📝 Editors Note
Last week, I heard coach Matt Doherty (former UNC basketball coach) speak at a conference and I wrote down three takeaways:
Praise the action you want repeated.
Adversity will always be a part of your life. You need to have a plan for how you deal with it.
Develop a morning routine. His is prayer, journaling and repeating a personal anthem in the mirror (e.g. I am on the only person standing in my way today).
Coach Doherty is, maybe unsurprisingly, now a professional career coach. I’ve become more interested in the profession because a few years ago I tried to find a career coach. I ended up with someone who wasn’t the right fit, wasting time and money. In hindsight I would have really benefitted from peer recommendations.
If you’ve had a great experience with a career/life coach or therapist, would you be open to anonymously recommending them via this google form? I’d love to create a database available to anyone reading.
Without further ado….
Why John?
We are close friends from college and new dads. John has always been on top of the latest tech trends and has had an impressive career working at various start-ups. He is also good at getting into and out of trouble!
Follow John on Instagram @technogito
Self-Description
Husband and father, East Coast-native Louisiana-transplant, Manchester United fan, scuba-diving loving product and engineering leader. Total nerd when it comes to automation of all kinds.
John’s Recommendations
Written in His own words…
Digital
One of the digital tools that has genuinely caught my attention over the past 2-3 years is Sunsama. It integrates seamlessly with various other platforms, consolidating my calendar, to-dos, tasks, and meetings in one central hub. Being someone who thrives on automating processes, I appreciate Sunsama's ability to aggregate tasks from various sources (Email, Calendar, JIRA, GitHub, etc.), offering a consolidated view of my day-to-day responsibilities.
It also helps in reminding me to allocate time for my family and friends, especially my little one, amidst a busy work schedule. Sunsama also boasts an automated task scheduler that takes all these disparate tasks and automatically schedules them on my calendar so I know what's realistic to do in a day, and what I need to say no or not now to.
Content
In my role at PatientIQ, nurturing a culture of continual growth and learning is essential for the success of our business, but also me personally. A tool that I've found particularly enriching is the diverse range of subscriptions offered on Medium.com, which I get a weekly email summary of. By setting up topics that interest you, you can get a stream of articles relevant to your professional role or personal life. I follow Technology, Product Management, Software Engineering, and Leadership, which provides a fresh perspective on how I build my Product and Engineering organization in terms of team, processes, technology, and culture. I find that these articles are often highly relevant to situations I find myself in on a day-to-day basis, and offer thoughts on how I might approach them that I wouldn't have on my own, or just saving me the mental energy of not having to start from scratch.
Product
My wife and I moved to Key Largo during COVID for about 2 years, and scuba diving became a sanctuary for me, a space where the stresses of daily life naturally fade into the background. I racked up more than 100 dives while there (many with my wife, Ann Marie), and I can't emphasize enough the value of Aqua Lung's BCD in these experiences. Whether you're new to scuba diving or thinking of getting into it, you won't go wrong with the Aqua Lung Axiom BCD.
I have a tremendous amount of respect for products that are clearly designed and built by people who have used them over and over, finding subtle ways to make them perfect for the job at hand. When you're 100ft down, being able to exert the fundamental skills like buoyancy control and handling inevitable emergencies with minimal distraction instead of fiddling with your BCD is important.
Well-Being
75 Hard Challenge
At the beginning of 2022, I decided to start the year by doing the 75 Hard challenge. There are basically 5 rules:
Follow a diet
Two 45-minute workouts per day (one has to be outside regardless of weather)
Drink a gallon of water
Read 10 pages of a book
No alcohol
I'll admit I was mostly doing this to get back in shape and lose some weight, but I was surprised at the habits that stuck with me (and have continued to stick with me) since doing it. In no way is it a sustainable way to live life, but it will positively impact day-to-day decisions you make related to your health and habits.
Watch
I highly recommend "Silo" on Apple TV+, a show that is not as mainstream but fantastic in storytelling and character development. This series, based on a compelling book series by Hugh Howey (which I'm reading now and can't put down), takes the audience into a meticulously crafted post-apocalyptic world, exploring themes of survival, human ingenuity, and resilience. The portrayal of life underground is depicted with incredible depth but also allows viewers to ponder the human psyche and societal structures at play. The philosophical undertones and analogies to our own exploration of what's beyond what we know on Earth make Silo a worthwhile watch.
Digital
This is an incredibly useful iPhone app, especially for those who like being data-driven with getting better at things. The application has most golf courses across the country pre-loaded, and if you have an Apple Watch, you can quickly select what club you're hitting, and the app will calculate the distance of your shots using GPS. I was worried about how clunky this might be, slowing down the pace of play, but with an Apple Watch, it's no more than 2-3 seconds per shot. The app also offers detailed statistics and analytics, providing a deeper understanding of your game and highlighting areas for improvement, which I desperately need. Whether you're a seasoned golfer or a beginner looking to understand the game's nuances, Golf Pad is an app I would highly recommend.
Plug
Burnbrae Vineyards is located in Forest, Virginia (outside Lynchburg, VA). My dad, who retired from being a cardiothoracic surgeon a few years ago, and his brother, started a Vineyard about 5 years ago. My dad is the kind of guy who dives head-frist into new hobbies and sends a picture with no context of him in a full bee-keeping suit surrounded by thousands of bees. He jokes that he works harder now than he ever did as a surgeon.
His passion for their vineyard is no different, and now ships to almost all US states! If you're looking for a Virginia-based wine as a gift for the upcoming holiday season, or just want to try some Virginia wine you might not have heard of, you can check out the bottles they have here.
Follow-up plug: John’s wife Ann Marie’s art work. These pieces are really good. Check them out here.
Want to get in touch with John? Find him on LinkedIn or shoot him an email at john.gerhardt@icloud.com.
P.S. this past weekend I was in Santa Fe for a close friend’s wedding. On Sunday, a few of us went to the Meow Wolf art exhibit. It was like being in an episode of Stranger Things and Sunday Scaries personified.