An Experiment

Last week I found an article I had saved from college entitled “How Will You Measure You’re Life?”. I don’t remember what it was about, nor have I made it past the first page. Nonetheless, just reading the title caused me to take a deep look into my life.

How will I measure my life?

I wrote to myself a couple years back that “when its all over, I will be happy if I:

1) had a life full of adventures and stories
2) Changed the world somehow
3) Spread joy and make a positive impact on others”

I told myself that if I spent each and every moment of my life doing, or preparing to do 1 of the above 3 commitments, that I would be happy.

But I have not been succeeding (as much as I want to, at least). I usually get engulfed with one of the above, and forget about the other two. For example, I will work 12 hour days on my company, and completley forget about friends and family, or adventures and travels.

Or, I will start traveling, but then feel really guilty that I am not working on my company.

And that will build up, and I will get so taken over by emotions that I will forget to spread joy and make a positive impact on others.

There is never a balance.

And in the end, all of the uncertainty from my company, all of these emails, all of the things I have to do, have made me feel that life is really controlling me, and I am not controlling my life.

20 years later, what do I think is going to happen? That I am just going to turn work mode off and turn relax mode on? As Jason Fried said, whatever habits you have now are the one’s you are going to have 30 years from now. When you look at people who said that they would work hard and then completely stop working and enjoy life later, it usually turns out that they are still working so hard after they retire. Its impossible to just switch it off.

And so I decided to do something about it; I am going to actually measure my life.

I decided for the next 30 days I am going to put a number on every hour of my life – and associate it to what actions I took those hours. At every hour, my phone or watch will prompt me to be conscious of how I am feeling. My hypothesis is that I will become much more aware of how my actions will affect my goals and emotions. I figure, that if dieters lose much more weight simply by keeping a journal of the food they eat, that I can start cracking down on all of the things I want to accomplish more efficiently because I will be more aware.

Hopefully this will provide some good insights I can share with everyone else out there!

Aaron
#5 – Blogging.

 

 

Small Things I Learned Or Thought About On Our Off Day

• Getting people to talk about their interests makes them like you much more (and makes them feel more connected with you) then telling them stories (no matter how interesting they are) about yourself or what you have done

• The best thing to do each day is to wake up and set some goals that you want to accomplish today.  You can really stay on track and feel like you are accomplishing something when you know what you want to do each day before all of the distractions of the day start to make their way into your mind.

• We are always taught, in entrepreneurship, to create a quick product and then iterate and learn fast (see Lean Startup).  Why don’t we do that with ourselves? We reflect and make quick changes to our product, but we hardly do it to ourselves.

Boston!!

Wow Boston. I love you…

A lot…

Today was our first full day in Boston. We went to Mike’s Pastries in the Italian area and I got my first ever Canoli. I have never eaten something that caused me to shut my eyes to enjoy the flavor, but wow, this definitely did.

In the morning Alistair, Rick, and I ran 13k around Boston. It was beautiful out, the sun bounced off the river and runners and cyclists were everywhere. We ran around the river, past MIT, Fenway Park, and Boston University and it really brought me back.

 

Alistair and Rick from our run today

When I was choosing a college back in highschool, I had a huge dilemma: Indiana University vs Boston University. It was essentially Business School vs The City of Boston. I loved Boston so much that I put in my deposit, bought BU sweatshirts, pants, shirts, and even a sticker that has still left its mark on my car even after I pulled it off.

Yet the last day possible for college decisions, I switched to IU for the business school. Running around BU today, but 4 years after the fact, really brought me back. I love Boston, it is my favorite city, and I wonder what my life would be like if I went there. However, I wouldn’t trade where I am right now for anything. I am so lucky to be where I am right now, and who knows if that would have happened at Boston.

Either way, I love it. I cannot wait to go to MIT for classes tomorrow. At MIT John Akula will teach us about Business Law.

Here is his Bio

John Akula: Senior Lecturer, Law

Then we get to meet Patrick FitzGerald who is from Wharton (Pennsylvania) Entrepreneurial Programs. I think we are going to be spending the day with some of the entrepreneurs from Wharton and I look forward to learning what their projects are.

Here is Patrick’s Bio

Patrick FitzGerald: Lecturer, Wharton

Thanks for reading today!

Aaron

A Little Glimpse into How I Work and What I am Working On

Taking up the whole whiteboard wall. Photo by Marin Licina.

 

Here is Where Bart (My Roommate from the Netherlands) and I Live

Living Room and my bedroom on the right!

My Bedroom!

This was from the first day.  Lets just say… It is not nearly as clean anymore…

Probably The Most Adorable Thing I Have Ever Seen

Blogs from Other Global Scholars

(Just in case I forget to update this one!)

1) Marin’s Blog (Netherlands)

2) Roger’s Blog (Netherlands)

3) Ali’s Blog (UK)

4) Keith’s Blog (Delaware)

5) John’s Blog (Boston)

The Global Scholars

The Global Scholars & Professor Ted Zoller (with Anna Missing Oh No!)

The Global Scholars as Dr. Evil (with Ted Zoller)

Night Time at The Foundation

Picture by John Pavlish

It has been a while…

Wow, it has been a long time since the last blog post.  Sorry!  I kept promising myself that I would post but never did.  Today, no more!  Here goes nothing!

First, what is the Kauffman Global Scholars program?:

The program brings in 20 young entrepreneurs (this year ranging from 21 (me!) to 35, with most people around 25) from all over the world with the goal of teaching us all that we need to know about entrepreneurship and creating our own company while providing us with a network to turn our ideas into companies.  At the end we will all be expected to turn our idea into action.  Over the past few weeks we have had lectures and meetings with Professors, Entrepreneurs, CEOs, Venture Capitalists, Angel Investors, and Researchers from the entrepreneurship community.

Without going into confidential details, here is a gist of a few cool ideas some of the other Global Scholars are working on:

1) Stress reducing candy

2) A waste management system for orbital debris

3) Polymers for computer screens that are much cheaper, more durable, and smaller than the current ones on the market

4) A way to stop energy theft in third world countries

5) Sustainable playgrounds

Everyone here is working on such mind blowing ideas that I would have never thought of.  I cannot wait until the ideas are public and on the market so I can actually talk to everyone about them as those brief sentences really do not do them justice.

This was our last week of lectures in Kansas City.  Next week we will each pitch to the other Global Scholars, something we have been practicing the past few weeks.  We will then go to Boston and take classes at Harvard and MIT for a couple weeks.  After that, we will all travel to Silicon Valley and do the same there but at Stanford and we will meet entrepreneurs in the area.

Finally, for the last 3 months of the program, we will all travel to our respective internships/mentorships where we each will learn from an entrepreneurial company that is in a similar area to each of our ideas.

I will be working at Prezi (check them out here and a video about them here) and I cannot wait to begin.  Prezi is a competitor to Microsoft’s Power Point but it allows you to map out your ideas instead of forcing you to present in a linear fashion.  A few of my teachers have used it in the past, and many of the other Global Scholars are using it to pitch their ideas, so I cannot wait to learn as much as I can from the people that have created Prezi.  They recently finished a $15 million round of funding so it is a really exiting time that I will be entering in.  I especially cannot wait to be in an entrepreneurial culture where the environment is changing rapidly and the company must react.

That’s it for now!  Thanks to everyone that got me here!  If you know any entrepreneurs that want to learn anything that I have learned or want to do this program, or just want to meet some of the other Global Scholars faculty and participants, let me know and I will definitely help you out!

Hope you enjoyed the post,

Aaron