Michelle LaBrosse Blogs

About six years ago I started working out in the water – quite by accident. I was building a corporate retreat center in Haines, Alaska. The first summer there, we did not have running water. I was taking showers at a local campground until I found the pool in town and discovered the water aerobics class. GREAT I thought – I can do two things simultaneously – get clean AND workout. I LOVED IT. I made some great friends there too.

Working out in the water has become my thing. I travel a lot so it’s easy to bring my bathing suit with me everywhere. I created my own 45 minute cardio and strength training workout. It’s helped me out a lot – with flexibility, strength, and stamina. I just started playing tennis again after 7 years and my game is a lot better than when I stopped playing (just how that happened, I have no idea – I attribute it to water aerobics). It helps my golf game too with the arm and back strength training I do.

Some folks on twitter wanted to see my water workout regime so here it is. If you need clarification, post a comment.

For some people, uncertain times trigger a sense of impending doom rather than a sense of incredible excitement. If you are worried about the future, instead of wasting unproductive hours with vague feelings of impending doom, create your own worry-ometer.

This is a technique for managing risks I created with Cheetah Project Management – it uses a very scientific technique called your GUT FEEL INDEX. I modified this from my days as an Air Force Officer/Aerospace Engineer/Reliability Specialist. We used to do something called Failure Modes and Effects Criticality Analyses to understand the potential failure modes of whatever we were designing.

So here is what you do to create your own worry-ometer.

1. Figure out the issues that concern you. List all of them.

2. For each one, identify the probability it will occur (just keep this simple – high, medium low will suffice).

3. For each issue, also look at the impact if this issue were to happen to you. (again keep it simple, high impact, medium, or low).

4. For all those with a high probability and/or a high impact, create a countermeasure. This could either something you will do to prevent it from occurring, or something that you could do if it did in fact occur.

Here is an example of how to do this: