Category Archives: Improvement

New Years Eve 2011

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Here is my cliche 2011 wrap up and hopes for 2012:

2011 was a great year in many areas of my life.

My company Spark::red enjoyed strong growth and I feel like its been an amazing success. You can read a bit about our growth this year here: Spark::red Year in Review.

I travelled to South Africa, Montreal (twice), Aruba, Maine, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Seattle, and more. I rode my motorcycle up Mount Washington. I ran a 5k. I did winter driving school at the Team O’Neil rally school. I drove at Loudon race track in both my S4 and my Ducati. I went to a ton of concerts. I ate at some amazing restaurants. I cooked some great food. I read some great books. I had an amazing set of new experiences with my wife.

It has been a great year. My best memories have been time spent with my wife, travel, motorsports, and building my company.

This coming year I want to do more of the stuff that sticks in my mind. I want to scuba dive, snowboard, travel, spend time on the track in my car and bikes, go shooting, take photos, cook, write code, triple Spark::red revenue, read, write, run another 5k. it’s going to be a big year and I can’t wait!!!

Snowboarding at Loon Mountain

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I went up to Loon Mountain yesterday and did my first snowboarding of the season. I’d never been to Loon, but it seemed nice. It’s early enough in the season that only a small fraction of the runs were open, and the conditions weren’t perfect, but it was a cold crisp day, with some light snow falling, and I had a great time.

Most of my snowboard gear is from about 10-11 years ago, so this season I’m updating a few elements. I picked up a new jacket and gloves last week and Saturday was my trial run for both. I used to ride with a thicker warm jacket that I’d just wear over a t-shirt, but I’m trying some layering with my new Rome DSK jacket.

It worked great, I was warm, and I LOVE the jacket! Having a snow skirt that hooks up with your snow pants means you keep warm and dry regardless of the wind or any butt sliding wipeouts you may have. Likewise my Burton gloves were Goretex, warm and dry. They have inner liner gloves that stay on your hands when take off the gloves, which is great, because if you need to fiddle with your bindings, headphones, sunglasses, etc… you can do it with optimal dexterity, but still keeping your fingers warm. Big fan. I need new boots through, after 11 years most of the padding and insulation are packed down to the point of uselessness.

Loon is only about 1:45 minutes away so it’s an easy day trip, especially if, like me, you’re only good for 3-4 hours on the slopes (although I assume that will get better as I get back into snowboarding shape). I’m planning on going a LOT this winter. Last year I only made it twice, right at the end of the season, and I regretted it. So this year I hope to hit the slopes a couple times a month at least. Wish me luck!

Ducati Track Day at NH Motor Speedway

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Only three days after I was in Loudon, NH at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway (NHMS) two Sundays ago, which you can read about in Emma’s Blog post about NASCAR, I was back in Loudon, back at the NHMS, but this time it wasn’t a family outing, I was here alone to ride my Ducati Monster on the NHMS Road Race course. I’d done a track day here about 10+ years before, back when it was the New Hampshire International Speedway before NASCAR purchased the track a few years ago and renamed it, but I hadn’t had my motorcycle on a track since. I HAD however had my car on this track just two months earlier for a two day performance driving Audi track event (which was amazing), so I was re-familiaried with the course, the turns, the best lines (although they vary a bit from cars to bikes and between vehicles based on weigh, power, and many other factors), the pit entrance and exits, etc…

I was riding the same bike as I had 10+ years ago, my ’96 Ducati Monster 900 (Mona), although within the previous month I’d enhanced the engine with a 944 high compression conversion and 41mm flat slide FCR Keihn carbs which gives the bike much more power and lets it pull right up to redline without falling off as previous semi-stock engine setup had done (previously it had an open air box, tuned jet kit, slip-ons, lightened flywheel). I’d also installed SpeedyMoto Tall Boy clip-on handle bars to replace the stock uni-bar. The clip-ons give the bike a more aggressive riding position and allow for better adjustment for finding the perfect set of angles and positions for the most hand/arm comfort.

Despite some trepidation around the event, mostly from not having tracked my bike in over a decade, and also from no knowing anyone at the event, everything went very smoothly and I had a really great time. I slept at a nearby hotel the night before so I could make the 7 AM start time without having to leave Massachusetts pre-dawn and exhausted.  I made it to the track at 7 AM and soon discovered that I was one of the very very few people there who didn’t have a huge enclosed motorcycle trailer specifically for hauling my bike(s), tools, gasoline, multiple race leather suits, coolers, etc… to the track.  All I had with me was my backpack with a couple small tools, some tape, water bottle, power bars, and yesterday’s clothes.  I was one of the very few true amateurs there as it seems like almost everyone else either raced competitively at some level, or the very least did enough track days to warrant the expense of a motorcycle racing trailer and tow vehicle.

We were all split into three groups based on experience.  I was in the middle group as I’ve been riding for many years and have done a track day in the past.  Each group rotates through classroom time (learning theory) and track time (applying theory) with short breaks in between each for water/bathroom/tinkering needs.  Basically you’re in the classroom for 20 minutes, then you get a ~10 minute break, then you’re on the track for 20 minutes, then you get a ~10 minute break, then back into the classroom.  You might think riding only 20 minutes of each hour isn’t enough, but when you’re on the track, at track speeds, really pushing yourself and trying to improve your form, line, throttle control, etc… 20 minutes is physically and mentally exhausting.

I learned a ton that day, everything from body position and how to hang off the side of the bike to increase your cornering speed, from the differences in best approach lines from the car I’d driven there two months ago to the bike I was on now, I learned that my bike was WAY faster than it was previously, and also that there are many bikes and riders who are much faster than me:)  Both the bike and I made it through the day unscathed, although the tires are nicely worked:)

I had a great time and now I’ve got the bug.  Next year I plan to do a lot more track days, and am wrestling with how to best balance my love of racing my car and my bike.  I also need to figure out if I should pick up a used track bike (there are a lot of reasons that tracking my Monster is probably not the best idea – everything from my gas tank being a work of art and virtually irreplaceable if/when I do lay it down and the fact the bike is really setup for street riding not track riding, and I don’t want to ruin the street-ability of it).

A Clean Fridge

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clean-fridge

I’m on Day Four of Using Time Blocks to Get Things Done and make headway on some of the never-ending things that need doing that can lurk on in the shadows of your mind. So far it’s going pretty well.

I had a couple of weak days: on Tuesday night Emma was out, so I took advantage of being solo to play a little The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. I usually only play an hour or two of XBox every 1-2 weeks, so it’s a well earned indulgence I think. Usually I play Halo 3 with my friends in Seattle, but lately I’ve been playing some Halo Wars and the new Riddick game, both of which are great. And last night we went out to the concert, leaving just after dinner.

However, tonight I tackled The Fridge! I wish I had a before picture. Honestly we’re clean people and our fridge wasn’t that scary. However, it was overly full, disorganized, and it wasn’t super clean. It was definitely time. So, after dinner I started my 30 minute timer on my iPhone and got to work. Cleaning a fridge isn’t much fun, there are a ton of things I’d rather be doing, but for 30 minutes I could handle it. Except when the 30 minutes ran out, all of the food was still out of the fridge. So I spun up another 30 minutes, and changed the music. When that 30 minutes ran out, I was almost done with the freezer, but knew I still had to take out the trash (which now had old no good food in it), and a few other things, so in the end I spent 90 minutes cleaning the fridge and freezer. And honestly I didn’t mind. Good music, and doing it in 30 minute blocks really helped out mentally. If I’d been thinking “Oh, it’ll take me all night to clean the stupid fridge” I would have put it off again. Now it’s done, it looks great, and I’m happy to have done it.

I’ve also made a slight change to how I mark the grid if I spend more than the allotted time on a task. Instead of just noting how long I spend, I’m marking down multiple ‘X’s. The overall number of ‘X’s on the paper when I’m done with the week will give me an indicator as to how productive I’ve been on these tasks.

Currently it looks like this:

Apr 20th Apr 21th Apr 22th Apr 23th Apr 24th Apr 25th Apr 26th
Exercise 30m X X
Clean House 30m X X X X X
Work on House 30m X
Write Blog Post 60m X X X
Finances/Bills 30m X X
Spark::red 30m X X X X X X X X

So I’m happy with the approach! Anyone tried it?

Getting Things Done Using Time Blocks

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I’m always trying to improve my productivity, my focus, and my organization. I want to worry less and do more.

I’ve firmly adopted a loose GTD system via OmniFocus to manage my important tasks and todos, things like “Label circuit breakers” and “Book travel for New Orleans”. For my development tasks, like “add SMS notifications to monitoring applications”, I use Jira, which not only integrates perfectly with my development environment (Eclipse) but also manages attachments, notes, workflow, estimates, and integration with Subversion/Hudson/etc… I practice Inbox Zero (currently Inbox Two), and *try* to keep my desk clean.

However, there’s a whole category of things I want to do that don’t really fit in there. Things that I should do or at least make progress on, but that don’t really have a schedule or are on-going things that would overwhelm OmniFocus pretty quickly. Things like keeping the house clean, exercising, paying bills/organizing finances and investments, fixing up the house, and so on. I know I should exercise every day, or close to it, but I don’t need a persistent task showing up in OmniFocus that I can never close. Ditto with keeping the house clean. And as a first time home owner, I’ve discovered that there’s an infinite number of tasks that should get done to the house eventually. Anything really important or time critical, such as “replace hot water heater” would go into OmniFocus, but there’s literally a never ending stream of things that should get done at some point, such as “nail up that one piece of cedar siding in the back that slides out of place every month or so” and “re-hang the Iguana Crossing sign on the mailbox post”. I could probably come up with several hundred of this type of task, and writing them down would just be overwhelming. But I still need to work on them.

So I’ve created a simple table which I printed out. Along the top I have the dates of this week. Along the left side I have some meta-tasks with target amounts of time to spend. So my current week’s table looks like this:

Apr 20th Apr 21th Apr 22th Apr 23th Apr 24th Apr 25th Apr 26th
Exercise 30m X
Clean House 30m X (60m)
Work on House 30m X
Write Blog Post 60m X
Finances/Bills 30m
Spark::red 30m X (3h)

When I do something on the list for the minimum time, I put an “X” down. If I end up doing it substantially longer, I mark down roughly how long I spent at it, so I can look at how I spent my time over the week, and also know that I don’t have to feel too guilty if I don’t get to any Spark::red stuff for the next day or two.

There’s a few key points:

  1. If I miss a day (or two) it’s not a huge deal. Nothing here is time sensitive, although I can use these time blocks to work on important tasks that are in OmniFocus if I want. Just in general, these are the things that I should be doing on a regular basis, but a day missed here or there really isn’t a big deal.
  2. Often the things I’ll end up doing aren’t very fun. For instance I scrubbed out a toilet today. So it’s hard to get super motivated about it. However, that’s why I have the 30 minutes blocked out. Short of torture, or watching Heroes (which is the same thing, really…), I figure I can endure 30 minutes of just about anything, so once I’ve done my 30 minutes, I can stop if I want. It doesn’t matter if I’m done or not, I can just stop if I want, happy in the knowledge that I did 30 minutes more than I would have probably done otherwise. This makes it MUCH easier to get going on an unpleasant task. And often, once I’m going, I keep going until the tasks or tasks I had in mind when I started are done, hence my overages today in cleaning and Spark::red work. If 30 minutes is too much or too little for you, go ahead and use 10 minutes or an hour. Find the right balance point for you: short enough you don’t avoid unpleasant tasks, and long enough to actually accomplish things.
  3. While you’re in one of those blocks, you have to FOCUS on what you’re doing. That means no watching TV while you’re working on your blog post, no taking email breaks while you’re cleaning the kitchen, just focus on what you’re doing for 30 minutes, and crank stuff out.
  4. Don’t watch the clock. I use my iPhone as my timer. It is easy to set it for 30 minutes, and just slide it back in my pocket. I’m usually surprised at how quickly it goes off. Also, if I want to push on a bit more, I can give myself another 30 minute countdown with one click.

This is only the first day of the new system, so we’ll see how well it works after week 5, but so far it’s been great. I’ve gotten a ton accomplished today, and felt pretty good about the 30 minute blocks. If you try it or are doing something like it already, let me know!