It is often said that life is a marathon not a race. And from where I am health and fitness wise, running a marathon is a rather non thrilling prospect. I can barely walk a mile not to talk of jogging it. However, that is exactly what I am thinking of doing.

A good friend of mine is training for the marathon and while he claimed not to have lost any weight he is definitely looking good.  

doable? donno

But I think I have a framework that I can use, and today the hottest day on record in Seattle is a good day to start it as any.

framework –

SMART {Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Results-based and Time-bound} OR

STARS {Specific, Time-bound, Achievable, Realistic, Structured}

For starters, I have started tracking what I eat at MSN’s My wellness center.

This is what website magazine claims as the top 25 reads for Web professionals.

Designing With Web Standards (Voices That Matter)

Web Analytics: An Hour a Day

The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day

Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time

Build Your Own Web Site The Right Way Using HTML & CSS

Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions

World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers that Get Millions of People to Spread Your Ideas and Share Your Stories

Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer

Building Findable Websites: Web Standards SEO and Beyond

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies

Do It Wrong Quickly: How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules (IBM Press)

Web Design for ROI: Turning Browsers into Buyers & Prospects into Leads

Killer Web Content: Make the Sale, Deliver the Service, Build the Brand

Building Findable Websites: Web Standards SEO and Beyond

Killer Web Content: Make the Sale, Deliver the Service, Build the Brand

Web Copy That Sells: The Revolutionary Formula for Creating Killer Copy Every Time

The Findability Formula: The Easy, Non-Technical Approach to Search Engine Marketing

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

Long Tail, The, Revised and Updated Edition: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

I am particularly interested in business strategy however strategy as a whole is becoming a  recurring theme in my conversation as of late. From the fourth of July US war of independence military strategy from History.com to my team strategic choices and the impact on the business, I find myself talking about strategy a lot lately.

What is Strategy? An approach for mobilizing resources to achieve specific future-oriented objective.

The key is to anticipate a future state. In business strategy there are natural forces that one must consider when thinking about strategy this include industry status, competitors (the players), Capital (investment required and profit potential), external factors.

Strategic thinking requires hard, fact-based, logical information, that questions everyone's assumptions while minimizing the resources required to win by being indirect and unexpected rather than being predictable.

Rule #1 of business strategy – follow the money: understand the fundamental economics of the industry before creating the strategy.

Interesting video on what Ballmer has to say on time management and meetings.

You can find more on his leadership style overall at:

http://online.wsj.com/public/page/lessons-in-leadership.html

For me a picture is truly worth a thousand words. In trying to learn any tough concept, I have realize I need a mental model that aligns with something already in my toolbox of mental models.

And the key components of my mental models are:"

1. Visualization

2. Reductionism

Like a lot of people I keep a to-do list. And sometimes, some items just languish on the to-do list until it is better to just get rid of them than anything else.

From a work perspective, I use a to-do list to keep track of what I am supposed to be doing and sometimes, it mentally acts as a justification for I have more to do than I have time to do it. While this may be true, it is essentially not taking responsibility for my own work/performance. For instance, the to-do list is not useful if it doesn’t list items in the order of importance. Also it could be improved it I track how long it takes me to do various tasks on the list. By 1) spend some time estimating how long 2) calculate how long it actually took. This will help me get better at estimating the amount of time required and also figure out ways to spend less time getting things done.

Thinking more about this, I realize what I need is a ‘what am I going to do today list” – based on my calendar, new tasks that pop up and other disruptions, I need to clearly see what it is I plan on achieving on a daily basis and see how far along I am at the end of the work day.

What this system doesn’t fix that I need to think about is, 1) how will I measure the promises that I made (especially in meetings and stuff) to make sure I deliver on them and 2) the promises others make to me, to ensure they deliver as well.

Happy 231st Anniversary America.

Watching the history channel today on the history of the revolution, one see that there are certain values that a foundational to America.

Individualism, freedom  in many ways, of speech, thought and political association.

Do you know that Rhode Island to meet their quota of soldiers sent slaves? back people have been involved in every “American” war since the very beginning.

This is a great country on many levels and I am proud to be an American!