Tag Archives: news

Jul 12

Ventures in Life

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Life is full of ventures. By definition, a venture is “an undertaking involving uncertainty as to the outcome, especially a risky or dangerous one”. Life is uncertain. Life is full of undertakings with uncertain outcomes.

So why not have some fun with it?

I approach life as a series of ventures. Trying new things. Being in the present. Ready to tackle what comes my way. It’s part of my improv philosophy to life. Some of my life’s ventures are spur of the moment, unexpected, & dynamic. Some are more calculated & more like “life experiments”. Monthly ventures. Daily ventures. Yearly ventures. and so forth.

What does that mean? To me, it’s about trying things out. Trying new things for a certain period of time. Making changes in my life to see what the impact is. For instance, for November last year I tested out “No News November”, for which I spent the entire month not reading any news. I got my news from other people sharing news with me. Result: I didn’t feel like I was living under a rock (though I did find out about the Italian cruise ship crash a couple days after it actually happened…oh darn). Have I avoided news since then? No, but I sure read a lot less of it. What I’ve learned is that if people put themselves in the opposite extreme of the behavior desired to change, people default to the mean…taking that behavior in a positive direction but not necessarily going 100% to the opposite side of the spectrum.

I’ll elaborate more as I share my ventures. Here’s a quick snapshot of my current life experiment ventures:

Monthly Venture: July
Write every day!

Weekly Ventures
Crossfit (2-3 times/week)
Create a recipe

Stay tuned for more to come about life ventures!

Venture on,

mel, the venture gal

Oct 16

No News for a Week

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This past week I decided to ignore my Google Reader RSS feed.  That’s right.  No news.  For an entire week.  Mostly this was an experiment in productivity and time management.  Though I don’t spend tons of time reading the news, I find it to be distracting.  Especially since I use an RSS feed, reading the news becomes a game in a sense. Whenever I see a new article I must clear it out.

I have set up my RSS feed so to make it quicker to skim through headlines and then just self select articles I’d like to dig into deeper.

This week was different though.  I didn’t visit my Google Reader.  I didn’t read the WSJ.  Guess what?!  The world didn’t end.  I may not know every company that received funding this week and what their valuation was via TechCrunch or Mashable.  Or news about acquisition announcements.  I survived.  The only news I consumed was that which was shared by others.  I got the idea to go on a “news diet” from Tim Ferris’ book The 4 Hour Work Week.  My life is just fine without reading the news every day.

Now, the stack of WSJ are still in my office.  And the unread articles in my Google Reader did not just magically disappear.  Will I press the “Mark all as Read?” and start back at the present with my news reader?  Or will I play catch up with all I missed out on last week? I’ll probably catch up on a few things, but mostly I will just forgo that week of news.

This is a great example of an experiment with habit changes.  It can be daunting and difficult to imagine a new routine or go cold turkey with something you do everyday.  I enjoy reading the news, and don’t think I need to go cold turkey all the time.  But I can cut out the RSS game and read through to stay in the loop…making sure I know when some folks with an idea on a napkin raise $30 million with an absurdly high valuation.

Venture on.  Venture on,

Venture Gal