dangerouslyawesome

This is not fatblogging, I swear.

The last 3 years have been good to me in a lot of ways, but I have’t been good at taking care of myself. Among my 2010 promises that I made (not so much a resolution, but really a promise) was to take some time to refocus on me.

So far, 2010 has been the year that I wanted it to be. Indy Hall has continued to grow, but also mature. As such, I’ve been able to focus on some other ventures that are fulfilling in many new ways.  I’m focused on products again, building both technologies and businesses. I’ve focused on teaching. I’ve focused on writing.

I’ve focused on my mental health. Learned what I cared about. Who I cared about.

I’ve taken time for myself.

I’m relatively healthy considering my aversion towards doctors. I only really get sick once, maybe twice a year.

But my body health – my physical fitness – has deteriorated. Recently, I dared to step onto a scale, to find that I weighed nearly 20 lbs more than the last time I was unhappy with my weight. So with 5 months left in 2010, I’ve committed to getting back under 200 lbs.

Last Monday was the “Geek Fitness” edition of Refresh Philly. I hadn’t been to a Refresh in some time, and this seemed like a topic I should pay some attention to.

I left Refresh with some new perspective on how – and why – I could make this happen. Here’s what I’m up to one week later:

Lose It or Lose It

I don’t think I’ve ever shouted from the hilltops how awesome Randy Schmidt is, which is a damn shame. I’ve actually known Randy since college, though we didn’t really get to know each other until the early Indy Hall days. Apart from being one of Indy Hall’s longest standing members (Randy’s participation and support dates back to the “Cream Cheese Sessions” of 2007), but he’s also one of my favorite success stories of complete career reorientation within the Indy Hall community.

But that story’s for another day.

Randy’s a problem solver. Lose It or Lose It was his solution to his own problem – his inability to stay motivated through losing weight. He found a pretty fascinating combination of reminders and the association of money to goals that’s not purely incentive based. Quickly, here’s how it works.

1. You choose a 10 week plan – 1, 2, or 3 lbs per week
2. You pony up an uncomfortable amount of your own money
3. Lose It or Lose It combines accountability friends, daily SMS or email reminders to you and your accountability friends), and weekly required weigh-ins to keep you on track
4. Each week you’re required to weigh in on the same day. Each time you miss your weigh in for any reason, you lose 10% of the money you put up at the beginning. If you weigh in but miss your weight goal, you lose 5%. If you weigh in successfully, you lose nothing!
5. At the end of 10 weeks, any money not lost in the weekly weigh-ins is returned, in full, including the paypal transaction fees.

There’s some neat things working here:

A set schedule with an attainable goal

When I business coach, one of the most common lessons I teach is to set realistic goals. There’s more value in setting goals that you can achieve than just achieving them, there’s also the emotional momentum of successfully achieving a goal. LIOLI gives you a reasonable schedule with a fixed end point, along with a realistic goal – just a couple of pounds per week – to set help you up for successive wins and keep you motivated.

Accountability

Randy’s Refresh presentation was actually more about how LIOLI takes on the human accountability factor that normally undermines diet partners. Unlike the person you’ve asked to keep you on track, the website is relentless and uncaring. Mostly because it, itself, isn’t trying to lose weight. But rather than remove the human element COMPLETELY, it stacks the automated (but friendly and often funny) reminders up against those human accountability friends as well…in fact it urges them to keep you on track. That’s right, your friend gets reminders to remind you to keep working at your goal.

Meta.

Money

I waited a long time to sign up for LIOLI because I had basically convinced myself that I’m not motivated by money. Then, after hearing Randy talk about it, I realized that LIOLI doesn’t motivate you with money, it helps you use your own money as a bargaining chip. That is, when you’re bargaining with yourself.

The trick to LIOLI is to put up an uncomfortable amount of money. Not an amount of money that risks you losing your home, or putting your life at risk. But an amount that you’d certainly prefer not to part with. And what you really need to consider is that the total amount isn’t the important part – but instead, the 5-10% amounts you risk to lose each week.

Basically, each week becomes it’s own mini-game. The amount at risk each week needs to be enough to force you to think, “is this decision, which is likely to hurt my chances of weighing in at my goal, worth $x?”

So I put up $1000 to lose 2lbs per week, or 20 lbs. That made each week worth $100, and each time I slipped on my weigh in target, I had $50 at stake. That’s enough to make me think “that burger’s not worth $50″. Or “I don’t need to spend $50 to have another beer”. Or “I could skip my run/ride, but that could cost me $50″.

I’m lucky to be at a point in my life and career where $50 isn’t going to break me, but its still enough money to make me associate my decisions with a value. If the outcome of decision doesn’t match the value, it’s an easy decision to make.

I’m not winning $1000 at the end of my 10 weeks. I’m using money as a bargaining tool with myself to help me make better decisions. It was my money to begin with, after all.

So, does it work?

Well, over 1000 lbs have been lost by LIOLI users. Almost 70 of those lbs were Randy’s. And by years end, I’m hoping that at least 40 more will be mine. I’m already ahead of schedule, but they say the first few weeks are the easiest.

Eating Better

I’m stating the obvious, but it’s not really something I’ve ever made a conscious effort to do. Luckily, it is an easy change, because based on the fact that I eat out almost every meal, all I needed to do was remove a few things completely from my eating options and add a few new ones.

I’m using an iPhone app called Lose It to enter my exercise and estimate my calorie intake. Not knowing how poorly I ate before makes measuring the differential tough, but simply paying attention to what I’m eating is already making a huge difference. If something I’m thinking about eating is worse for me than I realized, I go into the self-negotiating mode for LIOLI. That’s not to say I can’t eat anything I want, but I know what the outcome could be based on my decision.

A trip to the farmers market on Sunday to pick up some fruit for snacks, and another trip to Whole Foods for some easy-prep meals that aren’t full of crap means I can still eat well without sacrificing too much convenience, simply by knowing that my options are better than the ones I was giving myself before.

Much like LIOLI’s weekly required checkpoints, using Lose It on my iPhone is helping me learn my eating patterns so I can make smarter decisions about what and where I eat.

Exercise

Honestly, I’ve never been one to exercise. It’s never appealed to me. Getting sweaty, grunting, being in pain? Lame. I’m also not motivated by team sports, so I’ve never been much of an athlete. So something had to change.

Knowing full well that diet changes alone weren’t going to lose me 2 lbs a week, I picked a few variations to compile an exercise routine that I could manage to keep up with.

C25k

I was honestly motivated by the Refresh talks about running, so much that I convinced myself that I could do it too! Unfortunately I was quickly reminded how hard it is on my flat feet, and that it probably wasn’t the most sustainable way for me to maintain a daily workout schedule. That said, I found the Couch to 5k program approachable, and something I’m still going to try to work through.

I’m not really interested in actually running the 5k, but I like the program from the perspective that it assumes that I’ve never run before, and starts there. The first weeks runs are actually over 50% walking. But I’m still out for 30+ minutes, sweating, and “feeling the burn”. The part that sucks is later in the day when my ankles are wobbly and sore. If I can’t recover by the next time I’m planning on running, I’ve undermined my whole plan.

There’s a sweet C25k iPhone app, though, that gives you audio cues when to switch your running and walking, and it even lets you play iTunes or Pandora in the background. If you ARE a runner and want to train up to a 5k (or a 10k), there’s an app for that (10k version).

15 miles to 30 Rock

Since running isn’t a daily option (and I decided to start this whole routine in August of one of the hottest summers in Philadelphia’s recorded history), I’ve decided that going to the gym and using some cardio equipment is completely acceptable.

Treadmills give me the same problems as running outside, except it’s boring. So I took a spin on one of the stationary bikes. A few things I really like about the bike:

1. I’m not on my feet. My arches thank me.
2. Milage motivation – being able to ride 15 miles in the same amount of time I can barely run 2 miles is just more motivating to me.
3. I don’t feel the need to stop. Unlike running, where I need to stop because my ankles hurt, I can power through a consistent 40 minute ride even up the virtual “hills” the training program provides.
4. I can watch 30 Rock

That last one’s a little weird, but I was reading about workout routines and saw someone who stopped letting themselves watch certain shows except for when they were working out. Earlier this summer I decided to catch up on 30 Rock, which I’d never seen but heard was really funny. Season 1 had me hooked.

Before I could buy Season 2, Hulu sent me an invite for Hulu Plus. This gave me full access to their catalogue (which happens to include all seasons of 30 rock), but it also lets me watch them on my iPhone/iPad.

So I promised myself that I’d get through 30 rock, 2 episodes at a time, but ONLY while I’m on an exercise bike.

Those 40 minutes whiz by. It’s like taking a 10-15 mile bike ride with Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin every morning. It’s awesome.

And when I’m done with 30 Rock, I can pick another series I’ve been meaning to catch up on…I can even up the ante to 30 minute shows, and documentaries. Who said exercise equipment had to be boring!!

P.S. The music they play at my Gym is so bad. SO bad.

Daily Mile

A social network for working out. Not only did it seem counter-intuitive (social networks are places to sink time sitting on your duff, not being active), but it sounded awful. I imagined a virtual locker room full of athletes, slapping each others’ asses and shouting lame motivational chants at each other.

But Daily Mile turned out to be something else altogether. In fact, its kinda like having workout buddies without having to smell them. You can pick up tips (and even exercise routes) from other people that live near you. The amazing part to me was how many people I knew who were already on it. People I knew from Indy Hall, or just the general geek scene in Philly. I was welcomed warmly as I began to log my workout progress. In just a week, seeing miles rack up from runs and rides is pretty cool. I’ve embedded a Daily Mile widget in my blog sidebar too, more for tracking those miles than anything else.

Other relative stats, like “donuts burned” and “times around the world” are pretty exciting…while the numbers are low now they are the ones I’m kinda excited to see climb.

I won’t be consistently blogging about my progress, though I will be keeping all of my records public on Lose It or Lose It and Daily Mile, etc.

Thanks to all of my friends, especially Roz Duffy and Randy Schmidt, for the encouragement, support, and inspiration to cap off my year of refocusing on me in a really important and positive way.

One of the guys I work with, Jon, just bought his dad an iPad. His dad isn’t tech savvy, to the point that he didn’t use his home computer much any more, so when he asked for an iPad his son was perplexed but excited.

Jon shared an email with me that his dad sent him after spending about 20 minutes with the iPad. I was amazed at some of the comments enough that I had to jot them down, and some of the ideas and questions they raised.

Dadquote #1: I assume APPS, means applications.   Never seen it explained anywhere.

The concept of “Apps” seems very easily adopted. I wonder why that is?

Dadquote #2: Did not see where you get into the web

The mail app is called “Mail”. The Photo app is called “Photos”. The Calendar app is called “Calendar”. Etc.

In comparison, “Safari” is only relatively obvious to a Mac user as a web browser, or “The Internet” as my mom calls it. Why wouldn’t Apple call their internet app “Internet”?

Dadquote #3: as not sure how to shut it off…just turn it off with the same button at the top that I used to turn it on…wasn’t sure if there was a certain procedure to get out of things so I don’t lock things up.

Ah, the mark of a PC user. “I have to turn this thing off a certain way or else it breaks” is something that I don’t miss from my days of building and repairing PCs. I thought it was particularly interesting that he actually intuited the correct answer, and then based on past experiences, thought to himself, “no, there must be a harder procedure I have to go through to do it right”.

Dadquote #4: Once I have it in front of me other things may come to me.

He’s already committed to exploring the product more, one of the greatest achievements that I think any product designer can aspire to. The difference between that and the alternative approach to new technology – being afraid or intimidated, or worse, frustrated – is remarkable.

If the thing you’re making is ever meant to be used by anybody but you, there are some great lessons in these dadquotes that I’d encourage you to consider.

Working with the team at Red Tettemer has been about seeing the “little things”.

Today I decided to add one of my own little things by replacing the typical Lorum Ipsum that we splatter across our web pages before we get content for them with something a little more…infectious. I mean entertaining. I mean fun.

Since we use Textmate whenever we’re not elbows deep in Flex Builder, it seemed like a quick and obvious place to start, creating a Textmate Bundle that adds the Tab Trigger for the word “ipsum”.

Simply download and install this bundle, which I’ve decided to name BetterIpsum, and try it for yourself. Never more be plagued by barely pronounceable latin garble, and instad, get a tune in your head that you won’t be able to get out.

I’m thinking about creating a TextExpander version of this to make it less IDE dependent, but only if people are having as much fun with this plugin as we are at Red. And if there’s a way to do this for Photoshop (macros, I suppose?), I know our designers would love it as well.

Over the weekend, and late into Sunday night, I was scrambling to get some software put together to host ~50 people over the next 12 weeks. More on why I was scrambling another time.

Today, I want to take you on a trip. Hold on.

Rewind.

Late last year, Amy Hoy and I decided that it was long time that we sit down and actually do something together. Despite having been friends for a number of years, having supported and unstuck each other numerous times, and even working in close proximity, we hadn’t really worked together.

Amy had a landslide 2009. Setting the personal goal to “quit consulting” and live on revenue from products and services, and she nearly made it. No small feat, but she also decided to share her story on a 3 hour conference call back in December.

The feedback after her conference call from the participants was “we want more” on how to hustle our way to independence. Quite a call to action.

While visiting Amy and Thomas over new years, we postulated how we might finally work together, taking the call of “we want more” and blending it with my year of Unstick.me sessions, and came up with a course.

Rewind.

I’m a college dropout. I don’t hide this fact, I’m not proud nor ashamed. It was a decision, and I stand by the fact that I made the right one. College wasn’t the right fit for me, mostly because I had different aspirations. I didn’t want a job, I wanted to work. I didn’t believe in the business theories that were being taught. I couldn’t stand 10+ year old technology courses. I couldn’t handle apathetic professors (and misdirected students). I couldn’t operate in the bureaucracy. I didn’t understand theory without application and context. I valued fun over anything else.

Drexel University just wasn’t the place for me at the time.

That said, I’ve always had a special place in my heart for education. Mostly, alternatives.

See, I love to learn. And I’m lucky as a duck that I’ve got a bunch of crazy-smart friends, mentors, and peers to learn from.

Fast forward.

I’ve long believed that there’s a better way to educate than piling ideas on a person, than filling a person with facts. One of my best friends in the world and one of the smartest dudes I know, Matthew, is an actual professor at Rice University.  At SXSW, he expressed concern that the world was quickly filling with people who knew ABOUT a lot of things, but didn’t know a lot of things. Information vs. Knowledge. The Wikipedia generation, if you will.

I have to agree with the sentiment.

A generation of people who are full of good ideas, but lack the skill to synthesize, to make the rubber meet the road.

That skill is teachable, though.

Creating these people is the job of education, formal or otherwise.

Rewind.

So in Vienna, Amy and I talked about what specific powers of synthesis we might be able to help people with. We’d both launched a number of products, services, efforts, etc over the years prior, and found ourselves often mentoring first time “shippers” on getting from an idea to an actual viable product worth their time creating. And the “Zero to Launch” course was born.

Covering the walls of their home office in Vienna, Amy and I storyboarded out a number of our experiences, and the lessons we’d learned. We crafted the story arc, the consistencies across experiences, that helped us succeed. We refreshed our notes on what had inspired us. On how and what we’d learned.

And we put together the a 12 week course to help others do the same.

The Pragmatic & Profitable Approach to Ideas (like therapy for your dreams)

Dig Deep: Doing the Research (get real, learn what ideas to steal)

Your Idea’s Darwin Test (will it get kicked off the island, aka go broke?)

Define Your Shippability (how to determine your minimum viable product)

Create your Roadmap (without one, how could you drive forward?)

Look for Shortcuts (they always pay off)

Carve out Your Audience (do it now!)

The Price is Wrong (and how to make it right)

Maintaining Momentum (with a “day job”; without strangling yourself)

Talking about Yourself (you gotta do it)

Keep Your Cool (again with the no strangling)

Your First Launch (how to run it, & the aftermath)

Fast forward.

This week, we kicked off that course with just over 50 students from around the world. We’re conducting the course 100% virtually, with a composite of weekly lessons, workbooks, reviews, conference calls, and forum discussions. Already, its clear that we have an incredible 12 weeks ahead of us, and I’m beyond excited to be involved in education again.

The Future

It would be arrogant of me to think that what we’re doing is the future of higher education. But I think what we’re doing is a part of it, not replacing it.

Thinking back to University of the Arts’ President Sean Buffington’s Ignite Presentation about making (art)work that matters and “what does it mean to educate an artist”. Sean theorizes that there’s a need for education to update itself to for the medium it is attempting to teach. Most importantly, Sean suggests that you can equip students with the ability to learn for themselves.

That’s the entire approach to helping the students taking Amy and my Year of Hustle: Zero to Launch course: guiding our class towards the rubber meeting the road, with the outcome being not another information-saturated member of society, but instead, a knowledgeable and empowered  contributor to society, and hopefully, a life of success.

Hijacked shamelessly from The Middle Finger Project here in Philadelphia, here are Ashley Ambrige’s guidelines for living life instead of just living a life. It goes without saying that I believe in and adhere to all of these, with or without Ashley’s say-so.

1. True living is more than just keeping your heart beating and a roof over your head. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that is “just how life goes.” There’s way more possibilities, and, yes, IT IS WORTH GOING AFTER. Be daring.
2. Stop blowing yourself off; we get so upset when others blow off our ideas and desires, but we have no problem doing it to ourselves. Take your ideas, feelings, wants, wishes, yearns & urges seriously–those are your only true guide. Other people have no idea what’s best for you, so stop seeking their validation. Do what you need to do for you. Be confident.
3. Stop doing everything by the book. It’s time to start drafting your own revised edition. Rules don’t always exist in the name of the greatest good; more often than not, they exist because someone wants to establish or maintain power. And that’s just not a good enough reason. Be inquisitive.
4. Life is a series of choices. You choose every single direction that your life takes. Use it to your advantage. Be deliberate.
5. There will be people out there who won’t support what you’re doing. Who cares. Trust yourself more, trust others less. That includes significant others. Be brave.
6. Figure out what you value, and make the necessary changes to align your life with those values. If you value time more than money, stop working 60 hour work weeks. The only way you’ll get more time, is by doing less. It’s simple math. Be introspective.
7. Speaking of money, IT ISN’T AS IMPORTANT AS WE’RE TAUGHT TO THINK IT IS. Money comes, and money goes, and it provides little value itself until you actually exchange it for something that is valuable to you. So, ask yourself that question. What do you value? That’s where the majority of the money you spend should be going. Be prudent.
8. Having good intentions doesn’t yield results. Get off your ass and make it happen. Be zealous.
9. Life isn’t meant to be taken so seriously. In the scheme of things, if you’re going to be late to work, it doesn’t really matter. If you don’t get an A, it doesn’t really matter. If you’re proven wrong about something, it doesn’t really matter. If your house isn’t as nice as your best friend’s, it doesn’t really matter. Relax, and enjoy the ride. Think big picture, not details. Will this matter in 100 years? Be panoramic.
10. The world is not judging you as much as you think they are. Most people are too wrapped up in themselves to even notice what you’re doing. Drop the pride and have a little fun. Be lighthearted.
11. Perhaps one of the greatest goals we can seek for ourselves is exhilaration. Are you exhilarated by your life? Be stimulated.
12. When making decisions, always ask what’s more important. Thinking about canceling on an invitation to a friend’s baby shower or birthday party because you have too much work to do? Get your head out of your ass. Your friend is more important; work can always be done later. Nothing is that urgent. Relationships, however, are your foundation and you’d be lost without other human connections, so value them. And show it. Be thoughtful.
13. You don’t just need to love yourself; you need to respect yourself. You’ll garner that respect by accomplishing things you’ve set out to do. Be relentless.
14. Being content with your life and being proud to call it yours are two different things. Strive for the latter. Be courageous.
15. Last but not least, wine should be drank with meals. Preferably Argentinian Malbec. It’s freaking delicious. Be delighted.

Lifted with attribution to Hugh MacLeod. These are his ideas, not mine. I just happend to dig on most of them.

1. Everything takes three times longer than it should. Especially the money part.
2. The best way to get approval is not to need it.
3. People want what they can’t have. In fact, that’s pretty much all they do want.
4. Once you become an entrepreneur, you find the company of non-entrepreneurs a lot harder to be around. You’ve seen things they haven’t; the wavelengths alter, it’s that simple.
5. In a world of over-supply and commodification, you are no longer paid to supply. You’re being paid to deliver something else. What that is exactly, is not always obvious.
6. Word of mouth is the best advertising medium of all. The best word of mouth comes from disrupting markets.
7. People buy your product because it helps fill in the narrative gaps in their lives.
8. You can either be cheapest or the best. I know which one I prefer.
9. Some people think that once they secure venture funding, their problems will be over. Wrong. That’s when your problems REALLY begin.
10. It’s better to be underfunded than overfunded.
11. If an average guy in a bar can understand what you do for a living, chances are you’re halfway to becoming a commodity.
12. It’s easier to turn an ally into a customer than vice versa.
13. If you’re happy in your career before the age of thirty, you’re probably doing something wrong. Heck, if you’re happy in your career before the age of seventy, you’re probably doing something wrong.
14. Smart, young, artistic people are always asking me which is a better career path, “Creativity” or “Money”. I always answer that it doesn’t matter. What matters is “Effective” and/or “Ineffective”.
15. Write the following on a piece of paper, have it framed, and stick it on your office wall: “Have you hugged your customer today?”
16. People will always, always be in the market for a story that resonates with them. Your product will either have this quality or it won’t. If your product fails this test, quit your job and go find something else. Just making the product incrementally cheaper or better won’t help you.
17. Products are idea amplifiers. The molecules and/or bytes are secondary.
18. People remember the quality long after they’ve forgotten the price. Unless you try to rip them off.
19. Markets serve entrepreneurs better if the latter can keep the former undersupplied. Oversupply is the kiss of death.
20. I personally know a former CEO who, once he attained control of the company, ran an EXTREMELY profitable business into the ground in less than two years. From a market cap of $100 million to ZERO, just like that. Why? Short answer: He loved being “The” CEO, but he didn’t much care for being “a” CEO.
21. In terms of becoming an entrepreneur, probably the most useful thing I learned in the last twenty years was how to enjoy my own company for long stretches of time.
22. One successful entrepreneur I know well has a wonderful quality, namely that he never, ever compares himself to other people. He just does his own thing, which actually serves him rather well. Just because his competitor has bought himself a bigger motor boat, doesn’t mean he feels the need have a bigger motor boat. This quality helps him to build his business the way he sees fit, not the way the motor boat people see fit.
23. Running a startup is full of extreme ups and downs. Which is why so many successful and happy entrepreneurs I know lead such normal, stable, unglamorous, “boring”, family-centered lives. Somehow they need the latter in order to balance out the former. Extra-curricular drama looks great in the tabloids, but that’s all it’s ultimately good for.
24. MBAs are conditioned to use their brains in much the same way as sex workers are conditioned to use their genitals. Nice work if you can get it.
25. Bill Gates may have a million times more money than me, but he isn’t going to live a million times longer than me, watch a million times more sunsets than me, make love to a million times more women than me, drink a million times more fine wines than me, listen to a million times more Beethoven String Quartets than me, nor sire a million times more children than me. Human beings don’t scale.
26. F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “There are no second acts in American lives.” F. Scott was a drunkard and a fool.

Did you spend your time writing about things worth doing, or doing things worth writing about?

“It’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.” – Roy Disney

Hat tip to Theresa Stigale, one of the partners that owns the building that IndyHall resides in.