Joe Miller

Two back-to-back hikes in Griffith Park yesterday and Sunday meant I was ready to run along the ocean today.

After a busy morning dealing with trademark infringers in Europe and trying to put the finishing touches on some procedural and process changes in our plant with the help of my virtual assistant in South Carolina, I took off for the ocean to jog, rather than walk this time. I parked high above the ocean and walked a mile and a quarter up and down hills and side streets making my way down to the strand for my first time actually running in my Vibram Five Finger® shoes.

Two days of vigorous hiking demonstrated the addition of the Injinji® socks made all the difference in the world -- no blisters! As expected my 5K jog along the strand went really well.  Running in Vibram Five Fingers® is essentially like running barefoot, during which you feel lighter and faster.

It was a good workout on a beautiful day.

It's hard to see my fork going into my food when I'm eating with tears in my eyes; more to the point, it's embarrassing to think someone at the next table might be watching me. But that's what happened each time I took "Leaving Microsoft to Change the World", by John Wood, along to read while eating out.

I'd been warned. Tom Peters, coauthor of "In Search of Excellence", wrote: "I haven't cried so much reading a book in a long time."  But I couldn't resist reading the book at every chance I got, finally finishing it today.

At the beginning of this first year of the new decade, you can add a little spring to your philanthropical step by donating to John Wood's passionate project, Room to Read.  Wood has selflessly devoted his entire -- and I mean entire -- life to giving children from poor countries, access to books, an education and a better future.

Had John Wood been around Afghanistan when the Soviets pulled out prompting the US to leave and wash its hands of a bombed and battered nation, leaving a huge void promptly filled by schools set up by Saudi Arabia and Iran -- all of which have been teaching only hatred of the West, particularly America, to generations of children, things would be much different today with far fewer brainwashed adolescents and young adults easily persuaded to wear suicide vests. Your small contribution, here, will help spread the amazing gift of literacy to millions more kids around the world.

Wood reminds us in his book that Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe once wrote about Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, "If all the musicians in the world played this piece simultaneously, the planet would go off its axis.", and then reveals to us that that's how he feels about education for the children of the developing world. Your donation to Room to Read will be in very good hands!

Walking the winding strand along the ocean at sub 14-15 minute miles is a good workout, but hiking up and around the steep hills on the Mount Hollywood Trail is a tougher challenge. So, after my workout this morning I headed back to Griffith Park for another hike. This time I wanted to walk faster.

The Mount Hollywood Trail takes you to the top of Mount Hollywood and offers commanding views of the San Fernando Valley, the Los Angeles Basin, and the San Gabriel Mountains. The trail also includes Dante's View, a terraced two-acre garden planted by Dante Orgolini in the 1960s.

It was a good hike of 4.5 miles in about 1 hr and 40 minutes. Plenty of brief stops to grab my breath after the steepest inclines (and to shoot some pics). Plenty of time to also contemplate my day, my life, and the beautiful world we live in!

Check the photos. Just click on any one to open a manual slide show. Check the Vibram Five Finger shoes I'm wearing on these hikes. When I bought these last summer in Indianapolis, and wore them the first day on a walk, I got the worst blisters of my life! But then I tried them last week again, this time while wearing Injinji socks (like gloves for your feet).  Now I can wear the  Vibrams and walk long distances with no problems. It's like walking bare footed, the best way to walk or run. Or climb during hikes!

Peaceful, quiet, sunny, 75 degrees -- a perfect five mile, two hour hike in Los Angeles' Griffith Park today.  Getting lost was part of the fun.

People who win at anything have written goals. Goals are simply what you're trying to hit. It's been said, "If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time."

Don't forget -- good goals stretch you. They make you reach for something that's just beyond your reach.

In order to make a goal happen you should have to become a better person in some aspect of your life. Decide what you want to accomplish in 2010 and deliberately write your plans on paper.  Then roll up your sleeves and get to work.

Nice way to begin the day: phone call from the general manager of our building here in Los Angeles reporting that the association board is happy with my plan to bring a charging station into the building for my Tesla.  Still have bugs to work out, especially with regard to how to track usage and pay the bill, but it's exciting to know they're very open to the idea!

When the new Withings body scales arrived the other day, my plan was to weigh myself once or twice per week, but it's too much fun -- so I've weighed myself three days in a row now.

After 35 years of not even having a scales in my home, I've gone from getting weighed by my doctor's staff -- only during my annual physicals, to buying a wifi-enabled scales that sends my stats to a private account on the web and to an iPhone app.

Using the e.ggtimer.com site, I weigh myself 30 minutes after I get up.  Best feature:  logging lean mass and fat mass, in addition to total body weight, makes it easy to track body fat percentage.  The lean mass is the most important number for me. As we age, maintaining muscle mass is critical to a healthy, productive and mobile lifestyle.

Maybe it was the inherent excitement of a fresh, clean slate which I always seem to sense at the dawn of a new year -- perhaps heightened even more so because this New Year is also the dawn of a new decade. Maybe it was the sunny and warm climate here in Los Angeles, which always makes me feel alive and healthy of spirit, mind and body.  The goal setting desire swooped down on me this New Year's Eve like I hadn't felt in years, and I kicked into high gear.

On New Year's Eve, last Thursday, I bought the new edition of the Four Hour Work Week, at the Barnes & Noble down the street from my condo, and began to devour it -- even more so than I did with the first edition almost three years ago.

On New Year's Day I committed myself to a low-information diet and deleted all iPhone apps for newspapers, blogs and magazines. I also turned off all televisions and began to watch only mindless entertainment or educational shows at bedtime. No TV during any other time of the day -- and absolutely no news at any time.

It's a week into the New Year (at midnight in about an hour and a hall from now) and I've gone without watching the news, reading a newspaper, or reading any magazines in print or online or on my iPhone.

I've also gone a week during which I've checked my email only twice per day - at 11AM and 4PM, saving me hours of wasted time by batching all responses together!

I even swallowed hard and deactivated my Facebook account on New Year's Day!  That one was really hard. I've also committed to checking Twitter infrequently, though I use it to follow productivity gurus and other self help tweeters.

The lower level of stress from not being a news-junkie has given me a sense of being on a mini-vacation, especially here in sunny Southern California while it's brutally cold and snowy back in Indianapolis.  The substantial amount of time saved by not constantly checking and responding to email and/or Facebook has been put to good use -- specifically, I'm reading more than before (current book: "Leaving Microsoft to Change the World", by John Wood).

I've also installed and begun using, again, ResueTime, the amazing software that helps track my usage of and productivity on the computer.  Tonight, after two days of use, the stats show that I am in the "TOP 16%" of computer users in efficient use. I'm striving to be even better, and am tweaking the program to better recognize the sites I visit and their nature and their productivity quotient. Simultaneously, I'm using e.ggtime.com on my iMac and AIR computers to force me to pay closer attention to the actual amount of time I spend on the computer -- I even use it to time my showers and meals (a significant productivity booster! Highly recommended, and it's free!)

I now begin each day, not by spending an hour or more reading the NYT, LA Times, Wash Post, various blogs and checking and responding to email (my former routine) but, rather, by eating a hearty breakfast.

I'm also focusing more on my workouts, including Super Slow HIT and Krav Maga (though I'm healing from an injury to my ribs last week and haven't been to Krav Maga for a week) and long walks of 6-7 miles, or more, at sub-15 minute miles.  As as result, my body fat has decreased and my lean mass has increased. I bought a Withings Scale, which sends my stats to a private account on the Withings.com website, and have begun tracking lean mass vs fat mass, total weight and BMI, as well as % body fat.

I've also committed to a six-week creative writing class online at Gotham Writers' Workshop in NYC., two weeks of which I'll be traveling in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos -- I hope the class will be helpful in my efforts to try to document our trip.

So, there it is, my productivity has already skyrocketed past what it'd been for the past year or two. I'm excited about the potential for new projects and enhanced lifestyle improvements in 2010.

My e.ggtimer.com clock is telling me that I have 45 seconds to wrap up 15 minutes on this post.

I love this time of year, and I love the feeling of growth!