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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: Life Balance
Standing Desks are Awesome (and exhausting)
In August I pulled a muscle in my back. It was bad enough that sitting for long periods of time became uncomfortable. This was a big problem because, well, I sit all day long while I work. About a year ago I wrote about my efforts to sit less, which included using a standing station for my laptop sometimes. In that post I outlined all of the mounting research that suggests that sitting all day long can be bad for you. After that I continued to make a conscious effort to stand and move more in general. Still, I spent … Continue reading
Looking Back: It’s Been Five Years Since I Left My Job
In the midst of a really busy January and February I sort of forgot that it’s been more than five years since that day that I quit my job back in 2006. You know how people always say “it feels like yesterday”? Well in this case, it feels like a different life to me. It feels like it was much longer than 5 years. In a lot of ways, I feel like I’ve always run Pure Adapt. Anyway, I know there are a lot of people out there who have quit their job recently or are considering doing so. I … 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
I’m Back!
I had an awesome trip down South. It was exactly what I was hoping it would be – a long break from my routine. I wasn’t really trying to forget about work so much as just spend an extended amount of time in a different atmosphere with people I don’t get to see nearly often enough. JMU Talk The first few days were spent in Harrisonburg, Virginia at James Madison University where I gave my “Entrepreneurship as a Career Choice” talk. Previously I had just spoken to individual classes of say 15 – 30 people. This time Prof. Wales and … Continue reading
My Efforts to Sit Less
Starting with a NY Times article in February entitled Stand Up While You Read This! there has been quite a bit of attention paid to recent studies concluding that sitting is bad for you irrespective of the amount of exercise you get. Another good article is Sentenced to the Chair by the team at Men’s Health. Here’s an excerpt from the NY Times article: It doesn’t matter if you go running every morning, or you’re a regular at the gym. If you spend most of the rest of the day sitting — in your car, your office chair, on your … Continue reading
Work Blitzes
Back in January I wrote about how I planned for 3 productive hours per day when developing. Things were a little different then…I was busier, and there was a little more pressure to get LockerPulse done quickly. These past few weeks things have really calmed down for me, to a level I don’t think I’ve had in a long time (if ever). All of the chaotic stuff from the LockerPulse launch has passed. For a while while Mike was in China we were having tech issues with LP almost every day and a few other things went wrong. Piggybacking that … Continue reading
Is Google Ruining Your Life? [Guest Post]
This is a guest post from my good friend Tim, who is a regular commenter on this blog and is in the process of launching a Houston-based daily-deal site called YourYoupon. I am a frequent commenter on Adam’s blog, beyond the blog we’ve become good friends over the last few years and enjoy sharing business stories and other lifestyle/technology concepts we come across. As the story I’m about to share with you unfolded Adam was the first person I knew I was going to tell and he suggested a guest post for his blog, which leads us to the story. … Continue reading
Momentum Days
Yesterday was crazy. We’re in the middle of our largest Detailed Image sale of the summer, 25% off everything for three days. I was in the middle of moving LockerPulse to a new server (subject of a future post). We put some new warehouse processes into place. Mike is back this week. Oh, and a pigeon got loose in the warehouse. Luckily we trapped it quickly and released it with relative ease…a diseased rat flying around pooping all over our products would not have been good. Anyway, my to-do list piled up faster than I could even think about getting … Continue reading