Don Kowalewski
Writer. Ad Sales and Marketing. Social Media Content Creator. Aeropress Coffee. Makes the best salsa in the world.
I Do What Tim Ferriss Says
Because I do whatever Tim Ferriss says in his podcasts, I ordered the Mizzen+Main “Beckett” blue gingham dress shirt and used promo code ‘TIM’ and got a Henley shirt for free. And I knew I was responding to an ad. I knew it. I know it. But I trust Tim Ferriss so much, I’m actually taking ice cold showers daily during Lent (and noticing a distinct difference in my body fat and early day energy). I’m putting almond butter on celery at night before bed to enhance sleep and make my mornings better. I’m doing his slow-carb #4HourBody diet.
And I bought the shirt he told me to.
Is this what early stages of becoming a “stalker” looks like? I guess when Tim Ferriss finds me sleeping in his bathtub after having broken into his home, then everyone should worry.
Why the shirt? Well, it’s a bit pricier than what I normally pay for my dress shirts (Express 1MX almost exclusively with an occasional J. Crew dress shirt thrown in for flavor), but he swears it can be worn over and over and over again, doesn’t need dry-cleaning, and doesn’t need to be ironed. And he claims it’s stretchy and made from material that’ll keep me cool. So, if I pay a little more for the shirt, but save on dry cleaning, and if it lasts for more than a year with regular wear and tear, it’s probably worth the higher price tag. We’ll see. For the price, it had better look like, and wear like, a nice shirt and go with suits, slacks, and blazers. I trust his endorsement.
And in my day job, I sell endorsements. I utilize the personalities on the radio stations I represent in Detroit and have them talk about certain products or brands. And it works. Why? Because people trust people they like. And when it’s deeply personal and genuine, there’s an energy and honesty that can’t be duplicated in any other way.
Tim Ferriss, to me, is always looking for a time saver, shortcut, or money saver. His message, the way I hear it, is a) take whatever it is you do and b) find a way to do it in half the time it normally takes you. And when you do, you’ll have more “me time” and be happier. If I can spend a little more on a shirt and spend less money and time at the dry cleaner – bam. I’ll be happier. One less thing to worry about. Not to mention all the articles that say how toxic the dry cleaning chemical is and how it shouldn’t be against the skin and that, upon returning home from the dry cleaner you should try and rip open the plastic bag outside or in your garage because, otherwise, you’ll loosing tiny particles of chemical poison into your bedroom/closet air and, with my lung thing …well, one less thing that could cause me a lung seizure is a-OK in my book.
So, yes. I hope this shirt is awesome. And, I’m a victim (probably a bad choice of words) of trusting a celebrity who endorsed something.
Stay tuned for a shirt update whence it arrives.
Follow me at @donkowalewski.
One of my favorite Tim Ferriss interviews follows…
Blog Entry For One Person
This isn’t a blog entry for everyone. No, sir. This is for L.L. People think because I blog alot and Tweet and stuff, that I know stuff.
Here’s L.L.’s logo. Need a kick-ass real estate agent who can sell your house …fast?!?!?! Click the image below.
Follow me on Twitter at @donkowalewski.
Dominating
Remember what I wrote in a blog entry late last week – per Tim Ferriss’s advice, I was going to dominate a single thing and THEN move onto another.
Update – I’m currently dominating mornings (except for yesterday when my daughter came into our room post-nightmare, and then a new app on my phone went haywire at 4 a.m. and scared the crap outta me, so long story short I changed my alarm from a 5:00 a.m. wake-up call to a 6:15 a.m. call for that morning).
I just felt I needed an extra hour of sleep because I lost two.
I have, however, dominate 4 out of 5 mornings.
I’m dominating breakfasts – eating within 30 minutes of waking and downing 30 grams of protein. I’m dominating the dog-walking and dog-brushing (she should get walked and brushed twice a day). And I’d like to say I’m dominating blogging.
But more than all of this, I feel the confidence I can do what I say I’m going to do.
It goes with the idea that there is no such thing as multi-tasking and you can’t do everything. So I picked one thing. Mornings. And then I hope things snowball from there.
Today, I’m going to pick another thing to dominate: my email Inbox and task-list, at work. By Friday, I’m going to get my email and task-list to a point where I could leave for a month-long vacation.
Write that down. Hold me to it.
Oh, and is there anything you can’t “keep call” and then do?
More Fun
I feel like I want to go back and be a teenager, again. I want to live for the moment and for fun and for playing for hours on my Sega Genesis.
Honestly. Just this afternoon I was driving around and worrying about this and worrying about that, like it all matters soooooooo much. But then I remembered, I watched my second-favorite movie of all time over the weekend (my most favorite being It’s a Wonderful Life). The movie is Life is Beautiful, which is actually a better movie than It’s a Wonderful Life, but I still give the nod to the Jimmy Stewart classic because it’s tied to so many childhood and holiday memories.
OK. What do either of these movies have to do with having fun, like girls (who just ‘a wanna)?
It’s this …life is too short to be all serious, especially when I’m not at any sort of immediate risk of financial ruin or horrible health consequences. I work. I work hard. I could probably work a little harder and a little smarter. But one thing’s for sure …I could work happier.
I’m lucky. I have a cool job where I can be creative and when I’m doing my job well, I help people grow their business. And when I don’t do my job well …um …nothing tragic happens.
So, what does this have to do with Life is Beautiful? If you don’t know the movie, here’s the premise. A Jew from Italy, and his son, are put into a concentration camp during World War II and separated from his wife and he spends the entire movie keeping his son alive by acting like they’re at a camp and the whole thing is a game. He knows, however, as the grown-up, that death could come at any moment and he would probably never see his wife again.
The world, if you look close enough, has thousands of stories of people who’ve dealt with hopeless situations, or tragedies, or atrocities, and they were heroes.
I should not pat myself on the back for managing to make it through a day with slow Internet or a restless night’s sleep or because I’m only at 80% of my budget.
I should celebrate every day I wake up on this side of the earth.
I should have fun. Tons of fun. And it doesn’t mean playing Sega Genesis all day. It means approaching what I’m doing with joy and energy and optimism.
Thank you, YouTube, for having on of my favorite scenes from Life is Beautiful ready to post, here …where the main character, to keep up the illusion that the concentration camp is just a fun “game”, fakes that he understands German to translate the “rules” to his son.
Hopefully you get the point. Hopefully I do.
Dominate a Thing
Dominate one thing. And once you dominate that thing, then move onto the next thing you’ll dominate. And I mean absolutely crush and control and own a thing.
You probably thinking I’m referring to “50 Shades of Grey” but I’m not.
If you can, listen to The Tim Ferriss Show, Episode 63. He interviews two hedge fund managers but within that show, he kinda summarizes his entire 4 Hour Body and 4 Hour Work Week philosophy and the whole idea behind “hacks.”
The one guy said we sometimes make the mistake of trying too much. Start dieting, start exercising, start reading more, learn to play guitar, write in your journal, and on and on and on.
Instead, they suggested, you should dominate one thing. Like …dominate mornings. Wake. Eat. Exercise. Journal.
And repeat it the next day and every day until nobody does “mornings” as well as you do.
I’m going to dominate mornings. And then I’m going to figure out what I want to dominate at work!
And at this rate, I’ll dominate the world a mere 180 years from now.
Lent …Again
I don’t even want to look back at my past Lent related blog entries. I’m pretty certain I use Lent like a little reboot of my New Year’s Resolutions and like a little 40-day self-improvement class. Funny, the priest at my Ash Wednesday Mass kinda made fun of that. He said Lent isn’t really a time to say, “I’m going to try Yoga.”
So, “blog every day” probably doesn’t fit into the spirit of Lent, either.
It’s OK. I was sorta thinking I should take Lent a little more seriously, so Father’s Homily was well timed. Hmmmm. Kinda like someone wanted me to listen, for a change, and work on my inner peace and spirituality.
Yes. Write more, get back to my book and script, and regular exercise are still a part of my Lenton plan, but I’m doing it as an extension of the idea God gave me many blessings and gifts, and if I’m not using the gifts he’s giving me, I’m …essentially …laughing in his face.
I joined Dynamic Catholic‘s “Best Lent Ever” list and that will be my exercise in spirituality. It will be my main focus. And the rest, hopefully, will fall in line.
Like they say at Dynamic Catholic …I’m ready to remember this as my best Lent ever.
Sorry. Nothing funny, today. I’ve got 40 days. Something funny will come up.
Balance
At a staff meeting last week, the entire group was prompted to share their goals for 2015. Mine was lame – to write down a minimum of 4 specific goals each week and do those things. To make it public, as in, detail them in my weekly 1-on-1 with my direct report, and thereby be held accountable by my own hubris.
Wow. That was a boring opening paragraph. Apologies to all my high school English teachers for disobeying their first rule of writing an opening paragraph – make it energizing and attention-getting.
OK, back to my weekly staff meeting (and back to excitement!!!). I said I’d make a to-do list (holy crap, really, Don?!?! A to-do list?!?!?), while others went more cerebral. Especially A.T., who said she wants to work on “balance.”
She laid it out so simply.
24 hours in a day. Minus 8 hours of sleep. Minus 8 hours for work. Which should leave you 8 waking hours for yourself.
What? Do I really have 8 hours of each day for myself? And I’m counting “myself” as time with my kids (even the obligations that come with having kids that some might not call “me time.”).
But do I really have these mythical 8 hours. What am I doing with these 8 hours?
Well, I have 1-hour of commute time. Who does that hour belong to? I need to reclaim that. Truth be told, I only sleep 7 hours (at most), but I’ll lump the cool down time, the sluggish wake-up time, and even shaving and showering into that block of “sleep” time and call it “8 hours.” And I actually work from about 8:00 a.m. until 5:30 and mostly work through a “lunch hour”. So that’s 9.5 hours.
All that said, I should have right around 7 hours.
My question to myself… do I really do 7 hours worth of living with the time given me? Do any of us?
This week, I’m going to examine those 7 daily hours and figure out just what the heck I’m doing with all that “time to myself.”
Good stuff, A.T. Really got me thinking.
Follow me at @donkowalewski.
1 Month Down, 11 To Go, and 1 Thing
I don’t mean to freak anyone out (namely myself), but we’ve already burned a month in 2015. Did you make resolutions? I sure did. And how much closer am I to all those things I put on my New Year’s Resolution list than I was 30 days ago?
Ahem. Ask me how many push-ups I can do now that I’ve been training so hard to be on American Ninja Warrior? Go ahead. Ask me.
Um. I don’t know. I haven’t done a single push-up. Oops. And I said I’d wake early every day and write a blog and write some other stuff. And I’m happy to report, 33 days into 2015, I haven’t finished my script nor the book I’m helping co-author. Oops.
But, that’s OK. This is why I’m stepping back and evaluating.
This morning, the leadership team where I work gave us a worksheet and asked each of us to write down “1 thing we’ll do every week to make us better at our job.” I’m paraphrasing, but that’s what I heard them say the task was (never mind I got back to my desk and my co-workers said, “Don, you weren’t listening, that’s not what we were asked to do.”)
That’s what I did. I said I would do this “1 thing” every week and declare it publicly (in my weekly 1-on-1 with my boss) and then make that the first part of my meeting again the next week.
And I’m not doing it because the leadership team told me to do it (and I’ve already established I didn’t actually do what they asked me to do and wasn’t paying attention). I’m doing this because I want to be better. And I’ll do this by making myself accountable.
This week, I’m going to do THREE things I said I’d start making daily habits.
- Take the dog for a 15-30 minute walk in the morning and in the evening.
- Wake up at 5:15 a.m. and write, or complete some tasks that require me to look at a glowing screen.
- Resume 4-Hour Body to the letter (the homemade shortbread cookies sitting on my kitchen counter will not help me see this through, but I’m going to power through).
That’s it. Three things. And I only asked myself to list one thing. I’m such an overachiever.
Tomorrow, I’m going to share a thought on “balance” because something a friend (A.T.) said this morning has me thinking about balance …life-work balance …spiritual balance …the balance in my bank account. I betcha can’t wait.
See you tomorrow or, if not tomorrow, next Tuesday and see if I’ve truly held myself accountable to the three things listed above.
How about you? Can you do one thing this week? Can you do three?
Tim Ferriss is my hero.
Follow me at @donkowalewski
Lesson in Perseverance from the Honey Badger
What is this blog? Sometime it’s me talking about myself and what I got for Christmas and for my birthday and shamelessly just loving myself and stroking my own ego. But sometimes, I hope it’s amusing and interesting. And other times, I hope it’s educational and inspiring. This blog wouldn’t easily by re-purposed for a book or movie, but I’m OK with that.
Today, I post a video of the amazing honey badger which, I think, is amazing in and of itself, because that honey badger is wicked smart (to be read aloud as “wickid smaaaht”).
But the second reason I’m posting it is because there’s a “sales” lesson in the video. There’s actually a “life” lesson in there.
How hard are you willing to work for what you want? Are you willing to spend every waking moment looking for ways to accomplish your dream or finish a big project or chase down an idea? To get that dream job? To hit your ideal weight goal and be healthier?
The honey badger in this video wants one thing – he wants to escape his confinement and explore. He’ll stop at nothing to get out and be free.
When I want my dog to stay out of a room, I balance a big couch cushion in front of the restricted area and that’s enough.
Are you like my dog? Am I like my dog? Is a fluffy couch cushion enough to stop me? Or are you and I like the honey badger? Willing to do whatever it takes to get to our goal? And when the rules change or the obstacles become more difficult, will we adapt and adjust?
Today. I am a honey badger. Are you.
Follow me at @donkowalewski.
I Won Christmas!
I won Christmas. But not in the same way I usually win Christmas, which I usually measured statistically with measurable metrics like “most gifts” and “cost of gifts” and “percentage of list.” But not this year. This year, I measured it in here (pointing to my heart) and up here (pointing to my head).
We live in a material world and I try my best to fit into that world, worrying about (a) me, (b) myself, and (c) what other people think of me. I typically want other people to base their judgments on the things I have and the money they believe that I have. For most of my life, this worked out just fine. I walked around picturing everyone jealous of me.
Then, I approached 40 years old, then I turned 40, and then I went zipping right into my “40s” (the decade, not the beer bottles) and it all changed. I started to realize, nobody cares, Don. Nobody thinks about you and envies you as much as you hope they do. They have lives and families and concerns of their own.
I had to shift my entire world view. And with that came new (and probably healthier) perspective. Which brings me to my Christmas list.
My sister has laughed quite a bit about my Christmas wish-list. Everything on it was practical and boring (to the outside world). Usually my list is filled with items that make the outside world think I’m doing all sorts of awesome things …like dressing in high fashion and expensive clothes, or exercising and being awesome, or into expensive hobbies because I’m soooooo upper middle class. Not this year. My list, in a nutshell was (a) keep my feet warm, (b) help me sleep, (c) replace something I had and used up, and (d) drink – in style.
Guess what? When you ask for things, and get things, that enrich the lives of those around you, it’s actually way better.
My new world view is shifting to, if I get this, I can make Person(s) A happy by __________.
I got waterproof Bogs (slip on shoes) rated to 20 degrees below zero for walking the dog or for quick chores outside. This makes my life better by walking more. Makes my dog’s life better by walking more. Makes my wife’s life better because I don’t track dirt and mud into the house. Yes. I have running shoes. But on a 35 degree rainy day when the neighborhood is all puddles and wet grass, having these quick slip-ons is brilliant.
I got warm, boot high socks. I didn’t even know I wanted them, but my wife did, and they are cozy and warm and when it gets really cold (which I’m sure is coming soon), my feet will be warm (while walking that damn dog the kids wanted so badly …do you see them walking the dog? 10-9-8-7-6 …OK …I’m better).
I got a “#1 Dad” wallet, which means all my hard work in 2014 elevated me from “All American” to #1. Woo hoo! It’s probably because I bought this particular daughter a dog, come to think of it.
I got Bedphones. Hey. I have trouble staying asleep. I was trying to fix it by (a) reading in bed whenever I woke up (which meant a 1/2 hour or more of wakefulness in the middle of the night). Or (b) I tried heading downstairs and sleeping in front of the TV, which meant bad sleep in the glow of a TV (that’s horrible). I (c) tried getting up and making lists (of the things I was worrying about). That didn’t help. But I found the best idea was to have a few (boring) audio books ready on my iPhone. When I wake, I quickly pop in the headphones, set the sleep timer for 30 minutes, and then try like hell to stay awake and listen. But when the book is something like the epic “John Quincy Adams” biography and it’s detailing the letters he received from his mother about how to dress in public …trust me …it’s a cure of insomnia. Sorry, history buffs …it was interesting, but not that interesting. Ear buds hurt my ear canals, so I read about these Bedphones wish are soft and lay gently against my ears, but not in my ears, and I can sleep on my side or back and I can’t really even tell I have earphones on.
And lastly, I got a new sea salt block for grilling and cooking (which I love and love doing it for my family and I love when my wife says, wow, this tastes so good), and my Secret Santa at work got me a growler (32 ounce beer bottle) which I can get filled at local breweries. I’m not a “craft beer” guy, and rarely will I pick up a bottle of micro brew, but the style and flair of bringing a growler into a brewery and having them fill it up …OK …so this was the one gift that still screamed, “look at me …I do cool things. Envy me.” The growler is cool.
Can this non-selfish, and non-ego gratifying outlook on gift-receiving last into the rest of my life? Not sure. But for now, getting things that improve my life and improve the lives of those around me …it feels pretty good.
What if I really adopted the motto …help others in order to help yourself. That sounds like a pretty good resolution. And I’ll hope, maybe, somebody reads this blog entry and doesn’t see it as self adulation, but maybe they say, hey, me too.
Follow me at @donkowalewski on Twitter.
Don Kowalewski 