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2012 New Years Resolutions

Here are my resolutions/goals for 2012 (with a recap and review of my 2011 list below):  

1. Run a full marathon, 5 halves, and a triathlon
  • Run a marathon (already registered for the Oakland marathon on 3/24)
  • Run at least 5 half marathons
  • Find a trathlon and commit to the training

2. Have more of an impact

  • Create more value at my own company
  • Advise/consult with more startups (on sales/sales strategy, customer acquisition, etc.) 

3.  Build a better blog

  • I think one of the reasons I failed to write more in 2011 was that the barriers to entry felt too high. I do like taking the time to do research and write longer-form posts (like this latest one on local) but I often find the need for more short-form posts with quicker thoughts (but longer than 140 characters) on news and products.
  • Building a better blog also = becoming a better writer
  • Redesign and consider a new theme/platform

4.  Take more pictures

  • Get a nice camera
  • Take an intro photography class
  • Take more pictures

5.  Eat Slower Meals

  • I ate a lot healthier in 2011 but I hope to eat much slower in 2012. Lots of research shows that meal time with friends and loved ones is a direct predictor of happiness. They recommend at least one 2-3-hour dinner and/or drinks per week with people who make you smile and feel good. And I've found that to be true -- some of my best memories of 2011 were long meals with friends and family. I hope to have more of those in 2012. 

6.  See more live music and comedy

  • Live shows just make me feel good so I hope to see more. 
6.  Track books I've read in a public spreadsheet
  • I'm a big believer that exposing a personal metric, e.g. one’s runs on RunKeeper, workouts on DailyBurn, etc., often encourages tracking of the measure. So I'll start to track the books I've read in a public spreadsheet and keep it updated. I'm interested to see if the publicity of the list impacts how often I read. 
  • Some of my most popular posts have been on books with reading notes so I'll continue to post notes from my favorite books too. 
7.  Travel
  • Visit more new places: Hong Kong, Thailand, Turkey, Whistler.
  • Try to line up half marathons with new U.S. cities 
8.  Build a Web app and an iPhone app
  • Brush up and learn how to code enough to build a minimim viable product (MVP) of a few ideas I've been thinking about
9.  Improve on public market investing
  • Read more on swing trading, value investing and options strategies
  • Eliminate most of the noise from my news stream and focus on basics
  • Improve overall % performance
10.  Do full-scale body composition and DNA tests
  • Do body composition and blood work tests to guage levels of vitamins, antioxidants, minerals, etc. to find diet, supplement changes. 
  • Sign up for 23andMe and their Personal Genome Service to see what diseases I may be predisposed to and find diet/lifestyle changes. 

 

And here is my full 2011 list with notes. Here's a recap: (6 FAILURES and 4 SUCCESSES): 

 

1. Eat Healthier - SUCCESS!

2.  Switch from coffee to tea - FAIL (reason: added tea 50/50, will likely continue)

3.  Drink more water - SUCCESS!

4.  Read more - FAIL (reason: didn't track, take enough notes)

5.  Write more - FAIL (reason: work/life balance, didn't do much short form posts)

6.  Contribute more to online communities I follow - SUCCESS!

7.  Get back into scuba diving - FAIL

8.  Be more mindful - SUCCESS!

9.  Travel more -  FAIL (Went to Seattle, Chicago, and Boulder. But didn't get to nearly as many new places as I wanted)

10.  Compete in a marathon and triathlon - FAIL (reason: ran 3 half-marathons but never committed to a full or tri)

 

Hopefully I can do better in 2012 than I did in 2011. How about you?

Filed under  //  diet   health   new years   reading   resolutions   supplements   writing  
Posted
 

The Google Reader Redesign

Google has rolled out a new design to Google Reader. Previously announced, this release primarily includes a new design and Google+ integration. 

My friends and family know that I love Google Reader. Over the years I have curated my RSS feeds carefully into a heirarchy that I like. It's a bit messy but it works for me. I have broken my feeds into folders for the startups, entrepreneurs, VCs, etc. that I like to keep daily tabs on.

The general breakdown is like so:

  • Startups
  • Entrepreneurs
  • Big Tech Companies
  • Tech News (Hacker News, Techmeme, PE Hub, etc.)
  • Venture Capitalists (Fred Wilson, Ben Horowitz, Mark Suster, etc.)
  • Design
  • Advertising
  • Sales
  • Sports 
  • Financial news
  • Investing/Traders

Essentially I can glance at any folder and get a good snapshot of all the blogs and news that I care about and follow on a regular basis. 

A lot of my reading typically takes place within Google Reader itself. Yes, I'll occasionally click through to look at and engage in the comments or explore other articles. But I like having all of them in one place for quick reading and scanning. Since so much of my reading is done within Google Reader, this redesign was pretty impactful to me. And after playing around with it for a few days, I have to say that I'm dissapointed.

I didn't use the sharing features within Reader all that much (only to push to Twitter really) so I am pretty apathetic to the Google+ integrations. Do I think I'll share more of what I'm reading on Google+ now because of it? Not really. But perhaps it will grow on me. 

My beef is mainly in the visual and UI changes. Now, don't get me wrong. I am all for visual consistency. And I have been really impressed with Google's new design across all of their products, including the new Gmail design. 

However, my sentiments on the Reader redesign echo the feelings of Brian Shih, formerly a project manager for Google Reader. Here's what he had to say on the redesign:

In the name of visual consistency, Google has updated the visual style to match Gmail, Calendar and Docs. I have nothing against visual consistency (and in fact, this something that Google should be doing), but it's as if whoever made the update did so without ever actually using the product to, you know, read something.

When you log into Reader, what the hell do you think your primary objective is? Did you answer "stare at a giant header bar with no real estate saved for actual reading"? Congrats, here's your prize:

Reader_redesign

Shih also does a comparison of old Reader vs. new Reader so we can see the difference side-by-side down to the first subscription (click to enlarge):

Oldvsnew

As you can see, there is a lot of more room for text and reading in the old design. On laptops and small screens every pixel is important so this space really matters. 

Another more obvious change is the full grey-ing out of Reader. There are now no blue links within titles or posts which leaves a pretty bland, boring reading experience. 

Most importanly, my favorite feature -- the reading pane -- is now gone. It allowed you to hide the subscriptions panel to let you have the full screen for reading. I loved it. 

I am all for the use white space and a clean design. But Reader is a product built to read and read quickly. The old UI wasn't perfect, but it was designed for the primary use case of reading. I hope Google takes more note of this in their next iteration.

Update: I just came across a post by Kevin Fox, a former UX design lead on Google Reader, who has offered his services to restore and enhance Reader while keeping in line with Google's new visual standards. I hope they take him up on it.

Filed under  //  google   product design   reading  
Posted