Recreating 2006: My Magic Year of Personal HyperGrowth
As a history guy, I try to learn from the past. The past of societies and civilizations but also my own. Reflection is a valuable tool. When I look back, I believe that 2006 was probably the most productive year ever from a career, health and personal fitness perspective.
I was a salaryman at Yahoo! and a rising executive running Sales strategy and Ad products launches globally. It was an amazing time to be in Yahoo! business was growing like mad from a revenue and user perspective, it was seen as the place to work as we had yet to really get crushed by Google. The place was full of energy and amazingly smart talented people who are now found to be running significant businesses and organizations across the world.
I made the decision at the beginning of the year to sign up for the Tournament of Masters, a one week Systema fight training boot camp. Systema is a martial art used by the elite Russian Spetsnaz special forces, some of the toughest elite soldiers in the world, equivalent to American Special Forces/Delta/Navy SEALs. So to prepare for it, I had 8-9 months to get fit. I spent a lot of time in the gym but more importantly ended up taking Muay Thai Kickboxing, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Krav Maga all at the same time. I literally trained 2-3 hours every day, 7 days a week. 1 Hour in the morning, 1-2 hours after work. Couple hours on Saturday & sunday. After a couple months of this, I started to see some unexpected benefits that bled into all aspects of my life at that time.
My health and sleep were better than ever. This was reflected in my work, the clarity of thinking and my energy levels. The discipline it helped instill in me was also incredible. I still had a job to do but limited time. So I became very good about just focusing on 3-4 key things that I had to get done in the day. I was relentless at getting these done so I could make the shuttle bus back to San Francisco from Sunnyvale at 6 pm.
The results of this work led me to get promoted, got good stock option grants and good raises twice that year. I made my bones in the organization and it put me in a position to do whatever I wanted. I took so much vacation time, my boss at the time laughed about my accrued Vacation day count time being in the negative (it was). But I could get away with this because I handled my business & got SH-t done which is all that matters.
Additionally, that training regime made me super tough and confident in almost every aspect of life. I knew walking into a room or restaurant, I could have taken out 99% of the guys in the room in a fight. Confidence and energy are important, especially for someone aspiring for leadership. And I had it in spades that year until I got injured with bruised ribs in a Muay Thai class later that year. My career and travel schedule also took off then, which ironically gave me less time with my training which I credit for putting me on the path upwards.
Now it’s been over 16 years later, I’m looking to recreate this regime with a different impetus. The barbaric Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Covid pandemic, the idiotic Government policy overreach, growing inequality, inflation and economic mismanagement, growing extremism on both the Right & Left of America have me concerned for the immediate future. Call me a Doomer Optimist. And it leads me to think that rebuilding my self defense, fighting and shooting skills may be a good idea. I think of it as insurance, something good to have that you hope you never have to use. And you have the benefit of becoming more confident, being in better shape, and attain good health and energy levels. What’s not to like about this? It’s a no lose result whatever happens.