One of my favorite mental pastimes is reducing complex concepts into algorithms or metrics. One recent item I’ve been thinking about is how to measure maturity – specifically as related to the concept of child rearing & personal development. The topic is simple – there is a clear difference between a mature adult and a child. There is also a notable difference between adults; one that ‘really has it together’ and another that is ‘immature for their age’. The complex part is defining and measuring that in a consistent way. How would you quantify mature? How would you program a computer to recognize it? What is most interesting to me is to find a way measure maturity development and then use that measurement to set goals for how I raise my children. Benchmarks to help me see if I’m doing a good job introducing them to new challenges. Tools to facilitate conversations I
In a few months I will turn 30 and while that number has no particular significance to me, I started to realize while watching the Olympics that, physically speaking, I am hitting my peak. While competing at Rio earlier this month, Michel Phelps described himself as a ‘mature athlete’ and commentators made note of how much effort it took for him to climb out of the pool after one of his races, describing it as ‘gingerly’. He announced his retirement this year. After 16 years of racing at the Olympic level, he is ending his career. He is 31 years old. 30 30 tends to be when people stop being able to compete at their athletic peak. There is some variance per athlete, but the trend is pretty consistent. Here are some data I grabbed from the Association of Road Racing Statisticians (my new favorite association) that shows the fastest
Bringing a new product to life, either as a product manager or co-founder, ultimately amounts to solving a collective action problem. That is a problem that often occurs when a group of people is trying to accomplish something that is in their collective best interest but that none can accomplish alone. Encyclopedia Britannica has the following to say about this type of problem: “However, it has long been recognized that individuals often fail to work together to achieve some group goal or common good. The origin of that problem is the fact that, while each individual in any given group may share common interests with every other member, each also has conflicting interests. If taking part in a collective action is costly, then people would sooner not have to take part.” The result is a set of decisions by individuals to participate or not. If everyone acts then the result can ultimately
With the start of a new year, I take the time to set my focus for the coming year. Now that the year is half way through (maybe a bit more) I want to check in on how things are going. 2016 Focus At a macro level I am doing ok so far, probably as well as I will do. I have realized that I spread myself a bit too thin with these items this year though. Introducing a new one certainly exacerbated that. Having four items of focus is simply too many. Some of them have overlap, such as running & health – but others take me in a completely different direction. One of the things I’ve learned and will change for my focus next year is to have the theme be a central item that the goal, challenge & exemplar all tie back to. For example if health
It took two steps to get to the top of the podium. To wear my medal. To hear my song. It took 29,808 steps to get to the finish line. Each becoming more grueling than the last. It required everything of me. It took 1.98 million steps to get to the start line. Logging miles after long days. Early mornings running repeats up the hill. Sacrifices of time and comfort. Everyone dreams of the podium. Some people know what it takes to race. Only those that sacrifice to put in the work before the start line can truly understand those two steps.
On July 31, 2016 I raced my first marathon. I finished in a time of 2:42:23, taking first place in the race. Here is the race report. Compared to the Ironman I did in 2014, this race was relatively quick and not quite as grueling – but it was much more intense and there was far less margin for error. To put numbers to that – during my Ironman my average heart rate was 137 BMP or about 74% of my maximum. For this marathon it was 166 BPM or 90% of my maximum. My goal, which I had set at the beginning of the year before I started my training regimen, was to break 2:37. I missed by about six minutes. If you don’t fail once in a while, you aren’t trying hard enough. This was an intentionally aggressive goal that was set without context months earlier. That said, I think
1,397.4 miles to get to this point. Tomorrow I am racing a marathon for the first time. Everything so far has been designed to lead up to this race. The training gradually built up to reach full strength this month. The workouts were specific to this course’s terrain. The research into logistics, the headlamp for the tunnel, the TP for the ten mile stretch with no other option. Finally the intensity slowly backed off to enter this race fully rested. Everything has been for tomorrow. This is the culmination of nine months work. Yet tomorrow doesn’t really matter. If I hit my time, nothing about my life will change. I will still have diapers to change that evening and an office to get to Monday morning. If I don’t hit it – even if I were to trip and sprain my ankle at the start, it wouldn’t change any of those
What a strange time to exist in America – half of the country denies that natural selection happened and half of it denies that it still does.
My Bike Commute For the past five years, I’ve commuted to work primarily by bike. I find it to posses the positive attributes of being healthy, flexible, and consistent – while also avoiding the negative attributes of being stressful, costly and polluting. In many ways it is the perfect opposite to the dreaded car commute. Biking was a constant for me the entire time I lived in San Francisco. Many parts of my life changed, but my 20 minutes to unplug as I pedaled through the streets of the city was something I could depend on. It was how ramped up my energy to prepare for the day and it also served as a buffer to help me unwind at the end of the day. That all began to change when I moved north to Seattle last August. The distance between my house and office was over twice as far as it had
Todays post is a product review. I provide unbiased product reviews in exchange for discounted products with the goal of helping people find good products and manufacturers improve what they create. — My bike commute lately has taken a turn for the wetter. I moved to Seattle last fall and attempted to bike through what has been the rainiest winter on record. A typical day would look something like this. Lots of water on the ground, some big puddles and a steady trickle of Seattle’s famous light rain. During my commute, my backpack is usually stuffed with a laptop, smart phone, battery backup, cables and my change of dry clothes. Nothing I want to get wet. Even with a water resistant backpack and rain cover, I was always a bit worried and would quickly check when I got home. This is where the COR backpack comes in. It is essentially a hybrid between a really sturdy