At the beginning of 2017 I wrote about my focus for the year. I’ve posted a few updates throughout the year (quarter year, half year & three quarters) and now is the time to do a final review. 2017 Theme: Sabbath Year Self Grade: 8/10 After learning in the past that having multiple goals dilutes focus and causes competition for a limited amount of time, I decided starting last year to focus my goals (challenge, habit & exemplar) around a single topic. For 2017, the theme was centered around the idea of a sabbath year – a year of rest. I found that centering around that topic worked really well. My efforts towards each of the three goals contributed in part towards each other and they feel very much as three notes of the same chord rather than three diverging items. I think there is still room to improve how much of my
In 2017 I named Eric Liddell as my exemplar for the year, someone I wanted to learn form. After spending time learning more about Liddell, one item seemed particularly relevant to put into practice – his approach to races. Liddell was one of the most fiercely competitive people I have ever read about – once running so hard to win a race that he had to be taken by ambulance to the hospital afterwards. At the same time he was incredibly compassionate to his competitors. There are numerous accounts of him sharing a friendly word before races, lending his gear to another racer that forgot theirs and praising the other runners after a race. He would mentioning their best aspects and how they very well could win the next time. It seems a dichotomy to be equally caring of a competitor’s heart and unrelenting in his own physical performance. As
On November, 2017 I ran the Gobble Gobble Kids Dash with my two oldest boys. Here is the race report. Synopsis This was the first official race my three year old ran – he got his own bib & everything. My two year old was technically too young to register, but we let him run some of the race with us as well. This is part of me exposing them to the sport of running and what it has to offer. My kids have been watching me be a runner as long as they can remember (my two year old asks ‘are you going running daddy’ whenever I put a synthetic shirt on) and going in the stroller for just about as long (this past summer they even got to participate in their first race, riding in the stroller), but this was their first time where they got to be the runner
On August 26, 2017 I ran the Run-A-Muk 10k while pushing two children in a double stroller, finishing in 5th place overall with a time of 39:58. Here is the race report. Synopsis My first ever race with a running stroller. I was invited by my friend Abram (who is also my brother-in-law-in-law) who was putting together a group of dads that were going to run the race with strollers. Throughout 2017 I got pretty good running with the stroller, bringing one or two kids on more than 50% of my runs. I had mastered the art of snack management for keeping kids occupied, I had made adjustments to the stroller to allow me to clock sub-6 miles, I had even turned my kids into an onboard cheering unit, ‘run faster Daddy’ their cry whenever I slowed down (even if because of a hill). This race let me put that
In 2017 I set a goal to spend 7 hour a week outside with at least one other member of my family. As I’ve tracked this throughout the year, most things have been pretty straightforward, but on many occasions I’ve run into a situations of ambiguity. Am I Inside or Outside Right Now? For example: Reading in our living room? Easy. Inside. Throwing rocks into the water at the beach? Again, easy. Outside. Sleeping in a tent in a National Park? We’re sort of ‘in the great outdoors’ but we are inside of the tent. Does that thin sheet of nylon make us inside? Sitting on the porch eating? What if the porch is covered? What if it is also screened in? At what point do we cross over from inside to outside? Is being deep in the woods more outside than sitting on top of a 100 square foot
Each year I focus my attention on a few named goals as a way to be more intentional about the pursuits I direct my energy towards. The way in which I do this has evolved over time and these release notes serve to document the changes & most current process. Review Of v1.4 v1.3 contained 4 items that in practice went in different directions and resulted in overcommitment. For v1.4 I emphasized focus on a single topic, which the challenge, habit & exemplar would all relate to. The full details of v1.4 are located here. I found that structure to be very successful in 2017. The three items played off of each other well to point in the direction of the overall theme. Rather than feeling that each hour was contributing to only one goal and a whole other hour would be needed to contribute to the next one, there was
One of my favorite parts of camping is the bidirectional appreciation it inspires. On one hand, camping allows me to go deep into the wilderness, to exist amongst vast forests, rocky cliffs or sprawling landscape, and to appreciate the beauty of things untouched by people. At the same time, the primitive living conditions I take on when camping make me appreciate the comforts of home; clean water I don’t have to filter or carry, climate control and food that has not been freeze dried, among others. For nature, my appreciation is enhanced because my mind becomes focused on something I am otherwise so removed from that I do not take time to reflect on. With the comforts of home, my appreciation is enhanced because my mind becomes focused on something I am normally so immersed in that I do not take time to reflect on. After returning from a camping
This is part 4 of a 4 part series – you can read the rest here: Recycling A Broken Surfboard – Part 1 Recycling A Broken Surfboard – Part 2 Recycling A Broken Surfboard – Part 3 After I finished painting the board I dropped it off at Sunset Shapers in San Francisco to get glassed. It was winter, the busy season in those parts, when big winter waves broke boards and drove demand for new ones, so I figured it would be a while until I eventually got it back. I wasn’t in much of a hurry anyhow. A few weeks later while browsing Surfline I noticed my surfboard had made the weekly social media roundup. It was sitting next to a Tomo creation, nonetheless, which made it even cooler. Daniel Thomson, founder of Tomo surfboards, is a (much, much, much better than me) shaper that I really respect
A vacuum begs to be filled. Given extra time and energy, projects that were once low priority enough to not get started will seem urgent enough to focus on. Around 2015 I changed how I stored my digital pictures from folders by topic to yearly folders with files named with the datetime they were taken. Everything pre-2015 is has stayed the old way, while everything 2015 and onward has been the new way. One evening this week, while looking for a photo of when my first son was born, in 2014, I got the itch to do the housekeeping work to update all of the old photos so everything was organized the same way. It was a few hours in before I stopped to ask myself why. Projects like this are popping up like weeds. All of a sudden it feels of the utmost importance that I go through all
With the start of a new year, I take the time to set my focus for the coming year. I believe that by focusing on fewer goals, I can achieve results that are exponentially greater than the sum of the results from doing many things. I detailed my 2017 focus here (read that first if you want more context) & did a quarter year update & half year update as well. Here is how I’m progressing since then. 2017 Theme: Sabbath Year 2017 Challenge: Define & Launch A Sabbath Year We launched the year on July 13th and are now three months in. I’ve written some about the progression of my thought process, and I’m sure things will continue to change. There is more detail in the posts I’ll link below, but for now I want to sum up two thoughts I’ve had a lot lately: It is really hard to have ‘sitting-in-a-hammock-reading’ type rest