Suspense

# Chapter 357

The horrible suspense of waiting for the verdict. Health is the worse, but it is still bad if you are waiting for the verdict on your house or like we are, the verdict on your car repairs. Last month’s car repairs exceeded all combined income, and dang, here we are again, warning lights and dire predictions aside, the cold hard facts are that the Jeep (Just Empty Every Pocket) is back in the shop to try and chase down whatever is ailing it. But the tension of not knowing is always difficult, no matter what the subject. In fact most of us have limits to how much of this we can take and not blow a metaphorical gasket. With all of these suspense scenarios we will eventually find out the news whether we want to or not. And then we will make the next decision, which in fact may begin a new suspense cycle.

Our Jeep is old and has lots and lots and lots of miles on it and so major repairs always bring up the question of “is it worth it?” or something along those lines. Is it worth it to keep repairing the old old Jeep? That answer is usually yes, if for no other reason, better the devil you know than the one you don’t know - meaning better to keep this old car and all its known problems and quirks than to purchase another old car and have new problems and quirks to repair. There are people who strongly disagree with this approach, but a car is transportation at the end of the day, nothing more. If you are approaching your transportation as a status symbol or fashion statement or some nonsense as that, then you have other issues that we aren’t addressing today.

The evil of sluggishness

# Chapter 356

Ennui. This is what is tracking me like prey. Listlessness is my shadow, and I can’t seem to shake it. I have my routines and systems that keep me productive and moving forward, but sluggishness and lethargy are running a close race. This malaise is gaining on me. Do you ever feel this way? I will admit that I do not often feel this way. And I honestly don’t have very many ideas about how to break out of this and get back on my happy normal.

Perhaps it is turning 60 and trying to navigate the coming years of less and more difficult? Perhaps I just need to get on a plane and take that trip to Asia that I was so up for last year? Maybe I need to take my business consulting business back out on the road and meet and greet until I gain some traction? Maybe I need to resolve all the pieces that are keeping us so pinned down here in the States? Don’t even think that can be done, but I could change up the status quo and shake some of the patterns up.

Well my coffee time is used up and my peanut butter and Nutela allotment for the day are gone and I still haven’t written my required length this morning. Yet there is some good content here and I hope you find some answers as you think this stuff through.

What we imagine

# Chapter 355

Everybody in the entire building heard the child scream and then scream again. Just a normal day at the lab I guess, but if you aren’t accustomed to children screaming in holy horror at the needle coming their way, then you are in for a treat. This is the “I am being tortured by flaming hot brands” kind of screaming. The “I am going to die this very moment” kind of screaming. Elle, her nurse that had the horrible job of sticking the child while she was kicking crying and screaming, told me that she immediately quieted down once the needle was in. Why? Because as with most things in life, what we imagine is worse than reality.

Everybody in the building heard the child scream because of her imagination. Her fear of the unknown, i.e. her imagination. This is why people don’t reach for their dreams. Why businesses fail. Why businesses don’t get started. Why people drop out of college, or don’t go in the first place. This is why relationships don’t succeed, and why others break up. This is why you and I aren’t creating all that we think we could and should. This is why we don’t make the future that we really want. This is why we don’t love the way we really can. This is the reason we don’t live the lives that we could. This is why we don’t change the world every day. This is why we don’t live each day to the maximum. This is the reason we are stunted and less than we should have and could have been. This is the reason we care more about ourselves than others because we are afraid that we won’t get our portion, that it will hurt, that others are out to get us, that we aren’t understood, etc etc. We can change this.

Slow lazy breakfasts are the best

# Chapter 354

Less and less do I go out for food, the food we make at home is so much better. But we go out for social reasons and that is reason enough. But a $30 breakfast out with mediocre food is not the point. What you are really going out for is the experience, the ambiance and the shake-up in your routine, the different atmosphere is what we are really going to get. You just thought it was breakfast. Had the breakfast been astonishing, that would have been just icing on the cake, but the American version of that is quick, about eating, and right back out the door to the next thing. The European and Asia versions of breakfast are much slower and luxurious and crafted to ease you into your day, not be one more thing to check off on your list.

Lingering over croissants and coffee is very different than a waitress asking you five times if there is anything else they can get you (which is a mild indirect way of saying “if you are done eating please leave”). Lingering over a slow lazy breakfast is a far superior way to start your day and energize your plans and solidify your strategies. As I said the Europeans have perfected this, and it was absolutely one of the best things ever while visiting with our children in Germany when they were in boarding school - a big breakfast spread, and plenty of time to enjoy it in a beautiful comfortable room. I guess the point of writing this is to show the scale and possibilities that we all have in the ways that we begin our mornings, where, and how. As I sit here writing this on our porch, which is our usual breakfast nook, the improvement over the restaurant we just left leaves you gobsmacked. 1. My coffee is far superior 2. No irritating teenybopper music inanely playing in the background, 3.much more comfortable chair, 4. No pressure to exit quickly 5. And it didn’t cost me $30 for two small mediocre breakfasts.

Non-homogenous parties

# Chapter 353

We went to a party, and it was far less homogenous than most affairs we attend. It was great. Age range was mid-70’s to less than one year old. Different social-economic backgrounds, ethnicities and beliefs were all represented. It was far more representative of this fine country that we live in, than the groups and tribes we usually surround ourselves with, and it was educational. Meaning that we all are far more alike and far more different than we imagine, and that means we can have and find common ground if we choose, and we can argue about anything if we choose. And what a choice that is! It is one that we are making each day and that posture determines what kinds of relationships we have, and more importantly WHO we have relationships with in each stage of our lives.

This requires an exposure on our part, to be open in environments and with people who we usually aren’t hanging out with and who we aren’t seeking out on a regular basis. This is so healthy for us, yet it also is so challenging for us that we rarely if ever do it. I know that this was the first gathering of non-family or non-church that I have been to in years. Can’t believe I just wrote that sentence, but if I am going to own this then I am going to own this. I need these people and they need me. On the other hand, this introvert was worn out after a couple of hours hanging out! I am such a light weight, can’t handle all that much interaction with anyone at any time.

Make your mornings sing

# Chapter 352

Mornings are for productivity, because it gets more difficult as the day goes on, more inputs intrude, more demands are needed to be met, more expectations, less energy to accomplish all these matters. Get your groove on earlier in the day and enjoy the plush comfort of accomplishment. There are plenty enough challenges to work in the modern world that you don’t want to make things more difficult. Take the easier high productive road to where you need to be. Dig in deep in the mornings, pre-email, pre-schedule or calendar, pre-solve-the-world’s-problems, and definitely pre-news cycle and get some great work done.

You have to put the most important pieces right at the beginning. Not necessarily the most urgent, but the important. The pieces that could change everything, that develop your skills, that build a body of work, that move your goals forward, that build you. These are the important parts of your work, perhaps not the loud and the urgent, but the important. Whether it is writing two chapters in the novel you have always dreamed of writing, or resolving the plot line and character’s responses in that novella, or organizing your plan for the day, or reading your RSS feed which you have curated to send you the most pertinent and important information, or designing the next step in your side hustle, or catching up on your learning material for a potential new gig, or reading something deep and profound, make it important and make it a habit. Make your mornings sing with productivity and insight, make a difference in the world today.

Don’t just reprioritize the triage

# Chapter 351

Finally putt my butt in the seat and started getting some tasks done. There simply is no way around work, you just have to go through it and one hour at a time get the stuff done. There is a lot of satisfaction when that happens, and so I don’t really get the delay and delay and procrastinate thing that I can do to myself over and over. Actually I am a more reprioritize the triage list than a delay guy, but I do have clients that are all delay and more delay type of procrastination. But regardless of where you fall on this scale or another scale, the work was getting pushed back further and further to a later date and you and I were not getting it done on schedule.

But the pressure to help out others with their overclocked schedules and responsibilities was still high today, and I hated to disappoint them, but I had to set myself up for some success and progress. Sooooo, I 1.warned them that I was not available to help, 2. stay focused and on task and 3. kept saying no throughout the day as more requests for help came in and 4. encouraged others to dial it back some and not bring so much stress and pressure to our collective table. At the end of the day others may have been somewhat frustrated with me but I made some headway on important pieces of work. It wasn’t a perfect day, but it was way better than I had been doing last week. It was a good start. Now to continue.

Thieves are stealing your work

# Chapter 350

You should never never ever read email before you get your work done, because email is just going to derail all your best work. Email is going to occupy the space between your ears that you need to focus on producing something great. I made that mistake this morning. I don’t often do that, but bad news is the most difficult to avoid and subject of the message let me know that it was going to be less than happy news, and so I read it and now I so wish I hadn’t because my knowledge of my coming rent hike is intruding on my mind like a hammer. It interferes with each sentence, all congruence of thought, and just will not stop interrupting my thought process! This is why I choose a path of minimal inputs prior to the early morning routines, because these inputs intrude and interject and will not stay in any form of box or container so that you can get important stuff completed!

So our rent is going up, what is unexpected about that? Not one single thing. But this is why you need to isolate and insulate your mornings from inputs, you can’t control how your thought processes grab ahold of concrete problems and try to begin resolving them. We sell our productive mornings to email and the news, and pay the price of a derailed day that gets little accomplished. I typically don’t read an email before early afternoon, where I have a block of time to think about it and answer because I so plan and hope to OHIO (only handle it once) that baby! Stop allowing these thieves to steal your best hours of the day.

Another knot for me to untie

# Chapter 349

Another canceled leadership trip. Another person fails to invest in themselves. Why do we do this all the time? We are quick and eager to help others, or do those actions which bring attention or favor our way, but to address what is going on inside of us and to be better? Nah we aren’t all that interested in doing those things, even when someone else pays for the privilege. We are too busy for that. We are too overwhelmed for those choices. We are too stressed to even think about it and let it happen. And these three sentences reveal that you need to invest in yourself more than ever! If you were reading this about someone else, you would be yelling, “take some time to relax, develop, and invest in yourself, you big goofus!”

You can’t buy development at the store, you can not just make a decision and be a leader the next day like magic, you can’t be the person everyone needs you to be by working yourself to death and think you are going to win something important because you put in more hours than anyone else. Seth asks, “What if this were easy?” And I put much of my effort into making leadership and development easy. I come to you. I pay the airfare, all you have to do is show up and be fully present. And yet, still another canceled leadership trip. I get it, no one wants to dive too deeply into the things that make us tick, except those who want to excel exceptionally, which is not most of us. But there has to be another way to help you get where you want to go . . . another knot for me to think on and untie.

A whole different day

# Chapter 348

Deflected and redirected from all the tasks that you had set before you, but did you get a single one of them accomplished? Nope. A whole different day emerged. Frankly a much better day in most ways, the only fail being that the tasks from yesterday have now been moved to today and I can see that they will likely get moved to tomorrow. This is a terrible pattern of production, a great pattern of living in the moment and going with the flow of kids and grandkids and parental care. The non-productive pattern was a lot more fun too. Only bad part is that the production pieces of life aren’t going away, those 38 thank you notes are waiting to be hand-written, those financials need to be submitted, those taxes need to be paid, those cups-of-coffee 3-100 still need to be found and explored. And honestly a thousand other tasks are calling for attention. This is life and it is persistent.

An occasional “whole different day” is one thing, a pattern of whole different days is far more significant and deadly. There has to be a balance of getting it done, and living it well. Since I am generally the only one getting it done on the work side around here, the priorities need to stand. But when a sick grand baby wants their Opa to pick them up and hold them, well you do. When said sick grand baby crashes and falls asleep in your hot sweaty arms, you sit down and let them sleep, and enjoy every moment of the deep snuggles and baby smells, until the nap is over and they pop right out of your arms and start running around energetically. When youngest daughter needs to install and secure the child carrier on her bike, you stop and make sure it is done and done correctly. When oldest daughter gets stuck in an airport you stop and facilitate and help change all her arrival plans. And so on and so forth the day unfolded . . . .

100 cups of coffee?

# Chapter 347

I need to pursue and find and accomplish cup of coffee number three. Not wait around until it finds me. Initiative and action are my friends. Cup of coffee number three is the one of the 100 cups of coffee process that we use in one of the orgs I work in, to create contacts and funnels of work for the future. I am terrible at this. All my life my work has come to me, and now that needs to change, has changed, and I must change too. The inertia that comes from this must-happen change is powerful, and so far has been kicking my butt, it is the classic failure to launch scenario and of course this introvert doesn’t want to meet any new folks and certainly doesn’t want to go looking for them. And the wonderful COVID world where we all stayed home is largely ended for most folks and they expect real coffees in a real coffee shop now, instead of a short awkward meeting online, we now have long awkward meetings in person. I am so terrible at getting this started. Genuine curiosity is what I need most and lack the most.

Genuine curiosity gets you into people’s lives and dramas and draws you right in and the time flies. I have felt this so little in the last decade as to be non-existent. My curiosity burned out and I have no idea how to relight it. I mean who wants to sit here for the next 9.5 years and wait for “retirement” to arrive? Seriously, that is what it feels like many days, and that is on me and me alone. I have great choices in front of me and I can choose to choose or choose not to choose one or more of these great choices or settle for far less. But yes that sounds so big and overwhelming and I haven’t gained any traction with those size decisions the last two and a half years, so maybe I just need to focus on the third cup of coffee?

You need a large bulldog with larger teeth

# Chapter 346

It feels great helping people. There are times, when I truly wish that I could do far more. The hater situation that I was writing about yesterday is worse than I thought. He clearly hasn’t stopped his spite-filled self-righteous ways. Any resistance to his unsubstantiated accusations is considered a personal attack on the hater and any capitulation/compromise/cooperation is considered an admission of guilt - meaning there is no adult response possible. The hater becomes the accuser, the jury and the judge and executioner. When things get bogged down, he brings in his “peacekeepers” (I kid you not, they are actually called that!) who are purported to be independent objective neutral mediators and are in fact just henchmen directly employed by the hater’s parent org and the “peacekeepers” make you doubt your sanity and perspective and what actually happened in the past.

Once these peacekeeper gorillas are deployed you are well over half way to a public execution. What do you mean you didn’t do anything wrong? Where are your accusers? Honestly it doesn’t matter if you actually have accusers or not, it doesn’t matter if you are guilty or not, all that matters in this twisted version of Nightmare on Elm St is that the hater has a mission, and basically unlimited power to bring down the foe. You are the foe. I don’t know why someone has unleashed this bulldog on you, but they have and there is no putting him back in his cage until he has savaged you. You need a bigger bulldog. Be wise in which one you choose. Whether its God alone, the legal system, or a ferocious refusal to cooperate, may they have large large teeth.

Haters

# Chapter 345

Today is an important meeting to discuss a hater from the past. Hater in the sense of the word that he had all the power and did not know me at all and unloaded all his venom my way, starting an avalanche that ultimately led me out of the organization that I had worked with for 23 years. That was 15 years ago and I never think about him, and actually thank him when I do think of him because he shoved me out the door which has been a great blessing these last 15 years. But now he has targeted someone else I know and they are coming to me for help.

I don’t know this man really, and am not sure I have ever even met him face to face. All his arrows at me were emails and conversations with the powers above him so that he could kick me to the curb with immunity. Drunk on power and self-righteousness, he basically told me what I had to do. He issued commands. He did not do conversations. Fast forward 15 years and it sounds like he is still stabbing organizations and leaders in the back and getting paid well to do it. Proves once again that in my former parent organization “no good deed goes unpunished.” (Big sigh) I feel so terrible for those that I will be talking with today about this man, how they got on his radar I have no idea but it was a sad sad day when it happen. This hater is as tenacious as he is ugly and he won’t quit until he has them all on their knee’s before the proverbial headsman and his axe. Whatever do I coach them to do??

Nutella and peanut butter distractions

# Chapter 344

Well the clock is ticking and I am staring at a blank screen. Then my wife asks me “what am I writing about?” Well nothing actually, if I don’t get started. Getting started is always the most hardest thing. And keeping it going is the most important thing. Momentum is your friend! Don’t let it slip or slide away. But the importance of momentum is overshadowed by the difficulty of getting started. All the parts of my life that are stuck, static and waiting are getting started problems. And getting started challenges are seduced by the multiplicity of easier things to do. There is always something easier to do that needs to be done or could be done. Those never-ending easier things to do are the primary excuse factory that I use to explain why I haven’t gotten started.

If you think that this subject is growing as I am writing then you would be correct. I write and then more stuff that I am having impossibilities of getting started shows their heads. But at the pace I am writing today, the entire jar of Nutella is going to be gone by the time I reach my word count. I surely don’t have any problems whatsoever starting a new jar of Nutella! Or Peanut Butter! I can get started with either one of those easily enough, and that is what I am talking about. We are always surrounded by Nutella and peanut butter kinds of distractions that make initiative on the important stuff much much more difficult. But it is the important stuff we want to be known for and that is critical to complete. Can’t complete if I fail to begin.

Falling behind

# Chapter 343

Each year I fall a little further behind because stuff happens, life happens. Today is anniversary day, the day that I start, and or stop these daily writings. So that means that I should be at chapter 365 instead of chapter 343. Over the course of the last three years that I have been doing this, I have lost some 18 days where I don’t write for whatever reason, probably most of the reasons were travel days. Car travel specifically, these are hard to write going down the interstates. Easier on the airplane. But this shows that no discipline is perfect and the larger question is whether I should continue this practice or bring it to a close after writing over 1000 of these daily 275’s? This is an annual revisiting of this question.

But yes I am going to continue, if for no other reason than I continue to need the practice and discipline. Just read last week about how one of my favorite weekly bloggers wrote for four years to a tiny audience before he became famous. My goal is not to become famous nor infamous, my goal is to write something important well. I have days like that, and then I have days like this, where I write about writing and not especially well. But I learned much this past year, I stopped and then started again and then stopped once more, using prompters to get started each morning. Granted, a good prompt sentence makes this easier each day, than does a blank screen. Anniversaries and assessments are always good. This this has been important to me, but probably not to you.

Where the best leaders lead from

# Chapter 342

The change up day. Whether it’s your Saturday or your Sunday or some other day, you need a change up day. Rock you out of your routine rut. This is not something you want to do every day, but an occasional alteration of your every day pattern, can ship wreck you. Or, it can let you see things a bit differently. Hopefully this will be the “a bit differently” version. A change in your routines will give you different inputs so theoretically you can have different outputs.

So leaders who can gain clarity from this change up in routine will come out ahead of the pack. My biggest take-away today has been that I am not needed in 99.9% of the situations around this community. Yet I need to be intensely prepared to stand in the gap of that 0.01%!when I am needed. More importantly I must be happy, thrilled and pleased with this development. The days of being needed all the time are over, and our posture should be “thank God!” Real leadership always is working itself out of a job. This is next level leadership when you can lead from the back of the room, from the chair in the audience. This is where the best leaders lead from.

Defeating the power of busy over you

# Chapter 341

Busy is way overrated and under pressure is just a sure way to the graveside sooner than necessary. How about a little rest in your life? No one talks about rest in any significant way. We talk about sleep, and that is all fine and good but rest is different than sleep. Sleep is a superpower, energizing your life in ways nothing else can - you cannot live without sleep. Rest however, makes the life you have so much more enjoyable. Rest creates space in your life so that you aren’t incessantly running from one task to the next, so that you aren’t jamming every possible event and experience into every single second of every single day. It creates a space where you can take off your watch, lay down your phone, sideline each worry and concern, be careless and reckless with schedules and productivity and tasks. Rest is the pressure-relief valve.

When I was a kid, my mom had a pressure cooker. A loud obnoxious pot that was akin to a steam locomotive, because of the pop pop pop pop sound that it made, and the actual steam coming out of the spout at the top. That spout was the pressure relief valve making sure things didn’t explode from the pressure inside the pot. Rest. The same thing in your life. You need something to let the pressure off. To kick off your mental shoes and lay down on the beach and enjoy the moment. Rest is your beach trip, your book that you reading, your power nap, your mani-pedi, your cigar at the end of the day, your cold one, playing with your band, going for a walk, getting a hug from your granddaughter or grandson, a hockey game, anything that breaks the power of busy over you.

Don’t get run over by the urgent

# Chapter 340

All I needed was some super focused hours and boom! I got it all done! The client letters I had been attempting to complete all week, got thrown to the front of the line, in a take-no-prisoners style attack. Turn off the phones, lock yourself in your idea space, lock out all notifications, refuse to answer all summons, block all interference, stay away from all grand children, forego all foods and drinks, just get the butt in the seat and get all the work done! Unlike this very moment, where I am trying to write these words while grandchild number 5 is loudly talking and having a ball, experiencing tea for the first time, having an exciting morning, which is just wrecking mine, but what do you do? Enjoy the boy of course, but when this becomes the pattern of the week, an intervention was required.

You have to do this as well, when life takes over your work, you have to find a way to stop everything and find a space where you can focus and think and get important things done, not just get run over by all the urgent things in your life. The urgent is relentless and honors no man or woman’s schedule or obligations. So you have to snatch quiet and space from the jaws of urgency which are ever knocking at your door for constant attention and investment from you. This will very similar to the triage of parenting where you have to resolve and move and deflect the constant barrage of noise, questions, disagreements, intentional picking at one another, arguments, fights and general chaos to find some zen, a place where you can think, parents have long escaped to the bathroom for these reasons! Find your space, lock it down, get some important work done, reenter the chaos of life without guilt.

Pheromones?

# Chapter 339

Bringing out the introverts. As I was sitting in the auto repair shop waiting room yesterday, because today much like yesterday is a day of constant interruptions, people just would not stop talking to me! Generally I put off this very intentional vibe that I do not want to know you, that I do not want to talk to you, and plus I have nothing to say, don’t enter into conversations around me, I am an introvert and happy being so. Wearing my extrovert mask is so exhausting and I simply don’t unless it is required by work. But these other people in the waiting room kept on trying to engage me in conversation even though I was clearly trying to work on my work, while the mechanics were working on my jeep. What was so hysterical to me, was that each person in the waiting room considered themselves an introvert! Yes this too came up before I was finally rid of them all.

Is there some kind of pheromone for introverts? Or some kind of gene that sets off a room full of them together to begin talking like a gaggle of preteen girls? No, I don’t believe there is, but it certainly seemed like it yesterday. My wife thinks it is just me, that I bring the introverts out of their little shells and let them see the daylight. She may be right. When I grieving my brother’s death, I took the moment to accomplish one of my bucket list items, ride my bicycle across the entire USA West to East. There were about 25 of us on that trip, and it quickly became clear that there were four introverts, and 21 who could not stop talking. We made our own table, just for introverts so that we could have some peace, especially at breakfast! Keeping the extroverts at bay was a constant challenge, we even had to put signs on the table that it was a “no talking table” which only made it worse. Maybe my wife is right.

Course corrections

# Chapter 338

Some days require constant course corrections. Yesterday was one of those days. Phone calls while on my bicycle on the road that I had to take. So this demands I stop and get off the bicycle in order to not get run over while chatting with whoever. Then the dr’s appointment went on longer than planned, and had a different result than the one hoped for. You have to get back on course after those interruptions. And banking is always a disruption, it is so user unfriendly, I could totally reconfigure how a bank operates if they would only give me the chance. Needed another course correction after the bank. Then the gas pumps, which are fine, very straight forward to use, its the location that is problem. Then the pharmacy, and the constant discussion about whether my name is Kenneth (yes) or David (yes), and another course correction. It was after 4:00 pm before I got to my first client letter of the day, which was the most important task of the day.

This constant resetting of the day, to get back to client letters, to survive all these interruptions, to get to a place where you can produce something important and beautiful, is in and of itself, the work of the day. When I sit here and write it all out, this series of constant interruptions became the main course of the Tuesday I just lived. And yes yes, I still got a few clients letters completed before I went to bed, but the interactions with the dr’s, the pharmacists, the bank tellers, and the church receptionist were probably more important in hindsight, than merely course corrections throughout the day.