That’s not to take away social networks’ utility in reinforcing relationships that already exist — that I do see happening a lot, especially for those like my wife who actively engage. But, I thought it would lead to new bonds forged moreso than I see actually happen.

On a related note, it seems to me with extremely little effort, well known people on Twitter could so easily engage their fans more than they do. Mostly, at least from some 49ers I followed until earlier today, the same patterns hold true.  They interact mostly with people they already know. In fact, it’s funny how people beg to be retweeted by them, and then if you dig into their history, you see they do that a lot. Of course, I wouldn’t be aware of them without those retweets, so maybe they are able to increase followers (for whatever that’s worth) by spamming for retweets and mentions.

Anyway, back to the athletes I unfollowed today. It’s a one-way stream of pretty much self-serving info. Oh, once in a while, they’ll thank their tweeps for the support in a general way. But for the most part, even if they ask for a response (“How’s it going everyone?”), they don’t respond. Seems to me that they’re on ostensibly to interact with fans and admirers. Even if they’re only on for PR and ego purposes, they could respond minimally, for great benefit. So, when someone answers their how’s it goin’ query with a supportive comment, they could just reply “Thanks, means a lot.” Even if they don’t mean it, just say the right thing. Opportunity wasted. I didn’t unfollow because they ignored me (I didn’t respond), but I did look through some random replies to see if there were re-replies. For the ones who were pretty much nada, I dropped them, unless they posted usually interesting stuff. There were a couple (with a *lot* of followers and a *lot* of replies) who did re-reply here and there. Those guys I kept. Not because they replied to me, which they couldn’t, but because they don’t engage in a 100% one-way broadcast.

It’s football season now, so the Niners are more prevalent, but I just listened to a Bruce Bochy interview, after the Giants locked him up for a few more years. Happy about that; beyond being a top-notch manager for my team, I just like listening to the guy talk. He’s so even-keeled, even when things go bad. He’ll call out things that his players do well and need to improve with just about the same matter-of-fact tone.

Jim Harbaugh’s style is pretty close to opposite in tone, and he’s much less likely to call any individual out.  I also like listening to him talk, whether being interviewed or even his press conferences. He gives very little away, actually, but it’s pretty easy to imagine that behind the closed doors of the locker room, he’s holding people pretty accountable to their responsibilities. He’s a runaway Coach of the Year, yet he deflects any bit of praise/credit given to him personally. I’d prefer to hear something a little closer to what he really feels (which I’m sure is that he deserves at least a little credit ), but I appreciate why we never do.

Growing up, I played a lot of competitive/organized basketball and tennis. I skied a lot, although never on a team or in a race, enough to get expert in it. I dabbled in a ton of other sports for varying amounts of time, but if I spent any time on them, you could guarantee there would be a stretch I obsessed over it.  With all that, I only played a couple years in little league, and no organized football. However, in my adult life, those are really the only two sports I enjoy watching consistently, and the ones I follow the most.

[Picking up after a couple months, and now football season is over.]

I wanted to get to a couple main things with this post: figuring out why I follow two sports I hardly played, while hardly following the sports I did and still play a ton; and indulging a little fantasy along the lines of if I knew then what I know now. I think I’ll defer the first one, so I can get right to the second, in case I still don’t finish.

So, I was thinking how much I would like being an integral part of the 49ers coaching staff — setting aside the fact that I’m totally unqualified from a football technique standpoint. Part of it gets to why I like football so much — strategy levels, adjusting and counter-adjusting before and during the play, interdependence of all players every play, action, opportunity for amazing achievement on the field, etc. Part of it is due to within that, the 49ers are so clearly a team-first group. Love taking people who, while the best at what they do, are willing to subsume their individuality for the team’s sake, if needed.

With any successful pro sports player or team, you get the combination of phenomenal ability and competitive drive. The best never rest on their laurels. They can’t for long anyway, or they stop being the best. Whenever I see someone ease up because they don’t care, a part of me gets so frustrated. Different somehow if they decide they’ve had enough and explicitly pack it in (retire). Anyway, with a team sport like football, you get guys — on the field, coaching, personnel — all pulling together. I think it would be so awesome to be a significant contributor to that world-class competing.

I actually see a number of ways, even without football knowledge, I could help pretty quickly. A lot of parallels to building teams in the corporate world and learning how to think properly in poker, kind of meshing. But I don’t think I could ever convince someone of that. And at this point in my life, it would be hard to put in the dues needed to have a natural shot at it. So, I will continue to dream about that different path, while figuring out how to incorporate those things that I would most enjoy into my current path.

Minus the battered bodies Monday mornings .

Prediction: Chris Culliver’s performance would be critical.
Reality: I guess you could say that I got it half-right, in that if he had a terrible day, the game might have been out of reach. But, he either played well enough to not be thrown at a lot, or else I was right and Fangio helped him. I’m not sure. Rogers was targeted a lot, but that may be due to offense scheme, or else that’s just where they got the single coverage matchup. In general, although the secondary gave up a ton of passes, especially on third down, I thought they played well. The Giants only ever got one sustained drive for a TD, and I guess another for a FG. For an elite quarterback/prolific receiving corps, it was good enough to win.

Prediction: Worried about 49ers run game.
Reality: Well, any worry about the offense was validated.  The run game didn’t work consistently, but it was better than the passing game’s consistency. This one was general enough to not be able to get credit for any sort of great prediction, but I wasn’t wrong, either.

Prediction: Not as worried about Giants pass rush as it was getting built up to be.
Reality: Good here. Yes, they pressured, etc., but the way people were talking about it, they’d be in Smith’s face every time he dropped back. The line protected Smith well enough, IMO.

Prediction: Giants passing game will suffer more than 49ers passing game due to the field
Reality: I think I got this wrong, even though the Giants were probably supposed to have more explosive play in their passing game. They didn’t have any passes I can remember where Eli was able to throw before the receiver made their moves, but on the other hand, they completed a lot of clutch passes. The 49ers completed 2. They were big ones, but overall, the 49ers pass attack was anemic. So, tough to say that the Giants suffered more here than the 49ers. The 49ers were able to harass Eli quite a bit in the 2nd half, or it would have been even worse.

Prediction: 49ers have a huge advantage in special teams, enough to determine the game
Reality: Well, it did determine the game, but even without Williams’s miscues, the Giants had a special teams advantage. Lee’s punts kind of sucked, at least for him. Weatherford boomed kicks. Without the mistakes, I’d call it a push — 49ers didn’t give up any long returns, but missed several opportunities to pin the Giants really deep. Of course with the mistakes, Giants had a huge advantage on special teams.

Prediction: Whoever wins, the score won’t be really close
Reality: FG in OT determined the difference. Doesn’t get any closer. I thought that it wouldn’t be close because one team would establish momentum and mistakes would snowball on the other team. Really, no one sustained momentum. But the 49ers were supposed to be the ones making fewer mistakes, and that was wrong.

So, all in all, I did a poor job. The things I got right were the easier ones. The things I got wrong, I got way wrong. And the fairy tale ends for the 49ers. Still, it was a beyond-wildest-expectations sort of year for them. I thought they could get here eventually, maybe 3 or 4 years into Harbaugh’s tenure. I agreed with the consensus preseason sentiment of Harbaugh almost getting a free pass this year due to circumstances. Looking at it that way, the 49ers are way ahead of plan. But they came so far only to have happen to them what they caused and benefited from others.

No Super Bowl predictions, yet. But I was envisioning a different rematch from the season in the Super Bowl, with a different result than in season.

On offense, the 49ers have to contend with a significantly better defense than the one they faced. Tuck and their whole front 4 are healthy, as is Boley. I’m worried about the 49ers run game, since it hasn’t proved consistently good, when it needs to be. I can’t tell if the issue is with Gore or the line. I’m a bit less worried about the Giants pass rush than most others, although far from sanguine about it. They’re animals, but the 49ers have had the most trouble picking up creative blitzes. If the Giants believe that they can continue their trend of sending 4 or fewer almost all the time, I think that while they’ll have their moments nailing Alex, it won’t be horrendous like the Ravens and Cardinals games. Gore better have a good game because I don’t think Hunter does well with insecure footing. When he gets good footing, his cutbacks kill.  But he loses footing pretty easily.

Speaking of footing, I wish I knew a bit more about the Giants pass game. I mean, I know it’s good, but not sure how much it relies on precise cuts and timing. I think wet fields favor receivers in general, but not when patterns rely on throwing before the receiver cuts. There’s just too much that could go wrong. Again without having studied it much, I think the Giants passing game will suffer more than the 49ers passing game if the field gets sloppy or it’s windy, etc. End of the Saints game notwithstanding, the 49ers don’t rely as much on making throws before receivers make their final moves. The flipside to that, though is the 49ers will suffer more in yards after catch, or really yards after contact, in the passing game. The 49ers are better tacklers, but the wet field would neutralize that, and the Giants receivers are bigger, more likely to shed less-than-perfect tackles.

Final thing, and again I don’t think there’s been much discussion on it. The 49ers should have a pretty solid advantage on special teams. Maybe not with the turnover battle. But with field position. Lee should still be able to boom it. The Giants should have consistently longer fields than the 49ers.

Neither team winning would surprise me. Other things being equal, on a sloppy field: Giants offense vs. 49ers defense has a slight edge over 49ers offense vs. Giants defense. 49ers special teams has a significant advantage. 49ers have the crowd, which may be enough to erase that slight edge I was talking about. Neither team makes a lot of mistakes, but I think the 49ers make fewer, perhaps further erasing the edge or switching it over. I know the 49ers will be well coached, but the Giants probably will be as well. I’m really nervous about the game, but I give a slight edge to the 49ers. But the interesting thing is that I think whoever wins, the score will not be all that close. One team will get momentum, and it will kind of snowball on the other team.

That situation also works better for the 49ers than the Giants.

And all that being said, it’s way more of a fairy-tale season for the 49ers. Here’s hoping it doesn’t end Sunday!

Lose weight, or maybe more accurately, fat.

I think it will amount to the same thing. For the last 12 months, I didn’t make weight loss/maintenance a priority. I split the year between focusing on getting stronger and not focusing much at all. As I was getting stronger, I was most concerned about protein, and didn’t worry about weight gain. And then, for part of the year, I just plain didn’t focus. At the end of the year, I was mildly stronger, based on some weightlifting calculations. But, I was also about 30 pounds heavier. Tellingly, my pants are two inches greater in the waist. I would love to get stronger AND fit into a smaller waist size pair of pants. But I’ll settle for the smaller pants, and assume that I’ll be strong enough. I still plan on hitting the gym 4 days a week. The 5/3/1 program I’ve used for a lot of 2011 should accommodate any loss of strength due to dieting. Primarily, I need to get back to the following phrases: “No, thanks” and “I’m full.”

Read and write more.

Other than a couple weightlifting books, I didn’t finish a single book in 2011. Started a few, but it’s not enough. I want to wrap up Rise, possibly going back from the start to power through it. I’m in the middle of Steve Jobs, and have been enjoying it. On my list to read are Mark Twain’s autobiography, as well as re-reading the Wheel of Time series (or recaps) in preparation for the final volume this year. My reading tastes have changed a lot since college, when I first picked up the series, but I’d like to get a sense of closure by finishing it. Other than that, I’ve been pretty lacking in the Classics, and fortunately a lot of them are free on Kindle. It’s just a matter of making time for them.

On the writing side, as evidenced by the scarcity of blog posts, I also don’t make the time for them. I no longer fancy myself a good writer, but I do still think that it helps clarify my thinking. And I’d like to get back into practice enough that I once again consider myself a good writer. I am undecided how seriously to take it (how much effort to put into high-quality writing compared to simply jotting down thoughts, stream of conscious like this blog). But even without explicit attention to writing quality, writing more won’t hurt.  While I think the dream of one day writing the great American novel has passed on for good, something certainly still nags at me to just write.

Other Ideas

Re-organize email

I’m almost done transforming my email from an elaborate set of folders to more of a zero-inbox style. I’m currently working with 5 top categories: Follow-Up; Hold; Reference;  Current Projects; Completed Projects.  Follow-ups will be for things to file, research, etc. (as opposed to responding). Hold will be for open conversations (including for responding, possibly). Reference is any general sort of archive, whereas Completed Projects are for project work to archive. Current Projects contain items I can move out of Hold, but not ready to archive since they are for in-process projects. The idea behind all of this is to replace folders with tags and take advantage of email client search capacity.

Use to-do lists more extensively

I started this towards the end of 2011, and plan to continue in 2012. I’ll funnel everything from Evernote and Note Taker into Toodledo (for now), and spend a chunk of time each week going over due dates and tasks to start.  The other type of to-do list will be from flags in Outlook, across the different folders.

Build/expand social networks

I’d like to start putting myself out there a bit more. I’ve kind of poked around on Twitter, plan to use Facebook more, and perhaps have this blog flow into the social scheme as well. I do a lot of thinking, but tend to keep it to myself. While this is probably a good idea in general — most people who share a lot share too much, IMO — obviously there’s not much conversation or interaction. Even if I end up speaking mostly to myself, it will be no different than today.  And who knows, perhaps I’ll be able to help someone out with whatever wisdom I can bring to bear. One of the things I enjoyed a lot from my poker days — and yet still didn’t do well or often enough — was getting a chance to know some new folks, even if I never met them face to face. The poker world has a built-in set of common interests, but hopefully by putting some stuff out there, I’ll increase the number of folks I “meet” who share some of the same interests, priorities, and views.

I’ve been thinking a society based on merit. I’d like to think we have that — and I think the folks who “make it” would argue we do, while those who don’t argue against.  Most, however, would likely agree in principle that as long as people have opportunity, how well they do in the world (however they define well) should depend on their merits — at a high level, a combination of their innate abilities and how hard they work.  Even those railing against the system don’t say that the have-nots should get a lot for a little; they just think the game is rigged.

Whether or not the game is rigged would take too long to go into.  But at some point, the game should be rigged. It starts off rigged because we don’t all have the same innate abilities, whether intelligence, cleverness, strength, good looks, or even a passion for hard work. It’s obvious we shouldn’t dumb down or weaken to the lowest common denominator.  So, rigged from the get-go.

You can accept and embrace the pre-destined rigging and still try to set things equal after, though. In other words, you can say that even knowing someone’s got to win the race, we all start from the same line.  But, how do you do that? If I choose to spend the money I earn — whether by merit, privilege (rigging), or a combination — on my children’s education by getting them tutors and sending them to the best private schools, they’re not starting from the same line as those whose parents choose not to do that. Same goes true if I pass on my business to them when I die, even if they haven’t done a thing with it.  They just get it.

Of course, if the state prevents me, or makes it very difficult for me to do those things, they’re essentially dictating to me what I can do with the fruits of my labor. In so doing, they take away a lot of incentive for me to achieve.

What about setting some sort of limit to what you can do? To take a wealth example, what if you said that the most you could gift to anyone over the course of your life + inheritance was $10,000,000? (And for the sake of argument, say you could enforce it. And later on, we could replace it with any number you wish.) Seems like that’s a high enough number that the recipient would still get a heck of an un-merited benefit.  But what happens to anything over that? Does it just go to the state? Do they have a checklist  of what you could do? It seems a terrible moral argument to just take all the extra.

But even if you can get behind the morality — because after all, we’re letting the person do whatever they want with it, we’re just limiting how much they can give away to any one person, and it’s pretty damn high amount — what do we do to that person’s incentive to produce?  Say they have 2 people they want to benefit from their work, and they hit that 20 million ceiling. Well firstly, the chance that they’re at the top end of society’s innate ability folks is high. Especially since they would be limited on their own head start.  So, we’re talking about someone who is likely to be just the people we want to set up to succeed/produce in general.  Is it possible enough won’t feel a disincentive? Are the very best people going to keep producing because they feel their own moral imperative to contribute to society, among other things? Maybe. There certainly are people to whom money is not everything, as long as they have some degree of comfort. Rather they are motivated by some sort of challenge, or legacy, or passion for creation, etc.

That applies to me at work.  I’m doing a lot of stuff well, adding value, pushing stuff forward, etc.  At least what I should be doing, sometimes more. But I’m not making an impact that gets recognized by anyone outside my team, at least that I can see.  Even when I get out of the day-to-day tasks in the weeds and work on/drive more strategic initiatives. I feel like I don’t do a good enough job highlighting the value I add to folks whose job is something other than actually checking in on my work.  In other words, my boss sees I’m doing well, but it’s his job to see it.  But his peers, his boss and her peers, other important folks in the organization…well I don’t think that they see it. And what they do see, I’m not sure they see the same way I see it.

I’ve got enough self confidence to satisfy myself that I’m doing what I need to do for the tasks at hand.  Where I don’t have the….and I”m not even sure what the right word is — confidence, moxie, aggression, ambition? — anyway where I don’t have it is in taking on for myself the promotion of what I’m doing.  It would be great if my boss/his boss would tout all my achievements to everyone they know.  But I think those conversations are few and far between in general, especially where the org is pretty stale and the job market sucks.  I know I don’t have a lot of those conversations, aside from tactical annual ratings discussions where there’s a pretty narrow focus.

I’ll try to work on, if not working on a ton more of strategic initiatives, to communicate about the ones that I am driving or contributing. I’m doing well on enough things that I don’t need to play invisible if I don’t want.

Ultimately, I would like to measure how much energy I allocate to various categories. Borrowing from Sebastian: expansion, maintenance, life, unproductive.

• Expansion equals growth.  For example:  figuring this stuff out; defining ruthless priorities (Patty); networking; getting/giving mentoring; thought exercises/self-reflection.
• Maintenance equals taking care of business.  Work examples: monitoring Bug; attending routine meetings; status reporting; team meetings. Personal examples: scanning meaningful parts of my RSS and twitter feeds; reading; writing about something other than expansionary topics; socializing; exercising; house upkeep.
• Life equals more passive — but important — elements of, well, life. For example: eating (alone); watching TV with the family; going to kids’ events (with limited or no interaction).  While expansion usually entails a lot of growth and maintenance supports growth, life does not.  However, this category is still important.  The key would be to not spend too much time in this bucket.
• Unproductive, the final category, means something unnecessary that does not contribute to growth.  For example: mindless web surfing; watching sports or amusing TV; video games; indulging/binging in junk food. Unproductive does not equal bad, unless it dominates the other categories.  Nothing wrong with watching an episode of Dexter, but watching all 6 Star Wars movies over the weekend almost would definitely cross the line.  Similar to the Life category, I would sanction a limited amount of unproductive time.

In addition to categorizing my time and accomplishments, I think, at least eventually, I should track some checklist items.  For example: tracking nutrition; tracking goals/time; planning one or two top goals for the day.

Finally, what tools to use?  I’ve already come across dedicated tools such as My Life Organized, joesgoals.com, GoalHappy, and Toodledoo.  Sebastian suggested starting with just a Notepad.  I’ve been thinking I could set up a blog to do it, or use Excel.

On the other side of the injury coin, what about a legit injury caused by a cheap shot?  I think that there should be a penalty that hurts the team more than a 15-yarder or ejection.  The key may be determining what constitutes a cheap shot.  For instance, a pass rusher might go helmet-to-helmet with the quarterback.  Sometimes that’s a cheap shot.  Other times, maybe the quarterback moves in a way the defender didn’t expect.  Or the defender lost his balance, was blocked into the QB, etc.  But there are also some clear cheap shots.  You know it when you see it.  If there were a good way to determine those, I would say if it results in an injured player missing playing time, you could do one of two things to the offending team:

1. The player who caused the injury does not play again until the player he injures can play.  You end a guy’s season with a cheap shot, you hang up your cleats as well.

2. The injuring team’s equivalent player sits until the injured player comes back.  This is probably too harsh, but I think you’d see a huge reduction in cheap shots taken.

It’s just a matter of how much you want to discourage that sort of play.  A 15 yard penalty and fine won’t do it.  That said, I’m not sure there’s a pervasive issue here, probably more isolated to a few people.  I still think rule #1 is good for that situation, though.