Posts Tagged blog
Time is a limited resource
Posted by Adam Ainbinder in Ironman Training, Life, Time Constraint on January 22, 2010
I don’t know about you, but I often wish I had the life of a cat or a dog. I roam around the house, chillin, eatin, poopin, peein, sleepin. That’s about it. And it would be a dog, so I can play a little more than just eat, sleep and waste. Of course, this life is not for me given my athletic lifestyle, but there are days, like when I look at this picture of Kaila to the left, that I just wish I could sleep for a whole day guilt free.
I guess I can. On a Saturday or Sunday. Maybe. Or call in sick. But it’s just not in my D.N.A. I like to be busy. I am, based on personality tests, an achiever. An introverted achiever, but an achiever nonetheless. What motivates me is pushing myself to get better. This often contradicts with my goal of enjoying the journey, but I even strive to achieve mastering the process (kind of contradictory, I guess). I always strive to get better. I like hearing what I’m bad at and actually have a hard time taking compliments. I enjoy being told that I can’t do something because then it pushes me that much harder to do it. I wish I knew what made me like this, like what childhood event pushed me to want to prove people wrong. Was it my sister who said that when I get into junior high, my grades will go down, and when they didn’t, well, they’d go down in high school? Who knows! But I can tell you that was motivation to get better grades. Maybe I’m onto something…
So I digress…the point of this is that one thing I really fail at that I just wish I could do better is find the time to maintain this blog. It seems minor, but with how much I’ve learned from what others share/write, I feel like I could really give back in that way. I wish that I could blog at least 3-4x a week. I see the production of people like Danica with the Chic Runner blog, Brandon with his Brandon’s Marathon (blog, show, and everything), my all-time favorite blog in the world, Ray at DC Rainmaker (who finds time to blog more than me amidst a 15 day trip to Asia!), and lately Pete’s Runblogger and his scientific methods, and I totally wish I could find or make time to do something similar.
I read so much about training and have learned so much from my friendly twitter, facebook and daily mile community that I feel like I want to give back to everyone by discussing what I learn.I’ve also been told that my work ethic and dedication have inspired several people to get out of their place and run, or bike, or swim when they weren’t feeling up to it. If I can have that impact sharing some quick tid bits on daily mile, then what else can I provoke in people?
But between the typical 8-5 (and it’s now become a bit more than 8-5 as my responsibility increases), work travel, the 12 hours of training, my girlfriend, my family, my friends, the puppy, the cats, and well, my own free time for my sanity, there’s not much time to document these videos, to put in the pictures I take, or to sit down and write out my thoughts and feelings from the workout I just implemented from a training plan I’m writing from scratch. I guess I look at the trade-offs and say, do I sacrifice the 30 minutes of sleep? So far, that answer has been no.
And THAT’s the crazy thing. Because I’m training harder, I want to eat healthier, which means cooking more and picking up less crap for dinner. It means making lunches. It means trying to get a little bit more sleep when I can. It means trying to conserve energy so I can be present for conversation with my girlfriend and to be playful with my puppy when she needs to burn some energy! The lifestyle commitment I’ve chosen requires more time, and it’s just pulling time from other things.
Time is a valuable commodity. I like the fact that its a limited resource because it makes us choose what is important, and I think I’ve done that. I guess I wonder how others do it. How do they make time and provide a wealth of information for others to learn from? I am envious of those who do it, and do it well. Envy isn’t a good thing, so maybe that’s not the right word, but I do want to be like you (yeah, that’s envy 
)
How do you manage your time? How do you prioritize? Is it based on your values? Do you even think about this stuff? Please share – as usual, I’m willing to learn.
Blog shift
Posted by Adam Ainbinder in Ironman Training on September 7, 2009
I’ve decided to change my blog to entirely focus on training. I will occassionaly provide the rants on life and love, but I believe that there are several life lessons that we can learn from hitting the streets on a bike and with running shoes. I hope to shine a light on those through my experiences.
I’ll also provide tips on what I learn about equipment, maintenance, training, etc… for all those who want to learn. I hope to do more frequent, shorter posts, and as usual, I welcome any and all feedback!
life trifecta – answering the question, who am i?
Posted by Adam Ainbinder in Life on March 12, 2009
i want to thank @raymondpirouz for his thoughts on my blog post last night via twitter. he had some great insights, but really what I took from him the most was what he referred to as the triangle of life: passion, love, and faith. For faith, i could also think of this as hope, as my previous post from shawshank referred to.
think about that for a moment. i mean literally, stop reading, breathe, close your eyes, and think about those three words: passion, love and hope. do you find those three things prevalent in your life? If so, do you feel your purpose or do you question it?
i look at my life, and i have hope. I have love. And well, i think I’m missing passion. i wrote one of my first posts about being lost when i quit golf back in 1999. i was more passionate than you could imagine back then. I loved golf, and in turn, I loved life.
I practiced when the sun was out, before school, after school, in my room when it was dark, studying books on the sport, practicing in my dorm hallway at school when it was raining outside. I was truly passionate, and each day, I was so happy to wake up and play that game. it carried forward through my life. i was a happier person back then…
quitting left a void. And i became diligent about business, studying and learning so I could be as good as I could be, but there is a big difference between diligence and passion. Passion has an underlying happiness under it. I believe with passion, combined with love, I feel like I could die tomorrow and I would be happy. Passion makes you appreciate everything around you. When I was playing golf, I could appreciate the feeling of outdoors, the sprinkles of rain, the sun, the grass, visualizing a shot, the beauty that lies within a golf course and the camaraderie of playing with fellow golfers and teammates.
now I sit here, 10 years later, making a good living, loving unconditionally, enjoying work, developing friendships, but missing that piece that drives me. I loved @chathri’s comment about being attached to material things. ive felt that recently, and i’m finally aware of how unhealthy it is. @raymondpirouz also talked about this today referring to CEO pay and how ridiculous is it for someone to need millions of dollars. what world do we live in when that becomes what most people (as opposed to everyone) want?
if we’re driven by money, i believe we end up unhappy. in the end, money doesn’t get us connection, love, passion. but for some reason, it seems to buy temprorary happiness. but when that is gone, what do you have? who are u?
power of the picture
Posted by Adam Ainbinder in Random on January 9, 2009
i just checked my blog stats…turns out my Liskula Cohen post had 46 views…significantly more than my next highest post. Now the writing there wasn’t too original…what I think made that one stand out was the picture of 5 BEAUTIFUL women that I inserted in the post and used to post to facebook. people see beautiful women, they click on it…both guys AND girls.
so does sex still sell? is that how to attract people to read content…good looking people in pictures? well, here’s another test run. part of an adalytics experiment
UPDATE: per Timothy’s comment below, i think that he’s right. bigger audience may not be the desired audience! i guess the question is, does my targeted audience click through more when there is a picture of a good looking person rather than a nice winter day?
i also want to say, thank you photo loader (flickr creative commons plug in) that allows me to pull pictures about anything. it makes for very quick posts, and I think posting a picture in a blog is helpful for breaking up text!
How was your year?
Posted by Adam Ainbinder in Life on December 31, 2008
St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow
Alright everyone…it’s almost that time, and maybe even past that time for a lot of you depending on what area of the globe you live in. I wanted to write a quick post to reflect on this year and comment on the road ahead.
2008 will go down as a difficult year. Here are some of the things I think about in my own life when I think of 2008, good and bad:
- The economy was awful. I mean, awful. I think we’ll be talking about 2008 and what led up to this for many years to come, and it may even be a time period that our grandchildren look at in comparison to the depression. hopefully we don’t reach 25% unemployment, but things aren’t good
- On a side note, so I remember my econ professor’s teachings…this recession was a consumer led recession that was delayed because of a weak dollar, which increased US exports. Nevertheless, the bank failures and credit crisis killed credibility, and the spigot called lending stopped, and here we are. consumer spending dried up because of the housing burst and high oil prices, and the credit crisis killed the stock market, which led to a negative wealth effect. of course, much more complicated, but a quick summary.
- I switched jobs in 2008 after 4.5 years at HireRight. I left a lot of friends at that company, and I kick started a new chapter in my career path.
- My wife taught me a lot about myself and marriage, both good and bad. I’m a better person because of us.
- My sister got a divorce. It wasn’t pretty and she went through (and is still going through) some tough times. May 2009 be better for her and her children.
- I ran a marathon and shared it with some great friends in my favorite city on earth
Ainbinder before marathon
Ainbinder after marathon
- I failed at starting a company, again
- I volunteered…not because i had to fulfill a requirement somewhere, but because my soul told me I needed it
- I discovered cycling
- I did not break my gadget addiction
- I took a first step in my personal branding…and you’re reading it
- I found the value in service (not goods, but services)
- I became a Mac convert, and to be honest, i really think this sparked my creative motivation
- I still don’t know the lyrics to my favorite songs
- I traveled to several foreign countries (Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Russia, Czech Republic), and these experiences really taught me to enjoy being by myself
- I rekindled some old friendships (and one of those friends should give me free food from his restaurant tonight out of the kindness of his heart)
- I lost some friendships
- I discovered web 2.0 and all its benefits, and I will forever love “being connected”
For 2009, well, you’ve read my goals. I want it to be a good year, better than 2007 and 2008, which were not the best years for me. But what I have learned the most over these two difficult years is that pain helped me realize who I truly am and what I stand for. It’s made me connect with areas of myself I haven’t wanted to connect with. It’s made me a better person!
Therefore, the bottom line lesson learned from this year is no matter what happens, failure or success, there’s always something to gain from the experience.
Happy New Year everyone! Be safe and I look forward to a good, shared 2009 with each of you.
2009 Goals
Posted by Adam Ainbinder in Goals on December 30, 2008
so as the new year rolls around, i’m trying to focus on the things I want to achieve in 2009. as you gathered from my last post, it’s also time to start dreaming, so I’ll be looking at things i want to achieve by 2015 as well in a later post. but first things first. in 2009, i want to:
- Run a half marathon
- Run a full marathon
- Run an Olympic length triathlon
- Graduate with my MBA
- Develop a leadership philosophy
- Draw a self portrait that someone else can recognize as me
- Mix music that my wife will say, “that sounds good”
- Complete project harmony at work
- Develop a metrics program at HID that changes the way the executive team makes decisions
- Blog 365 times
- Play 5 songs from memory on my keyboard of medium difficulty
- Play golf 13 times, and break par once (i may have to increase my chances and play rancho san joaquin every time)
- Leave the country 5 times, 2 of which are to places I haven’t been before, and 2 of which are with my wife
- Get to San Francisco 3 times
- Start a mini company (meaning, a company that isn’t grand in scale that can either help someone or generate a little income)
- Develop a basic website with beginner CSS and PHP skills
- Be a good manager to whoever I manage this year
- Continue to love unconditionally
- Be there when I’m needed most, to friends, family, and most importantly, my wife
- Go over and above my 8 hours of required time at the animal shelter
- Bike to work at least once a week
- Write an ebook
Long shots
- Sky dive
- Snowboard 4 times
- Road trip up the coast
- Learn Spanish
- Learn German
My Life...
