Reaching High

It’s About Focus

I like new. I like new ideas, new projects, and new years. And this year is a whole lot of new. Not only is it a new year and a new decade (numer­i­cally), but it’s also a new stage in my life: I’m return­ing to work after nearly 8 months on dis­abil­ity. I’m hop­ing I have a new lease on life, too. I have very high expec­ta­tions for this year, and decade.

Dur­ing every Christ­mas break I out­line my goals for the com­ing year. With a new year, decade, and lease on life, I was even more eager this Christ­mas to estab­lish my goals for 2010. I learned a lot this past year about the impor­tance of lis­ten­ing to warn­ing signs and tak­ing care of myself. I feel that if I can apply these learn­ings in the new year, start­ing with my goals, all the time and pain of this past year won’t have been for naught.

My 3 Goals for 2010

In his book The Power of Less, Leo Babauta explains that we should have just three goals per year. With more goals than 3, he argues, we aren’t able to stay focused and end up spread­ing our­selves too thin. I can cer­tainly attest to that from my expe­ri­ence with pre­vi­ous years’ goals.

1. Run an Ultra (damn, I said it pub­licly again!)
2. Earn Mo’ Money (all these med­ical bills won’t pay for themselves)
3. Rock Fam­ily Time (wife, chil­dren, extended)

The fact that I’ve iden­ti­fied only 3 goals does not mean that I won’t do any­thing that doesn’t sup­port at least one of them. It means focus­ing on a few goals is how I’ll make sure to accom­plish some goals. There will be a whole slew of other things that I’ll need to con­tinue to do (main­tain­ing the house, for example).

Like­wise, not iden­ti­fy­ing some­thing as a goal doesn’t indi­cate that I’ve got it all fig­ured out. It just means there are three other things I think need more work and will gen­er­ate the biggest pay­off for me. And who knows, I might get into this plan and scrap all 3 goals for new ones. It’s a work in progress.

With my 3 goals set I now need to make them more tan­gi­ble and achiev­able with monthly and weekly goals. While it’s impos­si­ble for me to pre­dict what my goals should be for all 52 weeks of the year right now (I haven’t even run a marathon let alone an Ultra­ma­rathon!) I can work back­wards and put some­thing down for monthly and weekly goals.

Goal 1. Run an Ultra.

An ultra is defined as any dis­tance fur­ther than a marathon (26.2 miles). While 26.3 miles would tech­ni­cally qual­ify, it’s gen­er­ally under­stood that a 50k (31 miles) is the short­est ultra race. So, I need to train for run­ning 31 miles. And since I’m not inter­ested in run­ning on roads at all, these 31 miles will con­tain a fair amount of elevation.

The Ohlone 50k, a nearby and well man­aged trail race, is in May and is prob­a­bly the one I should tar­get. I won’t know if my body will be ready, though, for 2–3 more months yet. That’s the amount of time, on the short side, it’s likely to take to regain full use of my left calf (nerves sure hold grudges!). I’m going to start with a plan to get me to Ohlone and reassess my abil­i­ties and progress in March. If my body isn’t heal­ing quickly enough, I’ll choose a late sum­mer or Fall race instead and put a plan together for that one.

In order for me to get and remain fit, I will also need to main­tain a healthy diet and get reg­u­lar sleep of 8 hours a night. This will be dif­fi­cult, espe­cially while trav­el­ing. How­ever, with­out my health, noth­ing else will work. It’s the foun­da­tion, and to be hon­est, the end. Run­ning an ultra has to remain the means. There’s no glory for me in fin­ish­ing an ultra but injur­ing myself (well, maybe a lit­tle, but def­i­nitely a very bad outcome).

Work­ing back­wards from May, when the Ohlone 50k is, here’s a draft train­ing plan of what I’ll likely need to achieve each week to be ready:

Guide­lines (what I’m going to have to remember)

• Don’t increase my total mileage, long run, or speed by more than 10% from week to week (this is a big one).
• My long run shouldn’t be more than 40–50% of my total weekly mileage.
• Don’t beat myself up if I don’t hit my total mileage or long run one week.
• 30 min­utes of car­dio­vas­cu­lar exer­cise is far bet­ter than doing nothing.
• The plan is an esti­mate – it’s not 100% right for me, so I should be ok with some fluc­tu­a­tion and changes.
• If I can’t make it to the trails, I have to be ok with run­ning out my door on the roads.
• Blog­ging about my run­ning goals, achieve­ments, and strug­gles will increase the chance that I actu­ally reach my goals.

Goal 2. Earn Mo’ Money.

Short of rob­bing a bank and win­ning the lot­tery (and I hear you need to pur­chase a ticket to win the lot­tery – real bum­mer), the sources of more money will be work and pos­si­bly this blog. My best bet is get­ting a raise at work. Focus­ing on cre­at­ing value for the firm is the smartest investment.

Hav­ing just started work again after 8 months, I can say that it’s going to take some time to get used to the rou­tine again. It’s a cul­ture shock, It often takes me a day to get my head back into game after a long week­end. I’m scared to do the math after being out for nearly eight months!

It’ll likely take me a month just to get into the swing of things. And that’s if my body holds up to the increased hours and stress of a full-time job. The truth is I have no idea how tir­ing my job will be. I haven’t been able to do that amount of work or inter­act with a team and clients for a long time.

But going into work with a game plan will surely help. Here’s my plan:

• Reac­quaint myself with every­one at work and catch up on what’s happened.
• Take a reduced role for a cou­ple of months.
• Read up on what the hell has hap­pened in the busi­ness world (some­body said some­thing about a recession? :).
• Prac­tice being effi­cient with my time and effec­tive in my value per hour (track my time using Palm Pre app).
• Iden­tify the best areas where I can add value to the firm.

Goal 3. Rock Fam­ily Time.

With all of the above to do, fam­ily time could eas­ily fall by the way­side. But fam­ily has to come first. This goal is not only about mak­ing sure I spend time with my fam­ily, but that I con­tinue to also place them first in every way. It also has to be about both quan­tity and qual­ity of time. Swoop­ing in for an event with the fam­ily but not being around for “idle” time doesn’t cut it in my mind. I need to be there for the life that hap­pens between sched­uled events, too. I also need to help with fam­ily chores, to make din­ner, clean up, and vac­uum the floor, too (though my back might keep me from being able to do much vac­u­um­ing for awhile).

Trav­el­ing for work can make spend­ing time with fam­ily dif­fi­cult, espe­cially on the quan­tity front. But Rock­ing Fam­ily Time isn’t just about spend­ing time phys­i­cally together. While I haven’t been good at con­nect­ing with the fam­ily on pre­vi­ous trip – I tend to get focused on work and for­get about the rest of the world – I want to make sure I con­nect in spe­cial ways every day going forward.

Here are some specifics of what Rock­ing Fam­ily Time looks like in my mind:

Home

• Get home for din­ner at least 3 week­nights per week.
• Make at least 3 meals per week (week­end break­fast included:).
• Clean up after dinner.
• Get back to doing yard work (light work to begin with, obviously).
• Read the girls a story and tuck them into bed at least a cou­ple nights a week.
• Sched­ule fam­ily game nights regularly.

Trav­el­ing

• Leave notes for the girls and my wife before trips.
• Send text mes­sages and pho­tos between meetings.
• Sched­ule calls on my cal­en­dar to hear how the girls and my wife have been up to and what’s on their minds.
• Put a cal­en­dar and map up on the wall so the girls know what I’m up to and where I am.

Week­ends

• Camp once a quarter.
• Go on a day-trip once a month to places like Napa, Point Reyes, Santa Cruz, Pin­na­cles, etc.
• Take a cou­ple of long week­end trips (3–4 days) to the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
• Explore new parks, towns, and areas of San Fran­cisco as a family.
• Incor­po­rate run­ning des­ti­na­tions into fam­ily day trips
• Hike together as a family.

What are your goals for 2010?

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