When I heard Aaliyah sing I knew it was time to get my mind right for football practice.

Every morning, my best friend at Purdue University would drive us to Mollenkopf Athletic Center for preseason two-a-day practice.

Every morning he played the same song, “One In A Million…”

For 3 weeks.

When my colleague at AppointmentPlus emailed a link about the Fast Company Magazine Challenge.

Fast Company Magazine email link from AppointmentPlus team member

My mind went right back to 1996, sitting in the passenger side of Brandon’s red Dodge Dart.

Over this 6 day period, for this Fast Company challenge, I decided to document my progress, challenges, and findings.

I created 3 daily key performance indicators (KPI) for this Fast Company Magazine project:

Use only my Evernote Premium account app on my Samsung Galaxy S4 phone to take notes, outline my article, and research for material.
Use Pomodroido to make sure I write for at least 40 minutes.
Read Michael Porters Book “Competitive Strategy” for 20 minutes and write notes in the book.

As a bonus KPI, I must do this all before 6 am.

Day 1 – Fast Company Habit Challenge – Saturday – Wake up time = 3:50

Before bed last night, I watched Russel Crowe’s movie “Noah.“

It made me thankful that I know the true story. However, I had a few laughs at how Northern Medieval European everything look.

All I’m saying is that some of them should have tanned before shooting the film.

The child has been feed and she went back to sleep by 4:15.

I stayed up.

I find that if I brush my teeth first thing in the morning. I can feel more awake. It’s weird, I wonder if there is any research on the subject.

I started reading Michael Porter’s book at 5:38.

Kendall Matthews reads Michael Porter's book Competitive Strategy — I have a personal library of over 200 physical books, trade journals, and course materials. Thank goodness for Amazon Kindle.

My first morning nap happened around 9:30 am. It lasted for about 40 minutes.

Day 2 – Fast Company Habit Challenge – Sunday – Woke up at 4:26

Feed the child.

In the mornings, I drink Shamrock Farms Rocking’ ReFuel. It’s a 30 gram protein chocolate milk beverage with only 6 grams of sugar. This 12 ounce drink helps my body fight the urge to go back to sleep.

I need it bad.

Kendall Matthews takes Shamrock Foods Rockin Refuel

Then I refill my Arrowhead water jug with 101 ounces of water to guzzle down throughout the day.

Besides the hum of my laptop, it is extremely quiet in the morning, so I launch my app from Coffitivity to help increase my creativity. The app creates background noise as if you sitting at Starbucks working on your laptop.

Day 3 – Fast Company Habit Challenge – Monday – Woke up at 2:30 am to a loudly crying baby

It hasn’t until 3:30 am that I got back to sleep.

Then woke up a 5:45 to another crying “I’m-Awake-Get-Me-Out-of-This-Crib” episode.

I’m going to miss my overall before 6 am KPI.

I didn’t have time to write in the morning, but I did read for 20 minutes. Michael Porter’s book is fascinating because I can use the concepts to immediately.

I probably won’t get my mid-morning or afternoon nap in, hopefully I can at least workout after work.

Nope.

That didn’t happen either. I had to make more changes to a financial deck for work.

When I got home, everyone wanted to go swimming. So off to the pool and no sleep until 11 pm, because I have another project that I have to finish for our COO. I would like to do it tomorrow morning, but I’m meeting with our PR firm and executive team meetings from 8:45 until 1:30 pm.

Day 4 – Fast Company Habit Challenge – Tuesday

Woke up at 3:26. Feed the child.

Instead of going back to sleep and trying to get an extra hour of sleep, which turned into 3 hours like I did yesterday. I decided to stay up.

I turned on the Coffivity app to “Morning Murmur.”

When I went to login to Evernote, I notice that they changed their home page. Now they have a great hero banner and clearly layout their value proposition better.

This reminded me of what Mark Suster, a Venture Capitalist with Upfront Ventures talked about in the PUCCKA methodology (Pain, Unique Selling Proposition, Compelling Event, Champion, Key Players, and Aligned Purchasing Process.)

I can’t read Michael Porter’s book “Competitive Strategy” before 6 am. I took it to work yesterday and left it in my “Growth Hacking Office of Pain” at AppointmentPlus.

Therefore, I’m going to substitute the time by reading the story of Noah in a book called “Genesis.” I recently saw the movie version with Russell Crowe. I want to read how they put all those animals asleep in the Ark.

Kendall Matthews reads the true story of Noah and the Ark

Wasn’t able to take any 10 minute naps today.

I do need to make sure I bring Michael Porter’s book back home.

10 pm update:

Tonight, we went to OSHA Bar for Happy Hour. We sat next to a couple who had a 15 month old named Hannah. She loved to clap her hands and wave good bye.

My wife told them about Baby’s night out at UltraStar Movie Cinema on Indian Bend in Scottsdale.

Last week, we saw Scarlett Johansson’s “Lucy.” If you haven’t seen it yet, wait until it comes on TV.