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    • 4 Steps to Actually Achieving a Goal

      “To achieve a goal you have never achieved before, you must start doing things you have never done before.” – Jim Stuart, The 4 Disciplines of Execution

      We’ve reached that time of the year again, when people start listing New Year’s resolutions and thinking about life goals. I don’t believe in once-a-year resolutions, but I’m a big believer in maintaining strong habits and positive streaks. I write every day so that I don’t break the streak. Simple. Easy to understand. Achievable. There are days when I don’t even have a coffee but still manage to write. So how do we apply that to the rest of our lives when there’s just so much on our plate already? Apply the four principles from The 4 Disciplines of Execution to our personal lives:

      “The principles of execution have always been focus, leverage, engagement, and accountability.”

      Let’s face it, the reason we don’t finish New Year’s resolutions is because life gets busy again. It’s easy to make grand plans when you’re taking a few days off around the holidays. It’s a lot harder to maintain them when the craziness of life kicks back in. The 4DX authors call this the whirlwind. We all have a lot to do in our day-to-day, and that makes sticking with a new habit challenging. It’s not a part of our routine yet, and the routine is what gets us through our crazy days.

      So what are the four disciplines for executing on your goals?

      Discipline 1 is focusing on one or a maximum of two goals. More than that and you lose focus and face diminishing returns. At that point you get lost in the whirlwind and it’s all over. The 4DX authors calls this a Wildly Important Goal (WIG).

      The fundamental principle at work in Discipline 1 is that human beings are genetically hardwired to do one thing at a time with excellence.

      Discipline 2 is to act on the lead measures. This is an important distinction from what most people do. We all tend to focus on the lag measures: What does the scale tell me? What did we sell yesterday? Did I finish writing the book by December 31st? Lag measures are important indicators of achievement, but they don’t move the rock. You need a lever to move it, and that’s what lead measures are. Instead of focusing on how much weight you lost today, focus on what you put in your mouth. Focus on how many steps you walk today. These are lead measures that move the lag measure over time.

      “A good lead measure has two basic characteristics: It’s predictive of achieving the goal and it can be influenced by the team members.”

      Discipline 3 is the discipline of engagement. This is getting things done. What things? The lead measures of course! Eat the broccoli and move more! Find creative ways to fit it all in when you’re caught up in that whirlwind of your day-to-day. But in order to stick with it you’ve got to maintain a scoreboard to track yourself. Without it you’ll get lost in the whirlwind. Remember that writing goal I had? The scoreboard is the stats. I can see clearly that I haven’t missed a day in three years and don’t want to break the streak, even when I don’t feel like writing.

      Discipline 4 is creating a “cadence of accountability”. Find a support group that keeps you on track. Weight Watchers is successful because it’s based on a weekly cadence of accountability. Find people who will give you a nudge when you aren’t meeting your lead measures.

      “The magic is in the cadence. Team members must be able to hold each other accountable regularly and rhythmically.”

      The book is focused on the very real challenge of getting a team to focus on achieving a wildly important goal that makes a significant impact on an organization. But the same principles apply in your personal life. Decide what you want to be exceptional at and what the lead measures are to move you along every day towards that goal. Then make a scoreboard that speaks to you (it can be as simple as checking the day on a calendar when you do what you said you were going to do). And then build a support structure around yourself to help keep you accountable.

      Execution on an important goal isn’t complicated, but it also isn’t easy. These four disciplines can help keep you on track in the face of the whirlwind. Just imagine how fun actually accomplishing that goal will be!

    • The Slow and Gradual Cure of Blindness

      “Great discoveries are but reflections on facts common to all. People have passed that way myriads of times and seen nothing; and one day the man of genius notices the links between what we do not know and what is every minute before our eyes. What is knowledge but the slow and gradual cure of blindness” – A.G. Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life

      The accumulation of knowledge doesn’t make one an intellectual, though it might make one better at trivia. It’s the connection of the jigsaw pieces into a complete puzzle for all to see that makes the genius. Something to aspire to, I think, and something valued. The person who can draw together disparate bits of information and turn it into insight will have no problem working in a world with an increasingly short attention span.

      Becoming that sort of person takes time and a good filter. What do you say no to? The very distractions everyone else is obsessing over. Cultural, technological, social distractions designed to pull our attention from more productive uses to linger a moment just over here. Harmlessly fun. Distractingly fun. Blindingly fun.

      The people that see the obvious we’ve all been missing tend to look at the world through a different lens. Perspective matters, and we need those who can make sense of it all more than ever. Look around the world at the noise and you’ll see some folks are too eager to drink the Koolaid and less likely to ask “why?”

      There are exciting things happening at the genius bar. Rockets bringing telescopes to deep space. Huge advancements, accelerated by mRNA sequencing, in the treatment of disease. Robotics and Artificial Intelligence that have the potential to clear mechanical and intellectual hurdles humans have been unable or unwilling to clear. What will it all mean? And who’s paying enough attention to care?

      The way to get a stool at the genius bar is to think more deeply, seek new perspectives, read material that challenges you, visit places out of your comfort zone, and then weigh these new inputs against the stuff previously stored in your personal data center. Find the connections, find the contradictions, and make sense of it all over time. Here lies the cure for blindness. And maybe the hope for humanity.

    • Destinations Are Where We Begin Again

      Ships go sailing
      Far across the sea
      Trusting starlight
      To get where they need to be
      — Josh Groban, Believe

      A challenging couple of years brings us back to Christmas morning 2021. We know it’s not over just yet, this pandemic, but we have optimism for the year ahead. Tempered by other challenges in the world, other realities at home. Life isn’t easy, it was only framed that way by our support system of family and friends and community. Generous spirits that touch our lives at just the right time. Helping us navigate the stormiest of seas. Relationships make life worthwhile. Belief in ourself begins to develop in our tightest circles, and carries us to destinations we never imagined when we began.

      May you have the opportunity to spend time with those who love you most today. Merry Christmas.

    • If We Are to Live Ourselves: Thoughts on Didion

      “I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.”
      ― Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

      I feel the truth in Didion’s observation, seeping into to me like caffeine hitting the bloodstream. For who doesn’t look back on who they used be and shake their head? That’s no longer us, and in many ways, we might wish it never was. But that person helped carry us here.

      Joan Didion passed away yesterday. There are people far more familiar with her work—far more qualified—to write her obituary than me (See Parul Sehgal’s Joan Didion Chronicled American Disorder With Her Own Unmistakable Style”). If you want to glimpse the soul of a writer of consequence, read the words that they themselves offer to the world in their most personal moments. The words that bring you into their world in common bond. Such as this quote Sehgal highlighted:

      “I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package,” she once wrote. “I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.”

      Can’t you see it? Didion placing her hands on your shoulders, looking you square in the eye and imploring you to listen. Get to it straightaway! Live a bit more recklessly. Sing and dance and live outside your comfort zone. Take more chances. Decide who to be, and go be it.

      Didion knew urgency and pain. She lost both her husband and adult daughter within a couple of devastating years of each other. She herself suffered from Parkinson’s Disease in her final years. She might have lived a glamorous life bouncing between Malibu and Manhattan early on, but she suffered losses that would floor any of us. And she shared her journey out of the abyss with her readers:

      “I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us. I also know that if we are to live ourselves there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead. — from The Year of Magical Thinking

      Ultimately we either shatter into pieces and fade away ourselves or climb back out to make something of our remaining time on this earth. Didion was a fighter. And her words that remain even as she passes betray her spirit and prompt those who remain to carry on the work:

      “Do not whine… Do not complain. Work harder. Spend more time alone.” — from Blue Nights

    • Rest and Revovery

      “Rest is not death; it is life, and all life bears fruit.” – A.G. Sertillanges

      I worked my way back to the office to finish some work after dinner. There’s a lot to do lately. And it calls at me, nagging for more time. But getting to my desk, my chair was occupied by a cat with a different idea of how to live. Taking the hint, I decided to leave the work for another day and sit down to listen to music instead… and promptly fell asleep myself.

      The end of the year brings a certain level of chaotic completion with it. Things come together in the end, or they don’t and slip into the next year. What are we to do about it but our best?

      Proper rest is the key. Sleep, recover, begin again. The cat knows this, and deep down I do too.

    • Reaching for Excellence in a Short Life

      Life is the daily march towards excellence or oblivion. We make of it what we will, but we all have our role to play in the dance. Isn’t it better to get out on the floor and do your bit, however awkward it might feel at times? That bit, done consistently, defines what our mark on the world might be.

      I saw a funny graph recently that sums up perfectly the act of incrementally building something meaningful, with no tangible signs of progress:

      Source: @jackbutcher

      It reminded me of a Latin phrase I’d saved as a reminder to myself to do what I can in the time I have: Ars longa, vita brevis (“art takes time and life is short”). For this is the cadence of mastery on display. We grind along in our chosen work, building consistently towards–should we be so bold as to dream it–excellence. And what external signs do we see but polite encouragement from friends and family and quiet indifference from the universe?

      “We must always seek, always endeavor. Nature makes the wilderness flower anew, the star to shine, the water to flow down slopes, round obstacles, into empty places, dreaming of the sea that waits it yonder, and which it may at last reach.” – A.G. Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life

      But what do we seek? Attention? Profit? Mastery itself? The answer is different for everyone, but I think the answer lies in perfecting the craft to the best of our ability in the short time we have in each day, and by extension, in our brief lives. This incremental ascent to better is our mission, and if we’re lucky maybe something comes of it in the end. But the magic is in the daily attempt to reach levels previously unimaginable while plodding along in the valley of “this is pointless”. Most people just move on to less frustrating pursuits. But excellence demands consistent attention.

      “Because we think well of ourselves, but nonetheless never suppose ourselves capable of producing a painting like one of Raphael’s or a dramatic scene like one of Shakespeare’s, we convince ourselves that the capacity to do so is quite extraordinarily marvelous, a wholly uncommon accident, or, if we are still religiously inclined, a mercy from on high. Thus our vanity, our self-love, promotes the cult of the genius: for only if we think of him as being very remote from us, as a miraculum, does he not aggrieve us…. But, aside from these suggestions of our vanity, the activity of the genius seems in no way fundamentally different from the activity of the inventor of machines, the scholar of astronomy or history, the master of tactics. All these activities are explicable if one pictures to oneself people whose thinking is active in one direction, who employ everything as material, who always zealously observe their own inner life and that of others, who perceive everywhere models and incentives, who never tire of combining together the means available to them. Genius too does nothing but learn first how to lay bricks then how to build, and continually seek for material and continually form itself around it. Every activity of man is amazingly complicated, not only that of the genius: but none is a ‘miracle.’” — Friedrich Nietzsche

      That’s a long quote, borrowed in its entirety from Robert Greene’s book Mastery. Maybe it’s too long to quote in a relatively short blog post, but I like to break a few rules of SEO order along the way. This blog, for all I put into it daily, is a small but important part of the life I’ve built for myself, and an indicator to those who might pay attention of the incremental progress I make towards become a better human. As another year draws to a close, I think about the progress I’ve made, see the long climb ahead of me, and hope I’m given the time to reach my own personal summit. Excellence? Mastery? No… not yet, but maybe a small step closer.

    • Bottle Cap Time Machine

      I casually cracked open a bottle of water and placed the cap on the table. Sitting there, it seemed insignificant and commonplace. But hidden inside that cap is a time machine, bringing my brief encounter with it to the future, likely long after I’m gone myself. That bottle cap may survive the entire bloodline of my family, and by its very make-up an artifact representing an instant in my own brief moment in this world.

      Walk into any museum or visit an archeological dig and you’ll find artifacts to past lives. These were the bottle caps of their time, pottery, utensils, arrowheads and other trivial bits from which we derive the larger life of the person who left that artifact behind. That bottle cap represented but a moment of hydration in an otherwise ordinary day of business travel. I wonder what might be derived from it in the future, when millions of such plastic caps live on as time machines for countless other lives?

      The only thing certain is that they will point back at a time when the trivial bottle cap immediately became an afterthought, cast aside to begin its life cycle beyond our own. A life of hundreds of years, all to serve a few weeks of containing whatever fluid we happened to consume. The entire transaction is so commonplace in the average life of one soul on this planet, and yet has such a lasting impact on the environment.

      I wonder, what will it say about us?

    • The Booster Experience

      With all the variants dancing about, I was finally able to get my booster shot yesterday. For the record, it was the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine (Pfizer-BioNTech). And just like with the second shot, my body reacted to it with a wave of chills hours afterwards. For the second dose, it was at the twenty hour mark. For this one, it caught up to me at fifteen hours. For about an hour I shook so hard I had to put a towel in my mouth so I wouldn’t bite my tongue. Fun! But in both cases, I felt that if this was what the vaccine does to me I’m grateful I didn’t get the virus. The wave eventually passes. A bit if discomfort is the price of admission for the new normal.

      Everyone reacts differently, of course, and some people get no symptoms at all. I rarely get sick, so it was interesting to get this wave of feverish chills with the second two doses. But there’s another twist to this story–I got the flu shot at the same time. Is that reckless or efficient? Who knows, but my body informed me that I was ambitious.

      If this all sounds like a negative stance on the vaccine, well, that’s not the case at all. Just one person’s experience with the three doses of Pfizer. I’d do it all again if it turns out we’ll require a fourth dose someday. But I sure hope that’s not the case.

      With all that said, get your booster. We like you too much for you to get sick now. After all we’ve been through together.

    • A Moment With Snow

      Aren’t there moments
      that are better than knowing something,
      and sweeter? Snow was falling,
      so much like stars
      filling the dark trees
      that one could easily imagine
      its reason for being was nothing more
      than prettiness.
      — Mary Oliver, Snowy Night

      I know I have some readers in other parts of the world where snow is a distant memory or an impossibility. You might wonder why we carry on so much about the stuff, and it’s hard to nail down the reasons for the delight when we finally get snow again. While most of us have a love/hate relationship with it for all the joy and misery it brings, I think of it as an old friend that’s been gone too long.

      Oliver’s quote is from a magical poem about encountering an owl on a snowy night. I quote Oliver poems perhaps more than I should in this blog, but I believe in mixing wonder into our lives. Oliver had a keen eye for the stuff, and jumbled her words just so to share it with you and me and generations who we haven’t imagined yet. That’s magic in itself, isn’t it?

      You develop a nose for snow, and sense when it’s coming. You prepare for it as best you can, doing the yard work you put off way longer than you should have, move the shovels into a more convenient place, and the snowblower too if you have one. And then you wait for the first flakes to begin drifting from the sky, probing the land like a pilot probing a channel. Soon the rest follow and the world transforms before your eyes. Snow brings new perspective on a place you’ve come to see a certain way. Like a poem, really, that’s dropped on you at just the right moment.

    • Dancing in a State of Solitude

      “The spirit of silence must… pervade the whole of life. That is what matters most of all. It is said sometimes that solitude is the mother of results. Not solitude, but the state of solitude. So much so that we could, strictly speaking, conceive an intellectual life based on two hours’ work per day. But does anyone imagine that having set those two hours aside one may then act as if they did not exist? That would be a grave misconception. Those two hours are given to concentration, but the consecration of the whole life is none the less necessary.” — A.G. Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life

      Living in a state of solitude sounds lonely, but really it’s just the opposite. Lonely is feeling apart from the world, living with a spirit of silence opens you up to the world, to be a part of it. And this is where the magic happens, or, if you will, the consecration of life. To live sacredly, fully alive, fully aware, and full of possibility. This isn’t derived from background noise and distraction, but from quieting the mind and truly seeing.

      “A crowded world thinks that aloneness is always loneliness and that to seek it is perversion”
      — John Graves

      A coworker resigned earlier this week to return to a job he’d previously left, not because the current position wasn’t lucrative and full of growth potential, but because he felt lonely. What he meant by that was he couldn’t drop by to see old industry friends every week in a route, like someone delivering milk. This is a life of the familiar, and there’s comfort in it that we can all understand. The pandemic robbed us of much of this, and even as variants spike people stubbornly hold on to interaction with others because it’s a part of their lives they don’t want to be away from any longer. Who doesn’t understand the draw of the comfortable and familiar?

      A state of solitude turns inward, not to be antisocial or reclusive, but to open up the senses to awareness. Awareness of the inner tension inside of us helps us see that battle others have inside themselves. And this awareness leads to a state of receptiveness—to take in the world as it comes to you. I’m no expert on such things, but I can see that those hours of concentration have brought me closer to it.

      “When someone is anxious about being aware all the time, you can spot the mild anxiety. They want to be awake, to find out if they’re really awake or not. That’s part of asceticism, not awareness. It sounds strange in a culture where we’ve been trained to achieve goals, to get somewhere, but in fact there’s nowhere to go because you’re there already. ” — Anthony De Mello, Awareness

      Do you want to dance in your awareness? Seek solitude, wherever you might be. Walk in the natural world. Breath deep, listen and look at the world buzzing around you, look inside, and see. And you’ll find, in the stillness of that moment, that you’re already dancing with it.