The Quest for 1%: Debriefing February, 2012

My fellow riskologists,

Sometimes you need to shake things up a little to keep progress going. And that’s exactly what February was all about here at the Riskology Lab.

In addition to regular progress on my biggest challenges, I made some important changes to Riskology.co itself to keep the little movement we have here going strong.

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Welcome to the 1% Club Update for February, 2012. This is where I discuss the strategies I use as I take on the biggest challenges of my life.

If you’re new here, you may want to get familiar with the 1% Club first and read a few previous updates to see how things have progressed over time.

Thanks for being here. I hope you’re able to take some of the lessons I’ve learned and apply them to your own big challenges.

Big Changes to the 1% Club

I’ve threatened to do it for a long time, but this month, I finally set some time aside to think critically about the future of the 1% Club, and the result was a very big change. For the last two years, it’s been a sort of “bucket list,” if you will, dedicated to the challenges I want to take on in my life that less than 1% of the world will ever do.

Today, the 1% Club changes to focus only on the current challenge underway. The “to do” list is gone!

While it’s fun to have a big, long list, it’s not necessarily the best way to stay focused. The idea all along was to train my attention on one challenge and keep my head down until it’s finished. Then, I’d move on to another.

But what ended up happening was something much different. Instead of focusing, after just a few months I found myself spread far too thin, making a small amount of progress on a number of different and unrelated goals. If you look back through some of my earlier debriefings, you’ll see how many directions I’ve been heading all at once.

I never like to pigeonhole myself, but I also don’t like spinning my wheels. When I single task, I tend to get more done faster. So, for the foreseeable future, I’m officially a mountain climber and a distance runner (cue joke about still not being able to commit).

This is a big change on paper and in the focus of my life, but it doesn’t actually change a lot. All the goals I had before, I still have; they’re just out of the way for a while while I work on what’s right in front of me: the seven summits club and the seven continents club.

Hopefully this will help me get there faster.

If you have a lot of goals yourself, but find it hard to follow through with any of them, consider dropping all but the most important one.

You won’t forget about the others if they’re actually important to you. You’ll just get to them faster.

Looking Towards China, Feeling Fat

Now that the pesky details are sorted out for my trip to Beijing for the Great Wall Marathon, I can get down to the fun part: running!

I am, by most people’s standards, an “avid” runner. I don’t do it for the exercise. I do it to get high (no really, it’s a real thing). The “good shit” kicks in at around mile 10, if you ever wondered.

Even with my faithful running—three days a week with no unscheduled breaks for over 3 years now—this winter has been a particularly bad one for my physique.

After struggling to button my pants the other day, a quick hop on the scale revealed an extra 15 pounds since my last weigh-in in December. 15 pounds in two months! Damn you, warm, buttery croissants!

I’m a bit of a beanpole, so I don’t normally concern myself with a little extra weight, but this time it’s concentrated right in the critical “pants buttoning area.” And with a marathon coming up, 15 pounds can make quite a difference, especially in one with thousands and thousands of stairs.

I’ve run non-stop for three years, but now it’s probably time to face up to the truth I’ve always known: simply running is not enough to keep up good health.

Side note:  Apparently, some people are very passionate about stairs. Here in Portland, there’s a database cataloging all the staircases in town, people write short memoirs about them, and you can even pay for a staircase tour. I wonder how business is going?

Whatever challenge you’re working on, it’s possible that “just doing it” won’t always yield the best results. To excel, you might need to attack it from several different angles.

Next task: Begrudgingly tackle the free-for-all diet and add some new exercises to my workouts.

A Bird’s Eye View of Riskology.co

Ever since Riskology.co became my full-time gig nearly two years ago, I’ve fixed, changing, and generally moving things forward as much as possible each month. Some months have been more active than others, and some have been successes while others were failures.

Occasionally, I talk about some of the bigger changes when they happen, but I haven’t always done the best job of making Riskology.co updates a part of the conversation here.

Many of you are running your own communities and I get a lot of questions about how this site works and grows, so—at least for now—we’ll start setting aside a little space here to talk about how I’m working to grow Riskology.co and make it a stronger community.

If you’re not interested in the inner-workings of the site, feel free to skip this section.

In February, Advanced Riskolgy grew by almost 1,000 readers. This was due largely to a very popular guest post I wrote for Zen Habits that was published this month.

If you’re a new writer or trying to spread some type of message, don’t try to do it alone! Getting your work in front of other audiences that might connect with you is one of the most important things you can do.

I realized this a long time ago, but I didn’t make it a priority until recently. Now that I’ve seen just how important guest writing is for Riskology.co, I’ve made it a goal to do it at least twice a month.

Side note: I recently opened Riskology.co to guest writers in the form of “Riskologist Field Reports”. Our program is much different from most other bloggers’, and we have some special requirements, so make sure you read the rules carefully.

The best part, though, is that you don’t have to be a blogger or professional writer to participate, and I’ll help you make your piece the best it can be.

Here are the details.

One other change I made in February that I think will make a big improvement to the community is the introduction of a monthly theme. In February, it was freedom. This month, it’s creative adventure.

The idea is that, all month, we’ll focus on one specific topic and dive as deep as we can into it. My hope is that this change will be just as good for myself as it is for you.

AR lends itself to many topics, and I tend to be all over the map on any given month. By focusing on just one topic each month, we can start to have more meaningful conversations and newcomers will have a better understanding of what the site is really all about.

Of course, at this point it’s all a guess. This is what I hope will happen. In a future update, we’ll see if I’m right.

AR Readers Answer: Where’s the Freedom in Your Life

Last month, the theme here was freedom and how to get more of it in your life. Naturally, I asked you to write on your own blog and include a link to Riskology.co so I could include it in this month’s update.

Well, unlike other months were we got a number of submissions, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit we only got one last month. I guess I didn’t do a good enough job of letting you know about it.

However, the single submission we got from Paige asking, “How free do you really think you are?” was really good, so that kind of makes up for it.

Also, a number of people left thoughtful comments on last month’s update.

New Reader Challenge:  Describe Your Most Memorable Adventure

This month, the theme is creative adventure. Most people think you have to travel abroad or do something crazy and unexpected to experience “adventure.”

Those are certainly ways to do it, but they aren’t the only ways.

I want to know about your most memorable adventure. What was it like? What did you do? Why is it so special and memorable?

Share your answers with more people by writing an article about this on your own blog (and leaving a link to it in the comments). If you’re not the blogging type, though, feel free to leave your story right here in the comments.

I’ll share everyone’s stories in next month’s update. In the mean time, here’s to creating more memorable adventures.

Yours in risk-taking,

Image by: jercraigs