How to Develop Excitement and Anticipation?

I don't really know. My best guess is talking about something that is going to happen. I'm working on a few things, small things, but very personal things that will expose me more than I have exposed in the past. Three are articles, one about the forestry industry, one about dating, and one about losing weight. They are all things that are emotional, factual, personal, and involved, or still involve, significant learning on my part. Another thing is a surprise. It has words, but it's not an article. It's very exciting for me and more adventurous than I have been in the past in one respect.

In other words, you may have to suffer through some shallow posts like this before you get the magnum opus articles. Why even bother writing this shallow piece? Well, if I get a few of you excited, I will get more excited. Positive energy spreads. I'm at the point in all of the articles that just a little positive motivation to get me to write a conclusion paragraph, edit them, and add anything I might have forgotten is all that needs to happen. I don't want these to turn into another project I do 90% and leave sit on my hard drive.

Yep it worked. Trying to get you excited got me excited. Another successful social experiment!

Thoughts on Long Term Motivation

Long term motivation has been on my mind lately. Why is it that I still run day in and day out close to four years after my last race on a college team? How is it that I sit at a desk eight or nine hours a day looking at models and have been nearly every week for the last two years? How is it I have thought about Mt. Everest most days for eight and a half years patiently waiting? Time and again I run into people that are amazed that I do these things. To me however they seem average. I feel that a lot of it comes down to motivation. I have a lot of it. How did I get it and where does it comes from? I am not sure.

I am working on a graph to describe just my running motivation. I came up with seven categories that motivate me to run. Then I am going through by year and estimating with a number how much each one mattered at that point. It is not finished. This graph is a starting point to articulating and describing my motivations for all aspects of my life I recognize. The second step is to generalize motivations first by applying to other aspects of my life and second by studying the motivations of others. The third step is to understand motivations, at least somewhat. Difficult I know, and I will probably be wrong many times, but worth doing. Some answers may be simple, like looking good improves dating prospects, but others may be complex, like a difficult childhood that causes a person to work hard to suffer more than anyone else. I don't have the answers, that is why I am looking for them. Fourth, and ultimate goal of this personal project is to teach or give or develop motivations.

Motivations get things done. If it is possible to spread motivations more things will get done. If more people commit to long term projects more difficult, and more rewarding, results will be achieved.

I am asking you my readers, comment below, email me, talk to me, Facebook me, or send a text message, what motivates you? Starting in the coming weeks and months I will be looking for case studies, people who are willing to open up about their motivations.

Long term I hope to produce some document, ebook, infographic or something from this.

A Year After Publication

About 13 months ago my sister and I finished writing and editing What Gen Y Wants You to Know. Since then we have had 62 downloads and have given away at least eight books to people that do not really use the Internet or that would have liked a hard copy of our book. We have not sold any paperback copies of What Gen Y Wants You to Know. 

What have I learned?

Advertising, advertising, advertising, and then some advertising will get things propagated. This is one of the ways that anything sells. Lots of people hear about it and think it's cool. Word of mouth is a really strong way for things to propagate. It works because people trust their friends. I tried to follow Seth Godin's model or Dave's model of give it away free and then offer to sell it. The idea is that people don't actually want the information in the book as much as they want to own a book that has ideas they agree with. However, after the fact I realized that it probably takes six years of successful blogging to get to the point where that works. Or you have to start out famous.

I also learned that traditional publishing is a competitive playground. Millions of people around the world think they are great writers while precious few actually write well. (Yes, yes, I know I probably fall into that category as well, but you don't have to read my stuff and nothing I have written, with the exception of my thesis, is exclusive in any way. It's all free.) As far as understanding the publishing world and what it takes to get a book published by one of the nice big companies read Miss Snark's blog. Aside from all of the segues into her personal life it offers real sincere nuggets of publishing information. 

Some people have a hard time downloading things that take more than one click.

What will I DO differently next time?

That is a curious question because there are different avenues that I would like to take depending on the book that I am writing. I am working on a rope solo climbing book, and have been for two years. This would likely be self published print-on-demand because the market for this book would probably be less than a thousand people. It could be tens of thousands but based on the web traffic I measured in relation to key search terms, we're talking about a few hundred people so self publishing would be it. I would also not offer it free. Why not? I feel that the concepts are important enough that someone should have the whole book and feel that it has value because it costs money. If someone would download it free and print out only two pages he or she could easily get in a dangerous situation without knowing how to get out of it.

I am working on several other books and in fact have 130 pages of my autobiography covering ages 9 to 15 that I typed out on my grandma's typewriter. Traditional publishing is so enticing because the ability to say, "you can get my book in Barnes and Noble" is incredibly exciting! Having a book in a big chain book store means that the man approves of your idea and your writing enough to try and sell it. You may not make any money but you will have gotten a book published and in book stores.

EBooks are the future, hands down. Of course there will be paper books for a long long time to come and people will continue to acquire a few books every year. Yet the writing is on the screen, people sit in front of their computers and read from their screens. It's also kind of fun. Just write a book make a semi-classy PDF and share the link. It cuts out so many middle men, and inevitably people that cut into your profits or people that slow your ideas down. Similarly, news gets Tweeted by The People instead of investigated, written about, edited, printed, and delivered to your door step in the morning. It's fast.

If the book I write next is a little thicker I'm going hardcover. It's just more classy.

Put some graphs, statistics and color pictures in there too. I like looking at the pictures and I think most people do as well. It would also be nice if a book I wrote was slightly longer. It does not have to be a novel but What Gen Y Wants You to Know was a scant 48 pages with large type. Most people read it in like 20-30 minutes. It probably takes that long to read a week of my normal blogging. 

By the way, if you are in Seattle and you see Dave (the photographer) tell him that he should make a coffee table photo book because you would buy it. I've seen some of his pictures and trust me it would be worth your money.

One Year of Blogging in Review

One year ago today, February 27th, I posted my first blog entry. I did not know where this blog would take me. I started Learning to DO with one idea in mind: replicate the sort of blog that CiloGear has so that I could update the world on the trials of starting a company. Well, over the weeks starting a company kind of went up and down and who knows where it's at today. I have an email address and contractors refer to me being from Janzen Gear, but what does that mean?

This blog has evolved into something of a melting pot of information both personal and business. Everything from stories and videos from Pakistan to personal relationships and more info about running than you probably want. I have learned that I really like writing. If my job for the next ten years was to pop out several pages every day I could live with that.

By the numbers I would say I'm off to a good start. This is my 234th blog post in 366 days. Over 7,000 visits and 11,000 page views with absolutely zero money spent advertising, hosting, or on development. While that does not compare to the millions per month that other sites get, it is a decently large number. Recently I started averaging over 45 visits per day. If there is one key to getting more visitors every day it is consistency. The more content you have available on the internet the more people will find you. I even get fan email! I also get angry emails sometimes too...

As far as monetizing my blog goes, well, it has paid off. I am currently coaching one person and have made several hundred dollars as a result of that. We knew each other from working together the summer of 2006 and through Facebook stayed mildly connected until he started reading my blog and we started talking more. The next thing I knew I was getting paid to coach him. So I am not directly making money from blogging but indirectly I am.

I have become one of the world's experts in bottom-up meshing in Abaqus and I get about 10% of my hits on that post alone. I'm happy that post is helpful to people because I probably spent two or three hours writing it.

I think that I have been one of the driving factors to influence six of my friends to actually start blogging. For those of you who I helped inspired, yes I do read your blogs from time to time. This is significant for me. Everyone brings something different to their blog. Often times people are pretty revealing and tell things in writing that I would otherwise not hear about at all. This extends to instant messaging and texting as well. The difference with a blog is that the entire world can read it. I encourage more people to get into it. It is kind of like publishing your autobiography in small pieces. One piece of advice, if you do start blogging do it on your own terms. Do not let someone pressure you to reveal something you do not feel comfortable with.

Outside of the blog I spent seven weeks in Pakistan and made it to 23,050 feet and back in great condition. I have averaged more miles run in each of the last five months than any month before. I have run some nice races. I wrote my MS thesis and graduated with my masters. It was a good year.

With my sister I wrote an ebook and we produced it into an actual paperback. Although, I am the only person that has bought copies of it and the ebook has had only 52 downloads. In my mind it is worth it because I learned a lot about writing, publishing and advertising. When I release my next written work I am sure it will do at least five times better maybe ten times better. At this point in my life I am really just focused on getting the information out there and not making my first million. Like the title says "Learning to Do" that's exactly where I am in my life. By the way I am working on several written projects at the moment.

Life is good. Yeah it could be better (I could be paying more than the minimum on my bills), but I don't want to get demanding. Keep reading. I don't where were Learning to DO is headed except forward.

The Value of Guidebooks

As electronic reading devices become more popular there becomes a time when you wonder if any book will be worth buying in person. I like books I like them in person more than on a computer screen but still it is cheap and easy to get a book on the computer. Now one small section of the book market is the guidebook. These are books which contain information about a location be it climbing, hiking, hotels, tourist attractions, restaurants, and other location specific information.

You see there is no economical global wireless service to search the internet or information. In fact there are places without electricity. These constraints pretty much limits devices like mobile phones and net books and without electricity even electronic readers are worthless. At that point the value of a self contained book with everything you desire to know about an area is very valuable. I recently paid $70 for three guidebooks to Colorado. Some may question that logic because probably 85% of the routes are available free on the internet. That's true but as has happened more than once people print the route information for a climb and only read the descent information once so they have an adventure descending easy terrain that was more scary than the route itself. Also in the case that you are holed up in a location without internet access you may want to climb another route or do something else. With a guidebook you will have a number of options of things to do in that area whereas otherwise you may have no idea what to do.

Additionally there are usually those few routes or activities in the book that are not online because they are obscure or infrequently done. I know that several times while my family was on vacation we would stop at places where we were the only tourists. In fact it has happened so many times it isn't even strange anymore. We have also stopped at those national monuments that get only a few thousand visitors a year and we were one third of the groups there.

So there is still value in a guidebook. Something that does not need recharging or a wireless signal. A one time purchase with no residual costs.

2009: My Year In Review

January: The year started out well with me traveling back to WPI early to work on my thesis. I was also back running after a long term injury. I bought a season pass to Wachusett mountain and I was getting better at skiing by the day.

February: I went to the Mount Washington Valley Ice Fest and had a few good ice climbs as well as talk with people and learn. I also ran my first race in like four months, which while slow was a race I was very happy to run. I also started blogging and teaching the world!

March: Running and researching mostly including a sub 34 10k that was pretty easy showing that I could make a comeback. I also entered the Strage Innovation Awards and won!

April: Research was going full bore and so was the stress. My track season fizzled out due mostly to the stress of finishing my research. There were moments of grandeur here and there that kept me motivated.

May: The stress reached full tilt. I was going back and forth about what I was going to do once I came back from Pakistan. I considered dropping out of school and starting a company or being a climbing bum until the loan companies actually came for me. I learned how frustrating research can be and how deadlines are almost an arbitrary thing because things often finish when they finish not when a month ends. I also ran 52.4 miles in one shot.

June: After a short trip back to Wisconsin to pack my stuff I headed to Pakistan. Wow. Not your average summer.

July: More Pakistan.

August: A short trip to Colorado to use the full extent of my acclimatization then back to Worcester determined to actually finish my thesis. Suffering from a little post-traumatic stress I was determined to work harder in everything that I did.

September: Research was progressing as I was finally figuring out some of the basic mistakes that I just didn't understand before. I ran the Presidential Traverse with a bunch of friends then ran Reach the Beach with a bunch of other friends. The weather was nice and research was going well, more or less.

October: A nice month to be in New England as the leaves change colors and the temperature is nice enough to wear shorts during runs but warm enough that jackets are not yet needed. It's about this time that hot mochas come back into style taking a market share away from the iced mochas. I also had like 400 channels of cable. Work was accelerating, but in a good way.

November: Things were starting to look better. Research was going well enough that I was going to graduate in 2009. Running was going well as I was averaging more miles than ever before. I had finally settled into a great daily routine. In fact day to day life was so good that I'm actually considering going to school again because it was a nice place to be. My future was looking like I would start a company. I wrote a business plan and filed two patent applications. I also published a book. I also ran a PR in the half marathon in the middle of base training.

December: Things got a tad stressful as I finished my research and writing my 104 page masters thesis. However, finishing was a huge accomplishment. It was another huge confidence booster. Unfortunately I also left Worcester after getting to know my friends there so well. A month of great accomplishment and also great change as I enter the real world.

2010: Here I come!

FREE eBook: What Gen Y Wants You to Know

It finally happened. I wrote and published a book! It took about nine weeks from the time I came up with the idea until it was all put together. This is very exciting for me! About the book...

I have been reading all sorts of blogs about marketing and social networking and the transition the internet is making into mainstream life. I was reading all of this stuff and they are talking about Facebook and what Generation Y is into and how we use the internet. I couldn't help but think that we are old enough they should be asking us what we want. Or maybe some of us should be telling them... So I did a quick search and our generation does not really have a spokes person. Sure we have famous people, but I think that they are a bad representation of our culture. Personally I can't relate to having millions of dollars, having cameras in my face all the time, or reading about my life in magazines. So I decided to write an eBook and give it away for free. I just want people to hear from us a little bit. I want to help older people understand younger people because the more we understand each other the more we are going to get done.

The problem with this sort of topic is that I want to be general and talk about the perspective from our generation not just my own personal views. So I enlisted the help of my little sister. We are somewhat different so I think we covered most of the bases.

Download the ebook (pdf): What Gen Y Wants You to Know

Along the way I learned more things. I plan to publish a book in 2010 and this whole process was great because I learned all about the publishing process. Specifically, the self publishing process which is a little like the wild west. It's amazing what you can do for free on the internet with very little computer skills! While researching all of these separate tangents I decided to make the book into a paperback as well. You can buy the paperback copy of What Gen Y Wants You to Know on lulu.com.

So read, enjoy, and perhaps now you might understand the teenagers and 20 somethings in your life a little better. If you are in Generation Y I hope that we got the gist of what you want.