2016
- Launch Ticker - This was the first one I signed up for a little less than a year ago because I got a free one year trial and has definitely been worth it. They send 2 emails per day (morning/afternoon), with a handful of short summaries of news stories with links to the original. Most of the topics/articles they send out are around breaking tech news and if you aren’t online all day this does a great job of recapping what is happening in tech news.
- NextDraft - I have had this subscription the longest and I don’t see it changing anytime soon. Dave Pell does a great job summarizing, adding a catchy title, and adding in his own thoughts for what he finds as the top 10 news items of the day. Also, I really enjoy that number 10 is normally something funny or as he calls it the bottom of the news.
- Mattermark Daily - If you are a technology, startup, or investing fan this is one to check out. Not to mention they have been doing a lot more Editorials lately that have really knocked it out of the park from a thought/research standpoint (here is the latest one titled “Surviving Whatever Comes Next” by Danielle Morrill. Not to mention Mattermark the company is doing some pretty cool things on top of this daily newsletter.
- Inside Daily Brief (side note you can win an Amazon Echo if you sign) - Now this one is super new for me but I have been subscribed since they started. I will say it has been changing a lot since it started as it is trying to get formatting, content type, and other things ironed out. However, one thing is for sure they have some great summaries of top news stories of the day. Not sure if the trend will continue but earlier on Jason Calacanis was sending out a shared Google Doc to twitter for everyone to come help make suggestions before the next Daily Brief was published. I can’t wait to see how this one continues to evolve and wish the team the best.
A Brother Jogging
I was telling my wife last night about how running at night sometimes plays tricks with your mind. Most of the time it is when someone suddenly comes up out of nowhere and is walking/running at you, behind you, or just someone in the shadows of their house porch coughs or starts talking to someone on the phone.
That reminded her of this great video she shared with me by comedian Michael Jr. and I couldn’t help myself but pass it along.
via A Brother Jogging - YouTube.
Peaceful outside tonight for my late night run.
Bliss is...
Picture from the Superior Hiking Trail North of Grand Marais, Minnesota on August 2004
It is funny if you ask me what bliss is it would all depend on the day, time, and what I was thinking about at that moment. In fact, it would also probably depend on what I was doing the hours leading up to the question. The thing is there are different things in my life that are blissful. On the one hand, like the picture above it is a breathtaking picture of some secluded place or a picture from the top of a mountain, or seeing one of the 7 wonders of the world, or just a picture of my family having fun enjoying the little things in life as well as the company of one another.
What is your picture of bliss? Is it always the same or does it change as mine does depending on your environment?
Podcasts from January/February
Now in the second week of March (playing catch up), I thought I would give a quick list of some Podcasts (and favorite episodes) that have been keeping me company while running in the evenings. My favorite part about all of them is that you can subscribe to them in iTunes, which makes it super easy to pull the next one up when you are heading out on a run or long car trip.
This Week in Startups by Jason Calacanis (@jason) - The show is done twice per week where the host Jason has various entrepreneurs on talking about their companies, what they do, and how it could change the world. Also, every couple of weeks there is a news roundtable where he has two guests on that talk about some of the big tech topics out there. In January, one of my favorite shows to listen to was E614 where Jason was talking to the CEO Emily Kirsch who Co-Founded PowerHouse. The conversation was very interesting as it touched on what some new companies are doing along the lines of Solar and how Solar is becoming cheaper and one of the major roadblocks they run into is Policy.
The Tim Ferris Show by Tim Ferriss (@tferriss) - This is a great podcast and Tim has some really great guests like Edward Norton, Chris Sacca, Shaun White, Naval Ravikant, and Seth Godin. Note all of those were just in the month of January and February. Each of those people was probably my favorite episode of the last two months and I won’t dive into it too much as I wrote a little bit about Naval Ravikant’s interview in a prior post.
Intentionally Wandering by Jeff Sandquist (@jeff_wandering) - This one was created by a local Minnesota guy named Jeff Sandquist. I really like how the podcasts are normally only 20-30 min which is perfect to listen to the whole thing in one sitting (or run as I prefer). The other neat thing about this podcast is that it revolves around this same theme of Intentionally Wandering and, in my opinion, sharpening your own focus on how you view your world and the world around you. He brings in some very interesting guests as who also do a great job of making you think and sharing their experiences. In fact, I really like how he ends the episodes with guests the same way by asking them the same question that I always try to answer myself after each one.
“What is your why? Why do you do what you do?”
I should probably start writing my own answer down to see how much it changes over time. Another nice thing, since I am normally out running when listening to podcasts, is how Jeff puts show notes on the websites about the episodes with links to find the other materials (books/articles) that were mentioned in the show. One of my favorite recent episodes is a solo episode he did titled " Lessons Learned from Being Curious" and there was a quote in there that really stuck out to me as I can see myself in this quote sometimes.
“We are all born curious, but not all of us remain curious. Curiosity, while it does come naturally to all of us, it can easily be suppressed, lost and destroyed, depending on our environment, our upbringing, our experiences, and even our thoughts and our reactions and emotions towards this idea of curiosity.” - Jeff Sandquist
So what are you waiting for go check out some of these podcasts today! Also, do you have any that you listen to frequently? Let me know in the comments.
Conference Call in Real Life
As I have been in what seems like a day full of meetings today, of which most were conference calls, I was reminded of these two great videos by Trip and Tyler that I stumbled upon a while back. If you have ever been on video calls or just normal conference calls I am sure they will resonate with you too.
The newer of the two videos, “A Video Conference Call in Real Life” is spot on to all of the issues I have encountered in the various video conference calls I have had.
Below is the original “A Conference Call in Real Life” by Tripp and Tyler and is very accurate in Conference call issues as well as just talking on cell phones some days.
Hope you enjoyed the Friday afternoon humor. Do either of these remind you of the conference calls you have been on lately?
Running to Refocus
Here it was 9:30 pm at night and I was just going to quickly finish writing a blog post I had started a couple of days back, but I was stuck and it felt like it was taking me too long to write. It wasn’t just flowing out like some of the ones last week did. Then I realized that it is getting pretty late and I really wanted to get a run in tonight.
So…. I went for a run.
During my run, I reflected on how I have been having so much momentum with this blog and I should have just finished that blog post since I haven’t made a post since last Friday. Once I completed my run, feeling refreshed and motivated, I was reminded of a quote about why running appealed to Bernd Heinrich who was being interviewed in a video series titled “Why We Run” (video is at the end of this post).
It appealed to me because I could do it all the time where every I was, no matter where I could always run. - Bernd Heinrich
This year as I have refound my love for running I have tried to embrace a quote like that. I have been running on some cold days and very dark nights. However, for me, it is time well spent and the motivation I feel from going for a run is just too good to pass up. Now I know I didn’t publish the actual blog post I was working on but I was stuck and needed to run away for a while. In fact, as a result, of my run, I realized it helped motivate me to write/share something instead of having it feel forced.
Now for a question, when you get writers' block, or writing seems slow, doesn’t flow, or feels forced how do you get through it or refocus? Leave me your thoughts or tips in the comments as I would love to know how you refocus.
Hobbies and Side Projects
Can someone have too many hobbies or side projects?
That is the question I have been pondering over the whole month of February. Also, yes I know it is ironic since this is the same month I took a Blogging 101 course as well as having this crazy idea of creating a site called the Bloggers Meetup.
I look back at the month and I have still continued to do things that I have wanted to do, like running, reading (or listening to book tapes), keeping up-to-date with some podcasts, and trying to spend more time with my family on the weekends instead of being buried in work or side projects.
However, I do sometimes wonder if I have taken on too much. It is unfortunately in my nature to keep volunteering at events, helping non-profits, starting side projects, or just trying new hobbies. I am thankful that most of the things I do have different cycles of when they are busy and when they aren’t so it normally doesn’t create too big of a conflict. However, then there are the times when my hobbies start to become more of a burden and it overlaps with other projects/hobbies or just my family time and that is when it really makes me think.
I really starting thinking about this a couple of weeks back and even though I love all of the projects I have been doing/created, I believe I would like to take the next step and get more focused on a couple of them. It is not that I couldn’t continue what I am doing today but at some point when the next side project comes along that seems interesting I won’t have any resources to devote to it. Or I will not be as devoted to another project and at that time, it might be one I would like to be devoted to.
So this year in my year of changes, I am going to try to make sure I keep tweaking my focus on things. That is not to say I will drop everything tomorrow or even next month or within the next year. I am going to start by looking at what projects/hobbies I carried forward from 2015 and make a list of why I am doing each and what I hope to continue to gain by doing them. Some are very obvious to me right now but others are not. As I am not sure what my longer term vision of doing it is.
How about you? Do you have any hobbies or side projects that you have been doing for a while that you need to take a closer look at the why? I would love to hear your thoughts.
Community - Bloggers Meetup
I have been in a couple Blogging 101 courses over the last couple of years and I have enjoyed them as they push me to continue writing and more importantly, I always stumble upon a couple great sites that I frequent well after the course is done. One of the things I always enjoyed about the course is the sense of Community. You had people of all different blogging/WordPress expertise working together and helping each other out along the way. I was in a course a little over a year ago and was thinking wouldn’t it be great to continue the conversation after the course was done?
Now I know you could still visit people’s sites and make comments and suggestions. However, by only doing that you never get a chance to ask questions? You could end your post with a question but what if your question was about WordPress specifically, or a Theme, or just anything else that is random but doesn’t really fit as a blog post on your site for people to respond to? Also, that is assuming you have a magnitude of followers that actually see that post on a given week/day.
As I was in February 2016 Blogging 101 course, it was on my mind again about how could we do this. I have seen it done before but most of the time they wall it off with a Private Site and then it makes it hard for people to even find it or know what it is about unless you stumbled upon it by someone else’s post. Also, there were blogs I started to follow that continued my thinking about this little project. One specifically by Amanda titled “It Matters”, which it really resonated with me and I suggest you read it as well now. Ok, now that you are back.
Insert, the Bloggers Meetup, where what finally pushed me into starting this was based on a simple post I read in the Blogging 101 course where a couple of people were asking what will happen next after the course is over. I saw it as a time to recruit these people who had the same interest as myself in creating an Open Community where Bloggers could come and go and just chat with other bloggers. You can read more about my initial thoughts on the Bloggers Meetup as I don’t want to republish the whole thing here (also this is getting long right?). However, I would encourage any of you to register on the site and then I hope to see you chatting with the Community. Also, since it is just starting up feel free to throughout your ideas of how to grow or what you would like to see it become.
Finally, I want to thank everyone so far for registering and showing interest in this Community project. Not to mention some of the first people who reached out to me like @Amanda and @AmeenasMusings, who have really helped get things off the ground there. I can’t wait to see what is next for all of us!
A simple way to break a bad habit by Judson Brewer
I saw this Inc. article last night by Shana Lebowitz called “This TED Speaker Has Revealed the Best Way to Break a Bad Habit”, and thought it would be fitting to share the TEDMED video that the article was referencing. Judson Brewer is talking about Habits and the groundbreaking research his team discovered that can effectively help break bad habits. Since I had a post last Friday titled “Power of the Habit”, I felt that this video seemed along the same lines and worth the share.
Power of the Habit
I finally got around to catching up on some blogs and podcasts that I listen to late last week and I realized that two of them seemed to be touching on the same topic, “Habits”.
Now each of them talks about it from different angles but both have made me reflect on the habits I have been trying to break this year. Or even more specifically some of the good ones I am trying to create this year. Some people might say well that really sounds like a New Years' resolution, but for me, it is more of a time commitment change in focus that will be ongoing.
This brings me to the first blog that has been actually talking about it all year. The site is called Break the Twitch and it’s creator Anthony Ongaro does a great job of framing this up in his post a while back called “How I Created Daily Action Steps to Achieve My 2016 Vision (And You Can Too)”. There is actually a lot of good stuff in there about helping you create a vision for 2016 and follow through with it. However, based on how I have been changing my habits this year the following quote resonated with me best.
To eliminate a bad habit, we first need to establish a good habit to take its place. - Anthony Ongaro
Then as I was running last outside last week and listening to The Tim Ferriss Episode titled Naval Ravikant on Happiness Hacks and the 5 Chimps Theory. I would definitely suggest you listen to it as there are lots of good nuggets of information in that podcast. For me, the reason it really stuck out again was this talk of habits and breaking habits.
Learning how to break habits is an important/great meta skill. - Naval Ravikant
He talked about the power of habits and that after you have broken a habit it helps teach you that all habits can be broken. In fact, he said he break habits and creates new ones frequently. One tip he had to break habits is a daily workout as he suggests it is very important to do some kind of physical activity at the same time every day no exception.
He suggests further that it happens in the morning as it will lead to better choices as you have to make sure you get to bed earlier.
I couldn’t agree with him more on the psychology of physical activity and having it be in the morning. For me, I have been adding a new habit this year of running but not in the morning as he suggests but at night. This isn’t the most ideal, and it does lead to some of the same things he mentions as leading to better habits all around.
How about you, is there any new habits you are hoping to create in 2016 and in the process remove some bad ones? I would love to hear about your success so far or what is holding you back in the comments below.
News Apps and Email Newsletters
As I was reading my email last night everything became clear just as Jason Calacanis laid out in his post the day before titled “Knowing when, and how, to pivot (or, why didn’t news apps work?)”. It is a really good article and I would suggest checking it out.
Like many people, I have a couple different news apps on my phone, maybe you don’t and, in that case, lucky you. Why so many you ask? I use them strong for a couple of months and then I stop using them on a daily basis as I go back to where I always go to look for things social Media. Yes, just as the article said, “News apps failed because social networks succeeded”, which couldn’t be truer. I check Twitter first to see what is going on and read/consume most of my news/articles there. However, it is not to say I am not open to finding a better way to consume news because as I mentioned I have a couple of news apps on my phone but that is where they are, on my phone and I don’t do everything on my phone. However… My email is with me on my phone, tablet, and laptop and it is that running to-do list of things that are waiting for me to look at anytime/anywhere. Now maybe my habit of email has gone down over the years, as I don’t check it every 5 min, but I would say it still ranks pretty high on the usage ratio.
That is where these Newsletters are killing it these days because you are already in your email and you don’t have to open yet another app. Here are the top four newsletters I get every day that I always seem to keep opening:
Each of them provides something different which is why for me I can see them lasting in my routine for a while.
Final side note on News apps, I installed NextDraft app on my phone but never really use it because the email is so perfect for my routine as it is in a place I already look and can access it anywhere.
What are your thoughts on News Apps and do you think one will really stick around? If you are a frequent user of one let me know what your favorite one is as I am always game to try new apps.
Ice is clean… Who is up for skating?
Sometimes you have to ask
I am not one of those people to ask others for things. Specifically, in my career I am good at what I do but when I want to make a role change or find out about an opportunity from someone I end up dragging my feet and most of the time miss out on the opportunity. I tried to do better over the past couple of years but still it is something I am uncomfortable confronting people about. However, for those times that I have stuck my neck on the line it has been worth it even if it didn’t end as I would ultimately hope but, at least, I didn’t have to think I just missed out.
Today I was again reminded that it never hurts to ask. I have thought about my career path at the company I am working at lately. Don’t get me wrong what I am doing now is fine and I don’t mind doing it but I keep thinking in 10 years I don’t want to be doing the same thing. Also, as I have grown more in figuring “Life” out the last couple of months I realized I really would like to do something different.
On the same lines, I am reflecting back on an email I sent to a CEO that I have run into from time to time over the past 3 years. The company he works at had a job posted that I was interested in, I didn’t think I was qualified and kept dragging my feet for weeks. However, I finally found the courage to ask him if he would mind chatting about it which within an hour he emailed me back the name of the CFO for me to email as well copying himself. In the end, my thoughts were right, they wanted someone with a little more experience but I feel a lot better knowing it wasn’t just a missed opportunity.
Do you have any times in your career that you wished you would have spoken up to find out about an opportunity? Or did you have a time that you did speak up and how did it turn out for you, I would love to hear your thoughts, leave them in the comments below.
Not a bad way to spend the afternoon. Go Wild!
Quote of the Week - 02.12.16
“You weren’t born to just pay bills and die."
My wife sent me this quote the other day and it really made me reflect on things so I thought I would share. I decided to put that quote on a photo I took while hiking with a good friend in Colorado a couple of years back. In fact, my wife bought me the plane ticket to go see my friend for my birthday and looking back it was a great present as it got me to do what I had been talking about doing since I left college but kept saying to myself I was too busy.
I was more out of shape back then as I hadn’t gotten into the swing of running again but it was well worth it once we made it to the top. It was a gorgeous day and the view from the top of Estes Cone was awesome. Luckily, the trail we took, which started at Longs Peak Trailhead, wasn’t too strenuous and I would suggest it to anyone that finds themselves in the area.
Here are a couple other pictures I took from the peak, hiking up, and from the base of the mountain to give you a feel for how high up we were.
*Panoramic picture from the top of Estes Cone in Estes Park Colorado.*
*Picture of the other Mountains around Estes Cone as we were hiking up.*
*Estes Cone is the Mountain we hiked up to get the pictures above.*
Good night to smooth out the ice…
Back to Running
Yep, I was the person outside in Minnesota on January 9 when it was -4 degrees running around the streets.
However, since then the weather has been mostly above 0 when I go out on my runs even though most of the time it is around 9:30 pm. Honestly, I wish I had a better time to do it but I have tried to create a habit in 2016 of running and I tell myself that if night running is my only time, then night running it is.
*Sometimes the sidewalk ends when running in the winter*
###Some Background
Now, for fun here is a little background on my running, I used to be a runner back in High School (long ago) and loved running, still do, but I lost the actual urge to run as I fell into a busy trap. I could find lots of excuses after college, heck even in college. I ran off and on my Freshman and Sophomore year just as something to do as at that point I wasn’t too buried in the books. However, I took it up a notch the summer before my Junior year as I conned my brother into running the Twin Cities Marathon with me in October. I ran ever day all summer no matter what and sometimes 2x per day. However, once school started up in the fall I never really found time to run as I made excuses. Never fear, though, I was young and determined to still run the Marathon and I actually finished with very little walking. However, since that day I have always made excuses and let the excuses win. I would try from time to time but never keep the momentum. In fact in spring, summer, and fall of 2015, I think I went on a couple weeks worth of running and then stopped. Part of my problem I found was I wasn’t making the right choice or prioritizing my time correctly and my excuse was always that I could never find the right “time” to run.
###Starting over again
Fast forward to the start of 2016 and something clicked. It might have been some of the changes in my life that occurred in 2015, or that I wouldn’t mind losing a couple pounds, or maybe I finally remembered that I love running and gives me time to think. I am honest with myself in knowing that I will not run every day but I would like to run a couple times a week.
There is something great about running as it is just pure. You can only move as fast as you can, as far as you can, and as long as you can. However, it is all up to you to determine what you “can” do and what you get out of it.
For me right now I am not worried about the distance, or speed, or length as I just enjoy putting my shoes and going for a run, even if it is below 0.
*Picture of me after one of my many night runs so far in 2016*
Not sure what that face is all about.. We might need to watch this one.
Nothing makes family day better for this crew than a trip to the cupcake shop
