What gadgets are you using to track your fitness. Here’s a good list form over at TechCrunch. Here are mine, and some I’ve retired:

1. FitBit – small, accurate, easy to carry. Doesn’t do cycling well but great for everything else.
2. MyFitnessPal (app) brilliant tracker and food logger
3. Garmin Edge 500 (for the bike) – brilliant and essential for tracking rides
4. Strava (app) great for tracking rides. Garmin does much of the same for me but this is a handy back-up.

Retired:

• Nike FuelBand: too big and bulky. Not accurate. And I lost it.
• JawboneUp: Liked this. was a 1st generation unit and lost faith in it after all their issues with it.

So, there you go. What are you using to track your fitness progress?

Have always thought these were great pointers – although so hard to do — from a memo crafted by David Ogilvy on September 7th, 1982:

The better you write, the higher you go in Ogilvy & Mather. People who think well, write well.

Woolly minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters and woolly speeches.

Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to write well. Here are 10 hints:

1. Read the Roman-Raphaelson book on writing. Read it three times.

2. Write the way you talk. Naturally.

3. Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.

4. Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.

5. Never write more than two pages on any subject.

6. Check your quotations.

7. Never send a letter or a memo on the day you write it. Read it aloud the next morning — and then edit it.

8. If it is something important, get a colleague to improve it.

9. Before you send your letter or your memo, make sure it is crystal clear what you want the recipient to do.

10. If you want ACTION, don’t write. Go and tell the guy what you want.

~David

Loved my first read of Egan. It’s been sitting beside the bed for too long. The passage of time is incredibly fluid in this one – and a theme itself. Thought the .ppt chapter was indulgent and confusing. Didn’t do much for me.

The rest of the story was great. Well worth the read.

_****