Posted on

2014 Goals

As with any start of the new year, there are bound to be resolutions. I actually am not much of a fan of the resolution process. I don’t like the notion of waiting to a single point in time during the year where I lay out ideas and ideals to get behind for the year. Instead of laying out my resolutions, I am laying out my goals for the year. Things that I will be able to look back upon this year and say with certainty that I accomplished them. Goals have to be specific, time bound, actionable, realistic, and my own.

  • I need to focus on learning how to actually ride a mountain bike. I need to use the brake lever less. I will take a session or two with a local coach, but I am also going to ride more with the guys I ride with who are really, really good bike handlers, and try to learn from them as much as possible. I will know I am making progress when my speed going down the technical trails improves.
  • I need to focus on racing smart, and training smart. That starts with learning how to set and use my internal rev limiter. Too often I get excited in race situations, or even on group rides, and ride outside myself. That’s never a good plan. For 2014, I am going to race my one half Ironman to set a new PR, but I am going to race it smart. I will race my one full Ironman completely under control and not explode on the run.
    • Outcome: Honu Half Ironman - 5:10 (:33 swim; 2:40 bike; 1:50 run)
    • Outcome: Ironman Canada - 11:25 (1:08 swim; 5:45 bike; 4:20 run)
  • Start January by writing 100 words per day (blog posts, novels, screenplays – whatever – just write), everyday, and add 50 words per month to end 2014 with 600 words per day in December.
    • Outcome: Blog posts, short stories, perhaps even a novel. I am not sure how to scope the outcome yet so that it is more specific.
  • In conjunction with my racing, I want to start raising money for a charitable cause. I have selected that cause, and will plan to share more on that soon. The hard part has been coming to understand how athletes who have come before me have tied their endurance racing efforts to their charitable cause in a way that causes people to open their checkbooks. I am still learning, but if anyone has suggestions or feedback, please send me email.
    • Outcome: Raise $15,000 by the end of the year.
  • Work with my team to design and build a new feature that changes how people read eBooks. I really can’t say much more about this given the professional and confidential nature, but there are some ideas brewing.
    • Outcome: A new, never before seen feature.
  • Stop drinking calories, and stop eating the empty carbs. This one is actually a pretty big deal for me. I am really focusing on getting more lean for my racing season. To do this, I am sacrificing things which have become staples in my diet. For the last three months, I have stopped drinking Pepsi (really, all sodas) all together. To build on this, I want to drop Gatorade as a throughout-the-day drink, as well as all the pretzels, breads, pastas, etc, unless it is immediately before or tied to a workout. I have managed to shed most of the off-season weight gain just two months. I ended last season at 164 lbs, and started training on Nov 1 at 177 lbs. I weighed in at 169 lbs on Jan 1, 2014. I can see my running improving with each pound I shed. I know I am getting faster on the bike. It’s free speed! 🙂 At 5’8.5”, I really shouldn’t be walking around with this much weight in my upper body and my quads; certainly not in my mid-section. My body weight turns me into a furnace, a fact which was not lost on me in Hawaii during the half Ironman where I melted in the heat. Age will start working against me soon on this topic, but for now I am going to work hard to continue trimming down, staying lean, and not losing muscle.
    • Outcome: Race weight for half marathon (March) of 164 lbs.
    • Outcome: Race weight for half Ironman (May) of 161 lbs.
    • Outcome: Race weight for Ironman (July) of 159 lbs. (this was my race weight in 2005 when I completed my first and only full Ironman, so it’s a symbolic target)
  • Continue learning Spanish and become conversationally fluent.
    • Outcome: Not sure how I am going to measure this, but I have started ordering food at Mexican restaurants in Spanish whenever possible (I still ask the server, in Spanish, if it’s OK for me to practice my Spanish with them since I am learning), and conducting the entirety of the meal in Spanish.
    • Outcome: Complete the Pimsleur Phase 4 by end of March.
  • I have had too many months without a cool and fun personal coding project. There are a couple ideas that I have swirling around my mind. I build the code not to ship or to sell, but more to create something new, and coerce a machine into doing something cool for me. I also want to start messing with microcontrollers. It’s a good thing I got an Arduino starter kit for XMas.
    • Outcome: One new software project that performs a meaningful function for me, which if showed to my nerd friends would elicit a “cool” response.
    • Outcome: Build something (not sure what yet) with Arduino (or .NET Gadgeteer, or similar).
  • I have been doing quite a bit more reading in the last few years. I’m consciously trying to waste less time sitting in front of the TV, or frittering away time on this story or that story on some news website. This year I want to learn more about the world around me, real or imaginary. I want to improve on my 2013 reading list. Not included in that list were the two Great Courses I listened to via Audible; one on the American Civil War, and one on Vikings.
    • Outcome: Read 100 books.
    • Outcome: Read at least 1 history book about a non-USA historical event.
    • Outcome: Read at least 1 biography about a non-tech, non-business, non-USA leader.
    • Outcome: Listen to at least 3 more Great Courses.
Posted on

What Language to Learn

I am on a bit of a learning kick right now. I have been impressed with the breadth of materials available online and via sources like Audible, Kindle, Coursera, Kahn Academy, TED, etc. As I think more and more about my current role leading product management for Kindle reader software, I have taken on the challenge of broadening my expectations of what is possible with what we are delivering. I am still circling around the right short answer to “what do you do” but where it is trending is something along the lines of “empowering anytime learning in an age of information abundance.” That’s still a little too broad, but I like the challenge it presents when compared to the more banal “design features for eReaders.”

With that in mind, I have been spending my commuting and training time listening to TED talks, Great Courses, and re-learning Spanish via Pimsleur method. I was rated “proficient” in Spanish in college, but let’s be serious. If I was lost in Spain or Mexico at that time, I would not have found my way home. I might have found my way to the library, and declared that the pen was on the table, but that’s about it.

The Pimsleur course has been pretty amazing, especially considering I never really considered myself a foreign language guy. I think this had more to do with how I was taught. Pimsleur works for me. I tried Rosetta Stone with Spanish, but I just didn’t click with it. However, because of my grade school, high school, and one college year of Spanish, it turns out that my Spanish vocabulary is quite a bit broader than I had imagined. I feel like I am cheating in the “learn a new language” challenge right now.

Before I started with Spanish, I tested Pimsleur with German, as I had no prior knowledge of the language. My best friend is a native speaker, so I did it for a month, and then dropped some German on him. He was surprised at how much I had learned in such a short period of time. He did point out that it was “high German” and quite formal, but good nonetheless. Sadly, German is not a daily part of my life. Not on TV. No books. Magazines. Whatever. Even he suggested I learn a different language. Regardless, it was clear Pimsleur was working for me.

As I move into Phase3 of the Spanish course, I want to start a completely new language with Pimsleur. I don’t want to have any knowledge of the language, the vocab, the sentence structure. Nothing. However, I also want to be able to make some practical use of the language. There are more than enough Spanish TV stations on Comcast here in Seattle. Since Pimsleur is mostly spoken lessons, learning any language not based in the Latin alphabet may prove to be a fruitless endeavor, as I am guessing it would suck to learn how to speak, but be illiterate. I would love to get feedback from the community on that one. It would be nice to build the skill over time to eventually get to the point where I can partake of native language media, but certainly to engage in a native conversation.

Below is the table of language courses available to me from Pimsleur. Cast your vote for what I should attempt to tackle next. My vectors for this decision are: access to media which would allow me to exercise my understanding of that language; access to native speakers here in USA, and of course abroad.

spanish farsi danish
italian swedish czech
german dutch russian
hindi br portuguese albanian
egyptian arabic indonesian swiss german
norwegian haitian creole hungarian
korean tagalog western armenian
mandarin ukranian eastern aremenian
japanese urdu pashto
french EU portuguese polish
greek finnish  
gaelic croatian  
thai hebrew  
turkish romanian  
vietnamese swahili