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Ed Tech Fitness Challenge of the Week – A New Exercise

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I love going for long bike rides. Anything less than 50 miles is considered short in my book. But I only get to ride for that long once a week. The rest of the week is made up of some training sessions on an indoor bike or some shorter outdoor workouts. Usually, I don’t mind the trainer, but the last couple of weeks have been a bit boring.

Challenge of the Week

When exercise gets boring or it feels as if you’re stuck in a rut, it might be a good time to mix it up and try something new for a day or two. Avoid that rut by trying some new exercises/ exercise routines this week. For me, that’s going to be going for a trail run a couple of times this week. For you it might mean giving a yoga class, spin class, or body flow class a try. Whatever it is, try something new this week.

Updates on Earlier Challenges

Last week a handful of folks used the 5×20 challenge tracker. I’m going to keep that running for anyone who is using it or for anyone who wants to get started with it.

Earlier this month I shared the challenge of giving up or cutting back on social media use. I’ve been Facebook free (almost) for a month now. Here are five things I’ve learned from the experience. If you’ve tried giving up or cutting back on social media use, I’d love to hear about your experience in the comments below.

Five Things I’ve Learned in a Month Without Facebook

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Last month I decided to give up Facebook except for a few minutes each day to post things to the various pages that I maintain for work. I signed out of Facebook on my phone and installed the Stay Focusd Chrome extension to limit myself to ten minutes per day of Facebook time. Here’s what I’ve learned about Facebook and myself over the last month of not using Facebook.

Facebook Makes It Hard to Quit Facebook

As the manager of Facebook business pages I can schedule Facebook posts to appear at later times. I usually schedule Facebook posts on Thursday or Friday to appear over the weekend. So the first weekend that I went without Facebook I didn’t post anything or log into my account. On Monday morning Facebook sent me an email notifying me of 38 updates that I “might have missed.” These weren’t updates from my pages, they were updates from my friends about their dogs, cats, kids, and political rants.

Scrolling Isn’t Reading or Learning

Sure, I can follow some interesting pages about my favorite topics and I might pick up a few tidbits here and there, but that’s not nearly as effective as just Googling a topic of interest, going directly to an informative website, reading a book, or diving into a message board that is dedicated to a topic. I’ve gotten a lot more out of my time by going directly to topics of interest than scrolling through Facebook posts that are loosely associated to topics of interest.

I Can Read More Books

I’ve finished three books in the last month by simply picking them up and reading a page or two at those times that I might have scrolled through Facebook.

Fewer Moments of Melancholy and Annoyance

Those of us who are prone to bouts of being melancholy aren’t helped by scrolling through Facebook. Even if it’s done subconsciously we’re making comparisons to others and to ourselves. That’s not good.

No one has ever been convinced to change his/her mind about politics based on a Facebook meme. Not seeing those has reduced the number of times that I’ve been annoyed about things that I can’t control.

Lots of Other Ways to Waste Time

I’ve found that there are plenty of other ways to waste time. But at least now I’m making a conscious choice to read a book or browse stock charts when I should be completing a work task.

All in all, giving up Facebook has made me think about how I use my time during the day. It’s also let me look at the world around me with the wide eyes that I had before Facebook came along.

Ed Tech Fitness Challenge – 5×20

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It’s the third week of September. Life gets busy during the school year and it can be hard to find the time for the full workouts we did during the summer. But even 20 minutes a day is better than nothing at all. In fact, 20 minutes five times in a seven day period is better for you than one or two 60 minute workouts in the same seven days. It’s all about momentum.

This week the challenge is to do a minimum of 20 minutes of purposeful exercise five times in the next seven days.

If you need a little incentive to do this, log your exercise time in this form to keep track and see how the whole group is doing. Complete the challenge this week (between 9/16 and 9/23) and I’ll send you one of the new Ed Tech Fitness stickers that I designed over the weekend (see image below).

In other news…

Later today I’ll be publishing a podcast that I recorded with Dr. Beth Holland. In the podcast we talked about digital equity, stand-up paddleboarding, and how she maintained her fitness while spending two years recovering from a broken leg. You will be able to find the podcast here on my Anchor.fm channel.

5 Signs It’s Time for a Break from Social Media

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This week’s Ed Tech Fitness challenge was to try going on a social media diet. In other words, cut back or cut out the time you spend on the social media site(s) that sucks time out of your day while not giving you anything positive.

I’ve almost entirely avoided for Facebook a month, and I feel better. Next I’ll be cutting back on my time on Twitter. It took a long time for me to get to place where I was ready/ needed to cut back. Based entirely on my own experience, here are some signs that you might be ready for a break from social media.

You’re annoyed rather than entertained.

From friends sharing “free ticket” scams to pithy inspiration memes to political posts, I found that my reaction to most of the things I saw was annoyance rather than entertainment.

You’re making too many comparisons.

We all carefully select the picture, video, or words that we post online to show the best parts of our lives. If you’re having a tough day, week, month, year and all you keep looking at are pictures of things that look like more fun than you’re having, it gets depressing really quickly.

Perhaps looking at pictures of people having fun is inspirational for you. If so, go for it. For me and many others it’s just a depressing comparison that’s easy to quit making when you stop either following those accounts or quit looking at social media all together.

You’re not reading because you’re scrolling.

Do you know how hard it is to take a paperback book with you to read while you’re in your doctor’s waiting room? It’s not! I found there were lots of times when I could have been reading a book instead of scrolling through annoying Facebook posts or pithy memes on Twitter.

You’re looking at your phone instead of the beauty around you.

I live in one of the most beautiful places in the country. Heck, our state nickname is Vacationland! I was sitting in my backyard on a beautiful summer evening and looking at my phone instead of enjoying the sunset. What a waste!

You think about the social media post instead of the actual experience.

When you find yourself thinking about an experience through the lens of “how will I share this online?” before just experiencing it, it might be time to ask if you have a social media addiction.

Ed Tech Fitness Challenge – Social Media Dieting

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It feels like fall here in Maine. It has been in the 40’s (Fahrenheit) every morning since Thursday. That meant I had to move my Saturday morning bike ride to the afternoon where I got to enjoy some nice views over Streaked Mountain. And on my Friday afternoon ride I found The Yeti (see picture below). That was the highlight of my fitness this weekend. What was your highlight?

Yeti crossing road sign.

Challenge of the Week

This week’s challenge is one that I’ve been doing for a few weeks. That is challenge is social media fasting. In August I noticed that I was spending way too much time on Facebook. Not only was it a waste of time, it was contributing to making me melancholy. So I decided to go on a social media diet. In the time since I started doing this I’ve found that have fewer fluctuations in my mood during the day and I’m getting things done more quickly because I’m not “just checking Facebook for a minute.”

The challenge this week is to cut back on the time you spend on the social media site that sucks time out of your day. That could be Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, or something else that you find yourself wasting time using. I’ve been able to curtail my Facebook use by doing two things; removing the app from my phone and using the Stay Focusd Chrome extension. The extension lets you set limits for how long you can access any site(s) of your choosing. When the limit is reached, you’re blocked for 24 hours.

So this week try a social media diet and see how much time you can get back in your life for other fun things. I’m using that time to read The Naturalist. What will you read or do with more time?

Stickers!

I have five Ed Tech Fitness stickers left. If you want one, just send me your mailing address and I’ll put one in the mail for you this week.

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