Stay Motivated 6: Eat and exercise efficiently.

6. Eat and exercise efficiently.  I don’t know about you but I want to know if I am inconveniencing myself I want to know it’s for something that’s going to work.  When I changed my eating and exercise habits I did some homework to make sure I wouldn’t just be spinning my wheels.  If you’re on some diet or doing some kind of exercise that you’re not absolutely convinced will work – you’re not going to stick with it.  You need to have the confidence that you will benefit from the sacrifices you are making. 

Do whatever you need to do to learn about and convince yourself that what you’re doing is going to work.  If you think you’re just doing another gimmick diet or workout that will not help you succeed in the end, then you’re probably going to give up.  You need to be able to shut that voice up inside of you that says “what’s the point, this isn’t going to work” when you’re pushing yourself during a workout or choosing to eat healthy instead of crappy.  Be confident that the way you’re eating is going to be effective.  Be confident that the exercise you’re doing is actually helping you.  Do some homework and be smart about it – it will give you an extra boost when you’re looking for excuses to give up.

Note: this means you do actually have to do homework.  I don’t mean you should just pick some diet and then tell yourself over and over that it will work until you believe it completely.  There are bad diets out there, there is bad information, there are bad fads.  It’s possible to bust your butt working out and eating a certain way and end up wasting your time.  So do your homework and make sure that’s not you.  Decide what you want and then figure out the best way to make it happen.

Stay Motivated 5: Buy new clothes.

5. Buy new clothes.  If you drop weight and can therefore fit into new clothes – go buy some.  It may sound dumb but when I bought a pair of 36” waist jeans (instead of the 38/40 I was wearing before) it was a huge encouragement to me.  If money’s a problem just go to the thrift store – you can find at least one article of clothing there that will do you justice.  And if not you can at least laugh at how you can wear ugly clothes that are smaller than the ones you wore before.

It is so awesomely motivating to wear clothes you did not wear before because you looked bad in them, and now you look better.  Or to wear something smaller than you wore before.  Every time I put on a pair of 34” pants I feel motivated.  You might also try out new kinds of clothes you didn’t bother with before.  Today I am wearing a button-up shirt, tucked into a pair of NON-JEANS (gasp) – and you can see my belt.  When I looked in the mirror and actually saw my belt – it made me excited to wake up early tomorrow morning and get to the gym.  So you may not think about it – but if you’ve lost some weight go try on some clothes that are smaller than the ones you currently wear – you may surprise yourself. 

Stay Motivated 4: Talk to others about it.

4. Talk to others about it!  If you keep your goals or desire for change a secret it’s easier to give up on it.  We all know you shouldn’t care what other people think – but we all do to an extent.  So tell somebody, or lots of somebodies, about what you want to do. That way you can be shamed into continuing when you need to.  Sure, you could give up, but then those people you told are going to realize you’re just another one of those people that talks about wanting to get healthy but never does anything about it.  Do you want to be that guy?  I sure don’t.

Me blogging about this is another way of talking about it.  Look at me talking all big – I better live up to it.  Or I’m going to have a bunch of friends thinking “Jackson is so lame.”  Come to think of it, I probably already have a bunch of friends that think that.  But I want it to be for other reasons.  Share your intentions to change with at least one other person and it will increase your chances of sticking with it.

Stay Motivated 3: Know why you are doing this.

  3. Know why you are doing this.  Why are you making this change?  Why are you trying to get in shape?  Why are you trying to eat better?  Why are you passing on that glorious piece of cheesecake?  Why are you dragging yourself out of bed and getting in your car to go work out when you could get another hour of sleep?  If you don’t know the answers to these questions, and if your answers aren’t sufficient for you – you will fail.

When I first lost weight before meeting Janelle my primary motivation was to get thinner so girls would like me.  As I ran around Lake Elizabeth or ate my chicken breast at Outback while my buddies savored the garlic mashed potatoes I would remember why I was doing this: for the ladies.  Yes, it’s shallow as heck, but it was my motivation.  I dropped weight throughout the year, met Janelle, got engaged, and lost my motivation.  My habits also took a hit; I wanted to spend lots of time with her, which meant I’d eat with her and her family or hang out instead of working out.  I no longer had a good answer to those questions – at least not one I really believed.  I knew working out would make me healthier and feel better but I didn’t really care.

Over the next couple of years I developed new motivation and now the answers to those questions keep me motivated.  When my alarm goes off at 4:45am and I’m tired because I didn’t sleep well and I don’t want to get up, I can answer the question I ask myself: “why am I doing this?”  Make sure you can do the same.  If you don’t answer the question before your alarm goes off, and answer it in a way that means something to you, then you’ll have a hard time sticking with it.

Stay Motivated 2: Don’t give up when you hit roadblocks.

2. Don’t give up when you hit roadblocks.  You will mess up and you will fail from time to time.  You won’t push yourself as hard as you could have on a workout, you’ll give in and have that crappy food – deal with it and move on.  Do not tell yourself “well I messed up that one time so what’s the point, I’ll just eat like crap the rest of this day/week/month/year and start over again.”  That is the road to failure and a downward spiral that will ensure your continued dissatisfaction with yourself.  You’ll screw up – so keep going!

There will also be days or weeks where you don’t see or feel any progress.  You might start off great and then not lose any weight for a couple of weeks.  Don’t give up.  Keep going.  It happens.  If you’re really in this for the long term – and you are really changing your eating habits and exercising regularly – you will get healthier.  It’s science!

Stay Motivated to Get Healthy: Part 1 – Set Small Goals.

  Losing a bit of weight isn’t that difficult in the short term.  Just about anybody can adhere to a diet for a week or two and lose a few pounds.  Gyms make all their money on the huge percentage of people who purchase memberships, go for two weeks, and then never return.  We all know what it’s like to do something for a while and then give up.  It’s really hard to develop new habits, and when it comes to eating and exercise I think this is doubly true.  When you live a busy life it’s tough to eat right and find the time to exercise.  Unless you’ve grown up eating right you will likely have to work hard to change many of the bad habits you have related to food and activity.  So how do you keep going?

I don’t know how you keep going.  I can share what has kept me going so far, though.  February 2008 was about the time I got serious with my own health, and that was a year ago.  There have been a couple times over the course of that year where I slacked off a bit but overall I have been pretty consistent with my good health habits and they are becoming more and more internalized, and less and less of a struggle to maintain.

This is the first of a several-part series of short posts on staying motivated to become healthy.  I decided to split it into short posts because that increases the likelihood you’ll read them.  I am of course as always interested in hearing your thoughts on each of these posts, and also different ways you stay motivated.  Up first…

1. Set Small Goals.  This is pretty basic stuff – but set small, attainable goals.  I weighed around 245 when I first got started.  My first goal was to get to 225 lbs.  Ultimately I knew I’d want to lose more weight than that, but even for a merciless cynic like myself setting a smaller goal was helpful.  If my first goal was 170 lbs it would be a long time before I could celebrate any kind of victory.  My current goal is to get down to 180, though I’m more focused on body fat than weight right now.  I’m going to lose weight slower this way but it’s fine.  It’s important to set goals in areas besides weight as well.

Set goals for whatever you want to change.  When you’re trying to change the way you eat, tell yourself you’ll eat that way 5 days a week, or 6, or whatever.  Instead of going from eating 5000 calories a day on Tuesday moving down to 2000 a day on Wednesday – ramp yourself down.  The goal needs to be meaningful to keep you motivated and help you see results, but it also needs to be attainable.  Do this with your days of exercise, the weights you lift, whatever.  When you succeed, set a new goal.  I am first to roll my eyes and say “shut up playing stupid tricks on yourself doesn’t work” but I know short terms goals help. 

Student Teaching Has Begun

This is my first week doing student teaching.  I’m at Irvington every day and in a number of different classrooms.  I’m going to be teaching mostly Economics and World History, with some forays into AP U.S. History.  Right now things are busy at the school as students clamor to get teachers to give them breaks to make up for an entire semester of slacking off, and teachers are grading finals and turning in their semester grades.  Things still aren’t particularly clear regarding what my responsibilities will be and what the rhythm is going to be…that makes me a little uneasy but I know it’ll get sorted out soon enough.  I’m eager to get teaching again and have already learned how to avoid getting “owned.”

Apparently if someone says your first name and you respond with “what?” they can “own” you by then saying your last name.  The Sophomores in my World History class tried it on me and I’ve been owned once, but now I’m wise to their little game.  You’ve gotta keep your guard up.  Yesterday I tried to own a couple of them but they are ever vigilant.

This has led to a more packed schedule for Janelle and I.  During the week we have almost no free time…we get home, cook dinner, get stuff ready for the next day, get Belle to bed, and then need to get to bed pretty soon after that in order to get up the next day.  Most evenings there’s some school work to be done.  We alternate workout days, where we get to the gym at 5am.  I know that’s early but if we don’t get up then, we won’t be able to do it at all.  We will be cherishing our weekends for the next several months.

100 Often Mispronounced Words

It’s no secret to those who know me that I am a bit of a stickler when it comes to spelling, grammar, and pronouncing words correctly.  I tend to think my reputation as a “corrector” exceeds my actions, but as my sociology professor told me, “things that are perceived as real are very real in their consequences.”  Whether I am as much of a Grammar Nazi as people perceive me to be is irrelevant.

My friend Adam is pretty similar to me when it comes to pronouncing words properly and I love it when he and I get to talk about words.  We both understand that when you correct someone else’s pronunciation of a word, it is an act of love and consideration for the other person.  It’s not a matter of trying to show off what you know, it’s trying to help the other person out.

This past week I came across this list of 100 often mispronounced words.  Here are some of the highlights for me:

Irregardless is not a word.  The word is “regardless.”

Alzheimere’s Disease is not “Old Timer’s Disease.”

You escape from a bad situation…you do not excape.

I especially hate it when people say exspecially, but find it much more annoying when people say supposably instead of supposedly.

 

Go read through the list to help yourself out and see what you did or didn’t already know.  I was actually surprised to find “spitting image” should be “spit and image.”

Useful Exercise

Aside from eating right if you want to get healthy you’re going to have to exercise.  This can take different forms but I’m just going to share a little bit about the things that have worked for me.  The first time I lost some weight in 2003 the only exercise I did was run around Lake Elizabeth.  I started walking of course and built up running bit by bit until one day I made it all the way around the lake.  The next day I met Janelle and never did it again.  That time I got down to 190 but right now I weight about 190 but am way healthier than I was in 2003.  That’s because running isn’t the only thing I’m doing. 

If you just lose fat that isn’t going to necessarily make you optimally healthy.  It just means you have less fat, and are healthier than you were.  An important thing to consider is your body fat percentage.  When you lose weight you’re not always necessarily losing fat – you can also lose muscle.  I wanted to lose fat and gain muscle; I’ve succeeded so far and this is how I did it:

First, I started running with the Couch to 5k Program.  This is an incredibly simple program that’s designed to get you from the couch to being able to run a 5k (or 30 minutes solid) in 9 weeks by walking/jogging/running 3 days a week.  I started it when I was still above 230 pounds.  I was almost insulted by the first day – it said something like “walk for 3 minutes, jog for 1 minute, walk for 3 minutes, jog for 1 minute” up to 30 minutes.  As I stepped out my door I thought “this will be too easy, but maybe next week I’ll get some real exercise.”  I was wheezing and my heart was pounding at 30 seconds of jogging.  Sweet mother of pearl.  I stuck with the program though and improved greatly.  This really helped me lose some significant weight and get into some better cardiovascular shape.  I didn’t stick with it, though.  In July of 2008 I switched to something that is even better for losing weight.

 

Lifting weights.  I was surprised to learn this, but if you spend 30 minutes lifting weights or 30 minutes running, over the course of a 24 hour period you will burn more calories from the weights (provided you’re working hard).  Running does not build any muscle, but lifting weights obviously does.  Muscle tissue burns calories at a greater rate than fat; so as you build muscle your body becomes better at burning calories throughout the day.  You build your body into a more efficient machine as you build up your muscle.  You actually get stronger and feel much better. 

It can be hard to figure out what to do when it comes to lifting weights.  The gym can be intimidating and the free weight room, full of bros working on their broceps, can be a strange and frightening land.  After looking into different routines, I decided on a modified version of the Starting Strength workout.  Follow this link for the information on that workout.  (That link is to a forum that is not for the easily offended.  If you stay just in that thread you should be okay, but venture out of there at your own risk.  There is profanity in there if that bugs you too.)  If you want to lose weight and not be skinny-fat, I really encourage you to look into lifting weights.  It is way more fun than cardio and more effective.  It will also help you look and feel better as you lose weight.

An important note: make sure you get proper form down for the exercises.  I hurt my knee in October because my squat form was bad and my knee still isn’t back to the way it should be.  You can hurt yourself if you do weights incorrectly but really it’s not that hard to get proper form down and it feels so good to get it done.  Don’t let a fear of bad form prevent you from doing weights, but don’t neglect good form either.

Women should lift weights too.  Here’s a website specifically talking to women about lifting weights, and letting you know you won’t become mannish and disgusting by lifting.  It gives good info on how to do lifts and gives you a workout plan to follow.

This doesn’t mean cardio is worthless – it’s good for building endurance.  But lifting weights has been a revelation for me and it will help you in so many ways.  Just find a legit workout plan (like the one I linked above, it’s a great beginner workout) and get going.  Do not just go in and do curls or randomly do stuff.  Get a workout plan and make your time in the gym efficient.  Few things are more discouraging than putzing around in the gym feeling like you’re wasting your time and not getting any results.  Few things are cooler than seeing yourself get stronger and feeling more vital.

Finally, read this long post here about diet, nutrition, and exercise.  Don’t follow that link if you can’t handle  profanity and vulgarity (there’s a lot of it there).  But it gives some great information on a lot of topics related to what I’m talking about and has helped me tremendously.  If you are serious about getting healthy you should read and re-read that post.  It is pure gold.  Really.  I credit the information and resources in that link with my success up to this point.

Book Recommendation: Made to Stick

I just finished reading Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip & Dan Heath.  If you’ve read Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point then you should find this interesting too.  In it the authors look at why some ideas/concepts/stories “stick” and others don’t.  They tie it to a lot of things, from urban legends (waking up in a tub of ice with your kidneys gone) to marketing campaigns (Subway’s Jared) to proverbs (a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush).  That bird proverb has been around for thousands of years – like into the thousands B.C.  Why do ideas like that work?  The authors identify a few things that make for good communication of ideas/concepts, and they boil it down to this acronym:

S.U.C.C.E.S.

Yes, I know it’s spelled wrong.  But it works okay.  I remember it.  They stay that for ideas to stick they should incorporate as many of these elements as possible: Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotion, and Stories.  Each element gets its own chapter as they authors expand on the usefulness of each of them and ways to use it. 

I’ve read a lot of books that I found interesting but not terribly practical.  This book is not like that.  The authors offer all sorts of ways to help you incorporate the ideas into your own endeavors.  As someone who does a lot of communicating I found the book intensely useful and will certainly be looking to use its ideas throughout my career.  It will seriously help you out.  Read it and consider it an investment in yourself, no matter what your career is.  It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read re: communication of ideas, and I’ve read a lot.

How to Eat Better

The most important element of your weight and health is what you eat.  This is also referred to as your diet.  I use the word diet to refer to what you eat, not some special plan you follow for three weeks and then give up.  I’ve changed my eating habits and seen some success doing so.  Most of you aren’t fat like I was, but you can still be “skinny fat,” meaning you’re skinny but your body fat percentage is high and you’re not particularly healthy.  Here are some tips/suggestions for you if you want to eat healthier:

 

Remember: food is fuel.  Part of the problem is how we look at food.  If you look at food as fuel for your body it can help you eat better.  In order to eat differently you must not look at food as an escape or a way to cope or a reward – you need to realize that the food you put into your mouth is used by your body to keep it running and build stuff – be it muscle or fat. 

 

Eat Enough Food!  Too often when people want to lose weight they cut way down and end up with a big caloric deficit.  This can cause your body to shut down and stop working right; you may lose some weight for a bit but it’s your body cannibalizing your muscle rather than burning up your fat.  Don’t just guess at numbers.  Use these resources to figure out how much you should be eating:

Determine your Basal Metabolic Rate with this calculator.  Your BMR is the amount of calories your body would burn if you stayed in bed all day.

Next, use this very simple multiplier to figure out how many calories you need to eat to maintain your current weight.

I recommend you first get used to eating that amount of calories, because chances are you’re not.  Once you’re eating that amount try to cut down a bit, by 10% or so.  See how that works for a while and go from there.  Don’t cut down too much or you’ll shoot yourself in the foot.  Click here for a little more info on changing up the calories to lose weight.  If you want to gain weight, go here.

 

Eat Early and Eat Often!  Don’t skip breakfast.  Eat a couple hundred calories every 2-3 hours.  It will get your metabolism going and prevent you from overeating.  Sometimes I hear people say “wow it’s 3pm and I haven’t eaten since breakfast” as if it’s a point of pride.  It’s not going to help you lose weight.  Eating smaller portions of food more frequently will help keep your blood sugar regular and keep you from eating a bunch of crap because you got real hungry.

 

Eat the right stuff!  There are a lot of different people out there saying a lot of different things about what you should eat.  I can only go by experience and what I’ve read.  I’m currently reading a book called Good Calories, Bad Calories that I’ll post on later.  But for now, aim for 40% of your calories to come from carbohydrates, 40% from protein, and 20% from fat.  This will be tough to get used to but it’s good.  The biggest problem I’ve had is reducing my carb intake.  I still don’t have this down just right but it’s a good goal to shoot for.  This is called your “macronutrient breakdown” and the 40/40/20 ratio is a good starting goal.  Most of us eat almost all carbs and fat with very little protein.  We’ve been taught to avoid fat like it’s the plague, but we load up on carbs in ridiculous amounts and get fat. 

Yesterday for breakfast I had 2 eggs, 3 strips of turkey bacon, and 2 pieces of chicken sausage.  It was delicious, and more healthy than one bagel.  A better nutrient breakdown and less calories. 

Eating the right stuff also means you will likely have to do some cooking for yourself.  You can do so very quickly and easily.  It takes less than 10 minutes to cook up the stuff I had for breakfast.  Make yourself a lunch so you don’t eat crap like fast food.  Plan what you’re going to eat ahead of time so you don’t just eat out.  If you don’t have a slow cooker, get one, because they are awesome.  Failing to plan what you’re going to eat ahead of time will almost certainly result in you being frustrated and staying unhealthy.

 

Track what you eat!  This was the biggest change for me.  Making the above changes is only possible if you actually pay attention to and track what you eat.  Most people horribly underestimate the amount of calories they eat in a day.  You eat more than you think you do.  My stock answer when people ask me “how are you doing it?” has been “I pay attention to what I eat.”  We eat so mindlessly, snack on little things here and there, and it all adds up.  So track what you eat.  I’ve found the easiest way to do this is on The Daily Plate.  Sign up for a free account and start tracking your food.  The site has a large database of foods and in several months I’ve only had to manually add one thing myself.  They also track your macronutrients so you can easily track the 40/40/20 with a neato pie chart right on the front page.  DO IT NOW!

 

If you screw up, don’t stop.  There will be meals or days where you just totally blow it and eat like garbage.  Sometimes for sanity you just need to have a gigantic piece of cheesecake.  You want to change your view of food for the long term, and unless you are some kind of weirdo you are not going to go through life never having another cheesecake or ice cream sundae.  It also might be useful for you to not indulge in these things until you get a grip on your food situation – but whether intentionally or not, don’t stop eating right when you mess up once.  Keep going and remember you have your whole life to drop the weight and get healthy.  Think long term and you’ll be good to go.

If you have any thoughts or feedback I’d love to hear it.  Up next, I’ll write a bit about exercise and activity – another important element of being healthy.

So I lost some weight

As most of you who read this and see me have noticed, I’ve lost some weight over the past year.  The earliest I remember really being conscious of my weight was in 5th grade.  In 3rd grade my best friend was Jeff Fredrickson, and he referred to me affectionately as “lard belly.”  It didn’t bug me at all because I didn’t think I actually had a lard belly.  Perhaps he was a prophet, because I remember from 5th grade on for sure I was conscious that I was a fat kid.  Every now and then in high school I would try to do something to lose weight like eat cottage cheese and a bagel but I never really got serious about it.

In early 2003 I asked my friend Jesse to give me some nutritional pointers and decided to get serious about losing weight.  At that time I started somewhere around 240 and was down to 190 by June.  I ate better and started running around Lake Elizabeth.  In August of that year I met Janelle and my schedule was thrown off.  My motivation also decreased a bit since I’d found the woman of my dreams, and I began my descent (ascent?) back into fatness.  It didn’t get totally out of control until Belle was born.  She was the perfect excuse to completely let go and I got back up into the 245 range, give or take depending on the day.  I’d wear 38/40 waist jeans, and XL or XXL shirts.

I was pretty constantly unhappy about my appearance and low on energy but didn’t do much about it.  I recall a few times resigning myself to just being the fat guy.  Most of you who know me know I have some pretty big self-confidence problems that have been improving year by year.  I used to think that once I lost weight I would feel better about myself.  And that is actually true, I feel way better about myself.  But in order to really change the time had to come when I thought of myself as someone other than “the fat guy.”  I made that change some time in early 2008.  Janelle started to lose weight in late 2007 and she inspired me to do something different with myself.  I was so low on energy, which made it very difficult to help with our crazy daughter and the house and work and school and all that.  It put an unfair amount on Janelle’s shoulders.  I don’t recall a day where I put a stake in the ground or anything but I remember in February 2008, when I got the job as a teacher at Washington, I got serious about becoming healthy, this time for the right reasons.

  I have a family history of high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, and so on.  Being so obese up to this point has generally been an embarrassment but not really a danger.  With a family and a daughter, though, I realized being fat would cut into my time with them.  It was also really impacting my quality of life.  I didn’t have the energy to be the kind of Dad to Belle I knew I should be or the kind of husband I should be.  I have enough problems being the kind of man I should be – I don’t need weight adding itself to my character flaws.  So sometime in February 2008 I decided to get serious and get healthy.  I’m now down to 188 (finally broke the 190 plateau consistently, I need a belt for 34” jeans to stay up, and wear L shirts) and am in better shape than I’ve ever been my entire life.  Not that that’s saying much.

A number of people have asked me “what’s your secret?!”  They’ve  also made comments like “hey now, don’t get anorexic on us” or “don’t lose any more weight” which, while complimentary, have a tendency to be just the kind of external praise to keep me from continuing to lose weight and thinking I’ve done enough.  (I haven’t.)

I educated myself as best I could on how to eat right and get healthy, and then just started doing it.  I’m going to do a few posts on some of the things that have been most helpful to me when it came to losing weight and what I’m doing to be healthier and fitter.  I hope those of you who need some will find some practical help and information for your own health.  I also hope others of you will offer your opinion on the things I say.  I don’t proclaim to be a fount of knowledge or to know everything and welcome people who know more than me offering their thoughts and corrections.  This should also help me stay focused and not rest on my laurels.  I’m proud of the progress I’ve made so far and feel better than ever.  But it would be a shame to stop now, so I’m hoping posting a few things here will keep me in a good, healthy mindset. 

As if I don’t jump around enough topic-wise on this blog…now there are going to be health and nutrition tips.

A Monstrosity of a Shake

I love me a good milkshake.  I tend to prefer the kind with chunks of cookie or brownie or banana or whatever else you put in it to make it wonderful.  I like the contrast of the ice cream with the slightly-more-solid texture provided by the added ingredients.  This means I am also a particular fan of things like Dairy Queen Blizzards, where they thrown in chunks of peanut butter cup in very large amounts.  Because of this love I might be tempted to try something called the Baskin Robbins Large Chocolate Oreo Shake.  Just look at the picture.  Doesn’t it look delicious? 

It has been deemed The Worst Food of 2009 by Men’s Health because of its nutritional content: 2600 calories and 136g of fat (over 1 cup of sugar!).  And if you have any experience with shakes like this you know you can suck them down pretty quick.  In case those numbers are meaningless to you, that’s more calories than you should be eating in a day (body weight x 14 is a good measure for an active person) and way more fat.

Curse you Baskin Robbins, for making something so wonderful but so monstrous.  Click this link to read up on other “worsts” of 2009, including the worst burger, salad, appetizer, etc.  They also have other lists related to food.  It’s interesting and enlightening.

ht: Lifehacker

Awesome Firefox Extension

Those of you who use Firefox might want to check out the Ubiquity extension, which received a major update today.  It’s sort of like YubNub, something I’ve been using for a while in my Firefox address bar and find incredibly useful.  They allow you to use “command line” stuff to do things which can great reduce the amount of time you spend performing tasks.  For example, if I want to do a Google search for 49ers I just type “g 49ers” into my address bar and it takes me to the search results page.  If I want to look up the book 1984 on Amazon.com, I just type “az 1984” and I’m taken to Amazon’s website as if I’d performed the search there.  There are all kinds of things you can do with it.

Ubiquity takes that concept a step further and so far has a lot of nifty commands you can perform within Firefox.  I’d like to see it integrated into the address bar (or "awesome bar” as Firefox 3 refers to it) rather than having to press ctrl+space to bring it up but it’s still pretty early in development so I’m willing to live with it.

If you use Firefox and like the idea of doing stuff faster, and/or just like trying out new things, you should go install the extension.