Fitness and exercise, especially if you have a sedentary job like me in an office is important. More so if like me your also trying to lose weight and regain your fitness, at the same time. Right now with gyms closed and most if us confined to quarters its not such an easy task.

It’s an area of working and living at home 24/7 for the past 4 or 5 weeks that I have personally had a real struggle with.

I like to learn but cannot emphasise enough how much I hate to be taught, so following classes or a workout tutorial online is not for me.

Stretching, yeah sure I give it a go, my partner is very much into stretching and yoga, but as much as i enjoy it, I find myself switching off after 15 minutes.

I use an ironing board as a desk which sounds insane but it actually great because it means i have a height adjustable desk where I can alternate between sitting and standing, and of course i make sure i take a regular break to walk around the house during the day.

Still though its not really enough, we dug out an old 80’s exercise bike and its not so good to use and so I’ve lost interest in that as well.

In short no gym, no activity and I’m struggling. While I’m certainly not the fittest person you will ever meet, I do walk 10k spots a day minimum and I do cycle, swim and weight train, albeit not with a fixed and regular routine.

I was for many years a manual worker and for me i have always enjoyed hard physical work, in fact I had no need to go anywhere near a gym until my I changed career focus and became an office worker, so for me anything that gets my muscles going and lets me feel like I’m working is something that keeps me interested.

I have though I think found the solution to my workout problem and the sad thing is that it has been here all along… the garden.

Now I usually have zero interest, cars, bikes, mechanical things are more my taste. However my partner love the garden and the opportunity to create and relax in a green space.

Since we have nothing else to occupy is outside of work and Netflix, a lot of time is being spent in the garden.

Shovelling dirt, digging flower trenches, taking up leaves, planting and my absolute 2 favourites, building a brick bbq and using an axe to chop firewood for said bbq are all excellent whole body workouts.

A hour a day of hard physical work in the garden is helping me feel like I have accomplished something with my body, using my muscles and just generally getting everything moving and getting a sweat on.

Now I could be much more efficient about getting my bbq area into shape and helping my partner but that would defeat the purpose of the task, which is for me to get a workout in. So I take the long way round, don’t rely on mechanical aids and well basically just get stuck in.

The axe, the shovel, bags aof cement, bricks they are all great alternatives to brick laying and what’s more, take the long way round when taking them from point a to point b and then attach the task, and you get some cardio in for free.

If you have the same workout issues and have an outdoor space, go attack’s it and I guarantee you will have fun, get fresh air and find the solution your looking for.

Anyone who may have read any of my posts, here on medium or instagram may already know that I’m big on travel.

In fact these days I’m almost solely focused on working as an expat, moving around every few years and just experiencing as many different cultures as possible. My parents instilled in me a lifelong passion for travel, and the belief that travel really does broaden the mind.

One of my first loves when it comes to travel and culture is Kazakhstan.

There are a few reasons for that and probably the biggest is that really its one of the first places I really was able to work in and experience for any period of time, around the age of 20/21.

Starting at the age of 19 I’d been fortunate enough to travel extensively for work but up until this point it was for short trips in many different places. Kazakhstan was different, longer and repeat trips and the first time i really got a taste for culture in the country I was a guest in.

In fact for a lot of friends and colleagues our assignments in Kazakhstan in the late nineties and early noughties are the stuff of legend, that we still talk about with great fondness all these years later.

Back in those days the country was redeveloping its own identity and moving away from the soviet satellite model that it been used to since the early part of the 20th century.

Personally I consider that we were hugely lucky to have that opportunity to see a country develop having come out from under the shadow of the Soviet Union around 10 years previously. Certainly the opportunity to see such a rapid development of a country and change back to a uniquely national culture across so much of the globe as those countries that redeveloped post Soviet Union, is one we will be very unlikely to see again in our lifetimes.

Many assignments have and gone since then and I have experienced many different cultures and countries but always referred back to Kazakhstan as my base experience.

Fast forward to 2017 and I had the chance to take on another live in assignment, this time in Kazakhstan. Since I felt like I had unfinished business in my love affair with the country I jumped at the chance.

Ive been here just over 3 years making it my longest assignment to date and I still if I’m fortunate have around 12 months to go. In the time I’ve been here, this time I have really done my best to explore what the country and its fantastic people have to offer.

The 9th largest country in the world and the largest landlocked country in the world. Kazakhstan is roughly the same size as Western Europe, with a population of roughly 18mm people recorded in the last census 2017.

The climate is desert in the west and centre and mainly alpine in the east. Winters are 5 months long and brutally cold getting down as low as -50dgc with wind chill in some areas. Summers are hot and dry with temperatures reaching 50dgc in some areas. It really is a climate with extremes.

The landscape is varied from the beaches and long deserted stretches of coastline on the campaign sea, through the flat expanse of the central Asian steppe and the greenery, mountains, lakes, waterfalls and canyons in the east. It’s a country that has something for everyone.

If you think the gran canyon is a sight to behold, the Chorley canyon outside of the city of Almaty is on another level and so much more accessible.

The people are truly patriotic about their country and defending its culture in a way that many of us simply wouldn’t understand. The people of Kazakhstan can trace themselves back through the lineage of the Khan dynasty and are a major part of the history of the Silk Road,

Respect for your elders is a value that’s not simply admired or desired, its an expectation and a key founding tenet of the culture. I don’t just mean elders in the family I mean anyone regardless of background or position more than 7 or 8 years older than you.

Hospitality is offered everywhere with genuine intent, not simply as a gratuitous gesture.

The cuisine is a rich varied melting pot of Middle Eastern and Asian influences, although be warned you will end up trying horse at some point in your travels :).

In 2020 Kazakhstan is really expanding its efforts to bring tourism to the country. I highly recommend it, the place and the people will be a richly rewarding experience you will never forget.

I consider myself pretty fortunate these days. I’m settled in a relatively new to me rental home in Central Asia where lurking in the basement is a full size tournament spec snooker table, or so it seemed.

whole in not the most naturally gifted player to ever pick up a cueI do enjoy cue sports, billiards, whatever you want to call them.

Being a Brit I’m used to playing pool and snooker. Over the years I’ve also played billiards and bar billiards a couple of times and thought I’d seen just about everything that could be played with a cue and a billiards table.

As they say everyday is a school day and what I was lucky enough to find is a game very specific to Russian and ex soviet countries called Russian pyramid.

I believe that the game is known to some in the states and that there is a world championship which is won predominantly by Russians or players of Russian descent.

So what makes this game writing about and sharing with the world?

Well for several reasons its a real challenge.

The game has roughly the same rules as pool when it comes to foul play. Like all billiards games the objective is to pot more balls than your opponent.

That’s where the similarities end. The game starts with a yellow cue ball and 14 white object balls, there is no black.

The winner is the first to pot 8 balls, there is no preferred sequence and no need to nominate pockets.

So far so easy right? Well yes but its about to get a lot more challenging

Those balls well they are 25% larger and heavier than a standard snooker or pool ball.

The pockets, well they are 5% smaller than those on a regular snooker table.

This is where the challenge, the fun and to be brutally honest the utter frustration of this brilliant game come into play.

Potting balls and playing 100% accurately with every shot becomes both a nessecity and an art form. Every pot has to lined up exactly to roll in, and the cue ball being much heavier is harder to control. No trick shots here…

If the ball is not 100% lined up with the pocket then you either simply leave the pot on for your opponent as you look on helplessly as the ball rattles the jaws, or watch on equally helplessly as the ball ricochets back from the jaws.

So far its provided hours of fun, frustration, triumph, challenges and learning.

If you have an interest in billiards in general and access to a table, check what’s available. Balls are generally cheap, its a real challenge and one thing I can guarantee is when this quarantine situation ends it will provide hours of fun with friends.

I’m writing this after watching the movie “first man” about Neil Armstrong as he, NASA and his fellow pioneers in space travel take the first steps from experimental flight at the edge of the atmosphere, through the beginnings of the US astronaut program up to the moon landings.

As I watched the movie and still one afterwards as both just a normal person and as an engineer I’m simply in awe of the boundaries they pushed, the technological leaps they made to allow space flight and exploration to become a reality along with the courage and sacrifices of those who knew the risks they were taking to push the human race forward and unfortunately lost their lives in the process.

It also made me consider what life would be like for us today, if humanity was simply content to know what we know and live a life where we had just enough in terms of food, social interaction etc. Life would be profoundly different for the majority of us for sure.

It’s that curiosity for what’s out there beyond our understanding that drives us forward and help us continue evolving as a species.

Always asking questions, striving to improve, while we could argue that we don’t always get it right as a species. I think that we have a pretty good balance between what we get wrong, the lessons we learn and the things we get right. In terms of quality of living, educational levels and ability to fight disease we are certainly far better off than we were 100 years ago.

Today we face the COVID 19 pandemic and through the use of technology, collective education and knowledge, the ability to fail fast, learn the lessons and move on, there are teams of medical pioneers around the world right now working to push the barriers of what’s possible to build a defence against this pandemic.

200 or so years ago we would have relied on a handful of people working in isolation around the world, taking years to understand the disease, its effects and the possible remedies. Then our species developed the telegram and telephone and the world slowly started to become connected allowing these people to work together and develop vaccines in a much faster time scale.

Today that pioneering spirit we have 5g internet and people can connect with each other sharing, information and data faster than we can think, working globally but completely interconnected, through the internet to quickly develop a vaccine.

We have literal armies of medical staff, all interconnected by the same systems sharing data and learning how to deal with patients who are suffering the disease all while exposing themselves to risk, imagine the courage involved in that line of work. In the past almost all of the symptoms would have proved deadly, and sadly for some they are still proving so today.

Sometimes when we look at our collective situation today and feel fed up with the lockdown, especially as the weather turns and we want to be outside with our friends and family. It’s worth taking five minutes to think about the age we live in and the possibilities technology and humanities constant quest to improve have provided us.

It’s this collective knowledge, connected world through technology and the armies of medical staff working tirelessly to beat this that will keep us going and let us succeed in the end.

And yes the movie is well worth watching, I’d go as far as to say it may just be life changing and certainly its deeply profound

This morning and I was reading an article about the 1990 master golf tournament and how Nick Faldo that years winner, used visualisation to create a mental map to win all from a single thought that had entered his mind going into the final day of the tournament.

At the master, the winner of the tournament is crowned in a ceremony where the previous years champion passes on the famous masters green jacket to the new champion. This is all done in front of the TV cameras on the global stage, with full smiles, handshakes and congratulatory speeches. As you would expect from a sport that especially in that timeframe exemplified sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct. The 1989 champion who would have to perform these duties was non other than a certain Mr Faldo.

As the final day started Faldo was in the top 3 or 4, but he was some way behind the tournament leader. That morning a thought began to form in his mind, he would simply be unable to go through with the ceremony if he lost. It was unthinkable therefore that he would lose.

This single thought provided a basis for a mental map and a visualisation of the win. Long story short Faldo came back from around 6 shots behind to win the tournament after a short playoff. Thereby avoiding the situation that he would have to pass on the green jacket, in a situation he felt he would be unable to face.

This is an area of physiology I have been interested in and experimenting with actively for a long time. I’m primarily interested in what separates elite sports people and the average person in terms of being able to consistently get the result they desire.

If we remove sport from the equation, why are these people able to get results, particularly in times of adversity that the average person does not?

The answer really is the power of positive thought and visualisation. There is vast amount of literature published in this area and I’m not qualified enough to go through it in depth, but i do think based on what I have read and what’s ive taken away and practiced that these people are able to do 3 things that the average person is not doing in their day to day routines, but which if implemented can build us towards success.

1. Build a mental routine, for each thing we do, if its a hobby, a sport, deep work, building a routine that gets you into the zone for that, so that your able to use muscle memory to help complete the task, giving you more brain power to focus on thinking and visualisation.

2. Focus on positive thoughts around the outcome that we desire.

3.Visualise what the end goal looks like when you are successful in reaching that.

Ive been experimenting with this for several years and for me Ive very much found that these things work for me.

Some examples I can give are, in golf which is one of my hobbies, I have a routine I use with feet and hand placement, to get me in the zone, this lets me use my muscle memory to swing the club consistently allowing me to use my brain power to focus on visualisation of the shot i want to play and where the ball is going to end up. I’m still more caddy shack than I am Tiger Woods but it helps my game hugely and I bring this success into other areas of my life.

On my motorcycle I use a similar process, I have a mental routine when I get on the bike and position my body on the bike in a certain way. This grounds me and stops me getting too excited at the start of a ride with negative results. I also plan my route and visualise my escape routes for the scenarios i could encounter on the road. Doing this I stay safe on the road, keep calm and have far more brain power employed on controlling the things I can control while I’m on the bike, which at the end of the day keeps me safe.

In my career I use the visualisation, to see the positive outcomes of me achieving my goals. This has helped me with numerous challenges, its helped me see where I need to go for promotions and helped me realise my dreams of moving to different parts of the world.

Give it a go, positive thinking and visualisation works, you may just be surprised at the outcomes.

Most of the world is now working at home. Not everyone has that choice or the luxury of course, but this is the situation many of us find ourselves in.

My home work journey began 3 and a bit weeks ago and I must admit I was very apprehensive, Sure Ive worked at home before if Ive been ill or I have had a deadline to meet that meant evening or weekend work and I couldn’t get to the office. I have to be honest though and say I always hated home working. Firstly my mind prefers a physical boundary between where I work and where I live. Secondly Ive always just found too many distractions at home.

Now that I’m the position of working from home along with my partner I really have no choice except get on with it, and well the results have been surprising.

This has required some careful planning and logistics for both of us, as my partner actually works for the client, that I work with exclusively. So separate private work spaces were key from the start of the experiment.

However after we set a routine, some boundaries and got offices set up as far apart as possible (me in the basement and her in the spare room 2 floors up) I can actually say I’m starting to enjoy working from home.

Instead of leaving home at 7:30am and commuting for an hour, I simply start work at 8:30. The time I normally spend commuting well that’s now my time, to read, write, exercise, or anything else I feel like of a morning.

At 8:30 i have already accomplished some of my personal goals for the day and I’m into my work day, which starts with online calls/meetings. This has been a revelation especially for a Luddite like me, I can now be an active participant in meetings and get on with my day at the Same time.

By 12 I’m ready for a 30 minute break and catch up with my partner. Then its back to the action until around 6 which is the same time I’d normally leave the office.

What has been massively surprising for me is the additional productivity I have found.

When you strip out the physical meetings, the informal meetings where someone comes to the office for a conversation and the time spent commuting, productivity and concentration levels are massively increased.

Bear in mind that I write this as someone who has the luxury of an office to myself. I cant imagine the benefits to someone working in a cubicle or open plan office.

Is this the future? Well yes I really think it is for several compelling reasons:

. We don’t need to face to face meetings all of the time, a lot of our communication has moved online and its more productive as a result

. Do we need to be in a physical office space? I think this situation is proving to us that really we don’t.

So for those of us who don’t need to work in an office what are the overall benefits:

It’s better for the environment, less traffic, less commuters, less office space and emissions and more green space.

It’s a benefit to us personally, no commute, less stress, less cost, more productivity and more time to ourselves

It’s a benefit to business, less office space required is less cost and less liability

It’s a win, win all round, albeit not one that’s able to be universally adopted by us all. But its a very practical, low investment and high impact way to change the environment, lower costs for business and help humanity to thrive.

Given the challenges the world faces today, this really seems like a no brainier to me

As I write this from my very own lockdown cell ( I mean home 🙂 ), I’m 3 weeks into complete lockdown in town aside from grocery shopping once a week. I’m settled into working from home and have a pretty good routine going with my partner. Because we both have worked at sea and in remote areas, with not much to do except work and read in our lives, we are fortunate that once settled into a changed routine that works for us we are fine. That’s not the case for everyone though and so I thought i would share my tips for surviving this however long it lasts!

Ill start off by saying getting into a good work routine is key here, ive written about elsewhere in my article, the revalation of home working.

So lockdown, quarantine whatever you want to label it, most of us across the world right now are in some form of government mandated restricted movement, and there is good change that we are either furloughed for this period or working from home.

All at once we have freedom from the commute, more time with the family, and regardless of whether we are working from home or not, we all have more free time in our lives.

The flip side of this of course is that all this new found time and freedom is alien to most of now a days, programmed as we are to always be on, whether that’s for work, social media or other commitments. We are also missing out on a lot of diverse social interaction that being in a physical workplace and going through life, shopping, attending to hobbies etc we experience in everyday life, but which we are missing out on right now.

It’s not all bad news though, we can prevent and avoid the feeling of missing out. For example we connect with friends on WhatsApp or Skype, sit with each other remotely and catch up, gossip have a few beers and keep the social interaction going. The face to face social interaction is what we as humans need, this is just a slight change to way we go about our social interaction, but it still works.

We can do the same things with our colleagues. Missing out on the office humour and lively debate? Simply move it online for the time being.

The free time we have, but cant use outside in the community? Well the good news is that there are lots of other ways to use that. What are the things you’ve wanted to do for a long time but have simply been procrastinating on?

Take up a new hobby. Do you have a passion for something but never really developed it? Now would be a good time to do that.

Got a musical instrument in the house gathering dust? Go online you will find plenty of courses for free and who knows maybe your the next Ray Charles, Miles Davis or Jimi Hendrix???

Still need some inspiration – there are plenty of courses, guides and blogs online to help you learn a new skill, you may even be able to pick up a qualification or two while you are at it.

What is equally important is that you don’t chain yourself to your laptop, working from home generally means you have a little more freedom. If you need a break take one, need social interaction get online with your colleagues and try to compartmentalise your day.

That family time you suddenly have, why not kill the internet for a certain time each day and get the Lego or cards or board games out and have some good old fashioned fun…

Trust me you will thank me later

Thanks for reading

So we are all hearing different stories, opinions, casualty and death rates as COVID 19 sweeps across the globe and causes mayhem. Many of us are in isolation, either choosing to self isolate, or having to isolate and lockdown by government mandate.

It’s a strange time for the world in terms of our health, socially and economically. Many of us have simply not experienced these depp changes before.

No doubt it is truly daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. So much of the time we are too busy to stop and take stock of our lives and quite often things like work control us instead of the opposite way around.

So I urge anyone kind enough to read this, let go of as much worry and doubt about this situation as you can. We can’t control this virus as individuals, that’s a fact.

What we can control is our response by social distancing, self isolating, making sure our hygiene is on point etc, other than these things we have no control over it.

So instead of worrying about what we cannot control, embrace the extra time and freedom.

If your working from home take the time you would normally spend commuting as time for you. Spend time with the family, learn a new skill, get back into your hobbies and passions or create new ones.

You could even follow your goals like me, for example. This blog, being published and taking writing seriously are all goals i have been able to pursue in the last 3 weeks while locked down and working from home.

The point is that this won’t last, the time, the space, the freedom and opportunity it creates is just temporary but we all have a window to do something truly remarkable for ourselves and for others. We just need to look at the situation from a perspective of opportunity.

It’s a great opportunity to spend more time with your loved ones (even if they drive you crazy) and to learn more about yourself without the cloak of everyday life covering you.

It’s really a great opportunity to learn what you really want out of life and use the time to build the skills and knowledge to achieve that.

In my view the time we have in the next few weeks and maybe months is truly a once in a lifetime opportunity that if we are just positive could be the best opportunity to pursue a truly enjoyable and fulfilling life, that we will ever have.

Thanks for reading and stay safe

Sometimes these things are like public transport, you wait for what seems like forever for something to happen and then it all happens at once.

In this case for me, after deliberating and procrastinating as well for a significant period of time, 3 of my goals came together within a month and here I am today, writing about it on my own web site, and talking to you all as a published author.

These steps may seem insignificant to others and that’s ok, but to me they are big steps taken along a road that’s got a long way to go still.

1. I took the first steps into the world of writing in the public domain, opened a medium account and started posting articles, this helped me achieve 2 goals of my goals, which were to publish content online and become a published author (Albeit right now self published with next to no readership)

2. In the same week, i was invited by my employer to write an article on engineering in AMCHAM magazine in Central Asia. This strengthened the feeling of meeting the goal of being a published author since its an independently published article for a wider audience and albeit indirectly I’m being paid for my writing.

3. Start a website to share my writing with the wider world

In one month as i have move forward and focused on those goals, I’ve been able to realise them. I cant say that this has been a quick process as It most definitely has not, but i can say its very gratifying.

Whatever your goals are, keep focusing on them and especially right now, when we have the freedom and free time to pursue those goals and make them reality, what’s stopping you?

Thanks for reading

George

Hi my name is George Walker, I’m an engineer and keen amateur writer and painter, currently based in Central Asia. Welcome to my site, I hope you enjoy the content, feel free to join in on the discussion and debate.

So why writing for thought? Well up until maybe 1 year ago I hadn’t really written anything expect emails, reports etc for work and writing for the simple joy of writing was Ill admit fairly alien to me. However after starting to journal, I became aware that writing was incredibly stress relieving for me, and I’ve been writing ever since.

So why a website dedicated to my writing? Well in the end of the day my writing habits are pretty much like my reading habits, i prefer non fiction, and my aim is to be both a published author and to take my hobby to a professional level. I can only do that If I have outlet for people to read my content. So while I have also been using Medium to post for a short time now, Ive decided i should also have a dedicated site to share more content with you all. At the moment be prepared for me to write about anything and everything as I move forward.