Musical Motivation

This morning I watched an amazing documentary about the culture of art in media. You can watch it here: PressPausePlay

It's inspiring and cautionary all at once. That is, I want to produce MORE (books and music and inventions and more), but there are more talented people that are doing exactly that and not getting noticed because of the grey goo of everybody else, so I actually also want to produce LESS.

So of course I had a good idea while watching the end: What if I composed music that WAS the training program for getting off the couch and out jogging?


There are plenty of Couch-to-5K programs out there, but you choose your own music. And there are plenty of music playlists out there available for different BPM training -- that's along the same lines of what I'm talking about. RunningMusicMix.com is a good example of that. Running to music according to BPM makes sense to me, it's motivational and gets results.

But what about actually creating a varying musical rhythm that is in itself a song? A song for running? A song created specifically for your training program?

Run2Rhythm is more like what I'm talking about but not exactly -- they just produce fun beats and drums and instruments to jog to -- it's quite repetitive and boring. I want dynamic music. When I'm jogging, I want variation in my music but I don't have time sort it out myself. I want a package I can download quickly and know that it is the right program for my level of exercise.

I wonder what I should call it? Jog Pulse? Musical Motivation? Rhythm Racing? Any other ideas?

Automathical

Now starting Week 3 of the Automotive Math class at the college. They are so eager and bright learners, they make my job easy... Sort of.

Last week we got into a bit of a discussion about class times and suddenly an explosion of male testosterone filled the air! It was horrible. At least no one left.

I just need to remember my roles: Direct, Try not to preach, Avoid giving too many choices.

Lessons learned:
1) Teachers who give too many choices will eventually lose respect from the students.
2) Teachers who don't give enough choices will eventually lose interest from the students.

Po: Working Care = Caring Work?

'Po' is a word that Edward de Bono (the originator of 'lateral thinking') came up with more than 25 years ago. Po is to be used as a provocation word -- a word to provocate a thinking process -- but not necessarily create judgement.

For example...

Po: Employers provide day care facilities for their employees.

Read this as "Wouldn't it be great if..." & "What would happen if..." but all rolled into one thought.

The companies would save on time (and money) since less people would take sick leave or absences for emergencies or appointments. The money from contributing employees could be redistributed to fund the full-time staff looking after the children, thus reducing running costs. The reputation of the company would be fantastic in terms of benefits and generating the feeling that they're really taking care of their own. And -- perhaps most importantly -- it would provide a means for the typical working-parent(s)-with-child family to interact during the day, on a daily basis.

The employees would obviously save a lot of time and money usually spent getting to and from day care (since they're going to work anyway), or leaving early picking the children up, and organizing after-work activities would fit better in their schedules. They'd worry less, since they'd be closer in case of an emergency, and therefore have less on their minds -- which potentially increases productivity. They'd have a more flexible schedule to work with, again decreasing stress and increasing productivity. Interestingly, they could have lunch with the children, which not only gives the day care workers a bit of a break but more importantly they get to spend more time with their children...

The positives in this situation are too numerous to list.

Why hasn't this idea caught on more??