Ryan Mickle Blogs Here

Hey, I’d wear it. With pride.

Since my grandmother told me years ago that researchers had observed that when people wrote down their goals, a greater number of their aspirations for their future came true, I’ve written down my own. By writing down my dreams of a health, happiness, and success (as I define each) and even sharing them with those close to me, I’ve been able to hold myself accountable and remain focused as I changed and improved major aspects of my life and routine.

This year, I writing down a different kind of new year’s resolutions. Rather than focus on personal growth and fulfillment, I’m resolving to make serious commitments to influencing climate change positively in 2008. Notice that I am not just talking about personal environmental impact, but rather my influence on impacts over which I may not have direct control. This is because my control, or lack thereof, doesn’t limit the impact that climate change will have on me, my kids (someday), and the following generations.

Why I care:

• There exists a tremendous opportunity to thrive as a society that minimizes the long term impacts of everything it does.
• Guilt-free living.
• Climate change… there are so many beautiful places I want to travel with friends and, someday, my own family. Imagine an age in which a waterfall pool you swam in during your 20s with a best friend no longer exists when you return with your family to relive and share those experiences.
• Imagine how the next category 4 or 5 hurricane will affect the lives of families, changing every aspects of their lives, and the impacts of people being forced to migrate away from storm-prone areas.
• Imagine a time when polar bears only exist in Coke ads and captivity.

Climate Change Resolutions:

1. I will work only for a company that does has aggressive plans to reduce its carbon emissions (how about to zero?) in place. If the company doesn’t, I’ll lobby and volunteer to manage putting these programs in place. Only after 6 months of working toward this goal, all the way to the CEO, will I give up and leave the company.
2. I will do everything in my power to purchase only from companies with the most aggressive strategies to impact society and the environment positively (how about plans to reduce carbon emissions to zero?). Worst case scenario, I buy less this year and save more money. Big deal.
3. Train, bus, 50 mpg or better, carpool, or bust. Whenever even remotely possible, I’ll take public transportation over driving. If the additional time I invest ever starts to put this decision in question, I’ll make a conscious effort to strike up conversation with people around me, to learn from them in ways that I never would have otherwise.
4. I will cut my electricity usage by 25%, beginning with replacing light bulbs with CFLs, and turning energy use minimization into a challenge between me and those with whom I share living and working space.
5. I will personally lobby for renewable energy and efficient transportation. It seems as though people are ready for alternatives to driving cars, and many are willing to invest additional money in renewable energy for their homes, so why can’t we get a move on all these ideas? As I always say, talk is cheap. I’ll be lobbying in every way I can, until something gets done.

What are your Climate Change Resolutions?

During the holidays, in my family, we exchange gifts, decorate a tree, and lose ourselves in conversation with each other, catching up for any lost time. A couple times during the holiday season, I indulge in Peppermint Mochas at Starbucks. What makes the way we celebrate a bit untraditional could be our Christmas trees, which usually stand a foot or two tall, or our wish lists, which contain inexpensive items such as new running shoes for myself, a new hand vacuum for Nana (to replace the one we gave her a decade ago that has since died), maybe some new clothes.

When I see holiday advertisements that tell me that the only way into the hearts of those I care about is through diamond-laden jewelry (does “Every kiss begins with Kay” ring a bell?), or a new Mercedes with a big red bow on it, it makes me wonder less why consumers seem to be buying less each year, and why traditional advertising just isn’t effectively moving products any more. At some point, didn’t we all have to wake up and ask ourselves “do we really need all this crap?”

It was recently discovered that a Wal-Mart supplier has been employing sweatshop labor to satisfy the enormous demand of Americans for holiday ornaments. Would it have been a big story if the supplier didn’t sell to Wal-Mart… say, perhaps Ace Hardware? Probably not. But despite all of Wal-Mart’s efforts to ensure that its products are supplied from producers that can make cheap products, without breaking ethical rules, clearly this story has shown that their work isn’t yet done. Thanks to cell phone cameras, a brave factory worker, and the internet, we’re able to see firsthand why it is so important to encourage socially sustainable manufacturing. [See more pictures, video, and even what a sweatshop paycheck looks like here (hint: they bring home less than $1000 a year.)]

So what? Well, this week I had a chance to hear Warren Buffet talk about why he cares so much about investing in social equality. He said that each of us, in the beginning of our lives pull our ticket in the “ovarian lottery.” The ticket we select decides nearly every aspect of our lives–our gender, race, social status, the community in which we are born. If each of us were forced to pull a new ticket, we’d sure as hell want know that everything possible was being done to provide the same opportunities to live healthy, happy lives, to all of us, regardless of which ticket we chose. So, I am not, after all, telling you to boycott Wal-Mart. Just focus on what is most important this holiday–the people you care about, the spirit of expressing our affection for them, and the knowledge of how fortunate we are to have pulled tickets that have afforded us with everything we could possibly need. Do that, and maybe leave the crap that will end up in next year’s garage sale or at Goodwill anyway on the shelf, if you are so inclined.

Happy holidays!

In January of last year, I ran my first 5K in Orange County. I was never a runner, in fact I had hated running since middle school, when I thought physical education teachers made us run cross country because we had misbehaved. Since high school, I had been a gym rat, lifting weights until I though I was going to puke, experimenting with high-protein diets, and varying ratios of macro nutrients (e.g. carbs, protein, and fats) and calorie intake levels until was emotionally miserable, but could bench press the heaviest dumbbells on the racks. I was constantly dieting, never satisfied, and received little personal satisfaction from the significant time I’d invest in “staying in shape.” When I completed that 5K, however, I felt a new, invigorating rush of accomplishment and healthy state of being. That same afternoon, I thumbed through the flyers that I had been handed at the finish, in search of my next fix. I tend to be very determined, and to set high expectations of myself, so there was only one answer. I was going to run a marathon.

Why run a marathon

The benefits of training for and running a marathon are endless. I challenged three friends to join me in making it the most significant healthy living challenge of our lives. Together we set out to give up alcohol, fast food, binge eating, and anything else that would slow us along out path to the San Diego Rock and Roll Marathon’s finish line. Instead of hitting the bars, we’d lose ourselves in conversation during our Saturday morning runs, and hike together on Sundays (Hike Club, named after Fight Club, was born and would soon grow to provide dozens of people with 10-15 mile trail alternatives to nights of red bull vodkas and empty conversation). We made our Saturday runs, which would last for as long as three hours, our quality hang out with good friends time, and we began to look forward to them more than we had ever any bar. We stopped craving unhealthy food and began to really enjoy eating balanced, flavorful, healthy (not fat or carb-free, by the way) food. The result–a complete lifestyle change. We all dropped 30-40 pounds and felt better and stronger than we had ever felt, even in high school and college.

Since then, I have run two marathons (I’ll blog about the exhilarating experience of running a marathon in a future post). I have grown to depend on running as a vital source of mental release–hours I invest throughout my week to enter the meditative state that leads to my clearest, most creative thinking. I never miss a run, because the experience and incredible accomplishment of completing my next race depends on every aspect of my training, and by flaking on a run, I’d only be cheating myself.

How to do it

1. Sign up - the first step to completing a marathon is real commitment, much like the experience of leaving gainful employment and spending your first hundred bucks to start a business on your own. That is when it gets real. Find a run in a city that you’d like to visit (there are marathons almost any time over the course of the year, just about anywhere you’d like to run). Check out Active.com for a list of marathons.

2. Train by the book - there are plenty of training plans out there, and they are really simple. You’ll run fairly short distances during the week, which you can fit in during lunch breaks, and longer ones on weekends. Don’t go overboard; just follow the training plan, especially if you haven’t done too much running in the past. Oftentimes, your muscles strengthen faster than do your bones, increasing your chances of stress fractures and other injuries as you start tacking on extra miles before you’re ready.

3. Do it with friends - the experience of training for and completing a marathon is unforgettable, and worth sharing with friends. Even more importantly, your friends will contribute more to motivating you all the way to the finish line on race day than anything or anyone else. It’s your choice–do you want your friends to be motivating you to enjoy Saturday runs together, or trying to convince you that you can do it hung over, and that you should join them in painting the town red?

4. Make it a lifestyle change - as you invest your time and energy into training your body to run for hours at a time, you’ll find yourself increasingly aware of the impacts of the exercise, food, alcohol, smoking, etc. on your emotional and physical well-being. Listen to your body and eat, drink, and do what gives your body and mind sustainable energy and clarity. Once you shift these perspectives, you’ll enjoy food, drink, and experiences like never before.

5. Get a taste early - the experience of running alongside tens of thousands of others is exhilarating beyond words; it’s a major reason why people do it, and even find themselves running much faster on race day than they ever would have anticipated. Sign up for a 5K, 10K, a half marathon, or even volunteer at a race event just to experience the energy level. You’ll leave glowing, and counting the days until the big race.

6. Give it everything you’ve got - okay, it’s race day. Remind yourself of how hard you’ve worked, and how much you’ve earned that completely satisfied, accomplished feeling that you’ll experience at the finish line. Savor it; it’s the most difficult experiences in life that we often remember with the most delight.

Good luck. I hope to see you out there!

Randy Pausch, the energizing, inspiring professor at Carnegie Mellon who has lost the fight against pancreatic cancer, gave his last lecture in mid-September and the video ended up on Google Video, and surfaced on TechCrunch. In his lecture, he talks about how we can all achieve our wildest childhood dreams, get past the brick walls that we put in place to prevent those who really don’t want something from getting it without really trying, and inspiring and helping others, woven into a truly awesome story of his life adventures and path to real success (the kind with which many of the world’s wealthiest people are completely unfamiliar).

It may be a 90 minute video, but trust me, it is worth it.

In July, I set off for an eight day holiday, per the recommendation of a friend and mentor. It didn’t matter where I went, so long as there was a place to melt in a lounge chair, and lots of water (I’ve lived near the ocean for nearly my entire life, and it has become a prerequisite to my relaxation), or so I thought.

I chose Jamaica, and as you can see, it was gorgeous. What will surprise you, however, is that it was what I learned and the events that would follow when I returned to city life, where the treadmill is perpetually dialed at 14 (out of 14), forcing one to jump on in full sprint, would relieve me from burnout, not the sun, the lounge chair, and the horizon’s endless blue water. That’s right, relaxation wasn’t the answer.

While in Jamaica, I set my iPod and sunscreen on the lounge chair next to me (all lounge chairs in the entirety of Jamaica are arranged in couples, since singles rarely travel there, apparently… traveling alone, the subject of another story), and I read like crazy. I read about sustainable design, the application of economic theory to aspects of weird human behavior, and of course… the state of happiness. This book on happiness, however, didn’t claim to be a run of the mill self-help guide to finding happiness. It was written by a brainiac Harvard psychology professor (Daniel Gilbert) about the limitations of the mind, and its perceptions of the state of happiness. As such, there was little to take away from the book aside from a faint sense of hopelessness and frustration about the lack of control we have on our emotional states… except one thing. One big thing that applies directly to entrepreneurship.

In the book, Gilbert mentions a study of how people recall past experiences, mainly taking chances. (more…)

Yesterday, I made my way to Sausalito, a nice getaway spot stashed just east of the Golden Gate Bridge. While San Francisco was engulfed in fog, Sausalito was perfectly clear. I spent the day brainstorming beneath clear skies looking out at the San Francisco bay and a cloud that didn’t seem to want to let go of the city.

When surrounded by clouds, escape to a new perspective.

Author, entrepreneur, Princeton University guest-lecturer, and world traveler, Tim Ferriss, is helping the world begin living the lives they always dreamed about right now, with his book The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich. In the book (out on Tuesday, April 24th), Tim teaches readers to use proven techniques to automate the most time-consuming, income-generating activities in their lives to create the time and means necessary to begin actually living their wildest adventures. Most people don’t even know what they would do with the hundreds of hours in each month that they would free by implementing these techniques, and what is scary is that work typically expands with time allotted. Therefore, the time we typically free for ourselves gets filled with additional and often unproductive work. Ever tried to check your email for 2 minutes and finally pull away from your computer an hour later? The solution–lifestyle design. By designing lifestyles for ourselves that serve our personal passions, determining the requirements of these lifestyles (both time and money–it’s always cheaper than you would think), and actually scheduling in the activities of which we only dream today (like months of world travel, learning new languages, launching a volunteer organization to address a significant social need, etc.), it is all entirely possible.

This book will change the way you think about living. Buy the book and, as you wait for it to arrive, begin brainstorming about all the adventures and life experiences that you would seek out with the time and financial means that the book teaches readers to create.

One tip from Tim’s blog, to wet your appetite:

How to Check E-mail Twice a Day… or Once Every 10 Days

E-mail (and all of its Crackberry/digital leash/Twitter cousins) is the largest single interruption in modern life. In a digital world, creating time therefore hinges on minimizing e-mail. The fastest method I’ve found for controlling the e-mail impulse is to set up an autoresponder that indicates you will be checking e-mail twice per day or less. This is an example of “batching” tasks (performing like tasks at set times, between which you let them accumulate), and your success with batching will depend on two factors:

1. Your ability to train others to respect these intervals
and, much more difficult,
2. Your ability to discipline yourself to follow your own rules

Buy the book cheap here (under $13 for a hardcover, affordable even for bootstrapping entrepreneurs):

Overstock ($12.89 + 2.95 shipping)
Amazon (13.57 + 3.99 shipping, or free shipping on 2 copies)

Or pre-order it at your local book store (supplies will be very limited at bookstores, initially), here are some great Bay Area locations:

Stacey’s, 581 Market St. San Francisco, CA 94105. (415) 421-4687
Book Passage, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera. (415) 927-0960
Cody’s Books, 1730 Fourth Street, Berkeley, CA 94710. (510) 559-9500
Kepler’s, 1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park. (650) 324-4321

Dotherightthing.com was featured in the Sunday edition of the San Francisco Chronicle in a great story by Jessica Guynn about the growing trend of leveraging the web to create social value.

The fact is that people don’t work for money. If think you do, then you probably also think that you don’t have enough of it. Well, get used to it. As is captured by Jessica’s story, it is inspiring to watch (and be a member of) the new breed of web entrepreneurs aiming to do well by doing good.

Ryan Mickle’s life was the stuff young bourgeois dreams are made of. He had a lucrative career as a management consultant, drove a flashy car and lived a few blocks from the beach in an exclusive neighborhood on the Newport Beach (Orange County) peninsula.

Then a year ago he bought a lottery ticket. While jotting down all of the things he would do with the winnings, from spending more time with family and friends to making a real difference in the world, Mickle began to take stock of his life. He was earning a lot of money but was giving very little of himself. And he was the one who was poorer for it.

“I won the lottery that day by realizing that I had everything I needed to start living that life, right then and there,” Mickle said.

So Mickle ditched his high-paying job to brainstorm a new venture with friend Rod Ebrahimi.

Read the rest of the article here:

Responsibility is in their sites, Web entrepreneurs have an eye on social need — not personal greed

I hope that you enjoy reading the story. I’ll follow up soon with thoughts on the paradox of not working for money.

[SF Chronicle photo above by Mike Kane]

INFORUM, the younger, hipper version of the Commonwealth Club is hosting an event with YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, moderated by Wired’s editor-in-chief, Chris Anderson. Now that they’ve won the Silicon Valley lottery, the real question for Hurley and Chen is… “what’s next?” Their thoughts on the future of streaming video (or actually the future of video, period, since all video will end up online at some point) will certainly be interesting to hear. However, I’ll be sitting in the cheap seats waiting to hear how little has changed for them, since they amassed over $300MM in net worth (each) through their company’s acquisition. Is the whiteboard still working overtime to solve more problems and bring YouTube to more users around the world? Of course it is! So, I ask, are the financial rewards of entrepreneurial success really the big reward? Or is the accomplishment itself–changing millions of lives in some positive, substantial way–and the search for bigger, better problems (and solutions) the real reward? Come find out with me in May.

Details: May 23rd @ 6PM, $25 for non-members, general/Ramen-eating-bootstrapping entrepreneurs, register here

Location: Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St., San Francisco