In life there are a lot of things which seem to expand; knowledge, personal traits, ability, friendship circles, debt, waist line. Now I know what you must be thinking…surely he isn’t going to waffle on about a change in volume, or a thermodynamic process, that’s been covered in text books galore! Well you’d be right, I’m not going to talk about thermodynamic processes (not directly anyway) so let’s concentrate on some other things, let’s start with waist line. I am on the larger side and know that spending the majority of my time on a laptop studying and working means a lack of activity, I do struggle to find the motivation to exercise, bear in mind that I spent the summer, from the end of my exams to the end of September when I had to head back off to uni running multiple times a week and managed to get back up to 4 miles in 40 minutes. This for me was a great achievement considering I had let myself go, 10 years ago when I met my now wife I was regularly running 10km races (not competitively) but I had a fairly decent PB of 53 minutes. I was extremely happy with that at the time however life gets in the way, not being single any more meant more evenings doing what I shouldn’t and less evenings doing what I should. Over indulgence is easy when you are stressed, worrying or living a hectic life and that’s ok (in moderation).

I know I could make some changes and they would only have to be small to make a difference but I feel that at the moment I don’t have the mental capacity for this. I do have every intention of exercising but there’s always an excuse, a deadline or some other such reason to plough through a text book, attempt to learn how to use ANSYS or get to writing up that tricky conclusion for a report which is due in next week. These are all important things and I am only letting myself down by not pushing forward with getting my running trainers on and going for a 20 minute jog. Again moderation.

I want to expand my brain as much as I can in as many topics as possible, but this can be a challenge, I struggle sometimes to focus on more than one subject or topic at a time either while studying or at work. I have a very straight path in my mind and it can feel overwhelming sometimes, lots of different challenges occurring personally, professionally and academically. Again moderation helps with this. Sometimes there can be too many things going on all around and the ability to jump from one to another seems like an impossibility. Well it’s not, you just need a way to moderate it. I have picked up a lot of methods and processes from my colleagues both at work and at uni, things I wouldn’t of thought about. For me making a list each morning means that when I get that distracting phone call or email I can remember where I was and what I was doing by heading back to my list. It is also there if I need to expand this list with new tasks or topics, I quite like the style of a ‘to do’ pas as I can tick things off once accomplished and the pages aren’t so big that the list feels never ending (I love that feeling of ripping a page out once all items have been completed!

I guess this blog post has been more about moderation than expansion but it is how I deal with it. Expansion is great in many ways, I have met some really great people through expanding social circles, work socials and through studies. I am expanding my abilities and knowledge and i also decided 10 days ago that I was going to challenge myself to get my German to a standard good enough for me to pass myself off as a German in Berlin this Christmas when we visit the Christmas markets. I use the language app Duolingo, just small doses of 10 minutes a day and I feel like the language is returning to me from when I took German at secondary school some 16 + years ago…wow that long?

Anyway, ensure you enjoy a variety of activities and don’t let the slog of study or work get you down. (Hopefully my 10 day streak in Duolingo will have increased by the time my next blog post comes out, and who knows maybe a jog or two might slip in – anyone who says they don’t have 30 minutes 3 times a week is not being honest…we will see) till next time, moderate.