In the Film Starsky & Hutch there was a lot of exercising, mostly the eyeball variety but another eye-catcher was the Ben Stiller character of Starsky and his hilarious undercover character. His well used line of “DOO ET, DOO ET NOW!!!!!!!” has entered the modern vocab but i discovered another use other then screaming it down the phone at a mate who’s can’t get his ass into gear. It strangely has had a dramatic effect in motivating me - after reading about how my mind works there’s actually a logical reason behind it.

As a proud geek like me it’s probably no surprise to learn that you - like all geeks - follow a distinctive pattern in the way you use your mind. You are a logical kind of guy and follow a mathematically type of learning style. We work well using our brain for logical reasoning, we connect seemingly meaningless content and organize vast amounts of information into order to help learn and understand. And we don’t seem to quite fit into any of the other types of learning minds; Visual, Aural, Sound, Solitary, Verbal and Physical.

If we wanted to loose weight or start exercising to regain our health it would make ‘logical’ sense to approach the problem in a way that is best synchronized with the way our mind works. The line “DOO ET, DOO ET NOW!!!!!!!” actually is the right ‘fit’ for getting us to actually take some action - which is our minds biggest problem.

We as geeks have a tendency to over analyze, get caught up in the detail, almost to an obsessive degree. We get so caught up in the moment that when we are trying to solve something and understating how something works we neglect what is going on around us. We don’t pay attention to our physical state. Our breathing is affected, it becomes extremely slow and shallow. Our posture is terrible we hunch over our desks like some kind of grotesque beast out of Lord of the Rings - not surpassing as we can literally be stuck at our desks for hours.

This lifestyle pattern has far greater effects then just breathing and posture, our diet becomes inconsistent and we end up nearly starving ourselves because we can’t rip ourselves away from the computer to eat and when we do we don’t want to stay away for too long so we get fast food and sugar drinks. Sleep patterns also become out-of-whack, and the final nail in the coffin is that we we don’t we eat poorly. Poor sleep, poor diet and poor exercise, that’s a perfect trifecta for heart disease. We may not feel too bad now and therefor feel like changing too much but we are without-doubt on the road to earlygravesville.

A solution is to try get clued up on how our mind works and set booby traps. We need to remind ourselves that we need to take a break, even if it’s just a walk around the block, to breath in some oxygen - it’s only a start but that may be all you need to get back on track.

To help our absorbed minds we will set traps around our desk and work area to distract us. One trick i found we to writ e “Do it now” post-it-notes in strategic locations. Then i went one step better and put up a poster of the Starsky & Hutch girls above my desk, no only good on the eyes but has a powerful reminder effect. It interrupts my natural urge to get caught up in what i’m doing and i end up taking regular breaks.

What are you waiting for?!? DOO ET, DOO ET NOW!!!!!!!