Sometimes you have to go back to go forward

Sometimes you have to go back to go forward

I learned a ton of lessons today and will blog about some of them, but the most amazing one was that sometimes you have to go back (or backwards) in order to move forward or in order to make real progress.

My dad is an amazing engineer with an 8th grade education. He rebuilds antique cars with a passion that is energizing and awe inspiring with breathtaking results. All this with no formal training or schooling. Today's lesson came from a simple brake job on my ancient Japanese made pickup. We disassembled one side, leaving the other side intact. He has told me many times over the years that he takes “mental photographs” to remember how to reassemble whatever he is working on. I have none of this ability and that is probably why I never became a mechanic like him, even though I really enjoy tinkering with tools and engines.

We did this project together, because my dad is 75 years old and he simply can't physically do all that he was able to even in the recent past. As we attempted to reassemble the brake assembly, we repeatedly failed to attach a particular spring that was in the back. You guessed it, we eventually had to backup and disassemble the whole thing again, in order to install this particular spring and have a completed brake assembly. 

This is important because I had to do the second brake! Dad was out of gas, and thankfully I had paid careful attention the first time around. Long story short, this backing up process in order to move forward, enabled me to complete the second rebuild much more quickly and correctly the first time, than we experienced on the first rebuild even though the “master” was doing the first one.

What a great teaching tool and what a great learning process! This has lots of applications to other areas of expertise. As I am sure you can make many applications yourself, I will only make a one directly related to my area of work. When something isn't working, it often pays to back up, disassemble, start over or retrace your steps, in order to find the point of failure or disconnect or dysfunction. When a client is struggling to accomplish a goal, task or level of development, sometimes we need to wind things back until we find the fly in the ointment! Then we can start to make forward progress as the disabling spring is resolved. I did this mentally this past week as I spent several days traveling by car alone. I was able to “back up” and find the missing piece, the missing step to why several projects and clients were stalled, and we were not making any forward progress. I was also able to disassemble several problematic situations and find the missing spring that was preventing me from finding a good resolution. What about you? Where might you benefit by backing up in order to move forward?

How to drive a go-cart from PA to FL

Well it is almost a go-cart. In reality it is an ancient Isuzu Pup pickup with a quarter of a million miles on it, literally. Most people, all those who are sane, would never even begin a trip of this distance with such an old and worn vehicle. However I am not sane, much to my chagrin, and I am on this trip. It has let me down only once (so far) and prayerfully that little episode has been resolved. The key to driving something well past its prime condition is two fold: excellent care and a sustainable pace, neither of which mean what you may think. Let me explain.

Excellent care is not only regular maintenance, although that can not be allowed to lapse. Excellent care means to understand the nature of the mechanism, that it is a machine, and that parts wear out, that they need replacing even though they are not part of regular maintenance. This applies to our PTA as leaders in a complete and whole way. We have to recognize (read self-awareness) and understand the mechanism, that we are social, linguistic, relational, limited, finite creatures. We have limits, and those change over time. Sometimes you even have to get parts taken out or replaced that are not part of regular maintenance! Consistent PTA = excellent care in the leader's world.

Sustainable pace for a nearly go-cart type vehicle is not Interstate Highway Speed. It actually probably never was for this type of low geared small truck. But for sure it isn't the typical 78-82 mph that cars routinely travel down the vast interstate highway system in this country today. A sustainable pace for this vehicle is 60-62 mph max. My best sustainable pace, and your best sustainable pace is much slower than you think as well. And it takes a great deal of discipline to maintain that pace which is so much slower than everyone else's pace! In 2500+ miles of driving this truck at 60 mph on the interstate, I have only passed broken down vehicles and pedestrians - everyone else blows past me like a rocket! 

On the other hand, I noticed two things; that most people pass me multiple times over the course of driving down the road (which means our actual forward progress is closer than you would think) and that I am still moving forward (which is the whole point of driving at 60, that it keeps moving!) This informs us much about sustainable pacing, and I am sure you can see a dozen apparent lessons for yourself in the metaphor. I actually am living this successfully most of the time in my life as a leader. Some observations: I am much happier, content, alive, balanced than I was before in the hyper-ratrace we call productivity; I can more and more "be here now" in this moment rather than living in the next trip, curve, project, task, etc; and I can see that I am far far more productive in fewer hours than before. In fact recent research suggests at we produce as much in 11 hours now, that was produced in a 40 hour work week back in 1950. All the more reason to live a sustainable pace, you already are producing far more than generations before. But a sustainable pace for a 53 year old guy is slower than you would think, I easily have the equivalent of a quarter of a million miles on me, and I need to own that wear and tear in a responsible way. The results can be astonishing.

The dilemma of need and want

I have been on a long trip across America, some 4000 plus miles so far, and there is the most curious thing ever that I have seen this visit, a Cadillac pickup truck. I know that some of you, perhaps many of you, haven't even noticed. But to me, an occasional visitor to this great country, they stick out like a giraffe armadillo. No, there is no such animal that I know of, but a Cadillac pickup truck seems just as unlikely to me. Having grown up on a small farm, where a truck was a working tool not a transportation statement, this does not compute.

As I work with clients that are USA based I have noticed a similarly unlikely expectation. They can't say no. They have no clarity about the difference between a want and a need, a passion and a calling, a Should and a Must. I spend much of my time listening to how ovwhelmed and overclocked their lives are, and how this whole experience just happens to them. I am deeply sympathetic. I understand pressures from multiple directions and sources. I get how many opportunities can come your way, especially at the peak of your working years. I resonate with the confusing options that come at even ordering food at a restuarant.

However, each yes is a no to something else, and each no a potential yes to some other more valuable event or activity. Only you are responsible for your yeses and your no's. I know you don't want to hear that, and I don't want that responsibility either, but there it is. It will never change. Ever. You can never escape from this, you can only choose. When you do not think you are choosing, you have chosen. There is no where to lay the blame, there is no one to lay this responsibility on, there is no one but the face you see in the mirror. There are Cadillac pickups, but they are neither Cadillacs nor pickups. Wants and needs are not the same vehicle either. Have clarity. See clearly. Chose. Or someone else will make the choice for you.

Systems revamped!

I had a real embarrassment today, like I haven't had in years. I completely and totally forgot about a very important meeting. 15 minutes after I should have been there and on point, I get a phone call, and BAM instant awareness that I had majorly blown it!

Now that I have done as much damage control as I can exert today, I am sitting in a near empty cafe (because it is raining), drinking a mineral water, with a Nicaraguan and my mobile office, reviewing what happened and how it could have been prevented. It is like Peter Senge's seminal text The Fifth Discipline, came back to haunt me. Calm my racing heart! The very systems that I use to be as effective as any three other people, those very structures, my over-reliance on them, created a hole, and I fell into it.

This is a very important lesson, that I not grow weary of redundancy in my systems of execution, that I not  become casual about what I have allowed other people to place on my schedule, that I not let down my guard in the pursuit of excellence, that I always under-promise and over-deliver.

An ice cream free Sunday?

This time of the year is the, I-am-the-foreigner-and-I-know everything-you-need-to-learn-to-have-the-success-that-I-have-had, seminar time here in Eastern Europe. One after another! It is like they have a factory of these guys spitting them out our way! It is so frustrating, that a person from a completely different culture and language and history, believes/thinks/has convinced themselves, that if everyone does what I have done, the results will be the same.

This is not the Einstein equation of insanity where we are expecting different results by doing the same thing time and time again. This is Double Einstein equation of insanity where by doing certain actions in a totally and completely different environment, culture, language and country, and wanting and expecting the SAME results as you got in the first country when you did those certain actions! Doubly insane, perhaps even more so! This is like putting gasoline in a car and driving 600 miles, and then putting gasoline in a diesel car expecting to drive 600 miles, and you won't get even 6 miles! (This I know from very hard personal and expensive experience) This is like being in Northern Canada in the dead of winter and wearing very nice and wonderful Patagonia gear to stay warm, and then going to South East Asia the next week and trying to wear the same gear - you will die. This is like growing up under a constitutional Monarchy and then trying to enter into the ludicrous American political system of the electoral college. This is precisely like standing on a busy street corner in Russia trying to navigate the purchase of a house, while not speaking a word of Russian, with only Thai Baht for currency, and the lawyer across the table speaks only Siberian!

And on I could go, seriously. You have no idea how embarrassing it is to be an American living long-term abroad, and to have someone from your country come here and kill your credibility with ignorance and arrogance.  No amount of coaching can fix this, no amount of debriefing will help this significantly. It takes years of learning a language and a culture and a people, and LISTENING rather than teaching, of being humble, of understanding that the people you work with are your equals in every way that matters, that you have far more to learn than you will ever be able to teach.

The speaker yesterday gets up and says, "You have to make your churches seeker driven, user friendly, unchurched Joe sensitive. In our big huge church (ok he didn't actually say that part but it was implied) back in ole' America, a person gets greeted at least seven times. We start in the parking lot, where they get their first greeting, then the narthex", etc, etc ad naseum. Dude, we don't have parking lots at our churches. The vast majority of the people coming to church here don't even own a car! Why would you have a parking lot?!? And when you enter a church here, you shake hands with every.single.person!! Stick that in your "we greet every person seven times starting in the parking lot" pipe and smoke it! Do you sense that I am upset here? That is why you are reading this blog! You are one of the intelligentsia. 

America is event driven, time focused, and all about "creating community." Here we are relationally driven, everything IS community, there are no seekers, only the desperate. Take your socio-theology which has little to do with God, and much to do with Western Culture, and keep it to yourself. If you want to be missional (in the missionary sense, not the quasi-spiritual idea that everything is missions), and cross the oceans to learn. Cross the oceans to learn another language. Cross the oceans to learn another culture. Cross the oceans and learn some humility, and shed that ignorant arrogant coat from the West you are wearing in my country.

On second thought, just stay in America or wherever you came from! Thank God you don't speak Macedonian! You could do unspeakable damage with your ignorance and arrogance . . . and best of all we would not get to enjoy the translation mistakes :-). The speaker was most proud of the fact that his big huge church in America gives every guest a free ice cream sundae - and his proud point was translated, "every guest receives an ice cream free Sunday." 

 

Do it over?

It is Friday and the lesson of the week is, I am in charge of my schedule and I need to exercise that control. Otherwise I will overbook the week, and then spend all my time pissing and moaning about how busy I am and overtired I am. How counter-productive is that!

This is a lesson that I have to learn over and over again it seems, as I lower my guard and let slippage of my scheduling occur. It is a critical mistake on my part, and perhaps you find yourself doing the same thing? It is ever so easy to do, especially when trying to compress too much into too small a space.

We tell ourselves that we are leveraging the available time to maximize the results, but personally I just find this exhausts me, and marginalizes the potential value. I seem to be most susceptible to this negative phenomena when I am in a city for a short period of time, and when I have too many commitments to fit into that time. And I tend to do this when I have competing agenda's and work on either end of the trip - and then it spirals from there.

This is doubly negative when clients and work is shortchanged and nothing is as well accomplished as it would be under better planning. To have the discipline required to say "no" is the linchpin of decision making. If the work is important enough to do in the first place, then it certainly is worthy of having my best, and I (nor can you) can not produce the best work when under-resourced. Adequate time and energy to do it right the first time is the only way to do it right, and as John Wooden says, "If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have enough time to do it over?"

More on Expectations

You could easily look at the Shoulds and the Musts as the Obligations and the Commitments. There are some nuances here, but really it was more a widening of the understanding of the implications of what living with these understandings mean, more than anything else.

The nuances for me are something like this; Commitment is softer and fuller than Must. Softer in the sense that it can, but doesn't have to have undeniable urgency. It is more adult in how it feels and less hormonal or driven. Fuller in the sense that it involves my heart and my brain and my experience in more complete ways than Must does. However, it fails to have the irrefutable inevitability that Must incorporates. It doesn't have that, "this is my air and I need to breath" feel to it at all. Instead it is a "let's be a responsible adult human being" feel and vibe.

There are a few things that I want to feel Must about. There are far more things that I want to be committed to. Nor do I think we have to vilify Obligations and Shoulds. While I don't want them controlling my life, they often bring great gifts to the party and journey. Let's not throw them under the bus! Rather, let's place them in a proper thoughtful place in our lives, where we have plenty of freedom to say "no" and clarity about when they are harming us or helping us.

Which one learns?

I just spent four intensive days on the road, meeting with leaders from early in the mornings, until late into the evenings. These leaders cover most of the spectrum of leadership, from those young and just getting started, to those older than me and at the peak of their game. It was fascinating to listen and learn, which one of them best positioned themselves to learn more, get appropriate feedback and make progress.

Logic would say that the older more experienced leaders would be the top performers and also the one's who most actively sought appropriate feedback for assessment and for making some forward progress in their worlds. Did.not.happen. Those leaders with the largest responsibilities and longest and deepest reaches, largely failed to activate the feedback loops which could have supercharged their leadership. Those who were just getting started, were sponges, and took some very direct hits, in order to move forward.

I am generalizing, and there were some beautiful exceptions to these examples. Yet a humble learning posture was the key missing factor in those that had the most to gain. They are the ones most blind to the story that they are weaving, to the opportunities that are passing them by because of their biases and agendas, to their failure to learn and grow.

And what about me? What about you? Which group are we in, and how are we certain of that? You got it . . . because we are gonna be humble servant leaders who invite (perhaps insist!) that our feedback group/mentors/coaches/peers, tell us the truth of the matter, about which group we are REALLY in. The one who learns is the one who is able to humbly listen.

Be Big!

I had an early morning conversation that ran through the trials and difficulties of working for non-profits and missions abroad. One of the things my friend and I decided was the most negative in those worlds is the penny-pinching and the tight-fistedness of those cultures. One of the stories that I told my friend, was how missions and non-profits consistently try to lower the rents each year, how to pay the local hires for sub-standard wages, and generally are well known locally to be the most selfish and the people who pay the least wage for the most work.

What a bastardly way to be known! We shared stories about how our PREVIOUS parent group was always pushing us to live in smaller and smaller places, to cut corners on all things financial, to pay the least for the most value at all times. 

I don't know about you, but I do not want to live this way first of all, and second of all, I never want to be known for being such a money-grubber. I mean why would anyone ever want to follow the Savior of a group of people who live like they are on the edge of poverty and despair all the time, while being actually rich people in a poor country!?!? Why??

Well of course no one wants to follow such a Savior or such followers. My friend and I have long come to the conclusion that we want to be BIG people. Not the Wal-mart American variety, but rather the amazingly generous, the unwaveringly selfless, the indefatigably unselfish, the incredibly responsive . . . that kind of BIG. The success or lack of it that follows you, is probably related to this issue, no matter what field you are in. Be Big People!

Don't ever

If you are in the helping/coaching/guidance/perspective/development business as I am, one of the most difficult things to NOT do, is make decisions for people, or pressure them into a certain path. While you may find that you are far more objective and experienced and aware than your client may be, you still cannot do this for them.

If you do, you will find invariably, that you also become responsible for the success or failure of what you pushed them toward. Even if they only partially follow your directives, you still will (in their minds and in reality, truthfully) bear the burden of responsibility for future events and results (or lack of them). In other words, you have to provide clarity, ask questions to help them discern, paint verbal pictures of what the futures might hold, tell the story in effective ways, to help them see and decide their destination or next steps. You can only be non-directive, no matter how certain you may be in your conclusions of a matter.

It is their life. It is their future. It is their decision. You will never have the freedom to push too much or too hard for a certain path. If you can't restraint yourself from doing so, then you need to find a different career. You can freely say what you "think" will happen down each possible path, and you can describe what often happens when people chose or don't chose a particular course of action, but no one, no matter how wise and no matter how experienced can accurately calculate the human factor. It is the unknown wildcard. It is the beauty of this one wild beautiful life that we have been given, that we chose our paths and courses in life, and we have to live with the consequences, be they good or bad . . . and that perception too, is probably unknowable as well.

Expectations

I see that being back in Eastern Europe is not conducive to my blogging patterns in the same way as Asia has been. What is different? Expectations.

The Shoulds versus the Musts. The Shoulds are what other people think we ought to be doing. Musts are what we have to do, what we are compelled to do, what we are called to accomplish, they come from deep within our hearts and passions. Expectations that others have of me in Eastern Europe keep me on a different track and schedule than the Musts in my heart.

When the Musts are at the top of the work pyramid, life is simpler, there is more clarity, less clutter, less busy tasks, more satisfaction, more contentment, more certainty, less ambiguity, more "no's", less "yes's", more accomplishment of what matters and has meaning and significance for and to me. A big part of living a life that matters is moving toward a life of Musts rather than Shoulds. It is the heart of Essentialism, the art of diligently pursuing less but better. It is what I push myself and all my clients toward daily. It is THE key component of PTA - protecting the asset - me.

What is driving your actions today? Can you recalibrate and move toward the Musts? I have reset this day even though it is late in the afternoon, because I realized that I was doing good and important things, rather than the best and most valuable things. It is a subtle but critical difference.

Transitions

Life is full of them, mine more than many others. A highly productive, very satisfying trip to Asia is winding down. Laundry, packing, sorting, last stops at the noodle shops, kind of day. Now a long two day transition back to Eastern Europe, with lots and lots of long hours of sitting, people watching, reading, flying, and hopefully some sleeping too.

It feels like flying is a full time job and that airports are my second office/home. But since I am flying West this time, it won't interrupt my daily fitness routine nearly as much as flying East does. It won't even interrupt my work routines either, in fact, will give me a chance to catch up on some thinking, and writing as well.

The only downsides are monotony and limited geography (the confines of the airport) to walk around and explore, and the lack of decent high quality food at a normal price . . . and some physical stiffness from enforced sitting for hours on end. But since I am only going a quarter of the way around the world, rather than half way around the world, it won't be too bad I hope.

Asia has been good to me as usual, I feel 10 years younger here, my blood pressure drops into a completely normal range, the super spicy food is just so yummy, the temperature is sweaty hot, and the prices for just about everything are super low. Good indeed.

Saying no 1000 times

Steve Jobs in 1997 stated that "Innovation is saying no 1000 times." He also went on to say that he was as proud of what they did not do, as he was of what they did accomplish. Even though he said it 18 years ago, I think it is more true today than it was back then.

It is really difficult to have a perspective that is so self-aware that you are just as proud of the "no's" as you are the "yes's" and that is when you know you should be saying no 1000 times more often than yes. Before you just completely dismiss that thought as so outrageous as to not be important, think hard about it.

There are several equally important issues at stake here. First of all is opportunity. I was recently re-reading a book that my mother wrote about "Growing up on the farm" before Alzheimer's started wrecking her mind. The shear volume of hourly choices in today's world versus "Growing up on the farm" is mind-boggling. It is such a severe contrast, that it is almost like talking about aliens from outer space. You and I have so many amazing possibilities and opportunities, that we must say no 1000 times! Part of the problem is that people of my generation have been brought up to say yes all the time, because our parents did not have any of these opportunities. We gotta get over that right now, and realize that Jobs had it right for the most part, Innovation (uniqueness, meaning, significance) is in saying no to the 1000 BSO's that want to capture us (Bright Shiny Objects).

Second of all is clarity. Every single time we carefully say no, we sharpen and refine our clarity about where we want to go and are aiming. If you don't know where you are going and you don't know what you are aiming for, you are sure to reach it. Clarity is that critical awareness that I am spending more and more of my significant thinking time developing. Clarity is a J curve, the more I get, the more I want and need, and it just keeps going . . . I haven't found its end yet.

Thirdly is focus. All of this begins to funnel me down a brilliant path toward what I can best do, that few others can do as well, to that which is my best contribution to making the world a better place for all of to live, an easier place to discover the Creator and His love for us. Focus is a wonderful terrifying place, where what you need to be doing well is clear, and there is no longer any place to hide from that responsibility.

Saying no is the very best possible path to the right yes. It is the right synergy of opportunity, clarity and focus to give you the best leverage to change the world.

You don't need permission to make the world better

You really don't. No you can't change everything. And no you can't do everything, but you can do something. I am so tired of people talking about the need for change, and who fail to every DO one single thing to make that change happen.

Take human trafficking for example. I speak about it when I am out trying to gather resources, financial, human, intelligence, commitment. EVERYBODY thinks trafficking is horrible. Dozens tell me with tears in their eyes that they want to come and help, people write me afterwards and tell me they feel God is calling them to come and help, and to date (more than three YEARS of talking about this) and not one, not a single one has bought the freaking airline ticket and even come to SEE what is going on, much less "helped." What a crock of s**t!

People do what they want every single time. They have time and money for all their toys, TV's, phones, cars, cats, cable, facebook, surfing, music, American Idol, etc etc etc etc.. You do what you want every single time.

You want to know what I want? I want to be able to tell more stories like this: that one week ago two little girls, sisters, were being terribly abuse, and today they aren't. Period. You go have a great time on your facebook hour! You do what you want, I did what I wanted.

But I can't tell enough stories like that one, because we don't have enough resources to do more. Yes we will continue to rescue every single one we can, but please stop telling me you want to help! I know you are too tired and too busy and too extended and too stretched and too everything. You do exactly what you want to do every time. So do I.

And I picked this make-you-feel-extra-guilty-subject of human trafficking on purpose so that you might pay attention. You do what you want every single time. But this principle is at play in church development, church planting, leadership development, discipleship, having foster kids, micro-business development, clean water, market place ministry, community transformation, sanitation, urban housing, ethnic tensions, political abuse, democracy, pick your place and choose your goal, but do something. You do exactly what you want every time.

You can do something. You can. You make choices all day long every day. Its your turn as Seth Godin says. You don't need permission to make the world a better place for someone other than yourself. Do it. Talk is optional.

I woke up

I woke up

Feeling super shitty this morning, like a train had rolled over me slowly all night long. Achy sore pain everywhere, and so I took the Aderholdt cure all; a spoonful of Skippy's extra crunchy peanut butter, along with a spoonful of Nutella, along with four ibuprofen tablets, and then walked my sorry ass out the door and got on my bicycle and headed up the mountain! 10 miles later, all uphill, I was feeling human again.  I know you probably don't believe me, but that is precisely what happened and what I did and how I handled it. Life is too short for lying around.

As I assess people as potential new clients, this is one of the primary reasons I reject them. They want a developer who will make life easier. I want a client who shows up. 

A client who does not show up everyday, mentally, emotionally and physically, can rarely be helped by a developer. And the kind of help I give people is the cold hard honest truth most of the time, and that doesn't make life easier. Instead it opens the door for scale and a bigger and deeper impact. That is more. Not less. I think Seth Godin said it, but showing up is about 85% of success.

Pinned down

Pinned down

I have been pinned down or pinned in, however you chose to look at it, for most of the day. It is rainy season here in SE Asia and currently it is living up to its moniker. Usually at this time of year, they are regular isolated showers, kinda like what you have in Florida, where it rains every day, just not all the time. In the past, my normal wait time until a shower passes is about 15-20 minutes max. Today it has been more like an hour to an hour and 15 minutes, with little break before the next one comes along. As I look over my shoulder, I see yet another one coming. (break here, so that I don't get my gear wet)

OK, where was I . . . pinned down. You can be pinned down by almost anything, if you let yourself. You can be pinned down by finances, an ecosystem of thinking or technology or study, by geography, by the past, by the future, by distance, by assumptions, by ethnicity, by education, by lust, by expectations, by character, by your family, by the Shoulds in your life, you can even be pinned down by the desire to stay dry. And on and on I could easily go seriously!

However, if you reframe it, anticipate, plan, expect, create, turn around, view it another way, rethink it, recreate it, refuse to accept it, exert your will to chose another, expand your mental gymnastics and deny the common accepted responses, then you are free.

Free to choose a different path, a different solution, a different payment, a different future, and a different today. You may not be pinned down at all.

They know

They know

Your customer knows when you don't have their best interest at heart. Your kids know when you are bullshitting them. Your client knows when you are not giving your best effort. Your spouse knows when your mind is somewhere else. Your boss knows when they don't have all of your attention. Your team knows when you are less than fully engaged. Your friends know when they are no longer your top priority. Your pastor knows when you are just going through the motions. You know when you aren't getting it done. And they know too.

When you gonna stop living a divided, unfocused life? When are you going to start focusing on now, and doing it right? When?

Done!

Is it all done? Are you all caught up? Do you feel guilty? Like you aren't working hard enough, or you are wasting precious moments of life or some other dire thing like that?

Well stop. This is the result of you working precisely enough. That there is an end, a stopping point, a place where you can say, "I am all caught up!" And it is a place you haven't been at in YEARS! So stop. Quit beating yourself up and feeling guilty or lazy. 

Enjoy this very cool moment, that you have been working toward, in all its glory. More emails will come. There are other tasks that will have to be done soon enough. You may have finally found that super illusive balance that you have been trying to get right forever.

A techblog

A tech blog

This is purely a tech geek blog, about my experience traveling for four days while working in rural Asia with nothing more than an iPhone 6 plus and a Zagg bluetooth keyboard (http://www.gottabemobile.com/2015/01/05/zagg-pocket-keyboard-for-iphone-6-plus-note-4-more/). 

Obviously, the first trade off comes in screen real estate. There is simply no way around that. The up side of course is the tiny-ness of what I am lugging around all day in 100 plus degree temperatures. However, the screen did not prevent me from accomplishing a single working task over the four days. It did require me to make some adjustments, take some additional steps, and it did slow me down in searching for specific emails or Evernote files or anything that results in screen/visual complexity. 

However the majority of my time at the "computer" on this trip involved answering emails, reading RSS feeds, saving those feeds to Pocket or Evernote, writing blogs like this one (I write them in Drafts), typing notes in meetings and consultations, sharing information with clients - and I usually did that by sending it to them than showing them something on my screen like I would have done with an iPad or with my computer.

I also found that using this setup encouraged me to massively tweak the mobile apps that I was using, to better utilize them, finding ways to do things more simply or better, since jumping to my MacBook Pro wasn't an option. Perhaps inconvenience is the mother of creativity and full utilization? I am really pleased with the tweaks that I made in Drafts, Day One, and my Squarespace Blog.

There was also a discernible adjustment period, . . . and when it finally kicked in all the way, I found myself no longer longing for more screen real estate, nor minding the fact that I was in uber-mobile-mode. Unfortunately that took the majority of this trip. But somewhere today, I completely made a mental jump into the void of ONLY having an iPhone 6 plus and Zagg keyboard, and at the moment that feels like it would always be enough. However, I did not attempt the entire month's log of work on this set up, and when I get to the third week's work of sending out client emails and logging them in both Evernote and Numbers, that is most often when I use TWO computers at home. Yet for the hell of it, I might try to do the whole thing from this set up just to see how difficult, or extra-time consuming it actually is . . . although the thought I doing it this way, sounds complicated to me. 

Finally it should be noted that when I arrived at the airport here in Siem Reap Cambodia, I grabbed a $5 sim card (Yes you read that correctly, with 1.5 gig of mobile data!) for my phone so that I had text and internet ability for the duration of the trip, maximizing the reach and capability of my single work tool. You CAN do more with LESS, but the trade-off seems to be primarily one of simplicity for size/weight, once your brain gets accustom to having this size screen all the time. (The most annoying trade-off was iOS mail in landscape mode! Uuuurrgghhh!)

Twists of fate

As I argued in my last post, when faced with conflicting information, you have to keep moving forward until all things play out, even though uncertainty is higher than before, less is sure than before, and all your plans hang in some unknown and unknowable balance that you have no control over.

The conflicting information that I was specifically writing about in the last post was that one (usually highly dependable) tool of information informed me that my final flight of the day had been canceled by the airline for unstated reasons. And honestly, who can control that?

However, I STILL went to the airport. I still took for first legs of the trip, because who knows how this would play out? No one. The airline assured me that they were planning to fly to my final destination. On the other hand, my experience in Asia has long since taught me that the true-ness of a matter is far less important than maintaining face - usually what you hear when you ask a question is the answer that the person thinks you most want to hear. So the true-ness of whether my flight was going to actually occur was in question until I was seated on the flight.

And in the long run, I was actually able to catch an EARLIER flight than the one I had originally scheduled, and that was canceled (well they changed the departure time and the flight number which lead the whole conflicting information to begin with). If you don't press forward, if you don't continue to take steps toward your goal, then you have already failed. And who knows, sometimes in the end, conflicting information can lead you to take initiatives that you otherwise would not, and the payoff can be an early arrival!