The three key principles

One of my life mottos can be described with: There is only one speed – full speed. Over the recent years there evolved three key principles for myself with which I feel myself pretty good for most of the time:

• Workout regular
• Eat most of the time healthy
• Sleep not too short for a longer time

They work for me very well but of course could be different for other people. But with those key principles I think I can work very productive and efficient to create a nice company, have a good strength and endurance and the most important one: I feel good.

Workout regular

Workout regular

As you may recognized I was a very successful and good athlete in my younger years in the cycling area. I think my whole life was characterized with going out a lot in the nature and play there around with friends. In summer we played a lot of soccer or hide yourself and in winter we sledged or fighted with snowballs. And then when I was around 12 I focused a little bit in cycling. It made me happy and I needed the competition, the feeling after a long ride and being outside regardless of the weather. Even after I ended my athlete career silently due to study a semester abroad I needed to workout. As of today, I really workout 4 to 6 times a week depending on the travel volume and work load for my startup Binando. It is most of the time only 60 to 70 minutes, which is enough to build strength and endurance but of course on a sunny weekend when I have time, I sometimes take a 2 or 3 hours ride with my bike 😍.

As you can see here I am still quite in shape and do lots of different sport activities. This helps me to break out of the daily business, think about several urgent problems – often I solve problems which seem to be hard during a workout – and get a free head to come back energized to my beloved laptop.

Try it out: you can even start with one or two times a week and go out just for a walk for an hour, that could be enough if you did nothing before. But one thing I highly recommend: Don’t hang around all the time with your smartphone during your workout – use your workout to be offline, that is the real timeout!

Eat most of the time healthy

Healthy Food

To be honest I also sometimes eat fast food or sweets like a cake or drink alcohol like a beer or wine. But I think the right amount is of vital importance. Don’t eat every day fast food or drink ever day a beer. Focus on a well-balanced nutrition best with half carbs and half proteins and as little fat as possible because that comes automatic in for most of the people. What I always try is to eat more ground carbs like rice or potatoes and less processed carbs like pasta or pizza. But of course, sometimes you need the best pasta from your favorite Italian – no doubt, enjoy. To get a sixpack you definitely need another plan but we come to that later. I also try to eat enough vegetables and fruits.
A normal day when I am in the office and have no external meeting:

• Breakfast: Porridge / Oatmeal
• Lunch: Rice with chicken or turkey and a big salad – eat as much as I can
• Afternoon snack: Quark with nuts and raisins and banana
• Dinner: spelt bread with salmon and shrimps
• Late night snack before bed: tuna fish

When I am on my way to a customer or event or fair it is hard to get the above things to the “right time” into your stomach but I try as good as I can and with improvising a little bit it works out most of the time with a similar food plan, which is totally sufficient for a non-competitive athlete.

Sleep not too short for a longer time

Beautiful sleep

We all know that different people need a different amount of sleep to be energized, healthy and do not yawn all the time. In general, I feel best when I sleep 6 to 7 hours per night. If I sleep too long than I feel like I slept not enough. I think the recommendations from studies are somewhere between 6 and 9 hours of sleep is fine. If you sleep longer than you are at risk again according to several studies. So, the more you sleep the healthier you are does not count until the endlessness.

As a founder of course, it can happen sometime that something needs to be finished and it takes you until 2 a.m. but you need to get up at 6 a.m. or 7 a.m. again for an important meeting with a customer or your investors. For me that is no problem as long as this is no permanent state. During normal days I go to bed between 0.30 and 2 a.m. depending on the workload and the hardness of workout 😉 and wake up around 8 a.m. No joking is that when I train very very hard I feel better when I sleep 8 hours a night. And when I mean I train hard than it is really really hard, I think a normal training from me is still too hard for a normal person without the athletic background I have.

New studies prove that if you sleep not enough you are able to catch up the missing hours a few day later. Of course, this does not count till the infinity but for example if you sleep under the week 4 hours less than your optimum amount of sleep and on the weekend, you sleep 2 hours longer than normal than your sleep consumption should be balanced again.

But what is the ideal amount of sleep for your body? That can be easily found out, best during vacation. Go to bed at the same time every day for example at midnight and sleep until you are awake without any alarm. After a few days that should be your ideal amount of sleep.

What I would highly recommend is not to go directly into the bed when looked a long time in a laptop display, tv or smartphone. What I recognize when directly going from work on the laptop to my bed is that my sleep is not so well as when I read a book or journal for several minutes before trying to sleep. That is what the industry is calling the problem with blue light. Of course, companies like Apple have a solution here, you can use Night Shift for Apple Devices, which reduces the blue light – but I would recommend read the old classical way before sleep and it feels better for you and your wakeup in the morning.

What about the sixpack?

A nice sixpack, but not from me 😉

To be honest: I never had one until now. The problem is that you really need a perfect workout, meal and recovery plan to get a sixpack. Everything needs to be adjusted in the perfect way for your own body. That should not be an excuse but when you don’t know what is tomorrow and if you need to go spontaneous for a customer meeting the next day it is hard to comply with such stringent plans. Thus, my plan is to try it when I have a “relaxed” 40 hours week and just work as a 9 to 5er. As soon as that has happened and I can present my own sixpack of course I will update this blog post here and also describe with which plans I achieved it. But that can take a few years from now on until that will happen. If you want to publish here your own story on getting a sixpack than please let me know!

Amendment from July 2019 - My own sixpack. You can read more about it in the August 2019 Post 😎

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Hopefully the post was interesting for you and you enjoyed reading it! Have a great time until the next post will be published next month and enjoy hustling, relaxing, chilling, sporting, travelling or whatever you plan to do!

All the best – Mo ❤

P.S.: If you have questions, suggestions, criticism, an idea for a great new topic or just want to have a cup of coffee or a glass of wine or you want to work out with me please do not hesitate to contact me.

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