My Plans for 2011

It's not how you start, it's how you finish,

And it's not where you're from, it's where you're at.

- The Hours

About a month ago, I wrote about putting a 2011 Action Plan together with the caveat that I'd share what I'd be up to this year. Below is my list for this year. I plan to accomplish everything, though if this year is anything like last year, it's likely to dish up a lot more than I could have planned. I share it because I am learning that it takes a village to make a warrior and in the spirit of what I learned at The Foundry and my last blog post, I am opening up the details of my strategy so that you can assist in creating the life that is possible for me. If you have experience or connections in any of the areas that I lay out below, feel free to email me (travis.corrigan@gmail.com).

Objectives:

1. High leverage employment - Generate the best possible experience-based learning from my work. Be intentional about the choices I make at Discover, The Foundry and the companies that I am starting. Be a contribution in my various positions and add value to the institutions that I am in service of. Build a community that imprints me with precision-execution management practices while coaching in me in the learning process of growing, developing and interacting with colleagues, subordinates and superiors so that I can begin to distinguish the contexts that enable me to act and lead powerfully and transformatively.

2. Own the stewardship of my financial house - Learn and implement new technology to manage my finances such that I have knowledge and control over my spending and saving. Create and establish a context that accelerates getting out of credit card and student loan debt, allows me to fully contribute to my retirement accounts without impacting monthly cash flow and teaches me financial discipline.

3. Become a finely tune piece of fitness machinery - Generate and follow a training regimen that tracks my gains in strength, endurance and flexibility to achieve new levels of performance in events and competitions.

4. Expand the breadth and depth of my relationships - Make time to have meaningful relationships with the people in my life in order to learn more about them, learn from them and reap the benefits of having relationships founded on resonant bonds.

Key Results:

1. Financial Fitness

• Utilize Quicken to create and live from a realistic budget.
• Reduce revolving debt by at least 25%.
• Complete "Your Money or Your Life", including all the exercises.
• Currate wish list for big ticket items and set savings plans for them.
• Be in a position to max out 401(k) in 2012.

2. Fitness Machine

• Establish Vo2 Max and Lactate Threshold metrics as a baseline for 2011.
• Complete the "300" workout in less than 41 minutes
• Win 2 Cyclocross races
• Move up a criterium class.
• Complete the Wasatch Death Ride.
• Complete LOTOJA.
• 40 mile average ride by July

3. Expand relationships

• Reach out and create the possibility of regularly occurring "dates".
• Schedule and complete dates that have workable contexts for both parties.
• Track insights and learning in journal.

Reading List:

• How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work
• High Output Management
• Why You Do The Things You Do
• How To Write A Lot
• Your Money or Your Life
• When the Game is Over It All Goes Back in the Box
• Decoded
• The Great Reset
• This Time It's Different
• Where Good Ideas Come From
• Mind Wide Open
• The Mind's Past
• The Wave
• The Devil's Teeth
• The Great Divergence
• Dumbing Down America
• Future Shock
• Science of The Brain (research paper)
• The Lesson of Entrepreneurial Experience (research paper)
• The Entrepreneur Next Door (research paper)
• The Nature of Man (research paper)
• The Role of Team Composition (research paper)
• Web 2.0 - Design Patterns for Business Models (research paper)
• Creating Leaders - An Ontological Model (research paper)
• A Quantitative Approach to Tactical Asset Allocation (research paper)
• Integrity, Without it Nothing Works (research paper)
• Introductory Reading for Being an Effective Leader (research paper)
• Procrastination and Impatience (research paper)

Movie Queue:

• How I Met Your Mother -Season 5
• The Big Lebowski
• Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse
• The Fighter
• The Hurt Locker
• Memento
• The Social Network

Course Queue:

• MIT OpenCourseware 21F.301 - French I
• MIT OpenCourseware 21F.301 - French II
• MIT OpenCourseware 15.615 - Law for the Entrepreneur and Manager
• MIT OpenCourseware 15.301 - Managerial Psychology
• MIT OpenCourseware 15.316 - Building and Leading Effective Teams
• MIT OpenCourseware 6.090 - Building Programming Experience
• MIT OpenCourseware 6.00 - Introduction to Computer Science and Programming
• MIT OpenCourseware 6.001 - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
• MIT OpenCourseware 15.975 - Special Seminar in Management - Business Plans
• MIT OpenCourseware 15.060 - Data, Models and Decisions

So there you are. That's my entire year. Again if you have any insight as to how I could be doing something easier, quicker or cheaper, I'd love to hear from you. If you want to get together for the sake of getting together, let me know and we can schedule something. Looking forward to hearing from you.

-Travis

The 2011 Action Plan

Who says I can't get stoned?

Plan a trip to Japan alone.

Doesn't matter if I even go.

- John Mayer

Leading off from my last post about living intentionally and Seth Godin's recent post about how you are your own worst boss I'm going to share about why 2011 is going to be the first year of officially creating and enacting an action plan. I'm going create some of my own language around the use of an action plan (inspired by Seth's blog post):

"You wouldn't go work for a company that made up a yearly plan while hung over, you also wouldn't work for one that would abandon a plan after 2 weeks quoting that they were going to 'figure it out' as they go along.

Why do it: It declares the future that you want to live into. When you say that you are going to do something, what you are really creating is a new life that will be coming at you full on: one that you want to live. It provides the large things that you want to get done and allows you, through an action plan, to work backwards from that reality to today. I personally try to make mine as measurable as possible so that at the end of the year I can see what happened vs what I said was going to happen.

Most importantly I look at why? Was it not as important as I thought it was? Did something catastrophic happen? What? The reason for looking at 'why' is not so much whether or not the reason was valid but who I was in the face of that reason. What the data shows me is me. And I learn something about myself that I didn't see before.

Why no one actually does it: Because it looks like busywork or some homework assignment. They make themselves feel guilty when they break their diet once or forget to go to the gym. And rather than get back on the horse (what's 1 or 2 days, or even a week lost in the context of a year?), they would rather ignore the discomfort of sticking to behavior change than actually feeling the joy of the results they have gotten for themselves. By the way no one is holding you to the commitments you make except you. So if you quit nothing happens, literally.

Wait, one thing does happen: you learn that you are someone who can't be self-directed when no one is watching you.

In other words, you find out that you are person that can't follow through on their own commitments. Don't like how that feels or sounds? Then do the plan. Don't like how that feels or sounds? Well then good luck amounting to anything more than the rat race, my friend. Because the exceptional professionals I know are the ones that can show up and deliver especially when they don't feel like it.

Why I like it: It helps me offload the mental power necessary to remember, find motivation for and actually enact the behavior change. I simply declare what I'm going to get done, create an action plan, input the time into my Google Calendar to do it and then let my calendar dictate what I should be doing. I just follow the plan without thinking and happen to get the results that I want. It's not rocket science. Over time (say 5-10 years) I'll probably think less about the planning (because I'll get better at it) which means that think even less about the "doing", which in turn can allow me to start dabbling in tremendous things before the age of 35. Things in the ilk of Laird Hamilton and Shai Agassi. Why? Because that's what I chose for my life.

My challenge to you is to go check out Chris Guillebeau's blog about How To Conduct Your Own Annual Review. In the comments, let me know some things that you are thinking about working on this year - I might borrow some to try on as I roll out the first draft of my 2011 Action Plan.

Cheers,

Travis