Enjoy the work

# Chapter 256

As Bernie the Developer says, “put your butt in the chair and do the work!” Nothing, and I mean nothing takes the place of doing the work. Even if you do it slowly and patiently, it will get done if you sit down and do the work! This just sounds too simple doesn’t? Well I don’t think it is simple, it is discipline not simple. Put. Your. Butt. In. The. Chair. Do. The. Work.

Ok ok enough strong arm tactics. The other thing I do is gamification of the work. Make your own game, but mine usually runs along the lines of “finish this much work and take a break, play a solitaire game or walk around the house for two minutes” kinds of game. But even this is still discipline not simple, because if you don’t put tight parameters (discipline) around the game portion of this approach, you still won’t get any work done. You know this. Nothing new here.

But I saved the best one for last. So enjoy. That’s right, enjoy your work. Nothing will get it done faster and more pleasurably than just digging in and enjoying the pure pleasure of crafting something beautiful or useful or insightful. Doing what you do with skill and excellence and competence. It doesn’t matter if no one else notices what you have done, you know it. You do it out of pride and character, not because other people are watching or applauding. This is a reflection of who you are, not just what you do. We are all more than what we do. So dig in and just work and make the world a better place.

Mentally bloated

# Chapter 255

It is that time of month again, the time to consolidate all the information and material that you have been collating and gathering for the last 30 days for all your clients and then put it into a cohesive form that helps them move forward in their development and helps their businesses grow and their ministries expand. It is that time again, when I am challenged over and over as I assimilate the material that I am sending to all of them. I mean I get to read it over and over and it gets planted in my head and that is mostly good. But I usually feel mentally bloated this time of the month. Overfull of leadership and development ideas and almost no place to express them or exercise them or try them out. Its that time of the month again.

My idea funnel works hard all month, and then when it is that time of the month again, everything switches to writing and forming and combining and final curation before the clients/customers get their email from me or a call from me. And the product is delivered. And like a good book they can read it over and over and over and let the ideas soak into them slowly and purposefully and saturate their minds and strategy and execution. Of course in the real world some months they read it, other months they don’t or can’t because these people are living in tough places and in recent months have faced war and military coups and displacement and other difficulties. Its that time of the month again.

Revolutionize your day!

# Chapter 254

Helping other people is revolutionary to your whole day. We did this yesterday for an octogenarian who needed a row of bushes cut down beside her house. She simply could not have done this herself. She needed outside help. We all do occasionally and don’t think you won’t! But that is not the point here, the point here is that helping her changed the whole day, for her yes, but more so for the helpers.

The trap most fall into is that they are too old or too frail or too busy to help other people. These are just excuses. You want to energize your whole day, go help someone else. It was so much fun to see how much chatter and excitement this helping event caused around here. It changed all the conversations it changed all the complaints, it changed all the perspectives and it changed the tone for the rest of the day and that even flowed over into this morning’s conversation.

I have this experience regularly as I am an international worker - a rich person in a poor country. But honestly this only affects my scope and scale of how I can help. A helping hand first mentality was common when I was a kid, much harder to find now it seems. A help yourself first mentality seems to be the course of the day. But you and I can change this, we can offer and follow through with help every day and watch our lives blossom and change. Best therapy ever.

How tall is your table?

# Chapter 253

After years of sitting at this table writing emails and texts and typing endless hours I realized that the table is too tall for me when I touch type, or for the uninitiated, correctly typing. Though as slow as I am typing this morning it will be tomorrow before I finish this idea. The obscure point that I am making here, is that I did not realize that this table was too tall until I started doing the activity correctly. Literally decades of communicating at this table and it is too tall.

This imperfection did not cause a lack of production, my hunt-and-peck style of “typing” was what hindered productivity, not the table height. The table height never entered the equation until I started doing the activity correctly. Then awareness of the table height came to light. This is all designed to point out that there will always be problems and that even if you resolve all current problems more will come later. You will not ever lack a problem to solve. But all this talk about the table height distracts us from the real underlying issue or rather the central issue. I was typing slow and incorrectly, because I had never learned how to type correctly and that was what was limiting production. And then typing programs arrived and it was no longer that I did not know how to type that was the problem, it was instead that I did not have the patience and/or discipline to unlearn what I had been doing wrong for years!

Even now at this moment it is so very tempting to go back to bad typing. Because while I am learning to type and unlearning my bad habits I can type about 25-30 wpm. But with my bad habits employed I can type 40-45 wpm. But I need to get to 60-65 wpm and the only way to do that is unlearn the bad and break those habits forever, and learning the type correctly and force myself to stay with it until I have the results that I need. The table height wants your attention, and to distract you from the real issues.

Attention Triage

# Chapter 252

There are always multiple conversations going on, there is the conversation that is constantly going on inside your head, and around here there are likely two or more conversations going on in the room you find yourself in and that makes for a lot of conversations! Our attention capacity is rather static and bounded and this creates continual triage challenges for us in how we divide it and use it. Unfortunately we can’t listen to these 3-4 conversations at the same time with an equal focus. On the other hand this is probably good. Regardless it just is. You have practically unlimited conversations going on and limited capacity to hear them. For instance I am writing this in public, but the conversations around me range from the tomatoes going bad to how much his arthritis is bothering him today and these conversations are happening while I am writing. Where do you think my attention lies?

Attention triage has to happen all the time in other areas as well. For this reason you need to know what you value and what you are determined to accomplish in your life so that you can divide that attention appropriately. Otherwise, when you find that the squeaky wheel is the one always getting the attention you can understand that something other than your values is driving your life. This is not something you want to continue to happen because only the loud gets done and not the important. You and this world need the important things to get done, not just the loud.

Diagnosing

# Chapter 249

Diagnosing the problem is the first step of leadership. This can certainly mean leadership in your personal life as well as leadership in other areas. And this is the one we get wrong most often. It is so easy to mistake one thing for another in diagnostics. And in our personal lives it is even more murky and difficult. Anyone who has been married for any length of time knows that the problem is not the problem. In other words, what you see manifesting, or what you are hearing about, is likely not the real issue. This is true with each of us as well. When we are short and abrupt with our spouse or our kids, it could just as likely be you had a crappy day at work and this is just the emotional spillover from what happened earlier in your day.

While I am no psychologist or anything like that, any observer of human nature has observed that the problem is not the problem. How many times have you asked your spouse, “what wrong?” seeking to discover what is bothering them, and the response is “nothing” or “I am fine” or some other nonsense as that when something is clearly and unmistakably amiss. All this to say that diagnosing is not always a straight forward process. You have to do some digging. And a deft hand is wonderful if you can be subtle and unflappable in your approach and digging.

I see this played out over and over in our lives, that we misdiagnose the problems we are trying to resolve, and this leads us into unhelpful actions and directions. This also happens in politics, government, businesses, financial markets, engineering, medicine, churches, day cares and hair salons. Make sure of your diagnosis! It is part one of the leadership process and the beginning of your solution. Don’t confuse the spiritual for the political nor the plumbing with the electrical. Be wise.

Indulging

# Chapter 245

It is raining outside this morning and the this is wonderful for the grass and for sleeping. I looked at the clock at 5:00 am thinking would be soon time to get up and the next thing I know its almost 6:30 And Brenda is getting into the shower! That extra one and half hours of sleep is priceless! And rainy sunday mornings are the best time to indulge!

Indulging on sleep is something we need more and more not less and less. All these people talking about older people needing less sleep, not this older man, not yet. As I have been stating and writing in the last few days, sleep changes everything! It supercharges every aspect of life and makes everything run better and smoother.

But more sleep isn’t necessary better sleep. I am committed to getting both better quality and quantity. You can stay in the bed all night and day long, and that doesn’t mean you are getting any decent sleep. My target is 8-9 hours of high caliber sleep. And I get that 12 out of 14 nights and the difference it makes is astonishing. What is even more telling is how I struggle when I don’t get it. That really lets you know how important this event is each day! And medical officials have understood this for a while now, writing articles about how lack of sleep is equivalent to having alcohol in your bloodstream, especially when you are driving a car and need all your synapses firing in the right order! Thus all these messages about don’t drive under the influence and don’t drive tired!

I made the right choice - I rolled over and got another hour and a half of sleep.

Mondays

# Chapter 246

It is Monday today. In some businesses Monday is the worst day of the week. My friend’s business is like that. I have been there in that office on many a Monday and it is amazing the pressure that has built up over the weekend and seeks to be released on Monday morning and all day Monday to be frank, it never stops! Other businesses find Monday to just be another day. That had pretty much been the case for me for decades. I have been trying to think of the weekends as the weekends again for the first time in 35 years and it is really hard. So I have been turning my phone off and not reading or answering email on Saturdays and Sundays for a while now and slowly I am getting into the groove of the idea of a weekend, but honestly, at my age and at my stage of life does it really matter?

The Bangles made Mondays over to be the ultimate hard day and for Sundays to be the ultimate fun days and we have been thinking like that for far too long. Every day is simply what you make it and how you appraise it and how you approach it . Make it what you want it to be. Mondays can be your fun day!! Why not?? But far more important a question is what are you planning to do with this day and how are you planning to change the world and change someone’s life and change things for the better. Those are far far more important questions than what day is it and how do I feel about this day. Take this day and make it count!

The second gift

# Chapter 244

As I wrote yesterday sleep produces the best returns in life, hands down in my opinion. The second best decision that will produce great gifts in your life is exercise. I have exercised pretty much each day for the last 26 years. And I mean pretty much every single day. There are few days that I miss, and those usually due to international flights or long road trips where my days are disrupted and I have zero control of my schedule. But as soon as I arrive at my new destination I establish a workout schedule and routine. Because it gives great returns on that investment.

The first gift is that it works perfectly in tandem with sleep. It increases the quality and depth of your sleep, which in turn will make you faster and stronger the following day and which will make your sleep better and deeper and which . . . well you get it. Together they make a great one two punch. And the secondary gift of the exercise as it is connected to sleep is that it gives you a rhythm to awake and to sleep that is powerful. You go to bed earlier and get going earlier in the mornings. This side/secondary benefit deserves it own blog post it is so good and so helpful.

The second gift that exercise has always given me is multiplication of my time. It makes every working hour two to three times as productive, because as least in part, the clarity that follows exercise. You can think more clearly and with less emotion and with more clarity than non-exercisers can and do. I have a 26 year track record of living this. Trust me, this is awesome. Plus it is one of the things that helps you stay on track with daily exercise, this great gift, is one that you want to experience over and over again.

There are third and fourth gifts as well, but on another day. Its time to workout!

Longfellow is wrong

# Chapter 243

Longfellow was a believer in working through, and into the night as a key characteristic of those who succeed. I could’t disagree more! While that may have been a key for those of Henry’s generation, that is the worst key for today. Today you need sleep. Real deep long sleep. This is one of the keys to success for people in 2021. In fact the older I get the more sleep sensitive I become. I have even given up my favorite beverages in the world in order to have the best most awesome sleep experiences night after night. For those of you who know me well, that is a serious commitment to high caliber sleep.

Work hard all day long, but when it comes to night, man needs sleep. Its the greatest gift from God of all the gifts that He gives to men. It is one third of your life - that should tell you how important it is! Honestly no self-leadership decision I have ever made, had such a huge impact as the one I made to high quality sleep. Seriously it makes every single moment of the waking day richer and more vibrant and more more. That comes from the sleep side, not from the working harder longer side. The better my rest the far better my working hours produce. So I agree with Longfellow in that the most diligent workers are usually the best and most successful, but in the modern world they are also the workers who rest best. Each hour of high quality sleep multiples my every hour of work in terms of clarity and productivity. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.

Change that talk!

# Chapter 242

The real work of leadership happens between our ears. There is where the crux of the battle takes place. I know know everyone else is keeping tally of your KPI’s but those can be very misleading, especially in the short run. The big battles and the great struggles happen within the leader. All the other leadership factors depend on how well the leader manages the self-leading. Repeat, all other leadership factors will depend ultimately on how well the leader self-leads. Because what happens in the mind and heart of the leader will bleed out into the organization at the very least, and will become the basis of the values and structure of what they are leading.

All of the challenges, all of the ambiguity, all of the volatility, all of the uncertainty of what is faced, will be wrestled out in the mind of the leader. And the way that conversation and wrestling match goes is critical. It is very very easy to let that overwhelm of negative sweep through your mind and your negative self-talk will be your warning system that you are losing. In fact your self-talk is an accurate barometer of the flow of the battles and struggles that you are engaged with and how those battles and struggles are proceeding. Listen to your self-talk, assess it and understand what a gift, what a mirror into your soul, this self-talk is for you.

And now here is the part that few ever understand - you can use and choose self-talk to be a tool and a weapon of positivity inside your head. You can turn battles around completely by reseting your internal dialogue. First you have to stop the negative. Then you have to assess the facts, not the feelings nor the threat, but the facts. Then you choose a different action than the one you were using before and you choose a different sound track than you were listening to before! Change that talk! Change those results!

Layers

# Chapter 241

Layered goals is what you are after. They have exponential effects. It works like this in my life and in how I do it with clients that I work with around the world. There is this big whopping goal that you have out there in your mind and you simply have to, have to reach it! Big whopping goals like this sometimes take years or decades to reach. They are so overwhelming you don’t even know where to start! This is pretty much true of everyone so don’t feel special here, but at the same time how do you do it?

I most often work backwards from the goal or destination to the present. For example with a client, they had a big whopping goal that had to be reached at a five year mark. So I wrote that down at the top of the page. And then I asked him to unwind the goal backwards, meaning what happens in the year prior to year five? In other words what has to happen right before you can reach this milestone, this goal? That became year four’s goal. Then we went through the same process for year three, what has to occur in order for us to reach this intermediate step of year four? And we continued this repeating this process for each year. Now we have a page with the overall big whopping end goal written at the top, and then four years of subgoals listed for each of the years leading you to your big whopping destination.

We then break down each of those yearly subgoals into quarterly goals on separate pages. These quarterly goals will make sure we reach our yearly markers and keep us aligned. I am pleased to report that the client reached his big whopping goal and that he is a happy customer. The key here is not just writing this all out, but in seeing and treating each step as a critical goal in and of itself. This is the way to build Rome.

Magic

# Chapter 240

Persistence is the magic my mom always taught us. So here I am writing again this morning at zero dark thirty for the 605th straight day because that is what persistence is about. . . persisting. There can be no substitute. My mom was the model of persistence in life. She did not have an easy life and I am pretty sure that as I approach 60 years of living, no one has an easy life, but her’s had some particular challenges.

Today would have been her 78th birthday and that is what has prompted me to write these matters down. Neither of my parents graduated from high school and I am not convinced that this has ever bothered my dad, but it definitely bothered my mother. So much so in fact that she asked me to help her study for her GED when I was in college!! Now that is persistence! And of course she passed with flying colors because she was persistent in studying. She loved to read and she hated leaving things undone, and so her GED test was a slam-dunk. Persistence.

Although my dad is arguably more capable and talented than any of the rest of our family, my mom always made more money than he did. She could save it too, something my dear father couldn’t do if his life depended on it. She was persistent in life and it regularly delivered great gifts to her. We should follow suit. And I have for the most part. I make my path in the world reading and understanding and that is part of that persistence gift that just keeps on giving. Happy happy birthday mama!

Honeymoon nest

# Chapter 237

Today is our sixth month anniversary of being in this house. We bought it exactly six months ago today, right in the middle of COVID after a seven month long separation from my wife when she got caught on one side of the ocean and I got stuck on the other side. Needless to say this has been the ultimate oasis and honeymoon nest ever. This house will always be special for that and many other reasons. But the main point here is, where did the six months go?? Wow, it feels like we just got here! May we stay here forever and watch the grandkids grow up and leave their nest next door!

Life is short and most of ours has been spent abroad and away from family and our kids and our grandkids, so I make no apologies about my house and my posture in life in relationship with this house. And the funniest thing of all is that my work is not hindered by us being here and being in this house. If only I could convince our supporters and if only that were true of my wife’s work. Then we could settle back and create some long term rhythms in life that are centered around this physical place where we are celebrating six months, six months!! Six months of being together in one place on the planet. Woohoo.

The starter button

# Chapter 236

To get things going and to get things moving in your life and in the lives of others, you gotta get things moving and going inside of you. This is the huge disconnect for many people. They (and we) want someone else, something else, something external to get things moving to get stuff happening around the world. And all the time the starter button is you. It’s me. Its us. There is no outside force that can sustain you over the long haul and there aren’t many external forces that can even get you started!

I have seen this happen 100’s and 100’s of times living overseas, and the newbies show up with plans and claims of living the remainder of their lives for this cause or that cause or for this people group or this marginalized segment. This cycle is so predictable that I can spot it a mile away. Those who are actually going to stick and get something important accomplished don’t even talk about it. They just do it, they just live it.

I have seen this happen 100’s and 100’s times in the church, and people say they support missions or vacation bible school or the worship team or whatever, and then when it is time for them to produce, they are Absent Without Leave. In fact it was so bad when I was a pastor that I always had a plan B and a plan C for when the failure to appear happened. These people, who are the people we are surrounded by, are waiting and depending on external motivation and energy to get things moving and going.

As a leader, I will gladly take one intrinsically motivated person on my team versus 100 extrinsically motivated people. We will win most every time, even when badly outnumbered.

Staple guns and nesting

# Chapter 235

There are few things in life like walking down the street with my staple gun. Yeah you didn’t see that one coming did you? My youngest daughter is seven months pregnant and she is on a tear to make the house perfect for baby Emma’s imminent arrival. She is driving her poor husband crazy. But I get it, Brenda was a big nester before each of our three kids arrived and so this is not a surprise. So while I was talking to my dad yesterday on our daily call, youngest daughter texts me to come and staple some stuff for her. After wrapping up my call with Dad, I grabbed my staple gun and some fresh staples and headed down there.

It was a lovely visit and I felt powerful after making youngest daughter happy. I love helping the kids and the grands in these ways. I have a rollerblade repair job waiting for me on my workbench downstairs for second grandson. I have hammer and nails sitting on the dining room table to help Brenda complete her weeks long project of organizing our decades of pictures and getting them ready to put up on the walls. It will be awesome. These are the manly versions of nesting I imagine. Yeah men can nest, you can be sure of it. Regardless I am thrilled and looking forward to baby Emma making and appearance soon. Being Baba and Opa is the best. And I love it when I can do things other than thinking all day.

Now about that snow . . .

Your butt in the chair!

# Chapter 234

And even with a detailed action plan the urgency of the urgent in life can still derail your best intentions. Things pop up like every 30 seconds in life and yes an injured person person qualifies as an emergency, not only urgent. But the vast majority of the every 30 seconds are not urgent, heck they are most often the result of us “taking a break” or some other planned distraction. One thing leads to another and it often seems to take very very little distraction to lead me anywhere from my focus that produces the 80% of important stuff in my life.

There are a few things we can do to reign in the distraction beast. Close the door. Set a timer. Put your butt in the chair and do the work! Closing the door reduces the ambient noise in the office or home and communicates to everyone that you are hard at work. Make sure you are! The timer will help you head off derailing segues. If you don’t use one regularly you might have to work up to a decent 45-55 minute work span. Most of the youngsters I try this with only have about a 5-10 minute attention span. Like I said, you might find that you have to work up to a decent block of time.

Nothing will ever work better than putting your butt in the chair and getting the work done. Nothing tops this action. At my stage in life I can often decide, that I am going to work until its done or when 5:00 pm arrives. Long multi-day tasks like tax preparation, work well with this approach.

Action plans

# Chapter 233

Action plans are where it is at! It will move you from fretting and frustration to calm and purpose. You will know what your next steps will be. You will not have time to fret because you will be working on the next step, the next assignment, the next part of your detailed action plan.

I recently had to upgrade my commitment and work on detailed action plans because I was losing sleep and worrying about things too much. It is much more helpful to take an action step than it is to worry. It is much more helpful to take as action step than it is to lose sleep and toss and turn for hours. Decide which you had rather have, worry, or a next step? I have already decided that I want to take the next action step and not toss and turn for hours. Am I oversimplifying this? Not really. But having a detailed action plan requires work and thinking which is the most difficult work of all. Fretting is not thinking even though you are thinking/fretting about what you should do. That is just a loop of worry going around in circles inside your head.

Thinking, and a detailed action plan requires of most people, quiet concentrated uninterrupted time to decide what outcomes are most desirable or needed, and what are the most productive actions to get those outcomes. Most of us struggle to find uninterrupted time at all. Many of us hate quiet. Then you have other things to resolve.

Hat systems

# Chapter 232

I am not sure that we can change the number of hats we wear to any significant degree, because the hats we have are the hats we have. If you are picking up additional hats for the fun of it, you are insane. No most of us just have the hats that we have and we want no more. So what is really needed are systems that will allow is to remain focused on the most important actions within those hats that will produce the results that we need.

There are at least two regular systems I employ to gain tractions and amplify my results. First is the overlapping system - when I am wearing certain hats they don’t demand my full mental attention, they just demand time and energy from me. So I can overlap those hats. This means that I listen to audiobooks while exercising and I exercise a great deal! This allows me to log 20-30 hours per week of extra “reading” time, without dinging the exercise hat. Second is the free-hands system - when I am having my daily conversations on the phone with my dad (and others) I need my hands free so that I can work on other projects while listening to someone gab. I invested in AirPods early on so that I could have my hands free while talking and listening.

In the last month I have reupholstered all six of our dining room chairs while listening to my dad on the phone. I have discovered that I can not be looking at screens while listening, or I will stop listening. Screens are too distracting. But working on my house hat, while wearing my take care of dad hat works out just fine. I don’t need much mental bandwidth to do laundry or sweep the floors or cut material.

You have your hats and most of us have little choice in those hats. But how you get them done - that allows for lots of systems and compression.

More hats!

# Chapter 231

Wearing all those hats means that your thinking and clarity time get crunched and compressed, if not annihilated. This is the largest cost to wearing too many hats. You end up racing from one hat to the next and you never stop and consider if you are doing the things that produce the best effort for each hat. Its that 80/20 Pareto thing again where 20% of what you do likely produces 80% of the results that matter. I was reminded of this again yesterday as the weather forced on me some thinking and clarity time. The results were astounding and that alone should have me salivating do more and more of thinking and clarity time.

But no. We would far rather be “doing” something, than thinking. Plus thinking is the hardest kind of work, and it is not something that most people enjoy. Yet, unless we want to spend our lives spinning our wheels and gaining no traction, then thinking carefully and deeply is our path to forward progress. Its the only way you are gonna find solutions to the thorny parts of your life. It is the quickest path to a formula of actions that will get you where you need to go.

Don’t wait for the weather to force you into a thinking clarity time. You and I need to make this a part of each and every day because it is our most important work, even if it is the most difficult.