Tomorrow afternoon my bike and I are flying to Spain for Strong Like Bull Training Camps. I'll spend next week biking (and swimming and running) all over the South of Spain with a bunch of other athletes.
A biking vacation has been on my bucket list for as long as I've been doing triathlons. Biking is probably the only thing I've done where I've consistently experienced "flow." Needless to say, I'm very excited about next week.
Check out the camp. The coaches are awesome (John Hirsch, my coach, is on their coaching roster!)
(If you are a last minute person, consider joining for this week or next week!)
Stay tuned to my instagram account for posts.
Thursday, February 25, 2016
Thursday, February 18, 2016
Data! Numbers!
Last week we had a bunch of grants due, so I skipped posting. (Writing clearly is really hard and time consuming work).
Our grant submissions got me thinking a lot about data. When we submit grants, we provide a ton of data on our program -- how many students we've served, how many students get internships, the demographic makeup of our student body, the social emotional growth stats on our program, our partner companies internship satisfaction rates, and so much more.
I like data, and we love data at ScriptEd. I've been using data since I started swimming at age six. Measuring progress with numbers is a great way to understand where you are, where you are going, and how well you're doing.
Data also allows you to define success in an objective and measurable way. I think this is so important, especially in the field of social entrepreneurship where success can so easily be confused with attention. ScriptEd has been very lucky to get a lot of media attention and awards, which are crucial to help us attract resources, but are also pretty arbitrary markers of success. Data keeps us focused on what we're working towards.
At the same time, data can be incredibly intimidating. Numbers don't lie. There might be a million reasons why my swim times didn't get faster in a season, or why we didn't get as many internship positions as we would have liked last summer. Doing a lot of work and not having the outcomes you hoped for can be disappointing.
When numbers don't move in the way you want them to, you have to change your approach and start working smarter towards your objectives. When things go better than expected, you have to try to determine what made you successful and replicate those actions if you can.
And finally, sometimes people (and companies) are successful in spite of themselves, or not successful for reasons beyond anyone's control. It's important to recognize the difference between things you can control (and work on improving those things), and things that you can't.
Our grant submissions got me thinking a lot about data. When we submit grants, we provide a ton of data on our program -- how many students we've served, how many students get internships, the demographic makeup of our student body, the social emotional growth stats on our program, our partner companies internship satisfaction rates, and so much more.
I like data, and we love data at ScriptEd. I've been using data since I started swimming at age six. Measuring progress with numbers is a great way to understand where you are, where you are going, and how well you're doing.
Data also allows you to define success in an objective and measurable way. I think this is so important, especially in the field of social entrepreneurship where success can so easily be confused with attention. ScriptEd has been very lucky to get a lot of media attention and awards, which are crucial to help us attract resources, but are also pretty arbitrary markers of success. Data keeps us focused on what we're working towards.
At the same time, data can be incredibly intimidating. Numbers don't lie. There might be a million reasons why my swim times didn't get faster in a season, or why we didn't get as many internship positions as we would have liked last summer. Doing a lot of work and not having the outcomes you hoped for can be disappointing.
When numbers don't move in the way you want them to, you have to change your approach and start working smarter towards your objectives. When things go better than expected, you have to try to determine what made you successful and replicate those actions if you can.
And finally, sometimes people (and companies) are successful in spite of themselves, or not successful for reasons beyond anyone's control. It's important to recognize the difference between things you can control (and work on improving those things), and things that you can't.
Friday, February 5, 2016
Early Bird Gets the Worm
It has been a very busy week at ScriptEd, so am just getting to my weekly post at 6pm on a Friday.
As you'll see from my post last week, I've been in the middle of a bunch of longer term projects recently and was struggling to sit down, focus and tackle them. Thanks so much to the folks who emailed me tips -- they worked well. I think getting into an environment away from people, the constant notifications on my phone and social media was the most effective thing I could do to focus.
For me, this means waking up really early. A couple of times this week, I woke up between 4 and 4:30 am and got solid work done until 7:00 am (and moved my workouts to the night time instead!). Early mornings are the only time of day when I feel like I can easily get rid of all outside distractions. I normally have to interact with people all day long, so it's hard to sit and focus for long stretches of time during the regular work day. I'm usually pretty tired by the end of every day, so evenings have never been very productive for me.
(Yes, I'm pretty tired from these early wake up times this week.)
I'm headed to DC tomorrow morning for Teach for America's 25th Anniversary. I'll be presenting on ScriptEd and Computer Science Education on Saturday with some of my team members. Hope to see some of you there!
As you'll see from my post last week, I've been in the middle of a bunch of longer term projects recently and was struggling to sit down, focus and tackle them. Thanks so much to the folks who emailed me tips -- they worked well. I think getting into an environment away from people, the constant notifications on my phone and social media was the most effective thing I could do to focus.
For me, this means waking up really early. A couple of times this week, I woke up between 4 and 4:30 am and got solid work done until 7:00 am (and moved my workouts to the night time instead!). Early mornings are the only time of day when I feel like I can easily get rid of all outside distractions. I normally have to interact with people all day long, so it's hard to sit and focus for long stretches of time during the regular work day. I'm usually pretty tired by the end of every day, so evenings have never been very productive for me.
(Yes, I'm pretty tired from these early wake up times this week.)
I'm headed to DC tomorrow morning for Teach for America's 25th Anniversary. I'll be presenting on ScriptEd and Computer Science Education on Saturday with some of my team members. Hope to see some of you there!
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Selective Procrastination
I have selectively procrastinated for as long as I can remember.
Does anyone else out there have this problem?
Selective procrastination, as I've come to understand it, is procrastinating while being productive.
Here's what I mean:
I'm supposed to be working on a grant right now. Instead of writing the grant, I've cleaned my bathroom and my kitchen. I've responded to emails. I've reached out to some of our partner companies to see if they'll hire ScriptEd interns this summer. I've asked my team to invite me to observe some of their classes. Now, I'm writing my weekly blog post, and I'm going to start making myself dinner soon.
For the most part, these are all important things I need to do anyway, so I don't really think it's technically procrastinating. I think that I'm just 'selecting' to do some of my to do list items and not others.
The reality is that I'm really just avoiding writing this grant.
What do you think? Tips anyone? Would you just call this procrastinating?
Does anyone else out there have this problem?
Selective procrastination, as I've come to understand it, is procrastinating while being productive.
Here's what I mean:
I'm supposed to be working on a grant right now. Instead of writing the grant, I've cleaned my bathroom and my kitchen. I've responded to emails. I've reached out to some of our partner companies to see if they'll hire ScriptEd interns this summer. I've asked my team to invite me to observe some of their classes. Now, I'm writing my weekly blog post, and I'm going to start making myself dinner soon.
For the most part, these are all important things I need to do anyway, so I don't really think it's technically procrastinating. I think that I'm just 'selecting' to do some of my to do list items and not others.
The reality is that I'm really just avoiding writing this grant.
What do you think? Tips anyone? Would you just call this procrastinating?
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
The Planners and The Executors
I've been thinking a lot lately about planning and executing, both at ScriptEd and in triathlon training. The more experience I have doing both, the more I recognize that planning and executing are two equally important but separate things. It's really difficult to be a person who both plans and executes.
I think I'm starting to learn that for large projects and big undertakings, there needs to be people who plan, and people who can execute against that plan. One person shouldn't be playing both roles.
Here's an example of what I mean:
For the first five years of doing triathlons, I didn't have a coach. I made up my own plan (which was basically "run today, swim tomorrow, bike the next day..."). Because I have been an athlete for my whole life, this wasn't a terrible approach. I did well. I also ended up spending a lot of time and energy first trying to come up with a plan, and then wasted some time executing on a plan that wasn't as good as it could be.
Now I have a coach (John Hirsch). John is a professional triathlete and coaches tons of athletes, and brings his expertise to my training. John makes my plan, and I execute against it. I don't have to spend time thinking about my workouts or my training schedule. John does that. He listens to my progress and adjusts my plan accordingly. This saves me a ton of time. I don't have to strategize, and the work that I'm doing has more of an impact on my progress as an athlete.
I'm learning the same thing at ScriptEd. When ScriptEd started, I was both planning and executing against the plan. ScriptEd is too big for that now. My time is not well spent if I'm the person executing against ScriptEd's plan. My job is to make the plan, adjust it as necessary, and make sure that my staff adjusts their execution as time goes on. I don't always do this perfectly, but I'm getting a lot better.
I think I'm starting to learn that for large projects and big undertakings, there needs to be people who plan, and people who can execute against that plan. One person shouldn't be playing both roles.
Here's an example of what I mean:
For the first five years of doing triathlons, I didn't have a coach. I made up my own plan (which was basically "run today, swim tomorrow, bike the next day..."). Because I have been an athlete for my whole life, this wasn't a terrible approach. I did well. I also ended up spending a lot of time and energy first trying to come up with a plan, and then wasted some time executing on a plan that wasn't as good as it could be.
Now I have a coach (John Hirsch). John is a professional triathlete and coaches tons of athletes, and brings his expertise to my training. John makes my plan, and I execute against it. I don't have to spend time thinking about my workouts or my training schedule. John does that. He listens to my progress and adjusts my plan accordingly. This saves me a ton of time. I don't have to strategize, and the work that I'm doing has more of an impact on my progress as an athlete.
I'm learning the same thing at ScriptEd. When ScriptEd started, I was both planning and executing against the plan. ScriptEd is too big for that now. My time is not well spent if I'm the person executing against ScriptEd's plan. My job is to make the plan, adjust it as necessary, and make sure that my staff adjusts their execution as time goes on. I don't always do this perfectly, but I'm getting a lot better.
Wednesday, January 13, 2016
Living Alone
On December 31st, I started living alone for the first time ever in my entire life.
I'm two weeks in. It's pretty amazing.
I moved into my apartment in March and had a roommate until mid-July. My fresh-out-of-college little brother moved into my apartment in August, and lived with me until he was able to secure his first full-time job (congratulations, Josh!).
The first week felt strange, but I got used to it quickly. I'm spending a lot of time cleaning, decorating, reading, writing (it's grant writing season.. so tons and tons of writing happening now!) and sleeping.
I don't know how long I'll live alone, or if it's something all end up liking in the long run, but for now it's great. I've always wanted to try it, and for a long time I didn't think it would ever happen. I'm proud of myself for making it happen.
I'm two weeks in. It's pretty amazing.
I moved into my apartment in March and had a roommate until mid-July. My fresh-out-of-college little brother moved into my apartment in August, and lived with me until he was able to secure his first full-time job (congratulations, Josh!).
The first week felt strange, but I got used to it quickly. I'm spending a lot of time cleaning, decorating, reading, writing (it's grant writing season.. so tons and tons of writing happening now!) and sleeping.
I don't know how long I'll live alone, or if it's something all end up liking in the long run, but for now it's great. I've always wanted to try it, and for a long time I didn't think it would ever happen. I'm proud of myself for making it happen.
Monday, January 4, 2016
It's 2016!
I'm back in the office after a relatively long hiatus for me -- 12 full days -- which is maybe the longest I've ever taken off of work, ever. As I've written before, one of my goals for a long time has been to take a two-week vacation. This time-off almost hit that mark. I was able to finish up a lot of personal projects that I had put off forever, and I think I learned a lot about myself by taking time off. By the end of it, I was definitely very excited to get back to work. For better or worse, so much of who I am and how I perceive myself is wrapped up in my work.
I didn't set any New Years resolutions. Not to say I don't have goals -- I have lots of them -- I'm just not a huge believer in New Years resolutions. I think that if there is something I want to accomplish, any time of year is a good time to start tackling it. I do think one of the things that came out of my 'time-off' reflections though is that I need to continue to prioritize my personal life and relationships, because I can very easily get sucked into work. Generally, I think I'm doing much better than I was a year ago, though :) I just need to keep working at it!
Happy New Year everyone!
I didn't set any New Years resolutions. Not to say I don't have goals -- I have lots of them -- I'm just not a huge believer in New Years resolutions. I think that if there is something I want to accomplish, any time of year is a good time to start tackling it. I do think one of the things that came out of my 'time-off' reflections though is that I need to continue to prioritize my personal life and relationships, because I can very easily get sucked into work. Generally, I think I'm doing much better than I was a year ago, though :) I just need to keep working at it!
Happy New Year everyone!
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