I’ve been reading a lot of minimalist inspired writing this year. I fancy myself an aspiring minimalist and recovering consumer. I enjoy hearing different perspectives and can usually find nuggets that I can apply to my own developing minimalist philosophy. As I’ve been reading, I’ve noticed that although there are many common minimalist principles there are a few distinct differences in the philosophies. I have begun to classify them in my mind as five different schools of minimalism. The Five Schools of Minimalism Each of the schools is driven by a root motivation that the philosophy places ultimate importance on. These five motivations are the following: saving money, protecting the environment, freeing oneself from oppression, living conveniently through simplicity, and sacrificing for others. Before I describe the schools, I would like to caveat what I mean by minimalism. In general I am referring to those that are consciously and explicitly
My Former Desk As of last week, this is what my desk at work looked like. There wasn’t too much to it as far as work spaces go: Macbook Pro 30″ Monitor Framed picture of my wife & recently-printed-from-the-design-team-printer picture of my son Headphones & Mouse Water bottle & bowl for afternoon snacks A few trophies I won at work events That filing cabinet under my desk is mainly storage for running clothes (only clean clothes of course). We have an active culture and every day there is some sort of afternoon activity; running, basketball, flag football, yoga, etc. My decision to experiment with not having a desk happened by accident. It started with my new laptop, a 13″ Macbook Pro Retina. It only weighs about 3lbs which is why I got it. I wanted to have something small and light so I can carry it back and forth to
This is one of 14 updates about my 2014 challenge to complete an Ironman – you can see a list of the others here. I am now six months out from my race. I would love to say that things have gone swimmingly, but I feel like I need to be honest in this blog. The last month has been a rough one for training as I hit physical and mental blocks. The good news is that I, have found a path around them and feeling back on track – I’ll discuss this more later in this post. Training Data The chart below is my training which I am now grouping by week since the daily level is too small to be legible. There isn’t a key but blue is biking, yellow is swimming & green is running. You’ll also notice some red (surfing) and dark green (stationary bike trainer)
I am ahead of schedule… sort of. To date this year I’ve read: The Millionaire Next Door* David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants* The Joy of Less The 4-Hour Workweek* The Art of War* Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People* Warren Buffett’s Management Secrets* I am currently Reading: Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Shepherding a Child’s Heart Le Miserables* *Denotes audiobook That is why I feel I am only ‘sort of’ ahead of schedule. Six of my eight completed books were audio books. I haven’t been reading as much as I’d intended, but I have really been enjoying my waterproof iPod during my training bikes, swims & run (plus the occasional car trip). I had intended to stick to non-fiction for audiobooks, but I was cruising through them. Some are only 3-4 hours long
“The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision.” -Maimonides Data Driven Decisions I am a believer that one of the worst things you can do when making decisions is to do so without data. Worse than making a decision without data though is making a slow decision without data. Worst of all is indecision without data. In an effort to push my reliance on data even further, I am undertaking an experiment to make no decisions without data. I will instead defer those decisions to my Dataless Decision Coin. My Dataless Decision Coin This coin is not particularly special. It is a 1971 US $1 coin, commonly called a ‘Silver Dollar’. I’ve had this one for a long time. It was likely given to me by the Tooth Fairy in exchange for a small molar. You can however find a similar coin on ebay for
This is one of 14 updates about my 2014 challenge to complete an Ironman – you can see a list of the others here. Big Goals Goals are a good thing. They help us to focus and give us direction. But goals that are easy to achieve defeat much of the benefit of having goals in the first place. I much prefer big goals. Big hairy audacious goals (BHAGs). I’m often inspired by the founders of my current employer, Steve & Clara, and one such way is the size of the goal they set out to achieve when they founded Hearsay Social. They wanted to change the way people do business. Over the past four years the company has taken huge steps in that direction – steps that we might not have taken if we did not have BHAGs. Looking at my 2014 challenge, I wanted to complete an Ironman.
This is the third post in a series about my fantasy football auction strategy. I first wrote about the strategy here. Then after the season I started with part 1 of the retrospective. In this final post I have a few other thoughts that I’ll share. The Importance of the Draft Below are the positions each team ended in and the difference between their expected and actual results. We can see that in general, teams that predicted well on draft day performed well in the season. The r squared for the linear trend line here is .63 which means that for my seasons we can contribute about 63% of the final results to draft performance. What accounts for the other 37%? I would simplify the decision types in fantasy football by describing three. Draft day – who you predict will perform well In-season transactions; waiver wire, free agency & trades
2014 Goal: Read 24 Books I’m on track.* In January I completed ‘The Millionaire Next Door’ and am half way through both “Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring” and “David and Goliath”. *The asterisk is because of a decision I made that audiobooks count. It wasn’t my original intent to listen to books, I wanted to read them. As I started I realized how much time I would be spending training for my Ironman, 1-5 hours a day, so I invested in a waterproof mp3 player and got some audiobooks so I could leverage that time. I’m going to try to consume less than 50% of my books as audiobooks and I’m going to try to limit it to the non-fictions. I feel like I am able to learn from a non-fiction even when listening to it while I’m not able to slow down and imagine the world
Yesterday I surfed Mavericks. This has been a goal of mine for about two years and I’ve been actively preparing for the past year. I am so stoked to have completed this challenge and very grateful to have done so without harm. Here is the story along with some of my thoughts and observations. Final Preparations The last month or so has been amazing for surfing in central California. We’ve had a run of swell where it seems every other day is 10ft+. I’ve been getting out to Ocean Beach before work and spending plenty of time in the water. There is a saying (or at least there should be) that it is better to succeed late than to fail on time. I originally challenged myself to surf Mavericks in 2013 but extended my deadline because Mavericks is a winter wave and only broke twice in the 2013 half of this winter.
I’ve been thinking lately about generational patterns. Likely due to the fact that I’m expecting my first child soon. There are many patterns passed down through generations; discipline, community, political, hobby, religious, etc. The following are my early thoughts about economic patterns I’ve started to abstract into classes. Generation Type A – Sacrificial Foundation This generation sacrifices itself for the next generation. Typically exemplified by a strong work ethic, frugal spending habits and perseverance. A single foundation member can change the course of a family. Often entrepreneurs and self employed. Other times working multiple jobs. Many were not able to pursue higher education or a professional track career but instead have found blue collar positions. They are able to find upward economic mobility through working hard, long hours. There are the taxi drivers, contractors, masons, corner shop owners, garbage men and laborers of the world. Immigrants often exemplify the foundation