May 2007

  • Strength training is associated with muscle heads, but it’s smart for everyone. We know that muscle tissue burns calories, so strength training not only makes you stronger and look better, it helps you avoid weight gain when you’re not exercising. In general: Do total-body workouts 3 days a week, resting one day between workout days.…

  • The four-step process for delegation: Train Enable Delegate Let Go Danke to Ulrike for this one.

  • How to Run

    One thing blogging has given me is a place to put summaries of good stuff. I find books increasingly too long and boring to read through, I crave the gist. Much of what we know about fitness can be boiled down into relatively simple processes. Here’s the common formula for increasing your running endurance: Run…

  • I recently finished my first three-week session at Stacy’s Boot Camp, a calisthenics-based workout class held for one hour, three times a week, for three weeks. Sometime during the class when I was trying to avoid thinking about the pain I was in, it occured to me this is a wonderful example of a Blue…

  • Ian Curry, design analyst at Frog Design, pens an interesting look at the current state of design education in The Known Unknowns: Exploring the evolution of design education in response to the industry’s expanding role. We’re honored he includes SmartEx alongside the Institute of Design and Stanford’s d.school, two schools for which we have great…

  • Lou Rosenfeld, who helped create the field of information architecture with the “Polar Bear Book” blogged his reaction to Smart Experience… “…Smart Experience is essentially a broker of dialogues between teachers and learners at different levels, starting with sharing thoughts on rough topics, and ending with an actual course (with students, a teacher, course materials,…

  • I’m not convinced the MFA is the new MBA, though I like this use of Chekhov’s technique for talking to clients: “One of Chekhov’s more famous quotes was “Any idiot can face a crisis; it is this day-to-day living that wears you out”. His simple philosophies come through in his stories, which were not noted…

  • If there’s still anyone out there who follows this blog I’m sure you’re wondering why the post frequency has dropped off and why it consists mostly of quoting the New York Times. I’ve been busy slowly creating my latest passion, a school of continuing education called Smart Experience. I could write a lot about it,…

  • David Pogue with some good ideas from everyday life: It seems to me, though, that we haven’t even scratched the surface [of social media potential]… I was thinking about this — a LOT — as I lay in bed last week, sicker than I’d been in years. I hadn’t eaten for two days, and I…

  • Another reason I like agile management is because when something bad happens, you should know as soon as you can. If you only check project status every week or longer, that can be way too late. It’s like what Robert Duvall says in The Godfather: “I have to go to the airport. The Godfather is…

  • Woman from Marketing: “Well, since we’re all going to hell anyway…”