It has been almost two years since I’ve done a cyber vacation. Next week, I’m going electronics free! At the same time, I am going to take a week off from structured training. That’s going to leave a heck of a lot of time to think. So this entry is for both sharing my experiences and prepping myself to consider my 2012 strategic direction.

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Last spring, while renovating our house, I spent a few weeks with my desk, bike trainer, clothes and computer in our guest bedroom. About the only thing I was doing outside the room was eating, swimming and running.  I had a realization while spending up to 18 hours per day in my guest room, I was really, really happy. I’ve been considering what was ‘right’ with that block of time for the last six months.  I’ve also made decisions to simply my work-life to free up more time for the things that appear to make me happy – exercise, my wife, and my daughter.  

I’ve paid attention to myself when I have not been enjoying my key three (exercise, wife, daughter) and I’ve noted how best I like to experience my key three.  I’ll share some observations that might be useful for you:

Combining my loves reduces my quality of experience. Going for a run with my wife and carting Lex along in the baby jogger is far less fun than going for a solo run in the hills; going to a playground with Lex and taking Monica out for dinner. We had a rather unfulifilling family vacation in August. It was a good reminder than nearly everything that I need can be found right at home.

Action leads emotion. I manage my mood through sleep, exercise and nutrition. While Monica gives me a lot of support (to the point of dragging me out the door to run with her), ultimately responsibility for my life experience rests with actions that I chose to make and need to keep on making.  As I write this, I am spending a week training-through-fatigue. Given the way my brain works, total rest is one of the worst things I can do for my mental health.  So when I get really tired, I need to manage myself back to normal over a couple weeks.  I also need to take responsbility to managing my fatigue so I don’t get too far gone and sink into depression via poor choices with regard to sleep, exercise and nutrition. It’s a dance that only a minority of people learn to manage – and I’m still working on it myself!

Sleep trumps everything. Well rested, I find my most challenging days entertaining. My amusement feeds into the situation and helps difuse it. This past week, Lex turned into a Tasmanian Devil and started tossing lego blocks all around the room, while screaming.  I was sitting on the toilet chuckling to myself that she was really fired up. I headed out into her room, asked her how she was doing and she settled right now. When tired, I can feel myself wanting to lead by domination.  When rested, I’m able to lead by letting situations run their course.  There have been times in my life when I’ve been chronicly sleep deprived and, therefore, oblivious to my own role in creating my ‘problems.’

September and April have traditionally been the months where I take stock of my life via a personal review.  This year my financial, personal and family lives feel like they are in order – my main issue is ‘what’s next’ for my business life. I’ll let you know if I come up with anything while walking around in the Redwoods.

g 

This article in the WSJ reminded me that, most of us, are going to be working for a very long time.  So the goal is to optimize, rather than remove, work.

What to do?  Since I left traditional employment in 2000, I’ve been focusing on:

• Building a career that supports how I like to live.
• Work for, and with, people I admire.
• Protect my competitive position.

I need a career that’s true to who I am.  That’s why I left financial services — I didn’t share my mentors’ passion for it.

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When I consult on finances, most people believe that they are limited by two things:

• Revenue: money in
• Capital: current wealth

You can spend a lifetime waiting to have enough.  

I’m very similar to my inner circle.  Each day, I am focused on one long-term goal… How can I set my life up to train more.  It dominates the strategic planning of my life.  Here’s an article by Chrissie on the subject. Perhaps my “enough” is figuring out how much exercise is enough!  I’m working on that, too.

What I really, really like to do is explore.  Amundsen, Fiennes, Messner and Shackleton — their travels excite me.  My triathlon life is a socially acceptable way for me to satisfy this deep enjoyment of being outside.  That’s my basic motivation.  Create freedom to explore the natural world.  

Run new trails, climb new passes, explore new terrain.

A long way of saying, start with the end in mind.

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What limits me?

• Spending: driven by my choices
• Productivity: the speed that I can deliver value

I choose to build my family, I choose to live in Boulder, I choose to travel internationally… my spending is under my control but unlikely to reduce.  So I focus on my productivity.

This week’s photo is my coaching workstation: Apple LED Cinema Display; MacBook; Fujitsu high speed scanner; and HP all-in-one — $2,750 worth of hardware that saves me hours every single week.  

When I’m building training plans for my crew, I have six weeks showing on the Apple Display; one of my templates live beside it; and a google doc of the athlete’s year visible on my MacBook.  I have all my plans, workouts and data entered into TrainingPeaks and can build a personalized Ironman training program faster than that the people that designed the software.  If you are a coach and don’t understand what I just wrote then you have a major competitive issue that you should address.  There will be highly organized competition coming in the next few years.  

To have the life I want to lead, I must be world class in the delivery of my world class knowledge.  That’s the source of productivity and what, ultimately, provides the freedom, and serenity, that I desire.  When I read Ferriss, I can be fooled into creating a model where I outsource “Coach Gordo.”  Sounds great but totally lacks authenticity for the people that I want in my life.  I want to work for world class people.  Leverage comes from becoming world class in delivery of what I have to offer.  

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The Money

This is where Ferriss is spot on.  Classic financial advice is to calculate the capital required to generate your income and save towards that target.  Saving is good advice.  Waiting to start living your life until you have a million bucks in the bank is horrible advice.

What’s the level of value that you can deliver?  My coaching peers charge 3-8x my rates for a similar service.  Price is a competitive advantage for me.  Where do you stack up with your peers? Remember that you want long term stability.  Be ruthlessly honest with yourself.  

If you lack the ability to efficiently create value then your competition will have an edge over you.  Value added, productivity, pricing dynamics — these, and other attributes, create what Warren Buffett calls “moats and castles.”  You don’t need to be IBM to have a competitive position.  Each of us, as individuals, has a position in all areas of our life.  If your position is weak then fix it.  

Once you’ve reached your financial goals — focus on living — don’t get trapped thinking that you need ever increasing revenue, and capital, to be happy.  

Figure out what’s required to live, sort it and get living.

Choose Wisely.

When I think about the choices that have had the greatest impact my life, they stem from being able to follow a path of personal excellence.  Excellence can seem a distant quality, probably because our flaws are most visible to ourselves.  Consider these tips as stepping stones towards your path of personal excellence – as Coach Wooden said, perfection is impossible but striving towards perfection is available to everyone.

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TECHNOLOGY

The single greatest change I made this year was improving my relationship with technology, in general, and email, in particular.  The changes I’ve made have given me an extra 500 hours per year (!) of available time, which I chose not to fill immediately.  Here’s how I did it:

Acknowledged that I was hooked on the reactive nature of email.  That was a big step.  I need to discipline myself not to check email constantly.  It’s a huge time sink.

When I check email – I have four actions that I do:

1. Unsubscribe/filter/delete – I unsubscribe from as many automatic emails as possible (if you miss them then operate on a go-to basis).  I set up filters for repeat emails that I want to batch review at a later date (athlete workouts, financial notifications, subscriber updates).  I also set up filters for banned senders.  I’m running two levels of spam protection software (SpamSoap and Mail Client).
2. Move To Action – For items that require me to think, or type more than a short answer, I move to an Action folder.  I batch process these (mainly on Wednesdays and the Weekend).
3. Reply Immediately – There are some emails that are time sensitive – I reply to those immediately.  Using my iPhone for gMail has proven to be a blessing because I don’t have the keyboard to over-reply.  I pause, think about what the writer needs and reply directly.
4. Refer – As I wrote in my Structuring Your Business article, we’ve set up a team forum.  This leverages both the expert replies to our team as well as the combined knowledge of the team, itself.  Its proven to be a high effective resource for improving knowledge and leveraging everyone’s time. 

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OPPORTUNITY

The next tip stems from a shift in my business and investing philosophy.  In 2010, I deepened a choice to shift my focus towards creating opportunities for people to use their skills successfully.  When we founded Endurance Corner, the original motto was “helping people help themselves”.  The method has changed as we’ve learned more about ourselves.

I’m still very focused on cash flow – however, I think beyond pure profits and use my time/capital/energy to support the team in making positive changes in their life.  This belief drives many aspects of my own life, including asset allocation.  When I moved to Asia in 1993, I was advised:

1. Be willing to make less money to maintain your principles; and
2. Learn, succeed, then return home.

Seventeen years later, the wisdom of those tips is becoming more apparent.  By the way, Bogle’s book on Enough, is as good an explanation as I’ve read.  Having completed Mr. Bogle’s book the week before riding Hillsboro Beach to Jupiter Island made the message even more apparent.  The contrast, of the strip on Daytona Beach vs the castles of Palm Beach county, reminded me of pre-revolutionary France.

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STILLNESS

I’ve continued to find it difficult to improve my listening and this is probably because I’m not focusing on the step that comes before listening.  So, I’ve been trying to cultivate stillness.  I’ve found that I listen best when my mind is still.  Five tips that help me reduce the noise in my life:

1. Turn off the television/computer
2. Mute/power down the phone
3. Exercise without music
4. Schedule less
5. Walk rather than drive

My relationship with technology will remain a focus.  There’s a lot of upside for mental clarity if I’m not filling my head with my twitter feed every eight minutes!

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SHARING

My ride across Florida last week made me realize how much of an outlier I am, as well as the sheltered life that I lead.  The basis of populism (dismissed in my peer group) becomes clear when riding Key West to Panama City.

As endurance athletes we have unique definitions of fun as well as our fair share of idiosyncrasies – (lists and schedules for everything). I remind myself (with a list and schedule, of course) to be willing to compromise to share experiences with people that are close to me.  I allocate my time deliberately and share fun things with the people close to me.  This requires effort as I’ll simply work, work, work – if I don’t schedule down time.

Looking at the big picture, it all boils down to:

• reduce noise;
• serve others; and
• demonstrate love.

Happy Holidays,
G