In December 2007, I made a pretty significant change to my schedule. Understanding the new schedule and its significance will be aided by knowing something about the old schedule.

I would get up at about five in the morning (sans alarm), get ready for work, walk the three blocks from my house to the bus stop, and read the paper on the way in. Usually I would get to the office about seven in the morning, give or take a quarter-hour. Depending on the day of the week, the next ten to fourteen hours would be spent working. There wasn't a lot of time in there being spent superfluously; this is the sort of thing to be expected when engaged in massive undertakings.

The new routine isn't radically different but it does incorporate a new element: the daily workout. A critical component of the workout is that it is easily incorporated into daily life. I managed to score a membership to the Athletic Club of Columbus, which is quite close to the office.

I take a slightly earlier bus and disembark one stop sooner than I did when going straight to the office. From the bus stop I have a five minute walk to the Athletic Club. Twice weekly I'm in the weight room with a personal trainer. On every other weekday I can be found in the cardio room, usually on one of the elliptical machines going through one of the “hill” patterns.

After a few weeks of being in the routine I began to think about how much time was actually being spent in the gym. Especially when on an exercise machine it can be easy to get thinking about something and then to wonder how that time might be spent more productively. It was then that I noticed that in the cardio room I could find other people reading—especially on stationary bicycles.

That the people reading novels never work up a sweat did not strike me as especially noteworthy at the time. What I did notice is that they appeared to be getting something else done.

So I tried working out on the elliptical machine while also reading about lots of technical details of botnets and the like in a recent issue of ;login:. As it turns out, not only did I have difficulty following material with which I was already conversant but in the end, the “distance covered” and Calories-burned count statistics were... not impressive. After three attempts at that, I was finished. No more absurdity for me.

Ultimately, I'm left with a thought that was written two thousand years ago by Publilius Syrus, a Roman Slave. “To do two things at once is to do neither.”