Podcasting + Excercise : A Perfect Match
By Daniel Miessler on April 20th, 2005: Tagged as Health | Productivity
I think a big part of a person’s strengths is knowing how to properly handle his/her weaknesses. In my case, I hate to be bored. This is particularly devestating to the prospect of getting regular excercise, as the majority of tasks such as running, biking, etc. are all somewhat boring to me when done by themselves.
The thing is, when I am doing something else — something engaging — while participating in an othewise boring activity, e.g. driving, walking, biking, it’s not bad at all. This isn’t a new concept; people have been using Walkmans while running for decades. The spin I’m going to put on it is real-time intellectual benefit via Podcasting.
The thing that got me thinking about this is the fact that I’ve been talking on the phone a lot lately. When I do this, I do it from my cell phone while out walking around my neighborhood. Well, if I were to tell myself that I need to go walking 3 nights a week for at least 20 minutes, it’d never happen. I don’t like excercise for the sake of it; it’s not within me. When I’m discussing some interesting topic or even just listening to a friend’s opinion, however, the time disapears at break-neck speed.
I frequently spend well over an hour pacing at quite a high rate of speed while engrossed in these conversations, and the key is that I never even notice I’m excercising. Of course I enjoy the fact that I am; it’s a great feeling to get out and get some air and elevate the heartrate some, but the key is that I would not be able to do those things unless there was some benefit involved — in this case sharing ideas with friends.
So that’s where Podcasting comes in.
My thought is that I will find a program or three that has the right sort of content for daily consumption. I’m thinking technology, politics, philosophy, some combination of all of them, etc. I find content that fits this bill that fits within say a 30 minute period, and I pull it down daily via Podcast. Then, every night, every other night, or as time permits during hectic periods, I take my iPod and go for my nightly walk.
What this does for me is absolutely essential — it gives me the assurance that I’m not wasting my time. I feel completely unable to go out and walk or ride my bike when I know I could be doing something online that will improve me in some way. Of course I know that the excercise will help me more in the long-run, but that matters not because of my horrible distaste for being bored.
This way, using Podcasting, I can catch up on all the stuff I’ve been wanting to soak in but been unable to because I don’t have a commute. I have XM radio and would love to be able to get consistent news via it or iPod while commuting. Unfortunately I haven’t had that time every day to spend soaking something in during idle time — until now.
My excercise time will be my commute.
Essentially, I have two things that I want desperately to do daily but can’t do individually — excercise and soaking in a daily, intellectual input. This hybrid between the two will enable me to kill the proverbial two birds with one stone. In fact, the hybrid is what facilitates me doing either.
I’m enthused.
Ok, so where’s the good content? I have a few ideas:
- NPR’s All Things Considered
- Some sort of tech commentary ala Chris Pirillo
- Old 2600 episodes
- BR Magazine episodes
- Philosophy content?
- Foreign language osmosis?
- SANS Training
Thoughts? Ideas? Comments?
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I’ve been thinking of doing a similar thing, but I have yet to find a feed worth listening too, even after searching the Ipodder directory. They all seem rather boring or try to be “funny”.
Some of the SANS webcasts are somewhat decent, however there’s a few problems. One, often the first 20 minutes is just vendor advertising. Two, they are in Realaudio, which can’t be downloaded all in one go, and then you have to use something like Streambox ripper to convert them to mp3. Plus some are rather simplistic.
There’s also tools like Audiocast which will convert a HTML page to mp3, but I’ve yet to find a good use for this.
Comment by ghost16825 — 4/20/2005 @ 8:55 am
I recommend downloading episodes of “The Infinite Mind.” It’s a psychology program on Public Radio. Check out the link below, and give an episode or two a listen (streams in RealPlayer, but you can purchase MP3s for download). http://www.theinfinitemind.com/mindprgm.htm
Comment by Jason — 4/20/2005 @ 10:06 pm
Jason,
Forgot to mention…I’d like the content to be either free or pay per year or something. I don’t want to pay per episode or month; not only is that too expensive, but it’s a hassle too.
Looks like NPR’s charging for the Infinite Mind series…
Good suggestion though…I like the show a lot.
-Daniel
Comment by daniel — 4/21/2005 @ 12:46 am
99 cents ain’t bad, though. Plus, I’m all for support public broadcasting. The little extra effort is well spent, I’d say, since you’re contributing back for something that’s more significant than a pop song, you know?
If worse comes to worse, you can copy the audio from the stream using something like Total Recorder.
Comment by Jason — 4/21/2005 @ 8:05 am
currently I’ve been doing a lot of walking around the 4 mile ring here at the lab. What I’ve done is gotten a subscription to http://www.audible.com and am listening to audio books. its not exactly cheap, but hey you are getting a new job making the big bucks… so you can afford it.
Jason
Comment by Jason Ormes — 4/21/2005 @ 10:04 am
Do it baby do it… whatever you choose as you entertainment .. try not to forget the excercise part. The commute I assume you mean to work from home? Anyway good luck … seems like you have been thinking about a lot of health related issues lately. “Who needs action when you’ve got words” -Kurt Cobain … try to prove him wrong.
Comment by Charlie — 4/21/2005 @ 8:40 pm
and I’m going to be soaking in this material at a constant rate from now on. As per my excercise/podcasting post, I’m preparing a means to consume this information in a highly efficient man [...]
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Albert Brooks
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