Easier - is hurting you

# Chapter 345

Stop looking for easy. This is where we all tend to end up however and so you have to actively resist the slide to easy. Our whole culture is geared toward making everything easier, and I say that this is harming us most of the time. Its often marketed as “time saving devices” but the point is always easier. Unfortunately easier often translates into lazier and lazier often translates into larger waistlines and weaker muscles.

What if we aimed for stronger instead of easier? Stronger is way better in almost every category. Easier makes us soft and weak. Yes easier may save some time, but this is not the price you want to pay for those savings. Seriously I get saving time and I often double up on tasks so that I can get the maximum milage out of each hour of the day, but stronger is invariably better than easy. So I have a manual reel mower to cut the lawn, makes no noise, uses no gas or oil, gives me a great workout and takes no longer than a riding mower. I have rakes! We have four large leaf dropping trees on the property and raking is a great workout, instead of a blower. Quieter too. I have an old fashion edger, just a round blade and sturdy handle. Its a killer work out but it is slower and less precise than a gas powered edger. On the other hand it cost about 5% of what a gas edger costs. And it makes you stronger! All my mechanical old fashioned ways of taking care of the lawn are about not using fossil fuels and intentionally using my muscles - and keeping things quiet and peaceful in the neighborhood. Stop looking for easy.

Your shrinking future

# Chapter 344

Stop waiting. Like we were advocating yesterday, action is your friend. Waiting is a glorified friend to inertia. Waiting is the respectable partner to inertia. Inertia is considered to be a largely negative word outside of physics. The meanings are the same but the contexts are entirely different. Waiting is the polite and thoughtful way to say inertia. Waiting is like NATO - No Action Talk Only. This does not mean rush headlong into danger and stupidity, put your thinking cap on and use it! But you no longer have the luxury of time, because inertia and waiting are time hogs, they suck it down in large gulps.

Your future is shrinking, stop waiting. I have no idea really what eternity will be like, but I can say with certainty that your remaining days here are now officially one less. The future is contracting as you burn up the present, so stop waiting. Your available days to make decisions, take action, and change the world are in countdown and they always have been. That number continues to grow smaller and smaller. Make these days count like never before. Have an intensity to your present that makes each moment count. Take action, have intentionality, be present, live intensely, have impact, change the world, stop waiting.

Inertia

# Chapter 343

Action is required. Inertia is our enemy. This applies pretty much across the board in every area of life. Inertia is powerful though and it will take over your will-power in a heartbeat if you don’t kill it by taking action. Action is bleach and disinfectant to inertia. It will kill it like mold on a wall. Inertia is negative, action is positive. Inertia sucks all the momentum from what needs to be done, Action give momentum to what needs to be done.

Inertia can only be changed or uprooted by an external force and that is what makes it so powerful in our lives. It lies in wait indefinitely and infinitely and will kill everything it touches. And the passivity it grows in our lives is like a toxic flower. This requires a metaphorical hoe and trowel, to uproot this inertia from our lives and dig it up and throw it in the garbage and get on with planting something productive that will move the project forward and better and more efficiently and start a flywheel effect of progress for us. Inertia in our lives prevents this from ever happening at scale. But just a little bit of inertia won’t do us any harm right? Wrong! We need and want scale because we want to do the most good that can be done, we want to change the world as much as we can, because we want to change something at a profound level and depth - scale matters. So even a little bit of poisonous inertia will send everything else the wrong direction. Inertia is the enemy - get moving!

Sit for a minute

# Chapter 342

When it seems that you have exhausted your positivity and can-doism and your bandwidth for more, realize that you need to sit down in a comfortable chair. I just did this along with you. Have a cup or glass of your favorite beverage, I have my coffee. Make sure you can think a bit wherever you put this favorite chair of yours, mine is on the porch. Now that you are situated, sit back in the comfortable chair and nurse that beverage and listen to your heart beat, the birds chirping and the neighbors rehab job, and the mower running, and the weed whacker whining, and the cars moving out on your street and the sound of kids playing and your heart beat.

Now be grateful. Not filled with all the problems and challenges that you face today and this week, not all the pains in your body, not all the lost opportunities of your past, not your to-do list that just keeps getting longer and longer, not your car repairs, not your property taxes due, not your job or your hunt for a job, not your weight gains and your muscles lost, not your thinning hair and shrinking bladder, instead be grateful. Grateful that you are not reading this while in the hospital, not in the nursing home, mobile and able to make your own decisions. Not hungry most likely, have an eduction, can make it work. Sit back and be grateful, you can finish this on out yourself, I am being grateful right now . . . .

Getting started

# Chapter 341

Even crippled and hobbling along with my blown knee, you can still get stuff done albeit slower and less efficient. If I am not using my badly injured knee as an excuse to start vegetating on the couch watching YouTube and TikTok then neither should you. Yes of course I have a reason to sit on my keister and do cerebral stuff all day and I did exactly that all week long, but the grass, weeds and flowers are growing in your yard and they have no mercy. They care not that your knee hurts and that you are not able to walk without braces and crutches and canes. They are going to grow and take over your yard and in fact they won’t even take a break to celebrate your injury. So do something about it or be content with the consequences.

I don’t like the consequences so I got up and used the shovel and edger as my new cane and crutches and ever so slowly worked on the yard. Yes I only got a tenth as much done as I normally would have done at the price of twice the energy and effort that would have normally been expended, but I did it. And boy did I sleep well last night and wake up in a better place this morning. You can do this, getting started is the hardest part of almost every task in the world. Just put your leather gloves on and get moving however slowly. You can transform so much even if it goes much slower than usual and even if it comes with pain. You can do this.

See!

# Chapter 340

There are so many opportunities and most of them we fail to see. We have these closed loop thinking and seeing patterns that seem to be impenetrable and unassailable and while I admire the strength that this shows you have, I feel sorrow and pity for you and me when we close the loops and miss all the opportunities that are nearby. Many times to take advantage of a nearby opportunity all we have to do is stop the loop we are locked in, so sit down and think about it for a moment, and open the mental door and have a look around. If you can do this little mental exercise, you may be very surprised at what is practically knocking at your door.

You step out of your closed loop and SEE! See that your fear could be a chance to enjoy something new. See that your frustration is internal and that it is not the fault of the person you love. See that inability to communicate well is something you can improve. See that your anger is lacking much of a reason and that joy is possible instead. See that your fatigue is affecting more than you think and everyone around you and decide to make some changes. See that your overbooked calendar is ridiculously FOMO and YOLO driven and that you do not have to live that way. See that you have a choice of how you show up today and that everyone around is affected by what you choose. See that you don’t have to stay in the closed-loop you have created, that you have considered all these new ideas written here and you are still safe. See?

Average Joe

# Chapter 339

My learning curve is going straight through the roof again. I am taking on tons of new material because we are partnering with another organization to bring more value to our clients and theirs, but the learning curve is steep. What a great world we live in that a nearly 60 year old man can get to know these kinds of people and learn this kind of material and get to do these kinds of spectacular leveraging tasks with people around the world.

Is it comfortable - no. Is it easy - oh heck no! Is it necessary - absolutely. It is the promise you make to people, to raise the bar, to elevate all of those around you, to bring people to a place so they know the Savior so that they can change the world for better every day. I don’t know about you and your aspirations, but I don’t want to sit in a rocking chair doing nothing at the end of my life. Instead I want to sit in a rocking chair and change the world with my hard work of thinking hard about hard problems at the end of my life. You want to matter, don’t you? We won’t if we keep doing the minimum, taking the easiest route, doing the least we can to get by. Its how average Joe lives, and if you want to change the world then average Joe won’t make the cut.

The bar is far higher than that. You were made for more. Steep learning curves are just a part of every day in your life of more. Use your strengths as God intended for you to use them!

Doing what needs to be done

# Chapter 338

There are all different kinds of work and the kind of work that I did yesterday was important but not one of my favorites. It was a sit and talk day. The sitting was timely since that is about all I can manage with my blown knee, but trying to focus and listen and engage a conversation when all I want to do is scream, was very wearying. But that was the job yesterday so buck up and get it done! And we did, and moreover I am glad I did because it was needed and was the right thing to do. This is adulting 101 and it is how you and I need to operate day in and day out as we lead our lives and are an example to our kids and our grandkids, and heck why not say it, an example to our friends and neighbors and coworkers! I am not a sit and talk enthusiast on my best days, but sometimes that is the job and you get it done.

Today is gonna be a sit and teach day for the first half and then a sit a learn day for the second half. Yeah yeah I know, all this sitting, when I really want to be riding my bicycle and climbing a mountain and playing racketball and moving all day. Heck cutting the grass and weed whacking is far preferable to all this sitting, but sitting is what the day demands so sitting is what we will do. Do you see the theme here, we do what we have to do, what the situation and the day demands of us and we are so privileged to get to do these things. As Earl and I say to each other every day, “we aren’t in a hospital with a ventilator, we aren’t in a nursing home with a tube, and we aren’t in the graveyard pushing up flowers.”

Sitting

# Chapter 337

Sitting sucks. I did it all day yesterday and I am going to do it all day today and likely tomorrow. The worst part is how it slows the brain and muddles the thought processes and prevents those hyper intense productivity hours that you are accustomed to having each day, from happening at all. Instead is a long long slow slog through a mental swamp of distractions and interruptions. No flow and slow productivity at best. Is this what the majority of the world experiences in the office each day?? No wonder we can’t produce something magical and wonderful under these conditions. Its a miracle we produce anything at all! I am in awe of people who can sit on their duff all day and make things work and function around the world. I would struggle mightily to do this, I am struggling mightily to just sit for a few days and let my knee start to function again.

There are fantastic ways to counter this malaise but all the ones I have mentally close by involve hours of sweating. And before you diss that approach, please remember that I generally produce as much work and better quality in three hours after one of those sweaty workouts, as I did all day long sitting in this chair for 16 hours yesterday. You decide which approach you want to take, but I will always choose the sweaty route - when I can. Of course I can’t right now and who knows how long before I can ride a bike or walk again. Never take your mobility for granted!

Blown knees

# Chapter 336

It hurts when you blow out your knee. I had never done it before yesterday and I can already tell you that I don’t want to do it ever again. This of course is assuming that I will ever be able to walk again. Right now that it is serious question. We are highly unprepared for this. We made a crutch out of a two by four, its actually not half bad just on the heavy side. But I am here to tell you that you have no idea at all how constantly you use your knees, until you can’t. Every movement hurts. Every moment hurts. There is no comfortable spot or space or position. And already the other leg is hurting from standing on it alone. This is all going the wrong way! And stairs stairs stairs!! All we have are stairs!

And yet I am grateful. Especially for Brenda and her ability and willingness to help. She is amazing and unfailing in her willingness to keep me off my feet. I am grateful that my work is not physical but mental and I can work all day knees or no. Most of my friends here have jobs that require physical work and mobility and they would be without a job were they the ones with the blown out knee. I am grateful that we have a house with a bathroom on two levels!! I am grateful that I didn’t break my leg! I am grateful that I am in America and that I probably can get real actual care for whatever broke in my knee yesterday, if I can find the right kind of doctor.

Bumps along the way

# Chapter 335

It is a good day to reinvigorate your systems today. Haven’t you noticed that you are slipping and that you need to tighten up your habits and processes? Perhaps you have failed to write each day as committed, gained some weight, missed the gym time, fallen behind in your reading schedule, missed some key markers in your work, failed to finish your chores? Whichever of these and others that you are missing the mark on, these are your blinking warning signs that you need to make some adjustments to your trajectory. Otherwise you and I are clearly going to arrive at some place other than we want and intended.

Mid-course corrections are a stable part of a life that is making forward progress. No one reaches all of their goals in life in a straight line of success, nor in an unwavering consistency of direction and purpose and arrival. We all have bumps along the way that slow us down, slightly alter our direction and speed, and sometimes these bumps become potholes that derail us completely, but that is a different subject than we are discussing today. Today we are talking about the creeping scale, the missed assignment, the failure to perfectly complete what you said/committed to do. Your followthrough is less than ideal.

This requires realignment, consistency in daily practices, recommitment to goals and processes, better followthrough, going to bed each night tired but also a little hungry both for food and success.

Full house moments

# Chapter 334

The house is full. Every bed has someone sleeping in it and it feels great, and busy and we are at max capacity. This applies to beds and meals and people. Max capacity. It is something you cycle up to, not something you can sustain all the time. The YOLO crowd tries to stay at max capacity all the time and its burning them out left and right. I am not a max capacity sort of person really, I get far more done with steady plodding each day. Showing up each and every day is a better plan for people with my personality and skills. Max capacity is just a recipe for tanking in my world. Oh I can do it for a few days like I am now, but soon I will crash and burn if I have to continue this level of output for long periods of time. In the story of the turtle and the rabbit, I am definitely the turtle.

But at an emotional level, having a full house is a sign of living the high life, being at the peak and offering hospitality to one and all. Its like winning the relational and social lottery! Our place is the place to be!! And all that jazz . . . its not really true, but it does feel like this. We all need full house moments in our lives. They make us feel extra alive and important. These moments help quantify the other moments in our lives. When we look back on our last 27 years overseas, the things the kids remember most are full house moments. When was the last time your place was packed?

Forces like me

# Chapter 333

Slow down. That is what I need to do. That is likely what you need to do. In our endless quest to do more and say yes, our lives are overclocked and out of control. At least mine is for sure. In spite of all that I do to insure that this doesn’t happen, life has a synergy and energy of its own. Mine is particularly energetic as of late! And of course not every out of control schedule and life is solely a result of its own energy, other people put things on my schedule and in my life that create a great deal of tension and friction. Like when I arrived home this week after an exhausting 700 mile trip on the road, only to find that my wife has filled the house with all the grandkids and was trying to have a big family meal together!! I was so overwhelmed that I just had to go outside and walk around.

All of this to show you that we need to slow down and even if we do, that other people will try to speed us up either by accident or by design. Said another way, there are lots of forces trying to speed you up and almost no forces like me, trying to slow you down. Slowing down is the only way to savor what you have in life, to enjoy these moments, to deeply engage these people and events and experiences so that you can live these moments rather than skim these moments. Modern life feels entirely too much like skimming all the time. Time to slow down.

Brain switching

# Chapter 332

So difficult switching your brain from one context to another. I left one world in Georgia with my dad and arrived at a completely different world in Pennsylvania with my wife, kids and grandkids. But noise is noise, and when that is inside your head it doesn’t matter where you are at in the world. Yet when the noise is in the room you are trying to function in, then the noise is especially frustrating. Brain switching leaves you discombobulated and feeling confused and out of sorts. Like you don’t belong anywhere, rather than everywhere.

People have to do this all the time. I call it brain switching and they call it code switching, but it is the same thing. And my black friends say that it is exhausting and I would agree. Even though I am their equal in being a professional code-switcher I admit that they are correct in how exhausting it is. However I will say that if you aren’t doing great self-care and if you are already tired and lagging, then this code-switching weight feels unbearable, and that is what I hear myself and my friends saying here.

So whether you are code switching or brain switching if you are taking care of yourself then you will find this unfortunate fact of our lives more manageable. If you are not doing great self-care, then you will find this a crushing moment/event to navigate. Decide which pain you want, decide which path will bring you more of what you want.

Question your internal monitor when. . .

# Chapter 331

You have to pay attention to how people experience you in the world. It is not enough to know what you feel and what you intended and to be in touch with yourself. How do others experience you? That is a critical question. One, I am asking myself because of two recent events when the two people I am most responsible for both got their feelings hurt in one of our interactions and both accused me of “yelling at them”. My immediate internal and external response both times was that I was not yelling at them! My internal monitor said that I was not yelling, that my response was appropriate for the conversation and context according to me.

Obviously their internal monitors read things differently. So much so that they both had emotional outbursts and were clearly hurt by how they perceived my tone or volume or both. If one of them had this experience that is questionable, but if both of them have this reaction, then there are no questions that something in my manner, tone, volume, non-verbal, or actions set off their internal radars. You should sit up and pay attention when this happens. I am trying to sit up and pay attention because the people that I am most responsible for and to are having a problem with me.

Of course our brains try to shift the blame and reasons to the other person, but that is always a wasted action because it never addresses the stuff you and I are doing and that we need to moderate or change. If you are unable to accept input about your behavior and actions, then you need to stop reading this blog because it is only for those who want to move forward and make the world, including your world, a better place for everyone. Since I am almost 60 years old and am the person under scrutiny here, with a life demanding that I change something, then I am pretty sure that you have some changing to do also. Stop that defensive thought and get to it.

What I can control . . . and not

# Chapter 330

The check list is getting smaller and shorter. We are getting the jobs done one at a time and occasionally two at a time when my dad can be persuaded to work alone. Persistent pressure on moving forward is the engine here. Even the jobs I especially don’t like get done eventually under this engine that keeps us humming along day after day. Today and tomorrow we will finish up what we can before I leave, and then the check list will grow long again in the three weeks I will be gone and we will start all over again then. This is the cycle of work here at my dad’s house while I am living in both GA and in PA in this moment in my life. There is always a great sense of accomplishment when this list gets smaller.

We need this sense of accomplishment, these days in particular while so much negative is going on around us. The biggest negative are all the deaths in the family and in our circle of relationships. We are at the stage of life when deaths are the new normal practically every day. When I am 60 years old and my dad is 80 years old, this is to be expected right? But that does not make it pleasant. This is why the check list takes on even more important, because it is one of the few things in our lives that we feel like we control.

Ok enough maudlin muddled thinking and time to get to work on that list and enjoy another day of getting it done.

Evolve!

# Chapter 329

Why didn’t I do this years ago?? When you have regularly scheduled actions and activities, put them on the calendar and send yourself a notification!! For over a year I have been scheduling all my blogs for the week, on Sunday evenings, well that was always the plan. But about 50% of the time I forgot and the Monday morning blog would be late as I sat at the breakfast table scrambling eggs, and scrambling around to get the blogs posted and generally making a mess of the busiest morning of the whole week. It works so much better if you schedule all five blogs Sunday evening and then it is done for the whole week. This is of course a non-critical non-life changing example, but I like order and structure in my life and this is a perfect illustration of that. So I finally put it on the calendar with a reminder at 6:00 pm on Sunday to post the blogs for the week.

Wow, what a simple solution to a simple problem that has the potential to frustrate and derail the whole day. Why didn’t I do this earlier? Why didn’t I start with this solution? Well because the weekly blog didn’t start out as a weekly blog. It evolved into a weekly blog and so how I manage this evolving event needs to evolve as well. And now it has. Regularly look to calendaring as a solution to any scheduling phenomena.

Disruptions - no stone unturned

# Chapter 328

It is so good for you to change your pattern occasionally. It realigns all that is important. It informs you of all that is important in your life and what needs to be realigned. This occasional change to your pattern is called disruption. We generally hate disruption in our worlds, but there is value to be had in disruption. I am down at my dad’s place doing some elder care with him and the property and my niece and her husband and two kids came in for a two day one night visit. This is known as disruption. As my dad quietly said at breakfast this morning, “no stone unturned” meaning that those two little gals are into every single room, curio, drawer, chest, they leave no stone unturned. A virtual hurricane blowing through the sedate pace two old men keep most days - disruption on a massive scale. This informs what you value most and what you can discard without too much pain. But this process would never even begin were it not for disruption.

This whole process also teaches you how much flexibility there is in your systems and patterns and habits. Knowing this is valuable too, because once known, you can stretch and change for short periods of time knowing that you can handle this disruption for a few days and that you are resilient enough to not let it throw you off your production curve in the long run. Of course this is applicable to business and relationships and other things as well, and don’t forget, disruption scales! I gave a very small example here, that feels like a big disruption to my dad, but in reality is a small bump in the course of his life. My advice is to embrace the disruptions in life and enjoy the change of pace and then get back to your great habits when it passes.

How to make progress

# Chapter 326

Making progress. Over a year of steady work and we are seeing a truck emerge from the briar patch rust-bucket we pulled out of the thorns and briars in coronavirus lockdown. We call it our briar patch coronavirus project. Making progress happens with steady consistent effort and attention. The energy to produce that steady consistent effort and attention is the real subject here though. Managing your energy is the more key issue as you get older. Maintaining your energy is another key issue. We all remember the days of our youth when we could work 12-14 hour days and keep the pace. Now we are doing great to have 4-6 hour days of high quality focus and production. Most days we are fortunate if my dad can work three hours at a stretch and then he is done.

He seems to think this is terrible, but I think that for an 80 year it is wonderful and that he has any energy at all is great. We did not make all this progress on the briar patch truck sitting in the house under the air conditioning! No we made progress by endless hours of sanding, cutting, patching, painting, and rebuilding. All of these requires managing and maintaining your energy levels up high. It means sweating and bleeding and scraping and using a lot of bandaids.

Working on the briar patch truck does not require or demand the same kind of progress that thinking work does, but they both demand all your energy and effort to produce something amazing. Time to get to work!

No construction

# Chapter 325

It was perhaps the easiest and least disruptive trip I have made for that many miles in a very long time. 700 miles of no construction, no accidents and no slow downs. That is so rare as to be off the map! And that made it extra good for thinking and working. I got some good work done and that made the trip go even faster. Plenty of thorny questions to work through and consider.

I have largely resolved the next 12 months of financing and that is a relief and then I realized that I need strategies for the next three years, the next five years, and ten years and 30 years!! Each of those markers requires something different than the others do and so there are layers and shifts and most importantly, the 30 year financing type questions creates a great deal of pressure and also perspective to the 3-10 year financing questions. Of course there are always a large number of assumptions as you try to resolve these types of challenges. Just the fact that it is in the future, makes certainty unattainable and that is nothing new when talking and thinking about the future. But you have to take action, and you have to attempt to impose your will on how things will turn unfold in the future. That is why we go to college, why we learn and study and improve our postures for the future, and one thousand other actions that we do to improve our options in the future.

So you and I have to lay the groundwork for the future of work, for the future of our finances and thankfully I had some time to mentally chew on that dilemma yesterday and put some actions in play that may pay some fruit in the future.