I absolutely love taking on short hyper-learning experience projects, where I spend 20-50 hours on a specific topic to drive forward my experience much faster and further intentionally.

I originally picked up this idea from Josh Kaufman's book 'The First 20 Hours' where he talks about picking up new skills with focused and intentional learning. You can become quite proficient in areas you've never worked on before within 20 hours if spent with full focus and energy in them!

One of these projects was to start a business; inception, marketing, manufacturing, creating a web store, and shipping to the customer. My initial intent was to do it all within 20 hours, and I recorded my time with a stopwatch. However, I significantly underestimated how much time it would really take, and I'm now at 40+ hours with a minimum of 15 more to finish the project.

The point of these intense learning experiences isn't to make money or become well known. It's to learn what it takes to start a business and behind the scenes. In this fashion, I will better understand what to do when I eventually start a business for profit. The tight time restrictions force me to only invest my time in the areas that provide the biggest results and not get too caught up in the details. 

I won't necessarily need to do all the work for my future business as I can outsource a lot of it. But understanding the terminology and the process behind it will help me find the right resources to follow. 

Key takeaways:

1) Hyper-intensive learning experiences with a tangible result can drive forward your understanding

2) Build a mini-course to expand your knowledge of what it would take in the real world

3) I won't necessarily need to know how to do everything down the line, I need to understand it

I've heard that to be a great leader, you must follow them, learn what they do, and simulate that. However, this isn't a good idea; you're following the result, not the blueprint. 

I love the analogy of building a house (I heard this originally from Rabbi Daniel Lapin.) If you're trying to build a house, you don't study a house and then build it; you study a blueprint and build it. The house is imperfect and requires in the moment changes to work with the situation. The blueprint is perfect, in a perfect scenario. You want to go to the source when following a plan or process, not its result. 

This is why I think trying to become the next Tony Robbins can't be achieved by doing exactly what they did; you aren't them; you are you. You grew up differently; you had different life experiences, and you will view things differently. You want to follow the 'perfect' plan behind the process of where he got where he is.

Understanding that you are you, and there is no one exactly like you, is the foundation for putting into action new ideas and getting success from them. There is no broad plan that works perfectly for everyone. It needs to be adapted. In the scenarios where there is a wide plan, it's often not the optimal one, but it gets the biggest results from the biggest group of people. This is why coaches are a thing; they guide you through your scenario and adapt to how you understand and work. 

Key takeaways:

1) Don't follow great results; follow the 'perfect plan' behind the results

2) You work differently from every other human

3) There is no perfect universal plan; it needs adaptation to work for you

Since I put the program together yesterday for the new clamp piece that would fit on the side of the model truck, I was able to run through it and get my finished piece within about fifteen minutes! It fit perfectly, and I got the machine off and running with the final operation I needed to prove before getting these ready for production. 

Since the truck is quite wide, I had to be very delicate with the contour cutoff operation after my initial failed attempt going too slow with too high RPMs. I initially ran the 0.25" square endmill at 9k RPM, 6 inches a minute, and 0.02" stepdowns; however that left a very marred surface finish, and it was squealing the whole time. After discussing it with my boss, he suggested running it at 4.5k RPM and 13 inches a minute, which worked much better, and I had to pause the machine because it was so silent! 

I still feel very lost to the speeds and feeds side of machining, and I'm not sure what connection I'm missing. I really need to dedicate a few hours to this subject and put together my own formula and preset tools. My current notion of how things work is really messed up, and I'm constantly getting weird finishes on my parts. 

I'm honestly shocked how well the external clamp piece worked for holding the vehicle on the base; it was easy to add an option stop command, add the plate, and run the final toolpath. Pulling the truck off the base was as simple as unscrewing the plate! 

I made a massive mistake today and accidentally crashed the Haas VF2 5-axis trunnion.

The machine crash wasn't as serious as it could have been but really didn't do any good for my nerves! My boss wanted me to run through another piece of raw stock, and I was in the midst of the operation when the tool holder crashed into the truck's top hood. I forgot I had changed the toolpath operation from a 1/8" to a 1/16" and the tool stick out wasn't far enough for the endmill to reach. Thankfully there was no lasting damage to the machine, and after clearing the slag (aluminum that was pushed aside by the crash), probing the new tool, I was able to get up and running again! 

Through this process, I tried fixing the swarf toolpath that was causing me so much headache before. And I thought I had found a solution; however, after testing the Haas built-in quality settings (P1-3), I had a very poor result. The problem is that the endmill stalls and stutters from point-to-point, instead of a fluid contour. I sent an email off to Autodesk and am awaiting a response :) 

Throughout my journey, I've come to realize the importance of tracking your performance.

Several months ago, I picked up my first high-performance journal put out by Brendon Burchard; this journal has you constantly reviewing your performance every single day with a few questions and rating systems. Through this process, I can quickly evaluate where my attention is going and realign it if necessary. It also helps me see how far I've come. 

I'll occasionally go back to look at what I worked on a few weeks or months past, and I shock myself at how far I'd come. I can also identify some of the same problems I dealt with then and do now and record how I felt and performed. This assists me in assessing the problems and coming to a solution. 

It's sometimes difficult to get up the effort to sit down and journal at the end of the day, but I will want to know what I went through and my thought process in the future. It's a worthwhile investment and will allow me to understand better how to teach these same ideas and concepts to others going through the same. I am giving my future self a gift, and I find it quite amusing!

Key takeaways:

1) Journaling helps you evaluate your performance

2) Learning what you felt and acted will help you overcome challenges

3) Having a track record of what you've done will enable you to understand someone going through the same later on

Time management is a topic that's on my mind a lot; I'm always trying to optimize better how I spend my time to get the greatest value in the shortest period of time that I can. 

Something I've found helpful for this is the concept of 'block time,' which I heard first from Brendon Burchard. The basic idea is that you block your time into chunks and heavily focus on one area during that dedicated time. He suggests setting block time in one-hour segments and taking a break between them to let your mind rest and recompose. 

This means that you have to remove distractions from your surroundings, notifications, checking your phone, and people. Complete and intentional focus can yield double the productivity or more!

Right off the bat, this doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Spend less time on the same project, and interrupt our flow of thought to take a break? The longer we spend on a project, the more our minds get bored with the topic and start to float of thinking of other things, losing our intentional focus. Brendon Burchard found this typically happens after the 90-minute mark, so coming in early and forcing yourself to break the train of thought will pause your flow to recharge yourself, then come back with full focus for another hour. 

We work better when we are wholly focused on one topic and can get a lot of valuable work done with uninterrupted time blocks. I've found this works really well no matter what I'm working on, and forcing myself to take a break at the end of each hour is difficult but absolutely worth it for the focus you get after. 

Key takeaways:

1) Get more things done by setting your tasks in hour blocks

2) Taking a break during the flow will help you recharge and be focused more for a longer

3) It isn't easy to pull yourself away, but it is more productive in the long run

4) Complete intentional focus brings more value in less time

One of the things I have a lot of trouble with it, and I think it is pretty common among most people and that is picking up other people's problems.

Ray Edwards re-emphasized this in one of his episodes entitled 'optimizing life' and spoke about how we often take on problems faced by other people for no real reason. This is different from intentionally wanting to help someone with what they're going through and taking up headspace in something that you can't do anything about even if you wanted to. 

I think this problem makes up two big components that go hand-in-hand. Not wanting to miss an opportunity and want to help someone in need. From my personal experience, when someone comes to me asking for assistance on a project, my first instinct is to take it on. However, spending time on that means I have to say no to something else. This isn't a problem if I was going to sit and watch TV for a few hours, but it is if I was going to work on the skills that will help me get ahead in the long run. Even if the problem is related to what you do best, you have to weigh the cost. 

The thing I need to understand fully is that their problem is not mine. They will find a solution even if I don't provide it; I'm not the only answer. I've found when I take on someone's problem; I will spend huge amounts of time trying to solve it; this brings stress into areas of my life that I wouldn't have even considered at the outset. 

So learning to disconnect yourself from the problem and use dedicated, blocked out time to work on it will help you not let your life fall apart for this solution. 

Key takeaways:

1) Don't take on other people's problems

2) When you say yes to something, you say no to something else

3) You aren't the only solution

4) Use dedicated time when finding a solution. Don't let it bring you down.

I was listening to a podcast episode by Ray Edwards this morning on how to optimize your life, and one of the points he made really caught my attention.

He said, 'there is no simple answer to complex questions,' and I think he is absolutely right. Unfortunately, there seems to be an air of 'quick fixes' and 'life hacks' to overcome life's biggest challenges. But this isn't the case; if it was a big and complex challenge, it couldn't have a 'quick fix' as it would negate the meaning of a big life challenge. You can't cheat in life; there isn't a simple answer to getting fit and healthy; you can't hack your way into becoming wealthy. Granted, certain processes are better than others, but if the problem is worth tackling, the solution will require hard work. 

This is the parable of the man who decided to take a short-cut, only to find himself lost in the forest. The sooner he admits that he made a mistake and turns back, the sooner he will get on the right path. 

You're in it for the long-term, a quick fix will provide a temporary solution at best, but long-lasting change will require hard work.

Key takeaways:

1) There aren't simple answers to complex questions

2) There is no 'life hack' that is supposed to answer life's most challenging problems

3) The sooner you realize the short path isn't the right one, the sooner you can go back and take the right one

3) Short-term fixes will provide short-term solutions at best

One of the tricky parts about this 5-axis truck project I'm working on is the issue of parting it off when complete. 

Since this project has a very thick width, running an endmill back and forth on both sides isn't really practical as the part could move side-to-side when leaving a web of material. So the solution my boss came up with was to have some of the stock left on the truck's underside and thread some holes to bolt a plate that would attach to the wheels and new holes. This would give a secure workholding location while an endmill could finish parting the truck from the opposite end. 

Adding the side plate fixture would require a pause in the machine between toolpath operations. I accomplished this by adding a Manual NC program in Fusion360 where I can add custom code for the machine to position the part right in front of the door, ready for adding the plate. 

I'm quite proud of how fast I designed, program, and mill out the clamp piece! It was a simple 2 op part, and I got it running from nothing to finished in about an hour and a half. Unfortunately, I found out too late that I missed that I was supposed to add a block to one side to push it away from the remaining stock. So the part I made was useless unless I added a small block spacer behind it. Thankfully I've got the updated version finished up, and the machine is ready to run tomorrow morning!

One of the big questions I keep asking myself is 'what advice would YOU give to someone looking to get started moving on their career?'

It's a question I ask plenty of other people with mixed responses. But from my own experience, if I was starting, the first thing I would do is prove myself. 

Being so young, there are many things I have to overcome, and because of that, establishing a stable, consistent part of my life would be the very first thing I would do: nothing huge, just one small step of creating a routine that I can follow day to day. I've found that having one part in your life that doesn't move is extremely comforting, and you can make great advances in other areas that you normally wouldn't stride toward due to how alien it is. 

Learning to be consistent has been the single most important lesson I've learned to move ahead faster. Showing others that you can be consistent in your word and actions has been how I've been able to get into amazing opportunities. 

Key takeaways:

1) Prove yourself 

2) Consistency is the single biggest lesson to learn

3) You show yourself to be someone reliable 

Through reading Rabbi Daniel Lapin's book 'Thou Shall Prosper,' he constantly speaks on networking and how to increase the number of people you know.

One of the ideas I hadn't really considered until reading the book was how many people everyone knows. He talks about how in his synagogue, there are morning prayer meetings for every day of the week, and typically a group of 10 men shows up every time. After the prayer service, there are normally some light discussions before people head off to work; through that example, he talks about how he isn't meeting with 9 other people; he speaks with 81 people. Each one of those men typically knows at least 9 other people, and so getting to know one person, you may not have something in common with them, but they may know someone that is.

Putting it in the light of, it's not who you know now, but it's who those you know are in contact with is what really makes the difference. I did a small version of this almost by mistake a few months ago. I decided to ask one of the business leaders my family was in contact with about getting into a mastermind group. He then referred me to a networking guy who knew many people, and through that one initial connection, I am now in contact with many business leaders in the fields that I desire to go into. 

After reading this book, it's kicked me off to do even more networking, and I've been put in contact with some very insightful leaders that's accelerated my growth even faster. 

Key takeaways:

1) You have the ability to get in touch with hundreds of people

2) The guys you get in contact with may not do what you do, but they may know a guy

3) Start by asking questions and show interest in getting in contact