2011 Goals 6 Month Update

4 complete, 2 in progress, 4 to go! I cheated by adjusting some of the goals.

  1. IN PROGRESS: Live in Santiago Chile for 6 months and build a startup via StartupChile
  2. COMPLETE: (adjusted slightly. Got accepted, currently on leave) Attend University of San Francisco
  3. COMPLETE: (speaking to the MBA students at the #1 University in Chile on 7/4) Be a guest lecturer in entrepreneurship at UT Dallas (invited) 
  4. COMPLETE: (I went on a 4 week motorcycle adventure instead) Travel Europe for 2 weeks 
  5. Drive on the Nurburgring Nordschleife (car or motorcycle) 
  6. Give 100 people clean drinking water through Charity: Water 
  7. Get back into shape comparable to my wrestling days 
  8. IN PROGRESS: Bring AllRendered up to $(private) yearly revenue 
  9. COMPLETE: Raise capital for new startup 
  10. Compete in a supermoto race 

The original list is here.

Monthlong Motorcycle Adventure Part 1: Where and Why

Several weeks ago, I finished an adventure I’ll always remember. It was me, my motorcycle, and 1 month on the road to California. The above image is the exact route I traveled. First, some stats… 

  • Miles traveled: 5,600
  • Vehicle: 2007 Yamaha R6 motorcycle
  • Gas fillups: 42
  • Number of different places I slept: 11
  • Timeline: March 11 - April 11 (exactly 1 month)

It all started with a movie. Back in February I began getting the itch for a little adventure. One night I put in one of my favorites, Into The Wild. I’ll let my good friend IMDB give you a quick synopsis of what its about.

After graduating from Emory University, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandons his possessions, gives his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhikes to Alaska to live in the wilderness. Along the way, Christopher encounters a series of characters that shape his life.

I should add the movie is a true story. Now, I had no intention of hitchhiking or giving up all my possessions. However, it did inspire me to start looking into riding my motorcycle from Dallas to California for a couple of weeks. The idea started as a two week trip to San Francisco and blossomed into 4 weeks with main stops in Austin, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sacramento.

The trip was to serve three main purposes:

  1. I wanted to stay in San Francisco long enough to get a feel for what it would be like to eventually move my company there. I wanted to meet some other founders and get plugged into the startup scene.
  2. I wanted to clear my head and hear some varying opinions from successful people about their thoughts on entrepreneurs dropping out of college to pursue their business. One person I got to discuss this over coffee with was the founder of Priceline.com. Unforgettable. More on that in a future post.
  3. I just wanted a good old fashioned open-ended adventure, just me and my bike. I had already taken the semester off and I wanted to use the time to the fullest. Have fun and meet amazing people, that was it. 

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How To Best Measure Productivity Towards Your Goals

Over the last few months I’ve slowly developed a few habits that have allowed me to quantify the progress on goals I’ve set for myself. It’s been working really well for me so far, so I thought I would share as it may be helpful to others. Consider this a ‘how I work’ post. 

“Personal productivity is inherently personal”  

-Tim Ferriss during an interview in You 2.0 (a documentary on life hacking)

First and foremost, have some goals. I recommend coming up with a mix of personal and professional goals for yourself, it will keep you balanced and happy. Here are some of my goals for the year. I tweaked a couple since writing that but you get the idea. I’ve also accomplished several of them already (more on that later). 

Keep them infront of you. I use a to-do app for Mac called Things and the corresponding iPhone and iPad apps that all sync together. In Things I add goals as projects. I keep most projects as ‘Inactive’ until I’m ready to focus on them. Projects go into ‘Areas of Focus’. In my case they are Personal, Obsorb, and AllRendered (my 2 companies). Each task relating to the goal goes inside that corresponding project.

Identify what is moving the ball forward. This is the most important part. When I add any task I tag it with either ‘proactive’ or ‘reactive’. If you write things on paper, just put proactive or reactive next to the task, its as simple as that. 

Reactive tasks = a task that you need to deal with that doesn’t pertain to a goal you set. It’s incoming work.

Proactive tasks = a task that, once completed makes you one step closer to accomplishing a goal that you set.

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