filling my time

You may have read about our weekend on Danielle's blog. We prioritized "having fun" above things like school studying, baby preparations, and all the other stuff we need to do. And you know what? It felt great! We went to a BBQ and drinks in SF on Friday night, hung out around Burlingame and went to a wedding on Saturday...and Sunday, ok well Sunday we did spend the majority of the day studying but I still got in a decent jog and relaxation in the morning.

For awhile now, I've had on my "To Blog" list that I should write about my increase in blog posts during the time that I transitioned jobs from Ducati to Google. (Yes, that means this has been something I've been meaning to write about for 3 years and haven't yet!) It seems sort of irrelevant now because my blogging has become so erratic. But there was a period of time in 2007 when I was blogging almost three times a week. (I wrote 140 blog posts in 2007 after leaving Ducati.)

What I'd planned to write about was how changing jobs had increased the amount of free time I had. I was no longer spending big chunks of my time at airports and traveling for work. This meant I had more time and apparently I used that time to blog. But it seems that I always find new ways to fill my time. As my wife can attest, I rarely get bored. I've always got something to keep myself busy. Sometimes you hear retired people say that they don't know what to do with their time but I simply can't relate to that idea.

From Ducati 748

Looking back, I think a big shift towards having more free time was when I gave up my motorcycling hobby. Even though it was painful to call it quits and sell my bike, I'd never realized how much time it consumed. I didn't think twice about taking off at 9am to ride with my buddies up in the Santa Cruz mountains. I'd get home and the entire day would be gone. Not to mention the time spent maintaining my bike. It was fun, and I miss it, but how did I ever have the time? When I quit riding, I probably felt "time rich" for awhile...but new activities and hobbies eventually crept in and now I feel crunched for time again.

But what I realized is that I used to prioritize motorcycle rides very highly and made the conscious decision to spend my time doing that. And this made me happy. I was doing something fun that I wanted to do, not sometime I had to do. I need to make sure I continue to prioritize fun things in the future.

(Although I've been too busy for much in the way of cars and motorsports lately...I've recently been rekindling that interest in new ways. I don't plan to go back to riding bikes but I am looking to make cars and motorsports a part of my life again. I think I've also realized that it's OK to be a an avid motorcycle racing fan even if you don't ride -- like my old pal Julian Thomas who handled all the PR for Ducati Corse.)

pictures from the nine inch nails concert friday

Drew, Jocelyn and I went to the NIN/JA (Nine Inch Nails & Janes Addiction) concert on Friday at Shoreline Amphitheatre. We even met up with Miles and Kim, who were lucky enough to score the backstage VIP treatment. Sadly, due to our own hesitation, Drew and I missed out on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Lesson learned: Don't hesitate. If your gut is telling you to do something, do it. Don't let your brain intervene. It wasn't until after finally deciding to buy it that we found out it's sold out. This was the most emotionally wrenching experience. I went from a state of absolutely euphoria to utter disappointment and instantly vowed not to hesitate on decisions like this ever again. I still donated a few bucks to the charity, but it wasn't as much as I had planned.

The concert was still awesome and we had a great time. It was bittersweet since this is likely the last tour that Nine Inch Nails will ever do. Trent has been very clear that after 20 years of making music (Pretty Hate Machine came out in 1989), he plans to retire. From some of his recent interviews, it sounds like he just wants to have a normal life for once. But I wonder if the current turmoil in the music industry influenced his decision? Either way, he's picking a good time to call it quits if he wants to end on a high note. NIN has been doing great recently with lots of tours, excellent albums, a strong online community, and adventurous marketing.

Here are some pictures from the show:
My 2009 NIN/JA Tour pictures
Drew's 2009 NIN/JA Tour pictures

BTW - It's awesome that NIN is one of the few bands that allows cameras, including DSLRs with 300mm zooms at their shows. And kudos to a guy from Mercer, PA making it big in the music industry. (Some sources indicate he was born in New Castle, PA -- where my Dad is from.)

more on time, money, and ownership

I'm feeling a little better since my blog post last night. Maybe it's because I realized that I can spend my time how I choose. If I don't want to spend my evening doing homework for school, I don't have to. Now I just have to stop stressing about the consequences.

I thought about time as a resource a lot today. Time is valuable like money or gold or oil but it has some unique characteristics that prevent you from treating it like a currency.

Time can't be stored. You can't put it in a bank to use later. Sure you can "save time" by doing something quickly and immediately create a little extra time but you still can't store it for later use.

Time is limited. Again, unlike money which you can accumulate, you only get a limited amount of time. 24 hours per day. And everyone gets this exact same amount. Nobody is rich or poor in terms of time.

You can buy time. You can pay someone to do things that would cost you time to do them yourself. Some examples are cooking, cleaning, or yard work. But even buying time, you can't buy more than 24 hours in a day.

You own your time. Time is like an allowance, you get 24 hours at the beginning of every day. You can choose to spend it how you wish but whatever you don't spend at the end of the day, you lose. This is the part that I feel like I've been bad about lately. I've haven't been protecting the time I own. It's sort of like losing a wallet full of money, you feel bad because you didn't get to spend it on what you wanted. Someone else spent it for you instead. I aim to fix this in the next week.

Time doesn't grow. You can't speed up or slow down time. You can't collect interest on your time (because you can't save it.) You can't spend it at a rate any faster or slower than the second hand on a clock.

Since time is limited, in both how many hours we have per day and how many days we have in our lives (that part is different for everyone) I plan to start spending mine more wisely and trying to reclaim ownership of the time I've got. Less doing stuff that I have to do and more doing stuff that I want to do.

missing out on life?

This post may sound ridiculous considering that I just spent the weekend hanging out with friends, going out to dinner, and playing golf...but hear me out.

Lately I've been feeling pretty overwhelmed. Between work, school, getting ready for the baby, and all the million other things going on in my life, I just haven't been my calm, cool, stress-free self. I don't think reading this blog post helped: The 7 Traits of the Free Man.

I'm not saying I don't like my job, quite the contrary. And I highly doubt I want to be an entrepreneur (they have crazier schedules than anyone!) But the part about owning your own time is what really stuck with me. In my case, I think my current stress is coming from two things: not enough time and lack of control over my time.

Not enough time
I think everyone's felt like this at some point so it's nothing new. Put simply, I think I've just stretched myself too thin and the effects are finally catching up to me. I feel stupid complaining about anything in my life, because I have a great life. In fact, I feel like I'm finally at the point in my life where I've got a wife I love, a baby on the way, a good job, a nice place to live, and enough money to be comfortable. It's what I've always wanted. But this is also the problem. I am finally at this stage and I don't have time to enjoy any of it.

I'm jealous of the people who can come home from work and just relax. Maybe that means watching some TV, cooking dinner, going for a walk, reading, or playing video games -- none of which I seem to have time for. (Exception being my birthday weekend when I told myself I wasn't doing anything that wasn't fun. That was my gift to myself.) It sounds cliche, but these ought to be the best years of my life and I'm spending them slaving away between work and school. It's made me realize the true value of time. The problem is that there's only a limited quantity of it. This leads me to my next point...

Lack of control over my time
I've got never-ending "To Do" lists for work, school, and home. I rush through one task just so I can immediately move onto another. I get home from work and need to start studying. I finish studying and I need to do something around the house. There's never any time for "nothing." I think I've forgotten how to relax. And all of the things I'm doing, I feel like I'm not the one deciding what I should spend my time on. Everything is a "have to do" rather than a "want to do." I don't know why, but it seems like I'm letting everyone else dictate how I spend my time. I mean, I haven't even gotten around to setting up the Nintendo Wii I got my birthday (9 days ago.) I want to set it up, I want to play Wii games but when I prioritize it against all the stuff I have to do I just never get to it.

So that's my rant. I feel like I don't have enough time to enjoy life. As I said, I'm sure this is nothing new. One possible remedy might be drastic simplification and a reduction of commitments. (Is the MBA really worth all the added stress?)

the world today

Today I turn 30. This video reminded me that even though a lot has changed in the first 30 years of my life, even more will change in the next 30.

one more picture from mothers day

One last photo to share with all of you. This one taken by my dad.

(almost) mother's day

Today we spent Mother's Day with both of the Moms here in Burlingame. We enjoyed a great, late lunch at Il Fornaio, which is right around the corner from our place. Since Danielle only has about 5 more weeks until her due date, it was nice that everyone came to visit us rather than us having to travel somewhere.

Danielle is just barely missing out on Mother's Day this year. But if all goes according to plan, Baby Chiaro will be here in time for me to celebrate Father's Day! I know he'll be just out of the womb, but that's no excuse for not getting his dad a gift! Just kidding.

My photography-skilled brother Drew took some nice pictures. Enjoy!

marketing is really the study of stereotypes

Considering I just had my marketing mid-term tonight, I figured this was a good chance to post this to my blog.

This is the first marketing class I've had in my MBA program and I like it, a lot! I realized that I actually do a fair bit of marketing in my current job. So not only do I like the class, but it's immediately applicable to stuff I'm working on. In fact, on Monday I was able to put some of the market segmentation stuff into use at work which not helped me do my job but it also helped me study for my exam.

In addition to learning what marketing is not (it's not advertising or trying to sell a product, but more about understanding the needs of customers so that you build something they want or need) I'm starting to understand what marketing is.

Marketing is the study of stereotypes.

More accurately, market segmentation, which is the basis of most marketing decisions, is all about stereotypes. The whole goal of segmenting a market is to figure out who needs your product. (Or to identify certain needs and then go build a product that addresses them.) Hopefully you can then tie those needs to some identifiable characteristics like age, gender, location, education, income, whatever because it's hard to locate customers based on needs. (They don't run around with a sticker on their head that says what they need.) But in this segmentation exercise you typically score different groups on different variables. These groups (or segments) are really just stereotypes. They're groups of people who have a common need or common characteristic. They could be "musicians" or "artists" or "gadget geeks". Admit it, when you read each of those names an image of a typical musician, artist, or gadget geek probably jumped into your mind right? Like for the musician you might have imagined someone carrying a guitar, wearing ripped jeans, relaxed, casual, smoking a cigarette, being the life of a party, and maybe playing music in a cafe. They fit some stereotype.

So to be good at marketing, I think you need to be good at stereotyping or, more accurately, be good at grouping people into segments that need your product.