All posts in General

How to Make the Time to Do it All (guest post)

by Jason on April 4, 2012 in General with 1 Comment
Time management is a topic many seek to understand and master, but it is somewhat of a misnomer. We can’t really manage our time, we can only manage our behavior and what we put our energies and efforts on. Between Microsoft, volunteer work and competitive tennis, our guest poster Lilia Gutnik is a busy woman. Learn her secrets in the guest post below – Jason

Photo credit: Ricksflicks

It’s cliche, but I have come to appreciate the adage “Time is the great equalizer – everyone has the same amount.”

I used to beat myself up for not doing as much as the incredible people around me; people who could accomplish so much more than I seem to be able to. I would hear about their accomplishments and instead of being inspired, I would feel overwhelmed.

I talked about this on a 30 mile bike ride commute into work with a buddy of mine a few years ago. We would do this once a week at daybreak, catching the sunrise over the lake. The ride took 2 hours, plus shower and chocolate milk rehydration put me at my desk by 9am. I didn’t feel like I could balance training for a 300 mile bike ride (STP, a 1 or 2 day Seattle to Portland ride) with my tennis team upcoming season.

He said: “Lil, think about everything you are doing right now. List it out.”

So I did. And I felt pretty accomplished, actually. Because when I added everything up, I felt like I wasn’t as far off from those people I was feeling jealous of.

Thought Exercise #1:

When you feel like you’re not doing enough, consciously list out everything that is on your plate.

Then he said: “Now, if you want to ride 300 miles in a day, you’re going to have to train for at least 2 months ahead of time. That means riding every week 3-4 times to and from work, the long way. Plus a long ride every weekend, working up from 50 to 100 miles.”

“But I can’t ride that much and play tennis, I won’t have enough daylight left. And my legs will be worn out”

“That’s right, Lil. You have to choose. You can’t keep adding things to your list. If you want to do this, you definitely can. But you have to drop something else. What would you drop?”

Thought Exercise #2:

Be honest with your time. If you pick up a new activity or are working towards a new goal, evaluate how much time it will really require to do well and think about what existing activities will be affected by it.

And here’s the important part, at least for me. When I choose my activity, I actively stop doing something else. I don’t try to keep a hold on it just a little, just on weekends, just once a month. If I pick something new up, I have to commit to the new thing whole-heartedly or else it won’t really be fulfilling, worth-while, or done well.

So that helps me – it helps me say no to new random hobbies (Trapeze? Glass-blowing?). It helps me feel good about what I am doing (Look at me! I do all this stuff!). And it helps me really take on new activities without feeling like I’m going to fail because I know I’ve made the time for it.

Oh and by the way: I didn’t do the 300 mile ride. Instead I fully committed to my local tennis team season. We ended the season first in the division, won our local championship, and traveled to Portland to compete in the regional championship. So I guess I made it to Portland after all.

After graduating from UC Berkeley in 2007, Lilia Gutnik (liliagutnik.com) moved to the Pacific Northwest where she learned how to ride her bike around Lake Washington with the encouragement of her friend Matthew Pearlson. Her commute to work is now to the Bing offices, where she is a technical product manager on the monetization team. In her spare time, she still plays competitive tennis, travels to far-off countries, tells stories, and occasionally gets overwhelmed by the number of things she wants to do but doesn’t have time for.

I'm teaching an in-person Skillshare class on everything I've learned about creating a personal and professional brand through blogging on May 16th in San Francisco. See all the details here.

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I’m Teaching a Class on Skillshare

by Jason on March 26, 2012 in General with 4 Comments

As the cofounder of a collaborative consumption startup, I do my best to try all kinds of “sharing economy” services like Couchsurfing, TaskRabbit, Airbnb, Vayable, Grubwithus and Skillshare. I even blogged about my experience taking a UX Design for Non-Designers Skillshare class.

But there’s of course generally two sides to these products – the consumer and the producer. In Couchsurfing, theres the host and the surfer. In Vayable there’s the guide and the explorer. And in Skillshare there is the student and the teacher. It’s important to get both perspectives when you can.

I’ve worked hard to avoid blogging about blogging here at The Art of Ass-Kicking. The vast majority of my posts are on overcoming your fears, doing great work and making epic sh*t happen.

At the same time, in building this blog up, I have learned some great lessons about creating compelling content, discovering my audience and attracting 100,000+ visits over 2011.

And I’m sharing what I’ve learned in a class.

Continue reading →

I'm teaching an in-person Skillshare class on everything I've learned about creating a personal and professional brand through blogging on May 16th in San Francisco. See all the details here.

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Launching always takes longer than you think (Guide to YC)

by Jason on March 15, 2012 in General with 5 Comments

One lesson I’ve learned is that launching always takes longer than you think. If I got paid every time I heard a founder say their product was “two to three weeks away from launch” I could start angel investing.

Case in point: it’s been over a month since I said I was almost done with my cool YC-related project.

Well, better late than never is my motto. Last week I put up what I called the Unofficial Guidebook for Y Combinator Applicants at http://guidetoyc.com. In it, I shared everything I’ve learned from applying to Y Combinator, getting in, going through the program, understanding more about how the YC partners think and connecting with other founders.

I had friends who were applying to Y Combinator and asked for my advice so I would review their application. But I felt like most of my best advice was about how think about applying rather than specific feedback on their application. I wrote up a Google Doc on my thoughts on each section (team, idea, distribution, video, etc) and over the past few months have fleshed it out to what it is now – a 20,000 word guide on every aspect of the YC application process.

I put it up on Hacker News and in 24 hours got 6,500+ unique visitors spending over three-and-a-half minutes per visit. It was really great to know that people were digging my stuff.

After that, I worked closely with the awesome team at Hyperink, (a YC company that’s transforming publishing) and we were able to put together a beautifully laid out and carefully edited 92 page document that’s available as a free PDF download and also in mobi and epub versions in just 10 days.

It took longer than I expected – because I went through and re-edited several sections to make it as clear and readable as possible. I also integrated feedback from various YC partners who commented on the content. The Hyperink team did an amazing job turning things around quickly and professionally.

The result is something I’m proud to share with you.

Get your free copy of Guide to YC here.

I hope you enjoy the guide and I’d love to hear any feedback you have on the book. Please rest assured: regular blog posting will resume shortly.

Photo credit by Nils Öhman

I'm teaching an in-person Skillshare class on everything I've learned about creating a personal and professional brand through blogging on May 16th in San Francisco. See all the details here.

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13.1: Finishing My First Half Marathon

by Jason on February 2, 2012 in General with 13 Comments
Race: Brazen Racing Coyote Hills Half Marathon
Distance: 13.1 Miles
Date: Saturday, January 29th 2012
Notes: First half marathon – very happy overall. Pushed through some blistering and tendonitis on the side of my right foot. Great views. 

Last weekend I ran my first half marathon! Woot. Here’s how it went:

Training

After my 10k’s at Stanford and Eugene, I backed off a little bit, then started pushing my long runs again, getting to 9.2 miles before winter break. I did my best to stay in shape over the holidays and ran a bit in the chilly New England weather.

I’ve basically had a rough pattern of doing a threshold/faster run of 2.5 to 3 miles during the week (usually on treadmill) and a longer slower run on the weekend (to train farther distances). In between that I do elliptical/bike workouts, interval training, body weight workouts and at least one heavy lifting day (deadlift, bench and squat/leg press/pullups)

I was pleased to complete a 9.8 mile run the week after getting back to San Francisco and planned to do one more big run two weeks before the half. However, that run got cut short by some GI issues and I stopped at 8 miles.

Pre-race troubleshooting

That wasn’t so bad, except that then my foot started bothering me the next day. There was some soreness on the side of my right foot that got more painful as the day went on. By Sunday night (36 hours after the 8 miler) I was hurting pretty bad just walking around.

The pain didn’t go away with ice and ibprofen. After some googling, I figured it was either a stress fracture (BAD!) or an inflamed tendon on the side of my foot. Since I didn’t want to take any chances, I went to see a podiatrist. At this point I figured I was not running the half.

The diagnosis was – “It might be a stress fracture, but it’s more likely tendonitis. Tape your foot up, ice and see how you feel in a few days”. That weekend I tried to say off my feet. Early next week, I was starting to feel pretty good.

Doc says it might be ok to do the race, knowing that I really want to, but first try running a few miles. So I did. Unfortunately the taped up foot and lack of running meant I started feeling hot spots just a mile in. I wasn’t feeling much pain so I bailed on the extra miles, deciding that I knew enough about my foot status to go for it.

The race itself

The race took place in a regional park in Fremont, CA (East Bay). It was a nice day, a little chilly, but by the time the race started, t-shirt and shorts were fine. The route was a big loop plus an out and back.

I was a little nervous. Not only was my foot just getting better but I was worried about getting blisters early in the race. Additionally, I had felt a little sick in the days leading up to the race and didn’t really do of anything activity-wise. But as I’ve heard – better to go into a race under trained than over trained. And I was definitely the latter.

MILES 1 – 6

The race started off well. I tried to get into a good rhythm. They had aid stations set up nicely which was great, and my track selection “Swedish House Mafia 2010 Creamfield Extended Mix” really helped. What was NOT nice was that the Vibram Bikila’s did not do a good job protect me on some of the more gravely areas. Definitely took some pebbles to the foot. But was able to push through.

The first loop went pretty well all things considered. But remember, I had never actually run more than 10 miles so today I was going 30% farther than my max distance. The first loop was a lot of me going - Ok, I feel pretty good now, but can I run what I just ran X more times???

MILES 7 – 9

One thought I kept trying to re-iterate was this: when you think you really can’t go anymore, you’ve got about half left in the tank. This is actually going to be the basis of a whole future blog post but anyway, the point is that I had to keep reminding myself this was something I could complete.

It’s also true that the 2nd time around things go by a little bit faster. But around mile 8 I was starting to drag a little. I lived moment to moment for the next announcement from Runkeeper that I’d gone another half mile. At one point I was starting to run with my eyes closed, until I realized I was going to run off a cliff.

MILES 10 – 12

Around mile 10, I reached an aid station and and ate an energy gel which helped perk me up (though it left my hands pretty sticky). Also, I just read an article on energy gels and apparently half of the effect is just in perking up your brain. Interesting.

Once I got to mile 11 I knew I was almost there. I started to pick up the pace.

Mile 12 came around quick. I had been walking for bit every mile and pushed myself to run the last 2 miles

The loop ends on a pretty brutal hill so that was pretty rough to keep jogging – and there’s also a crazy downhill section with a lot of rocks. I almost crashed sprinting to the finish but luckily I stayed on my feet. Didn’t even really feel out of breath at the end of the race like I usually do – but perhaps the longer distance just affected my body in a different way.

Post-race

After the race I just felt really drained. Not panting but just tired. I sat down for a while and felt a little better. Then I felt A LOT better when I saw what they had for snacks/post race food.

Ice cream sandwiches from Ikes, Apple Pie with whipped cream and other amazing foods. I made myself sick with all of it – and it was glorious.

Debrief

I ran a 2:09.09 (chip time) 2:09:31 (gun time). The average pace was 9:52 but really I was around 9:30 for the first half, and got slower and slower in the 2nd half til I was probably running 10:30s or something.

That put me at 197 for the race (out of 347 racers) and 18th out of 25 males ages 25-29. I’m below the median – but that means there’s more room to go up!

Ultimately, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I had some massive blisters on my foot, my tendonitis was flaring up a little bit, but otherwise I made it out alive. My calves have been sore for the past few days but that’s to be accepted. My knee is doing great.

Runkeeper data (it’s a little whack)

Next Race

My next race is going to be a little different: a trialthon! I’m doing the Stanford Treeathlon – a spring distance tri on Feb 25th 2012. I did my first swim workout a few days ago and I think it’s going to be a lot of fun!

Any triathlon readers out there? Would love to hear training advice!

I'm teaching an in-person Skillshare class on everything I've learned about creating a personal and professional brand through blogging on May 16th in San Francisco. See all the details here.

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2011: Art of Ass-Kicking Year in Review

by Jason on January 5, 2012 in General with 2 Comments

See my 2010 Year in Review blog post here.

2011 blog year in review

2012 has begun and I thought it’d be a good time to reflect on how the site has done. I’ll start with top posts, dive into some analytics and finish with reflections and thoughts for next year.

Top Posts of 2011

(* denotes it was one of the top 10 most read posts of 2011)

Entrepreneurship/Startups/Ridejoy

The biggest thing for me in 2011 was founding a company called Ridejoy and going through Y Combinator. Based on the survey I took a few months ago, this is one of the topics my readers are most interested in reading more about.

General Ass-Kicking

Some of my posts defy any particular topic or categorization and really can only be placed under the “general ass-kicking” header. People really seem to love these posts: Cold Showers was my post popular post of 2011, and Winning Isn’t Normal, another general ass-kicking post, was my top in 2010.

Running

I started getting into running in May of this year and little did I realize how much it would change my life. I predict many more running posts in 2012 – just getting started on this and am loving it!

Practical Wisdom

I try to include actionable ideas in every blog posts, but these ones in particular were focused on how to do stuff. Survey results said readers wanted more lessons/tips type posts and these are my best ones.

Gymnastics + General Fitness

Outside of running, I did a series of posts on gymnastics and general fitness that people seemed to like. I think it’s really important to stay fit if you care at all about performing at a high level, whether that’s for your job or something else.

Sales and Marketing

I announced that I would be working on a series on sales and marketing to put down on paper everything I’ve learned so far on these topics. The first two (nondouchey self promotion and everyone being in sales) have been quite popular.

Meta (Blogging on Blogging)

I try not to be a blogger that blogs about blogging, but once in a while it creeps in. In these posts I pull back the curtain on how I run this blog or what I’ve learned from doing this site.

Random/Other

Finally, a grab bag of miscellaneous posts that I thought were good but didn’t make it neatly into any other category.

Analytics for 2011

Traffic Graph

My traffic is still very spiky, based on getting hits on various blog posts.

Visitor Data

I had about 3x as many visits as last year (44k visits in 2010) and about 40% more pageviews (127k pg views in 2010). People spent a bit more time on the site but less pages per visit, which doesn’t really make sense to me – let me know if you can explain that one!

Sources & Keywords

As I’ve grown, I’m getting more search engine traffic and less referral traffic as a total proportion of my traffic. Direct visits has stayed constant. In terms of the keywords that come to the site, it’s dominated by my name, cold showers and rejection therapy. Referral sources still have HN topping out, with direct traffic coming in second and search results coming in third.

Lessons / Reflections / Looking Forward

I started blogging seriously again in July of 2010 and so 2011 was my first full year of operation, so to speak. I learned tons about writing interesting and (hopefully) insightful blog posts. I renamed this blog from jasonshen.com to “The Art of Ass-Kicking”. I started a small email list with special updates. I got to connect with tons of smart/interesting people. I posted 5 days a week for a month and I held my first readership survey.

So what have I learned?

That it’s good to experiment. Some of my best posts were written in the heat of the moment (rebellious. asian.), on a random topic I didn’t think anyone would care about (cold showers), written in a different style than my normal articles (getting your groove back) or about stuff that was deeply personal (blew out my knee).

That people care about the personal touch. I reply to every single person who signs up for my email newsletter and people seem to really appreciate that. It gives me good ideas for blog posts and also helps me stay connected to what my audience is interested in.

That bloggers are regular people. Sometimes people will tell me they’ve read my blog posts when we first meet (at a mixer or meetup). I’m usually a little surprised but it’s a nice feeling. It gets awkward though when the other person gets gushy about it. My blog isn’t even that big/good! I got to meet Patrick Mckenzie briefly at a YC event and was barely able to rein myself in and act cool. It was only because I remembered how I feel in these situations and tried to “do as I would have done to me”.

What are my plans for 2012?

Well, my primary focus for this year is Ridejoy, so that means the blog will only get secondary (or perhaps even tertiary treatment as my running training ramps up). But don’t worry too much, as I’ve grown as a blogger, I hope the quality of the posts I put out will increase, even if the frequency / sheer quantity decreases some.

I did upgrade my blog theme (I’m now running the Premium Pixels theme by Orman Clark). I’d love to get your feedback on it. I’ve also created a logo for myself – which you can see on the left. I’m excited by the upgraded look, I believe it builds a stronge professional brand for this blog, without looking too corporate or stuffy.

I’m hoping to do more interactive stuff with the blog – more giveaways, contests, perhaps even a meetup! I want to expand the range of the blog.

I also hope to vary my post style. I’ve read some good books over break (including the wonderfully elegant Different) and will be trying a couple different styles of writing. Would love to hear what you all think.

Most importantly, I want to continue serving you – my readers. I am very fortunate to do this and I hope to continue producing valuable content and sharing my learnings with you.

 

I'm teaching an in-person Skillshare class on everything I've learned about creating a personal and professional brand through blogging on May 16th in San Francisco. See all the details here.

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