What a great vacation! We arrived at Massanutten on Sunday afternoon to get everyone checked in for the Heiman family reunion.
On Monday we played at the pool and had dinner at the geezer house.
On Tuesday we celebrated my parents' 40th wedding anniversary, my 40th birthday, my dad's 70th birthday and Seattle's 22nd birthday all at once at a picnic in Hopkins Park on the mountain.
On Wednesday eleven of us conquered the Massanutten Ridge Trail, took pics on the peak and rode the chair lift down the mountain. We had Log Cabin BBQ for dinner.
On Thursday it rained. We played some games inside and went to the Massanutten Water Park for much of the day. We shared a toast to the reunion hosts and ate tacos at the RAZN house.
On Friday Lara and her girls went horseback riding while the Demers went canoeing with Mom and my clan (JAMI) rode the chair lift to the mountain summit. At 12-ish, JAMI, Mike, Mikey and Emma went tubing down the Shenandoah River. Beautiful water, perfect weather.
I did anywhere from 20 to 220 minutes of activity on every day and probably had more than enough calories to ensure that I did not lose any weight. I've been sore and tired at bedtime every night this week. We all slept well each night (except my dad, who felt ill for a couple days after mixing up his medication schedule) and enjoyed the soaking hot tub more than once.
Today is Saturday and we're heading home to see Billy Joel in concert tonight at Nationals Park in DC.  posted @ 11:18 AM

  Morning walk - 2.88mi, 53:00, 9:05am One full week of activity every day - done. Next week, 20 minutes per day minimum.
Got to walk with Amy again today. Had a relaxing morning on the eve of my summer vacation.
Tomorrow I'll do some chores and get ready to head out to Massanutten for some serious walking and playing with family.  posted @ 10:18 PM

  Morning walk - 2.33mi, 40:23, 8:05am Another day of activity. Still dealing with a sore back. Tried to run, but didn't get very far. Mostly walking. I stretch to try to save my back, but it still hurts.
Drafted some work e-mails in my head before returning home to eat, take a shower and get to work.
I think I have told myself in the past that I couldn't exercise at 8am because the day was getting away from me and I had to get to work. A decent rationalization occurred to me today: I could be sitting in traffic for over an hour - not working - on my way to work or I could be exercising during that time. Seems like an easy choice.
I still need to get better about going to sleep earlier and waking up earlier so I can have more productive time during the day.
When will I see the dividends of extra energy from this regular activity? I am so impatient.
Trying to stay focused on the little successes leading up to the establishment of a good habit - a habit of daily activity that I need to stay healthy.  posted @ 9:22 PM

  Today's Activity - Erg for 20 mins, 4km - 8:20am Keeping the streak alive! I did 20 minutes on the rowing machine (erg) and racked up 4000 meters (2:30/500m pace). My arms already hurt. They will hurt more later.
No ideas to report from the exercise session. Afterward I did have a thought about what to do to clean up the clutter in the basement: put everything we don't use into plastic boxes and put those boxes in our cubby storage area off the garage. Label all those boxes "Garage Sale" and set a reminder for a time to pull it all out to throw away, sell or give away. It's just re-arranging the mess temporarily, but it will help to feel like we're making progress.  posted @ 10:20 AM

  Morning walk - 2.38mi, 44:03, 8:06am Walked with Amy this morning. We got to talk a little - about work, the kids, plans for the house. Amy's ready to go back to work already. My back still feels sore from the tubing trip. I think I need more sleep to recover and build muscle so I don't feel so sore all the time.
No brilliant ideas to report from today's walk. Just glad that I'm keeping the streak alive to eventually instill a new habit of daily activity.

I did have a strange bolt of hubris streak across my brain while in the home stretch of my walk: I thought that it might be a good idea to train for a race like the Army 10-miler. Then I thought it would be more of a challenge - a stretch goal - if I were to train for it as if it were really a race. In the past, when I trained for the ATM I was focused on just surviving the course and finishing. Those are important goals, to be sure, but what if I trained aggressively to hit a personal record time that seems really audacious? I don't know what would happen. It might hurt a lot, but daily activity would not be boring. Motivated by the goal of "leaving it all on the field" and achieving a personal best time that seems out of reach could feel really good.

Labels: Walks

  posted @ 11:16 AM

  Morning walk - 1.01mi, 18:21, 8:08am Four days in a row now...
I went with the family to Harpers Ferry yesterday to go flat-water tubing down a stretch of the Potomac River. It sounds relaxing, but it was exhausting to try to motor around in a tube against the river current to catch up with people. We went down the river twice. The second time we tied our tubes together and it was more relaxing. But today my shoulders, core and even my legs are achy.
In spite of the aching, I managed to get out for a short walk this morning.
Not many thoughts while on this walk other than the usual awareness of how stiff and sore I feel...
I do remember thinking that if I am this sore before and after these little walks and other activities, then I am going to die when I try to hike the Massanutten ridge next week. I hope I don't die. Sore muscles wouldn't be the worst thing when you're lounging around with family at a mountain resort.

Labels: Walks

  posted @ 10:06 AM

  Today's activity: trimming hedges, mulching flower beds, bike riding practice No daily walk today, but plenty of activity.
I trimmed our bushes in the front yard. I picked up mulch at Home Depot and spread the mulch under the bushes. Then I tried to teach Jake to ride a bike. After pushing him around and listening to a LOT of whining, I am exhausted.
Tomorrow: tubing on a river.

Labels: Walks

  posted @ 7:27 PM

  Morning walk - 1.21mi, 22:58, 9:46am Haven't walked in a week or done any exercise really. I did go on a family walk, but I don't remember which day that was. I keep thinking I'll get around to exercising and keep finding reasons not to:

• Have to skip it in the morning because I wake up late and have to get to work
• Have to skip it in the evening because I'm hungry or tired or still working
• Skip it on the weekends because I'm busy doing other stuff with the family or I am in a lazy mood.

I walked today even after waking up late and after eating breakfast - just to break the streak of missed walks. Some thoughts I had on my short walk today:

1. I've decided that I am less concerned with losing weight than I am with creating an exercise/activity habit that will allow me to stay healthy and manage my weight. I've already tried (and achieved) the boot-camp weight-loss approach (via the Ideal Protein program), losing 60 pounds in four months. I've gained back almost 30 pounds now due to two main factors: eating whatever I feel like and not being active enough to burn off the excess calories. One day I may try harder to fix my diet and eat better, but for now, I want to focus on establishing an activity habit that will allow me to manage my weight.
2. Having a plan or a theory to create a habit is not sufficient. I've read that I should start with a small achievable goal and use that to build momentum. So I will start today with this goal: For the next 7 days, I will do something active everyday for at least 10 minutes. For the following 7 days, I will do something active everyday for 20 minutes. Fourteen days from now I'll check my progress and set a new goal.
3. Mary called me this morning to ask about options for PC virus protection software. Even though I was only half-awake, I was happy to be able to help her by providing a recommendation based on my experience answering the same question for myself ("What anti-virus software should I use?"). Questions occur to me in all aspects of my life and I do what anyone else does to find an answer. I search the Internet for solutions that others have found and documented. If that doesn't work, I ask actual people I know for their recommended solutions or guidance for finding a solution elsewhere. I could use my blog (or better, a new blog) to document questions I've been able to answer. It would be a useful reference for me to jog my memory and it may be helpful to others. Certainly it would save me time when I try to answer a question that I've answered many times before. I'm sure this is not an original, earth-shattering idea, but I think the real value to me would be creating and maintaining a compendium of answers to my questions.
4. I thought about how to summarize Lessons Learned after a project. 

• First, describe what went well and any thoughts on why you were successful. 

• Second, describe what did not go we well along with any thoughts on what contributed to the problems you encountered. Be sure to distinguish between the problems that were within your control and those things that were out of your control. For problems that were within your control to fix, describe what you did and what you should have done (if, given the benefit of hindsight, you think you should have done anything differently).

• Finally, describe what you would do differently in a similar situation in the future given what you learned from this project. To do this, it is important to structure these statements to include the following components: 

•  Describe the situation and the typical approach used to handle the situation 

•  Describe how that situation should be handled based upon what you have learned - has your experience shown that the typical approach really works or have you found a different, better way to handle the situation 

Example
WHAT WENT WELL - Our team was extremely flexible. We quickly adapted to our evolving understanding of the client's needs and kept a positive attitude about making adjustments to project tactics.

WHAT DID NOT GO WELL - The value of our team's contributions were not well-understood by key stakeholders. IN-OUR-CONTROL: We could have insisted that we confirm our project sponsor expectations as early as possible in the project. OUT-OF-OUR-CONTROL: The project sponsor was not available to us and did not understand what our project was for (even though she apparently approved paying for it).

LESSONS LEARNED - When a project starts, it is common to have questions about the requirements and target outcomes that will be valuable to the project sponsor and other key stakeholders. The contract/statement of work (SOW) is meant to provide clarity on project requirements and goals, but in most projects involving strategy consulting services, there are many diagnostic questions that may need to be answered to get a clear picture of what will truly provide value for the client organization.
Our typical approach to dealing with ambiguous requirements is to make some assumptions and infer what the writer of the SOW meant. Then we take our understanding - our interpretation - of what is required for the project and present it to the project sponsor (ideally) to have him/her either validate our interpretation or give us better/different guidance to follow.
Based on our experience with this client, we have learned that this typical proactive approach to confirming client goals and expectations may ultimately do more harm than good. A client must be able to articulate what success looks like from their perspective and what they want to achieve in their own words. We can help refine their vision statements and ask clarifying questions. But if we do not insist on having the client describe what they want in their own words, we may be obscuring a fundamental problem that can lead to the cancellation or failure of the project: If the client can't say what results they want to achieve, then it will be almost impossible to provide results that matter to them.

Labels: Walks

  posted @ 11:45 AM

  Morning walk - 6.32mi, 1:46:33, 10:02am

1. Quite a few people were out walking today. I don't think I saw anyone who was actually walking to get somewhere or do an errand. Everyone was either walking for pleasure or exercising (unless you count walking a dog as an errand).
2. Was reflecting on the phrase I used yesterday at work - "...we do ourselves and our clients a disservice when we do not offer multiple ways to interact with Gartner to solve a given problem." 
3. This led me to think of the proposed timeline of interactions with Research that my colleague sent. I think this timeline is good but it is incomplete. It would make a good framework for presenting an "action plan" for a client - not quite a roadmap, but more like a menu of options for various ways of tackling a problem or set of problems facing a client.
4. This led me to think of the different ways that we can bring our services to bear to address different problems, and I began to think of what consultants do using a metaphor of "Consultant as Doctor."

• Research can be thought of as a resource of information for managing one's own health. For the most part, it is possible to maintain your health by following published good advice. Occasionally it may be necessary to follow-up with the author of such advice to ask more specific questions about how the advice may apply to you. But at some point, and under certain conditions, it just makes sense to go see a doctor.
• Doctors diagnose patients (organizations) to determine their illness or condition (problems). Consultants do this in three ways:
1. Identify problems by naming them, taking what a client says at face value
2. Refining problems by probing further into what a client says (doing some root-cause analysis) 
3. Framing problems by interpreting their meaning in the context in which they are found
• Consultants diagnosing a problem is like one or more office visits to a doctor or a stay in a hospital to figure out the true nature of one's symptoms
• Developing an action plan is like developing a course of treatment to address a given condition. A full treatment plan should include several modalities:
• Developing a strategic plan or road map is like visiting a psychologist or a personal trainer who helps you set your goals and then make a plan to achieve them
• Physical therapy and/or outpatient surgery (like workshops or taking action on risk assessment findings presented in a deliverable)
• Self-monitoring and maintenance (specific behaviors a client must do to ensure the benefit of the treatment). This can include doing some homework (like reading research) to be well-informed to make good choices
• Attending support groups is like participating in briefings, webinars and events
• Consultants can also be brought in as "specialists" to treat a very specific kind of problem. Changing the medical metaphor to a sports metaphor, consultants can be thought of as "free agents" you acquire to add to your team to win a championship, or in some cases, these specialists are like "designated hitters" - role players on a team with particular strengths (e.g., getting on base and hitting home runs)

Labels: Walks

  posted @ 12:34 PM

  Morning walk - .88mi, 16' 31" 6:18am

1. Preparation is helpful (having shoes and clothes ready, having running app on iPhone configured with playlists for music, etc.)
2. One lap around the block behind my house is almost one mile long
3. Skipping exercise in the morning is not a good idea. Figuring that you'll get around to it later in the day almost never works out. The truth is that you never feel up to it, like you have enough energy to start. The best thing to do is to just start and do something.
4. I'm grateful for having a nice, safe place to walk (paths, neighborhoods, trees).
5. Sunrise this morning was a bright yellow ball.

Labels: Walks

  posted @ 6:58 AM