What music have you been listening to lately? Please share. #musicmonday

One of my favorite things about integrating twitter into my life, thus far, has been how powerful the platform is for giving & getting recommendations of new habits, products, or hobbies, from a trusted network of friends & colleagues.

And, there’s a part of me that loves music. discovering it. listening to it. digesting it. feeling it. dancing to it. and, sharing it.

I’m going to try an experiment combining these two hobbies, and I’m starting today, Monday 2/22/09.

Every monday, I’m going to tweet what new music I’m finding, and where it fits in my lifestyle. (aka if I listen to it on the subway, while working, while relaxing ?)

I’m going attach the hashtag #musicmonday to these tweets for easy tracking.

I want to hear what you’re listening to. And I want to share what I’m listening to. So I invite you do the same.

Check out my twitter page if you want to take part.

The amazing value of the Techstars network

About a year ago, I was given an once-in-a-decade career opportunity: Join Adam Sachs & Dan Osit to help start Ignighter.com, an online group dating website, at Techstars, the startup incubator program based in Boulder, CO. Techstars typically takes a small equity stake in your company in exchange for a small amount of seed money, a summer of office space, mentorship, and connections.

While others have written extensively about the value of the Techstars program, from the perspective of their companies, I was in the somewhat different situation of evaluating my decision to leave my corporate job and join Ignighter at Techstars.

I made a weighted pro/con table of the options. Staying in Pennsylvania would be safe & conservative. I would continue to wallow in bureaucracy, process, suits, & ties. I would have little or no say in my workday or the work I was doing. Going to Colorado would be an adventure. There would be a complete vacuum of process, bureaucracy, and it would be completely up to my team & I to define how Ignighter.com worked.

With the benefit of hindsight, it was a no brainer to make the switch. At the time, it was a tough decision to pack up my life and move it across the country. In the end, the value came down to one last thing: If I joined Ignighter, I would like what I was doing for a living.

I’m a strong believer that when you truly & passionately enjoy what you do, money & success can and do follow. I work 40% more hours than I did before. But, that’s okay, because I relish it. I’m learning new technologies & APIs, meeting new interesting people, and defining a new niche, every hour of every day. I now feel a true sense of ownership for my work, myself, and a real sense that I control the destiny of my career.

So, if you’ve heard that Techstars applications are open, and you just gave them a passing glance, thinking it was too much of a long short, take another look. Applications are open now.

You are your habits.

With 2008 now in the rear view mirror, there have been many predictions in my TweetDeck and my RSS readerthe about the upcoming year. Everything from predictions of the next big web-thing, to the next tech-breakthrough, to predictions that the economy will bounce back, or even worse, will collapse even more.

While I could lay down some of my predictions for the upcoming year, I like to have a more pragmatic approach. Chances are I really have no idea how 2009 will change the world for everyone else. I want to focus on how I will change my world, for me.

You are your habits.

I love the idea that I can learn a new skill, pick up a new hobby, or learn a new craft, just by making time in my schedule for it, and then
following through .

I don’t have any resolutions for 2009, but I do have some new habits I’d like to pick up. While they are modest, they are attainable.

- Meditate for at least 5 minutes nightly. I’ve long been enamored with tales of meditation. From it’s calming effect on one’s mind, to promises of richer everyday experiences & deeper appreciation of the people in one’s life, there just always seemed to be something there. 5 minutes a night is a modest start. Implementation strategy: Just do it until I ‘get over the hump’ & really begin to enjoy it & look forward to it on a daily basis.

- Floss. I know it’s good for me. I know all the rational reasons why I should do it. I just don’t do it, yet. There’s a famous Mitch Hedberg routine about flossing.

“Man, I can’t floss my teeth. People talk about how hard it is to stop smoking; I think its about as hard as it is to start flossing. ‘Hey, you look jittery.’ ‘Yeah, I’m about to floss.’”
Mitch Hedberg

This is a simple one. Implementation strategy: Just do it.

- Read nightly. I’ve long been enamored from afar with the craft of writing. As a student of philosophy, I’ve found a passion for the way some writers are able to put their most fluid thoughts onto paper in such a poetic way. I’ve always been very left-brained, analytical in a way that has dominated more expressive, verbal. In the spirit of expanding my horizons, I’m going to dedicate a half-hour nightly to reading offline. Implementation strategy: Make it a habit to find interesting content. Make it a habit to read before meditation & bed.

- Dedicate an hour per week to expanding professionally. This one is a little bit more abstract. I’ve long been obsessed with having both a
breadth and a depth of professional skills & knowledge. In practice, I find that a lot of my time is spent executing. I get much of the bredth in my daily work schedule, but not very much depth. Implementation strategy: Dedicate an hour each week to finding a new technology meetup to go to, explore twitter for interesting new technologies to learn about, or engaging in other non-immediate-work-related technology material.

My hope is that my new habits are both modest & realistic enough to become a part of daily life. I’ve always been a firm believer that you are your habits, so I’m looking forward to picking up a new few habits myself, in 2009.