New Year's Resolutions

I have not yet come up with my own list of new years resolutions - maybe sometime this week I'll figure mine out. But in my blog reading this morning of Between Two Worlds, I enjoyed reading the list of New Year's resolutions that Jonathan Edwards wrote. I've read them before, but am always amazed to read them again. I like #6 "Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do". To read the whole list, click here. Which one do you especially like?

Inventory

Tomorrow (at 6 AM!) we begin our annual inventory here at work. Inventory means different things to each person familiar with the word. There are many kinds of inventory we do and should at times take of our own lives or our possessions or desires and goals. Those types of inventories can be done at your own pace and will benefit your life. Taking an inventory of your desires and comparing what you desire to the actions you take on a daily basis may cause you to change your actions and develop different habits that will more closely align your actions with your more important desires.

Of course this is really a post about a different type of inventory. In this inventory, my coworker and I are in charge of making certain that over 2000 different part numbers are correctly counted. This doesn't sound too difficult (except for the quantity of part numbers). But when you add in varying degrees of accuracy and human error and the fact that auditors do come behind you and if too many errors are found will require the entire inventory to be done again (as in 2004), the weight of the responsibility grows a bit heavier.

We have fine tuned the way inventory is taken for the past four years. We've found that the best way to ensure accurate counts is to have two independent counts taken of every hand counted item. We then compare those two counts. If they don't match, we will send another sheet out with a third counter. If that doesn't match a fourth can be sent. This method seems to give us what we desire - an accurate inventory in which the counts are almost always repeatable when we are audited. Of course, it means that we handle a ton of paperwork and checking. We even have the counts typed in by two individuals and compared in access for data accuracy. All of this takes time. Sometimes (like tonight while I wait for one computer to finish downloading data and another to open a different system for me to make adjustments) it seems to take too much time. But, the results - an accurate inventory that can be trusted by our materials department as they pull parts, by our project management as they commit to customer orders, and by the finance people as they state with certainty that we really do have a certain amount of inventory as an asset is worth it.

Finishing a task like inventory (as I hope to in by no later than Friday night) feels good. Tasks like this can be broken down into small jobs done by each of the 25 people involved in this endeavor. It's a task much greater than one person, and only succeeds when each person does their part. One person who doesn't care and choses to do a sloppy job counting will have a huge impact on the progress of finishing inventory. In the same way, choosing to allow a poor habit to rule you life can impact your future in ways you never imagined.

So if you're doing inventory in any way this week, don't let it be in vain. Give it your best!

Today's Decisions Determine Who You'll Be Tomorrow

I just finished listening to a great sermon by Rany Alcorn in which he challenges us to:

"Live a life of endurance. The closing question: at the end of this life, what will you wish you’d done more of? What will you wish you’d done less of?

Why not ask God to empower you to spend the rest of your life closing the gap between what you’ll wish you would have done and what you are now doing today in the little choices of life that will make us the people we will be"

If you can find the time, I totally recommend listening to this sermon, or at least reading the highlights of the message. You can do both by clicking here.

24!

Rob, you were right! Rob, who doubles as our resident diet and exercise consultant at work in addition to being my engineering manager, told me that I would achieve my goal of 24 minutes the day I broke up my goal into short one or two minute segments. That way I would know where I needed to be throughout all of the run instead of only finding out how close I was to hitting the goal at the end (when it's too late to speed up).

On Sunday afternoon, using the measuring tool on Microsoft Streets and Trips (also available on Google maps), I found out how many yards it was between every street that I pass on my route. The distance actually worked out to 2.92 miles when measured that way instead of 2.8 miles so I might actually be running a little farther and faster than I thought. Then I applied a rate to each segment - a faster rate for my first 3 minute segment as well as a downhill portion leaving all the other segments the same. Then I found out how many minutes it should take to get to each street as well as what my halfway to that street time should be.

I run while listening to music on an mp3 player and have used audacity to make custom length segments to use when doing the couch-to-5k running plan this spring. Listening to music to tell me when to switch from running to walking is much easier at 5 am then pressing a stopwatch and remembering how long you're supposed to run. Anyway, using audacity, this Sunday I recorded notes for myself for the halfway mark "halfway to __ street in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1" as well as street notes of "to __ street in 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1" for each street (17 streets in all). Then I arranged those notes on my 24 minute music segment. On Monday, I ran with these notes for the first time. All was going ok (though I was behind my notes for most of the time) until my shoe got untied when I was .5 miles from the end. I paused the time and tied my shoe and then took a minute (or so) to catch my breath and decide if I should run and finish the route. I finally decided I would go on and restarted the time. I did end up finishing in 24:03 but wasn't sure if I could have without the break. So, today was the real test. I put a fresh battery in my mp3 player, tied my shoes tight and was off!

It's funny how my mind plays tricks on me. Within a couple minutes I was sure that I must be running slow and would never make it even to the first street on time. But I actually managed to stay within a few seconds of almost every time segment and finished with 5 seconds to spare! If I'm running 2.8 miles, that's a rate of 7mph or 8.6 minute miles. It's nice to have finally hit that goal! I'm not sure what my next goal with be. I was pretty exhaused when I finished the run so so I think I may just do this route a few more times and chose something new after my trip to Chicago in August.

If any of you want to do the couch-to-5k plan, take a look at this chart. I made it for my use in doing the plan. It was much easier for me to quickly follow a chart then to keep up with the pages of notes on their website.