Friday, March 28th, 2008
Instead of the usual nutrition/fitness stuff, I figured I’d put together a list of some things that have caught my eye over the past week or so.
- PatrickRhone.com - One of my new favorite blogs. One of the best designs I’ve seen in a long time, great writing, and similar interests. I’m not quite there on the GTD stuff, but his interest in it seems to bring forth other great things like this 37 Signals article on Workplace Experiments. For those that have worked with me in the past, it’ll be quite clear why I like that post.
- Confident Goal Setting - I’m currently constructing an ontology for improvement, and this post references a great experiment that took a person of “average intelligence,” worked with them for 3-5 hours a week, and brought that person’s memory level (tested by memorizing random strings of numbers) to that of the best memories in the world…well, within the realm of random number. I’m waiting on the specific details of the experiment, but you can see how well this fits in with deliberate practice and expert performance.
- Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sleep - When it suddenly hit me that sleep was simply a series of chemical reactions in the body, I started researching further to see how it could be hacked for more optimal performance (ie: less sleep, more benefits). This article is mostly geared toward the chemical process of sleep, and is certain to help lead you to more specific research and questions.
- AnyWired.com - A new blog I found today about the cross between lifestyle design, entrepreneurship, and doing business online. Sounds comforting.
Thursday, March 27th, 2008
“The purpose of a business is to create a customer.” - Peter Drucker
“I skate to where the puck is going to be.” - Wayne Gretzky
“Getting fit is about nutrition and exercise.” - Everyone
People, and especially us Internet businesspeople, seem to forget fundamental concerns of the things they care about. They get so wrapped up in these complex ideas, and want to do these complex things, simply because they can.
The interesting thing is that when you look at what works and what succeeds, it’s when everything you do relates directly back to the fundamental concern of your objective.
I see this happening all over the place, and especially with social media marketing. The problem is that people get lost in the gliss (that’s not even a word, but it sounds like it should be and it sounds like the kind of word I’d like to use. So I’m keeping it) and forget why they’re on Twitter, Facebook, or even have the business that they have.
What fundamental concerns does your business address for your customers? Do you reach out to them in ways that resonate in those areas 100%, or are you farting around, exploring new opportunities without the fundamental concerns of your business at the top of your mind?
This applies to everything. For example, in rock climbing, everyone who has climbed more than once knows it’s about your finger strength and shoulder strength. Everyone who has climbed more than twice knows that climbing is all about your footwork and balance. But few people focus solely on these things. Ultimately, the ones that practice yoga to improve their footwork and balance, that exercise their grip to improve their finger strength, and practice pull-ups until their shoulders are burning, succeed much more quickly than others.
If you’re trying to succeed at something that is seeming overwhelming, take a step back. Outline the fundamental concerns of the action (hint: it’s usually 3 things), decide which practices will most quickly develop your skill in those areas, and start practicing them more than anything else.
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
Sometimes, I find it useful set goals that are contingent upon other goals.
What I mean by that is that if I am unsure if I can develop the capacity to achieve a larger goal, I’ll set an interim one that will give me an idea of if I can develop the capacity to hit the larger one. There’s no use in having a goal of $10M in the bank, if you can’t get $10k in there.
In January, the morning of this (and before I found out about his death), I decided I wanted to do the same thing…ascend Everest, and two other difficult peaks in the world. The reality is that, other than rock climbing, I hadn’t intensely training for anything since playing hockey in high school…almost 10 years ago.
So, what I did is I set an aggressive goal, with an aggressive time frame, to ride my fixed-gear, brakeless bike a full 20 miles in an hour. I chose this because it would force me to exercise my legs in a similar way as mountaineering, and it would force me to develop my lungs - which I hadn’t taken care of with 8 years of heavy smoking (I quit last April).
Today, I hit that goal. More than three weeks ahead of schedule. (it sucked) (and I did it on 3 hours of sleep and after 3 hours of climbing/weight lifting last night…more on that later.)
The point is: If I had only focused on the larger goal, I probably wouldn’t have progressed nearly as quickly. Sometimes, making a larger goal contingent upon a smaller goal (rather than the smaller goal merely being an interim milestone) forces you to perform at a faster rate.
As a personal note, if you know anyone who has ascended Everest, K2, Kilamanjaro, or done any similar alpine mountaineering/climbing (ie: Patagonia, Africa, etc), if it would be possible to arrange some sort of meeting/communication that would be awesome. As much as informal education is a wonderful thing, there are some things that just can’t compare to the experience.
Sunday, March 16th, 2008
For several reasons, I love this article on Jeff Bezos, published by Wired in 1999. The tech boom was gaining notoriety, and the young Amazon.com was a hopeful leader still trying to find its way like everyone else.
One of the things I like is the idea that Bezos lives by called a Regret-Minimization Framework, exemplified here:
“When I’m 80,” he asked himself, “am I going to regret leaving Wall Street? No. Will I regret missing a chance to be there at the beginning of the Internet? Yes.”
Steve Jobs holds a similar posture in his legendary morning routine that he shared in his 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech…
“I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”
They both can be tough postures to hold, but are very powerful in answering decisions about how to live life…Or grow your business…Or manage your employees…Or make that decision that can have potential negative consequences for the community.
If you never have, consider giving the idea some practice in your day-to-day. Maybe you’ll find yourself throwing raves, setting otherwise-unreasonable goals, or quitting your job and moving across the country.
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008
Today, the Freakonomics blog had an article about how A-Rod got as good as he is. While I think that hockey is the only team sport necessary (rock climbing being the only individual sport necessary), it didn’t keep me from being intrigued by the idea of expert performance and reading through.
A couple of years ago, I listened to Freakonomics and really enjoyed it. One of the topics I hadn’t remembered was the idea that a specific kind of deliberate practice gets someone closer to expert performance than anything else.
The idea, pioneered by K. Anders Ericsson in this research paper, asserts that “deliberate practice” is the single most important factor for expert performance, where expert performers would be people like Michael Jordan or the world’s top surgeons.
This idea nearly destroys the idea of inborn talent.
At the same time, it further supports that you must not only find what you love to do, but then do it, and keep doing it with “deliberate practice.”
Deliberate practice, in essence, is:
1. Focusing on technique instead of the outcome.
2. The setting of very specific goals and time-lines for achievement.
3. Receiving quick, high-quality feedback and folding that back into your practices.
I think that one of the great things about online business is that the people who are out there now and are succeeding are the ones that already do this to a certain degree. You can’t get the education for online commerce, SEO, Social Media, etc from college. You have to be in the middle of it, day in and day out, constantly moving and progressing toward new goals.
Forums are where you get your techniques from, and analytics are where you get your feedback. Your goals aren’t about what’s realistic - it’s not realistic to be the next Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos - your goals are for your to decide.
I don’t mean that in the pep-talk kind of way. I’m not one for pep talks. People who have worked with me in the past, know that. Instead, I mean that in a very pragmatic kind of way. That it’s a belief that will result in greater achievement than others within the same realm of practice.
This same idea is inherent in resistance training for both hypertrophy and strength, it’s seen everywhere in sports, it’s most certainly seen in the marketplace, and through practices such as Six Sigma.
If you want to be great at what you love, rethink how you can deliberately practice those things you want to accomplish.
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