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Hi. My name is Adam. I am the co-founder of Pure Adapt, Inc in Albany, NY. We own Detailed Image, LockerPulse, and a bunch of other websites. I write about our company, entrepreneurship in general, work-life balance, and whatever else interests me.
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Category Archives: Happiness
Trading Hours
@DHH wrote a really interesting blog post yesterday about what he calls “flipping the day“: Most days I work from 1pm to 9pm here in Spain, which translates to 6am to 2pm Chicago time. That gives me all the time before lunch to enjoy the light of day and all the activities that encourages. I find myself more interested in working out, more eager to read books, and generally infused with more energy for both physical and mental activities. Over the past few years my average sleep schedule has been roughly 10 PM – 6 AM. When you compare that … Continue reading
Embracing Winter?
Remember back in 2008 when I absolutely hated Winter? At that time I was fairly certain that within a few years I’d either start spending my winter somewhere down South or move out of the Northeast all together. Now, a few years later, I surprisingly don’t mind winter. In fact, I’m sort of enjoying winter. What changed? The Weather First and foremost, the weather has changed the past two winters. Since Albany is not in the mountains, not on the coast, and not near any of the great lakes, and since the temperatures have been a bit warmer (because of … Continue reading
Maintaining a Social Life After Leaving the Corporate World
When I first left my career as an engineer to run SportsLizard, my sole focus in life was building a successful business. I viewed anything that got in the way of my work to be an annoyance, and that included anything social. For probably the first six months I spent what seemed like every waking hour of every day working my ass off. I felt like I didn’t deserve a break. Real quickly I learned that isolating yourself doesn’t make you happy, that relationships are as much a part of happiness as doing work you enjoy. I think this actualization … Continue reading
What do you want from your work?
My partners and I have a running joke. One of us will pose the question “how much would someone have to pay you to do ___?” Most of the time, we just fill in the blank with the most obscene things our minds can conjure up, and then vehemently debate just how much money you’d need to humiliate yourself. It makes for some entertaining discussion. Sometimes though, we’ll pose a business related question. Like “how much would someone have to pay you to teach basic computer skills to the elderly every day for two years?”, or more realistically, “how much … Continue reading
How Being in Control of Your Work Drastically Reduces Stress (and just might save your life)
Last month Wired Magazine published a fascinating article on the science of stress called Under Pressure: The Search for a Stress Vaccine. The essence of the article is that while it’s becoming understood that stress has negative emotional, cognitive, and physical effects, we don’t fully understand the depths of what causes stress (for instance, the article talks about how stress endured during childhood or even by a mother during pregnancy can permanently change your DNA), which forms of stress are good for us and which ones are detrimental, nor do we fully understand how to go about “solving” stress (i.e. … Continue reading
Too Busy People
One of my least favorite phrases that people use is “I’m too busy for that”. I don’t really believe that any of us are too busy for anything that’s important to us. We all have the same 24x7x365 to work with, and we all have a large say in how we spend it. What you’re really saying (and what other people hear) when you say “I’m too busy” is “I don’t want to”, or “I’m too important for that”. It sends the wrong message to the people around you. One thing I’ve come to realize lately is that the vast … Continue reading
Lay Bricks
My good friend Adam Gilbert wrote recently on the My Body Tutor blog: When you give it your all every day, not only do you feel awesome for having done so, but you are making progress. And at the end of the day, I’ve never felt better from taking a day off of laying bricks than I have from a hard days work of laying them. Ever. One brick at a time. That’s so true. That article was in the context of dieting and exercising, but it just as easily applies to entrepreneurship. I enjoy taking time off. But I … Continue reading
Changes in Work, Sleep, Learning, & More
In looking back at posts from previous years, I realized that I used to post more frequently about all of the other things I think go into running a business and being an entrepreneur. Stuff like sleep and happiness and work ethic. As I’ve slowed a bit with my posting, it seems like those posts have been fewer and farther between. This certainly wasn’t intentional, but it’s always easier to put off a post about sleep & productivity than it is a post about a new feature on one of our sites. Nevertheless, I don’t want to lose that balance, … Continue reading
Vote With Your Actions
A few months ago I saw the movie Food, Inc. I’ve become quite obsessed with the food industry the past few years. I’ve read a bunch of books and watched a bunch of documentaries. It fascinates me just how broken things are and how negatively that affects the entire population. One of my favorite parts about Food, Inc was at the end of the movie, after revealing just how bad things are, they give you specific steps that you can do to take action. The list is up on the website. I love the fact that they encouraged action. How … Continue reading