Desk Jockey Workout: 8 Ways to Stay in Shape at the Office | The Art of Manliness

Desk Jockey Workout: 8 Ways to Stay in Shape at the Office | The Art of Manliness.

The Art of Manliness posted a great article about how desk jockey’s could create simple workouts or life changes to stay in shape at the office.  Their ideas include to:

  1. Make Getting to Your Office a Challenge
  2. Take the Stairs. While You’re At It, Run Up Them
  3. Get a Standing Desk
  4. Maintain Good Posture Throughout the Day
  5. Do 10 Push-Ups and 10 Squats Every Time You Take a Bathroom/Coffee Break
  6. Get Up and Walk Outside for 15 Minutes Every 45 Minutes
  7. Perform 15 Dips When Leaving for and Returning from Lunch
  8. Perform 30-Second Grok Squats Throughout the Day

But, how feasible are each of these?  If you have a long commute or small parking lot it will be hard to make your commute a challenge. Perhaps your office is a single floor, so no stairs.  Maybe your job has you seated so much that you forget to maintain good posture.  Perhaps you are a bit shy and don’t want to do too many exercises around your coworkers.  Maybe it takes 30 minutes to get down your sky scraper to walk outside.  Anyways, here are a few additional ideas and ways you can support your efforts to perform these office workouts.

1. My office has no stairs: Try some heel lifts at your desk.  It does not take much space or effort, but stand up and lift your heels.  Space them out and go slow enough to feel the burn in your calves.

2. My parking lot is small: Pretend you are on a phone call and take a few laps outside around your office building before going inside.  Carry a backpack or bag, even if you don’t need to just to add some weight to your workout.

3. My office is too small for push-ups: Try taking a stack of books and lifting them up like you are doing curls.

4. My office is too small for a standing desk: Check out the Ninja Standing Desk.  It is portable and can hang over your door or hang on hooks placed in drywall.

5. I am too ADD to remember to walk: Try EyeLeo on your Windows computer or Coffee Break on your Apple.  Or, know your office smokers and follow them every time you see them head for the door.

6. It rains too much to walk outside: Take laps around the office or get an elliptical trainer for your desk, like the Stamina 55-1610 InMotion E1000 Elliptical Trainer.

7. My job is computer intensive: So your job keeps you at your desk a lot?  If you need to call someone in the office, ditch the phone, get up and instead walk to their office.  You can use all the breaks you can get.

There are other things you can do too, like make it a point to walk to lunch of they are within walking distance, or join an office walking group.  I know around DC there are non-profit groups that organize walking contests between local businesses.  Anyways, check out the full article at the artofmanliness.com.

About these ads

The World’s First Gentleman’s Fashion Adhesive by Jon Yeazel — Kickstarter

The World’s First Gentleman’s Fashion Adhesive by Jon Yeazel — Kickstarter.

OK, I am officially on a Kickstarter kick!  And no, I am not being paid to promote any of these products.  This product is not totally up my alley, because I tend to dress fairly casual at work (I do the dirty work and kept away from customers).  But, if I was wearing more collars, more suits, or worried a lot more about my appearance, I would jump all over this product and get a lifetime supply! But I did pick up some for those just in case moments.

This offering is for an adhesive to hold yourself together.  Not your emotions, but to hold your collar, or tie, or even the suit jacket sleeves in place, giving you a sharper and crisper look.  How often do collars lose shape and curl out?  How often do you debate over which shirt button to open up while going for the business casual look, but one is too high and the other too low?  This product will help solve those problems and to put away the tape and safety pins.

The packaging markets to men, but I imagine the adhesives would be just as effective for women to use.

Check it out!  The Kickstarter campaign ends soon.

The Best Gift You Can Give Your Employees – Forbes

The Best Gift You Can Give Your Employees – Forbes.

Do you agree with this point of view from Forbes that the best way to retain employees is through a diverse set of corporate volunteer programs?  That seems like a good idea, but I would still much rather have telecommuting, competitive pay, extended vacations, gym passes, maybe some stock options, and for the employer to be more proactive paying for training and continued education.

I think with more of an investment in the individual, at least how I feel, I would be more inclined to volunteer for the company.  If they take care of me I would have greater motivation to help others under the company umbrella.  What do you think?

I think everyone should volunteer some time outside of the company anyways.  There are always a lot of opportunities, even if it is as simple as a 5k walk to raise a few bucks.

Elmore Leonard on Bad Movies and Good Writing

Keywords: Why and Where You Should Be Using Them

Keywords, the greatest tool you can ever have and understand how to use.  Search engines are based on keywords.  When you type into a search engine that you want to look up famous quotes about life by Albert Einstein, the search engine is trying to return results that best match your request.  It will find anything that is about Albert Einstein and mentions quotes and life.  It is quite simple, except when your search results return hundreds of results.  So where can you use keywords?

Finding Things Online

As mentioned, you can use them in a search engine to find things online.  If you are at your favorite blog or online store, you can usually enter keywords to find what you are looking for.  If you want a book by a particular author on Amazon.com, you can enter the authors name and a drop down appears that says the authors name and topics they are available in.  You would select books.  On Google, searching for Albert Einstein quotes returns several sites with quotes from the famous physicist.

Job Hunting

When you post your resume online at Monster or CareerBuilder you are making that resume available to their search engines.  Employers access these search engines and input keywords related to the position they are trying to fill.  The good news is you can access their search engines as well to search for those open positions. Using the right keywords helps you to be found, and for you to search for the right positions.

The best advice to offer when writing your resume is to avoid writing what you think should be said and what you think the keywords are.  You should search for jobs you might like and to incorporate into your resume the keywords you find in their search results.  Let’s say you find a technical writer position listed and it states that the company wants someone familiar with the APA style, has good proofreading skills, understands medical and technical terminology, are organized, and a self-starter.  You will want to make sure, as long as you have that set of skills and experience, that you use those same keywords common in the search results in your resume.  I also recommend you search for a few similar positions and see which words pop up the most.

Web Publishing and Building an Online Presence

If you are posting a blog and want to be found in the search results under certain topics, you tag your blog with relevant keywords.  An easy example is posting to Twitter.  They show their latest trending topics.  To show up at the top of search results on those topics you will find users posting a link to their material loaded with those trending keywords.

While that is annoying, it does get you to show up in results.  Results are where you want to be.  Proper tagging in your blogs (WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger), pins (Pinterest), tweats (Twitter), and on a main business site gets you to show up in relevant search engines.  Do the research to find out what the relevant and most popular keywords are and you will get more noticed.

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