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    • The Whisper

      “The key to efficiency is doing things right. The key to effectiveness is doing the right things.” — Peter Drucker

      I’ve made some changes this summer that have in turn changed how I spend my time. Things I did in an unfocused way have become very focused, while things I shouldn’t have focused on at all have been removed entirely from my day. When we make changes, it’s important to take stock of how we react to these changes. What do we want more of? What do we miss? Which habits are going to finally stick and which will we forever be trying to kick?

      The trick in Drucker’s quote is knowing enough to stop doing the wrong things. We haven’t got time for wrong things in this brief go at things. Knowing the difference between what is right for us and what isn’t thus becomes essential to an effective life. But what is right and what is wrong anyway?

      To borrow from The Tubes old song, what do you want from life? What are we being efficient at that doesn’t align with what we want? If we’re moving with purpose but we’re going in the wrong direction aren’t we just wasting time? Life requires constant assessment. To check the compass now and then to find our true north before taking another step. But knowing what our true north is in the first place requires a level of self-awareness that takes time to develop.

      So it is that we must tackle everything we do as if it’s the most important thing in the world for us in that moment. Painting a room? Aim for perfect lines. Writing a proposal? Look for words that inspire and eliminate what detracts from the real message until it flows like a clear mountain stream. Grilling dinner? Turn down the heat and focus on the perfect moment to flip that fillet. Perfection lies within us, waiting for us to focus on every opportunity to reveal it.

      Any task or odd job will speak to us, informing us that yes, this is the right path, or no, this won’t do for us. If we half-ass the work, we’ll never know the potential in it (let alone our own potential). The whisper comes to those who are focused on excellence in whatever they do. That doesn’t mean we have to keep doing it once we’ve determined it isn’t right for us, but having done it well, we may leave it behind with honor and a hint for where to go next on our journey.

    • We Choose to Become

      “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”
      — Carl Jung

      Recently far more active than I was just a couple of weeks ago, I’ve become reacquainted with lactic acid and the aches and pains of shrugging off lethargy once again. A small price to pay today for a healthier tomorrow. The idiom “pay me now or pay me later” is always in play in every decision. Paying as we go will always net a better result for those building a better future.

      We change when we decide it’s time, or when change is forced upon us (which is usually too late in the game). We have agency, we must choose to use it. Decide what to be and go be it, as the song goes. If that’s not high agency, I’m not sure what is. First, decide, then go be that which we’ve decided to be. There is no magic formula hiding behind the curtain. We were the wizard all along.

      The thing is, when we keep a promise to ourselves, we learn to trust ourselves more when the next audacious idea comes into our heads. We made it this far, why not try for that next BHAG (“Big Hairy Audacious Goal”) that Jim Collins points to as the fuel behind reaching for long term objectives with urgency and purpose. Is getting back in shape audacious? Not really, but closing that gap makes us more inclined to close another, then another still. And thus to reach higher than we might have otherwise.

      We choose to become or we concede our agency to others. Have another drink, have the fries with that burger, don’t wrestle with that homework, don’t make that call that would make all the difference… we know where these broken promises took us. So why keep breaking more? What’s happened in the past brought us here. What we choose to do now will determine who we will become next. Why leave that to fate? Go be something more.

    • One’s Enough

      “I suffer whenever I see that common sight of a parent or senior imposing his opinion and way of thinking and being on a young soul to which they are totally unfit. Cannot we let people be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make that man another you. One’s enough.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

      The best advice for any new parent is to offer enough presence and guidance to our children for them to get to young adulthood and then let them figure things out from there. Parents who hover and control, parents who try to over-protect and over-influence their children usually create more fragile shells. We must let our children feel the weight of the world, that they may build the strength to carry that weight themselves one day.

      Today is Father’s Day, making me think of such things as parenting. My own father did the best he could given the circumstances, and in general I didn’t mess things up too much on my path to adulthood. We may like ourselves just the way we are, or maybe we’re inclined to keep working to set the sails just right on this journey through life. Constant and never-ending improvement is a choice, just as steady decline is a choice. Who we become is largely up to us after we leave the nest.

      We in turn become parents and try to figure things out as we go. It would serve our children well to heed Emerson’s advice: one of us is enough. Whoever we’ve become, whoever we will be, is ours alone. Our children will take the foundation we help build for them and rise to whoever they may be.

      Our best contribution is to lend them a hand now and then when they ask for it, and otherwise get out of the way that they may do the climb themselves. And more, to keep climbing to better ourselves. One of us is enough, but we can’t forget to keep making today’s one better than yesterday’s. Our example will influence our children just as our parent’s example influenced ours.

    • To Be Filled

      When I am among the trees,

      especially the willows and the honey locust,

      equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,

      they give off such hints of gladness,

      I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

      I am so distant from the hope of myself,

      in which I have goodness, and discernment,

      and never hurry through the world

      but walk slowly, and bow often.

      Around me the trees stir in their leaves

      and call out, “Stay awhile.”

      The light flows from their branches.

      And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,

      “and you too have come

      into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
      with light, and to shine.”
      — Mary Oliver, When I Am Among the Trees

      This morning it’s raining again.

      For the thirteenth Saturday in a row, I might add.

      Breaking a record, I’m told, for consecutive weekends of rainy Saturdays.

      And even though I’d rather have the sun warm my face and draw my tomato vines to the sky, I don’t mind a rainy morning. If only for the sounds it brings to the forest. If only for the quiet it brings to an otherwise busy mind.

      We may choose how to face each day. My inclination to shine may seem out of step with the times, but it’s my day to face in whatever way I decide to face it. To bring light to darkness is a choice, just as it is a choice to bring darkness to light. How we bring balance back to the world is determined by the collective, but I’ll go on shining as best I can in my time.

      Filled with light, I’m inclined to share it.

    • The Bridge of Process

      “We’re not going to talk about what we’re going to accomplish. We’re going to talk about how we’re going to do it.” — Nick Saban

      I’d like to finish writing a book I’d started a while ago. I put it aside, changed media, lost said media, started over again, and here we are with an unfinished work. It will remain unfinished unless I bridge the gap between dream and reality with action. Otherwise it’s simply another unfulfilled wish that peters out one day along with all the other things we said to ourselves we were going to do one day. And so we must build a bridge of process that gets us from here to there and do the work every day to reach the other side.

      I thought it prudent to spend this summer getting fit again. I set a goal weight a week before an important date on my summer calendar and worked backwards to create a plan to get there. I’m nine days into the routine and seven pounds lighter. That’s good progress and well ahead of pace, but nothing to celebrate yet. The celebration will be on that important date after I’ve crossed this bridge. And this fitness plan I’m on is all process too. When we do what we tell ourselves to do, we reach the goals we want to accomplish. Simple, really, and yet so hard.

      We can’t control so much of what is happening in the world right now. We can get spun up about that and drift away from the focus required to reach our goals, or we can simply look at what’s next in our plan and execute on it. When we are process-oriented we filter out much of what we cannot control and just do the next thing we said we were going to do, then the next, and before we know it we’ve gotten somewhere closer to what we set out for.

      I began writing this blog for reasons I’ve covered many times in the process of writing it. It’s so much a part of my identity now that I hardly think about it unless the day is getting on and I’m feeling that bit of anxiety creeping in, telling me I haven’t published yet. And so I carve out some time no matter how busy I am and focus on writing the best possible thing I can muster given the circumstances. These blog posts will outlive me, and the Internet doesn’t care how busy I was in the moment. But the underlying process brought me to a place where writing it is so much a part of the identity I chose for myself that I’ll get it done again and again.

      When we stop talking about what we’re going to do and simply focus on the process to get to where we want to be something amazing happens. We actually start bridging that gap we once thought too far to get across. Once crossed, we can set our sights on something even more audacious, and keep crossing chasms again and again, far beyond what we once believed possible. Stop focusing on the gap, focus on the bridge.

    • RIP Brian Wilson

      She makes me come alive
      And makes me wanna drive
      When she says “Don’t worry baby”
      Don’t worry baby
      Don’t worry baby
      Everything will turn out alright
      — The Beach Boys, Don’t Worry Baby

      Another giant passed away this week. Brian Wilson was the genius behind The Beach Boys and by all accounts a beautiful soul. He raised the bar on popular music, making other giants like The Beatles take notice and up the ante. We’ve all benefited from Brian Wilson’s prolific contribution to music and culture, directly as a soundtrack to our own lives and indirectly as an influence on other artists. How different life would have sounded without him.

      I didn’t play a lot of Beach Boys on my playlists, not because I didn’t like many of their songs, but because I felt I was always hearing them played somewhere so why bother? But a few songs were in frequent rotation, beginning with Don’t Worry Baby, then rolling into the bouncy ride of Sloop John B (those lyrics aren’t as peppy as the music!), the thrill of Good Vibrations, the sonic mind trip of God Only Knows and the harmonious confession of In My Room. These were all big hits, of course, but didn’t it feel like everything they did turned into a hit?

      Losing Brian Wilson and Sly Stone in the same week… goodness. We know that these things happen in threes. Let’s hope this week is an exception to that rule.

    • Tomato Days

      These are the early days of summer, even if it feels like it hasn’t started in the northeast United States, where I live. And June is the beginning of tomato days. I grow them as much for the smell of the vines as for the fruit I may or may not harvest, depending on the tomato-loving wildlife and the fickle weather. What I grow we’ll eat, and what I can’t grow I’ll pick up at the local farm stand. Tomato days are the very best days of summer.

      Lately I’ve introduced more tomatoes into my daily routine no matter the season. My PSA score was higher than it should be, not dangerous levels but still make some changes in your life levels. It seems that the abundant levels of lycopene in tomatoes is an excellent way to help protect cells in the body from damage caused by free radicals. Lycopene is an antioxidant ally in a world full of bad stuff trying to mess with our happy lives. So eating tomatoes every day is an easy and logical way to increase our health span.

      And health span is everything! If we hope to have a long and active life, versus a life tempered by assisted living and lowered expectations about what is possible in a day, we must build and maintain a healthy and fit body that can help kick atrophy and disease down the curb. Exercise and good nutrition are building blocks for a better future, while helping us feel more energized and focused today. So have a tomato. Just save some for me.

    • The Other Path

      “One of the biggest mistakes people make in their careers is to treat work primarily as a means to an end. Maybe this is what you have done throughout your career up to this point. If so, you have done what so many do on their fluid intelligence curves—have learned that’s a mistake and decided it’s time to stop. Whether that end is money, power, or prestige, the instrumentalization of work leads to unhappiness.” — Arthur C. Brooks, From Strength to Strength

      We’ve all got to pay the bills, line up health insurance, and be productive at something in our lives, but we ought to be careful about the path we choose to get there. Slogging through years in a career that we don’t like, working for people we’d just as soon not be associated with, for money, power or prestige is a recipe for an unhappy, unfulfilling life. We all think we see a light at the end of the tunnel when we’re in these types of pursuits, only to find the tunnel opens up to a sheer cliff. This is our only go at things, so why do things that don’t resonate deeply within?

      The other path is doing work for the joy of doing the work. It’s not a means to an end but the path itself that we find meaning in. We aren’t all lucky enough to find ourselves on that path for our entire career, but we ought to have it on our radar. Having switched career paths a few times in my life, I usually felt a sense of excitement akin to a first date: this could be the one. Alas, it was usually the one for now and would soon run it’s course. Life offers all kinds of stepping stones, and inevitably showing up every day, building a network and a reputation leads to growth opportunities.

      Every day is a winding road
      I get a little bit closer
      Every day is a faded sign
      I get a little bit closer to feeling fine
      — Sheryl Crow, Everyday Is A Winding Road

      At this stage in my career, I’m more inclined to do interesting work than worry about money, power or prestige. There’s something liberating in that realization. And it leads me towards more creative pursuits, where perhaps I should have been all along. How about you? Every day is a winding road, as the song goes. A great life begins with making that winding road interesting to travel, for we won’t pass this way again.

    • Giving Up the Good

      “Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” — John D. Rockefeller

      We reach a point where we get comfortable with what we’ve got. What we’ve done to this point feels like enough. Maybe we’ve done our share and now it’s time to take a break. But comfortable is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, hiding inertia and stasis. We all know that stagnant water isn’t good for us. Do we forget that we’re 60-70% water ourselves? We must move to survive.

      But move where? To be a Jack of all trades is to master none. We ought to focus on something meaningful in our lives, if only to move closer towards mastery in that craft. So if the course we’ve set for ourselves doesn’t feel like the right path, change paths. We know change is disruptive to our routine, but since when is the routine the goal of a fully optimized life? A bit of discomfort is good for us, for that’s how we grow.

      By now regular readers know what’s coming with this blogger well before I come out and say it. There will be more change in my future this year, if only to challenge the borders of that comfort zone. The changes have already begun, and there’s so much more to do. If not now, then when? Great is somewhere up and to the right from here. Will we do what must be done to get there? The trick is to ditch good to have a go at great.

    • Doing Something Different

      “You can’t put limits on what you’ll do. You have to be open to new ideas and new ways of doing things if you want breakthroughs in your life. As you travel the path of mastery you’ll find yourself continually challenged to do new things. The Purposeful person follows the simple rule that ‘a different result requires doing something different.’ Make this your mantra and breakthroughs become possible.
      Too many people reach a level where their performance is ‘good enough’ and then stop working on getting better. People on the path to mastery avoid this by continually upping their goal, challenging themselves to break through their current ceiling, and staying the forever apprentice” — Gary Keller, The One Thing

      This will surprise a few people in my life, but I’ve paused my alcohol consumption for a couple of months as part of a change in my daily regimen. Admittedly, summer is an odd time to put a pause on drinking, when the spirits flow as free as the warm vibes, but then again, what better time than now for anything we want to try? So I’ve paused drinking for June and July, with a clear date in mind in August when I’ll likely be having a few celebratory beverages. But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

      I’m a strong believer in not saying what you’re going to do, but simply demonstrating who you are by doing it. My last drink was four days ago, and despite ample opportunity to indulge since, I’ve stayed on track. We’ll see how I do when the sailing friends return, but by then I’ll have a little wind in my own sails. But why stop instead of moderate? Because I’m not pausing the alcohol consumption because I feel I have a problem with it, but to demonstrate to myself that I’m steering this ship.

      I’ve also changed a few other things that don’t get the attention that alcohol does. The reason is to pursue a desired health level that hasn’t been achieved through the average of my days in the last few years. We are what we repeatedly do, as our friend Aristotle reminds us, and thus excellence is a habit. What we do now is the foundation for who we’ll be then, and my foundation needed a bit of strengthening. Our lives are forever about the paying the price of admission: Pay me now or pay me later. Our good health must be payed in advanced.

      The bottom line is that I’m not satisfied with good enough, and so more is required of me. Because a different result requires doing something different, and when is there a better time than now to give it a go? Not drinking for a couple of months is the tip of the spear, with other lifestyle changes behind it. So pass the ice water, I’ve grown a bit parched. The path to personal excellence demands a lot of us, which is why so many never get around to it.