativity and hacking hacking a body system basically is what this comes down to this is a great diet to try for two
00:34:54.790 weeks to see like what you're actually capable of and it's pretty out there the
00:35:00.820 main advice that a mcdonald gives with this this diet is you know know what you're going to transition to after it
00:35:07.690 and that's really where you no going back to to this advice comes in you know
00:35:13.930 pick up on Nevarez dilemma or his food rules book and figure out what you could
00:35:19.240 make work in your your day to day life and maybe try this out for two weeks you know if you just want to get a little
00:35:25.210 bit crazy while you're planning a lifestyle that you're going to do after that yeah so I think I'm actually a
00:35:38.020 little bit early so I think I would just want to stress I covered a whole bunch
00:35:45.190 of things covered pomodoros exercise you know taking breaks nutrition and
00:35:52.270 meditation that's a whole lot of different things that I'm thrown at you guys I would really just stress you'll
00:35:59.080 pick one thing do it for about 20 days it's about all you need to have it become a habit and then literally do
00:36:05.440 like a retrospective on like hey is this practice of pomodoros and doing like
00:36:10.780 yoga for five minutes a day from ordering to my brakes is that helping me you know if it is keep doing it and like
00:36:17.440 incorporate that into your into your life if it's not then throw it out and try one of these other things then you'll see see how it works I think
00:36:25.240 you'll find that that all these things you know if you can if you can find a way to incorporate them and and have
00:36:31.690 them in your life you'll become you know not just a better more effective rubios
00:36:36.880 but you're also just be happier and and have a greater sense of well-being overall thanks
00:36:51.940 let me know if I have time for questions yep
00:37:06.170 I don't have any practical advice for them yeah I the only thing I can say is
00:37:13.430 I notice it when I actually do get eight or nine hours and I think that actually goes back to the whole like historical
00:37:21.980 hacker sense of you know working crazy hours and not getting enough sleep over
00:37:27.080 you know many over a long period of time and it's for me it's hard to break my
00:37:33.230 habit that goes back a long time with just you know surviving basically on
00:37:38.450 five or six hours and i so i guess i'd
00:37:44.060 love to hear advice you have for for how to actually make sure you get eight hours a night but i just find there's
00:37:49.730 it's always seems like there's not enough time to get everything done and sleep was the thing that I always end up short changing I guess
00:38:10.850 it's kind of close down close down two things
00:38:18.999 right
00:38:29.860 right yep I've know I've noticed the same thing and I've noticed with a you know
00:38:35.750 especially dealing with with stress as I come up at work like dealing with that kind of stuff or you know with family is
00:38:42.200 that much harder when sleep deprived
00:40:00.910 shows how deep your your sleep is basically every night
00:40:12.280 cool
00:40:20.330 we checked we moved into a different space so we haven't been all set up the
00:40:25.830 table again we're hoping to get to a space where we can do that again though
00:40:32.720 you have to talk to Alex our sales guy he he was pretty good
00:41:00.280 um I I guess for me it's a I do let
00:41:05.410 myself indulge like for sure like I don't if I want to go out and you know have a good time have a really good meal
00:41:11.430 I'll do that and I'd try to be at a place where I don't feel don't want to
00:41:18.190 feel guilt about it don't want to like beat myself up over it and actually the hardest thing for me is when I can't
00:41:24.130 exercise because i find that exercise is kind of like the foundation of a lot of
00:41:29.500 the positive feedback loops and so when I can't work out it's which I can't right now because of some injuries it's
00:41:36.190 been just incredibly tough to keep the other things in mind but I find what I am able to stick to working out it's
00:41:43.540 that much easier for me to like eat fairly well because I don't want to sabotage like workouts and like and to
00:41:49.030 not miss workouts because you know if I have a plan like that sort of thing yep
00:42:20.860 what is what is it is that like TRX stuff or i'm not i'm not familiar with
00:42:26.300 it yeah if it works I know like the gym
00:42:42.890 turns a lot of people off and
00:43:19.730 I think I'm the same way with rock climbing I'm like horrible at it but i keep going back because it's so much fun
00:43:25.790 you know it's just bread
00:44:04.220 yeah that's that's actually parlours I threw up the the two week thing the the
00:44:09.330 practical scientific paste crash diet was because I I found like when I when
00:44:14.640 things were completely out of whack for me kind of going on that for two weeks kind of reminded me like oh this is what
00:44:20.580 it's like to be hungry and like this is what it's like where I can't eat finish a meal like all those things that are easy to forget about like when you just
00:44:27.210 change one thing severely like that yep uh yeah I I when I when I run it's
00:44:41.130 pretty much all five fingers now I actually I wish I had started out pure barefoot when I when I started things
00:44:46.890 out but I started out with the couch to 5k with switching between regular shoes and five fingers then not well i run i
00:45:00.420 use the five fingers when i'm running on s fault or concrete and I've run barefoot a little bit on you know maybe
00:45:06.420 like up to a mile on on streets and sidewalks it definitely takes time to
00:45:12.870 get used to it like you can't if you just go out and do it you know without a period to acclimate to it you're going
00:45:18.180 to be in pain but uh but you're the nice thing about going full-on barefoot is your feet you're the skin on your feet
00:45:24.330 gives you feedback really quick to when you're going too far and actually with five fingers you can kind of ignore some
00:45:30.540 of that because you're you can go farther than maybe you would by being full on barefoot so I guess that's one
00:45:37.350 of the ideas behind you know try to go barefoot when you can obviously starting out on grass for sure like a nice feel
00:45:43.260 this is definitely the best place to start with her I would recommend that yeah just try flow on barefoot you know
00:45:49.920 where the vibrams to get your your calves and everything used to it where those like around the house or like for
00:45:55.770 walks but when you are starting out just short runs I would say if you if you have if you don't live in like downtown
00:46:01.650 New York City or something you know start up full full barefoot yep
00:46:16.549 um can you get a stand-up desk well
00:46:26.849 we've I've used one off and on like for the past few weeks and it like the first
00:46:32.599 couple days are hard like that was the most difficult thing because your feet hurt and it's like hard to get used to
00:46:37.799 it but once you get through that period I think that it was a pretty good change
00:46:43.619 because you you pretty much can't stand and work without moving you know fidgeting basically like that i found
00:46:50.069 that was pretty helpful in terms of that yep
00:47:16.520 right
00:47:45.500 you
00:48:03.790 Oh just to change it on
00:48:11.660 right wait you spend an hour without electronic devices is that is that
00:48:16.910 possible right right yep yep no no I
00:48:35.089 definitely hit hit I hit more like around two thirty to twenty and actually I think I did I think I did a week of
00:48:41.359 that cry that crashed at the the wild mcdonald look I did a week of that to help me get through it and I would
00:48:48.710 definitely like Shane I tried change it up routines like focus more on like weights and like climbing or something
00:48:54.859 instead of all the running like just switching things up like that is one way
00:49:19.109 like so you mean once you've lost it or or in terms of hitting
00:49:47.190 I I guess so the exercise was one high-level feedback loop I used calorie
00:49:54.430 king.com sometimes I would use that which is basically just tracking
00:49:59.980 everything you eat so like you see you know where you're where you're trending and watch what your calorie levels like
00:50:07.079 I'm trying to think of some of the other you know treating it like a like Brad
00:50:13.240 was saying like tweaking different variables like I didn't definitely bring in like a hacker mindset helped helped me you know kind of seen it as like a
00:50:19.930 big system that you're you know you're never going to understand the whole thing but just trying to change pieces
00:50:25.390 of it and see what happened was was pretty big for me yeah I don't know it's
00:50:34.359 hard to pick just one thing because it's a lot it's a definitely a tough yeah
00:50:43.630 yeah I think I'm about out of time here
00:50:49.869 but uh thanks guys
00:51:32.970 you
00:51:42.730 you
Explore all talks recorded at RubyConf 2011
+55