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    • Energy and Time

      “Energy, Not Time, Is Our Most Precious Resource.” — Jim Loehr, The Power of Full Engagement

      We often say we don’t have the time to do something we know is important, when in reality we have the time but nowhere near enough mental energy to take the initiative. Sure, time is limited, but how often do we find ourselves watching television or mindlessly scrolling social media videos instead of getting up and getting to it? More than we’d like to admit.

      Lately I’ve surprised myself with productivity gains. It’s not that I hadn’t been there before, it’s that I’ve been too unfocused on some essential habits and my effectiveness slipped away. Put more focus on energy management and suddenly I feel like a better version of myself.

      There’s no secret to energy: when we fill the tank we have more to burn. But the tank needs to be filled with the good stuff, like exercise, nutritious foods, hydration, proper rest and a positive and encouraging circle of influence around us. When we align these restorative forces behind us we can be propelled into higher performance.

      The question is always, what do we want to get out of life? We ought to follow that up with two more questions: what kind of energy will I need to burn to get there and do I have the right support system built to supply it? When we align all of these forces behind us, we might be surprised at how much energy we have, and how much more we can do with time.

    • How Was Your Experience?

      I received the same question from my dentist and my automobile service team recently—How was your experience? It turns out both left me a bit disappointed this time around, where I’d come to expect excellence. Perhaps that expectation led me there, or maybe they simply didn’t measure up to their own standards. Either way it was the same result.

      We ought to ask ourselves this question every day with an ever-higher standard for our own behavior, execution on goals, and an ever more refined philosophy for how a life should be lived. What gets measured gets managed, as Peter Drucker supposedly said. Each day offers an opportunity to ask ourselves, how’s it really going? What needs to change? How do we become a better version of ourselves than we were yesterday? It starts with the right questions and follows with an honest answer.

    • The Making of It

      “The place where you belong will not exist until you create it.” — James Baldwin

      There are days when we forget that we are the actors in our own play. It feels sometimes like the world is imposing itself on us (surely it will), yet we still have a verse. We see that those who boldly push their own will on the world often find themselves further along than those who accept the impositions. The lesson for us is to know where we want to go and keep working to get there, because we’re all going somewhere anyway and we might as well make it the place we want to be.

      So it is that lately I’ve been imagining what’s next. Write the book? Buy the boat? Build the house? Or maybe forget all that and immerse myself in a Caldeirada in some sleepy seaside town in Portugal. We can’t have it all, but we may determine some small part of our future with a steady accent to that summit in our dreams. Indeed, life is what we make of it.

      To see the truth in Baldwin’s statement, we only need to look around at our present state and follow the breadcrumbs from who we once were to this place we are now. We may blame fate or the will of some higher power for dropping us where we are now, with the circle of people influencing every aspect of our lives, but deep down we know we brought ourselves here too. That’s either cause for celebration or a catalyst for massive change, but our role in our current situation is undeniable. So why not look ahead to what’s next and create the future version of us? It’s coming either way.

    • Adding Surprise

      “If you keep experiencing the same things, your mind keeps its same patterns. Same inputs, same responses. Your brain, which was once curious and growing, gets fixed into
      deep habits. Your values and opinions harden and resist change.
      You really learn only when you’re surprised. If you’re not surprised, then everything is fitting into your existing thought patterns. So to get smarter, you need to get surprised, think in new ways, and deeply understand different perspectives.” ― Derek Sivers, Hell Yeah or No: What’s Worth Doing

      We know this, don’t we? To learn is to grow. To experience new and diverse things in our lives offers this learning experience for each of us. So it follows that we ought to get outside of our own small box and leap into the new and surprising. It’s here where we may just find delightful insight.

      Ah, but can’t we find delight in our everyday routines? Isn’t that why we’ve landed here? I may walk out into the garden and delight in new blooms, the smell of fresh basil, the song of a cardinal overhead. I can sit in a familiar chair practically molded to my form and read a favorite book again and again, drawing out something new from it every time. Indeed, there are advocates for immersing ourselves ever deeper into the familiar that we may one day master it. We can’t reach mastery if we’re always frittering from one thing to the next.

      There is of course a happy medium. We may go out and seek new perspectives and return to the familiar with them as a more experience-rich person. we collect memories and insights into the ways of the world and bring them back to build a bigger, more expansive and more open box. And like a bird nest we may fly away and return in the proper season. Life is about balancing the familiar with the surprisingly new. The trick is what to prioritize when in our lives.

    • Time in the Sun

      There’s a dark and a troubled side of life
      There’s a bright and a sunny side too
      Though we meet with the darkness and strife
      The sunny side we also may view
      Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side
      Keep on the sunny side of life
      It will help us every day, it will brighten all the way
      If we keep on the sunny side of life
      — The Carter Family, Keep on the Sunny Side

      “There’s always a sunrise and always a sunset and it’s up to you to choose to be there for it,’ said my mother. ‘Put yourself in the way of beauty.” ― Cheryl Strayed, Wild

      It occurred to me while driving to Connecticut the other day that the process of driving down that particular road has never been a pleasant experience for me. I’ve been driving on that Interstate for my entire life, and it’s always a grind of either traffic or boredom. The only time I recall enjoying it was when I first got my driving permit and my father let me drive from Cape Cod to our home and I distinctly remember the feeling of newness and potential that road offered on that day. Since then? Nothing but a familiar tedious task to complete before getting from here to there. That’s no way to go through life, friend.

      The thing is, each day offers us a path to new potential or tedious pain. We often (not always) get to choose which path to take. I’d like to say that I choose never to take that particular Interstate highway again, but I know deep down I’ll be on it Monday morning unless the world turns upside down for me in the interim. Given the choice, I’ll take the highway, thank you. But not forever. Our goal should be elimination of the ugly for the embrace of beautiful. Instead of commuting down that Interstate yet again, maybe meandering through some hiking trail or ancient cobblestone street is a better journey. Life shouldn’t always be about our means to an end. We forget that that means ought to matter a great deal to us as it’s the stuff of life. It’s quite literally our passage through our time in the sun.

    • The Route of the Routine

      “Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” — Pablo Picasso

      To have a plan is to have a route. A route transformed into a daily routine is what carries us from who we have been to who we aspire to become. Who we are today represents a single step on the journey, but it’s often what we fixate on the most. So it is that we get frustrated with performance standards on any given task, workout or event we’re in the middle of at the moment. We measure ourselves against there, when we are still here. Never a fair comparison.

      It’s good to focus on small wins while gently pushing to a higher standard. Yesterday was a good day of work but not a good day of working out. Today offers an opportunity to turn that around. Seeing the forest for the trees, it’s may become clear that the routine is the same, even when the steps along the route change. Just keep following that desired compass heading.

      As Picasso pointed out, the trick is to vigorously act on our goals. Otherwise they’re nothing but dreams. Daydreamers don’t get very far, do they? Once we know the route, we must get to it already.

    • The Minimum Viable

      When you’re short on time, what gives? The routine being what it is, an abundance of minutes to accomplish everything is often necessary to meet our expectations of ourselves. But some days there just aren’t a lot of available minutes. Still, we must move the chains.

      James Clear discussed this concept of minimum viable habits, for which he coined the name atomic habits. Makes a great book title for sure. The concept itself is pretty straightforward: what is an acceptable level of effort applied to a habit to make us believe we’ve checked the box today? Read one page? Ten pushups or a walk around the block? When we set the minimum viable number, we give ourselves a way to pat ourselves on the back and move on to the rest of our hectic day.

      I’m quite literally rushing out the door, but attempting to create a blog post that meets or hopefully exceeds that minimum viable for me to consider it a worthy submission. I do this at the expenses of some other habits I’d very much like to do as well, but they’ll have to wait a few more hours—when they too most likely will sneak in above that minimum. That’s how we make progress and keep streaks alive for one more day. And some days, that’s just enough.

    • Showing Up

      The hardest day in a new workout routine is the second day. You’ve hit it hard on day one, felt that sense of accomplishment, and then get up the next morning a bit stiff, with lactic acid buildup and a hundred reasons why you should wait just a little while before you get back to that routine. This is the day when you’ve got to show up and push through it, no matter how it goes. Showing up is where committed identity is established.

      The thing is, the results may be pretty ugly. My day two was humbling and embarrassing to post, but it’s one workout in what should be a steady climb to better. What does it matter if we don’t set a PR on day two? I’m not rowing in the Olympics, and the dog walking team hasn’t called me just yet. All that matters is the streak, and you can’t get to day three without getting through day two.

      We are what we repeatedly do. That’s the only success formula that matters in a lifetime. The reason The Beatles were so prolific in the relatively brief time they were a band was because they showed up and did the work. When they slid into a distracted fog they fractured and broke up. The analogy isn’t any different for us. We must show up and do the work that calls to us, every day.

      I was talking to one of my favorite writers a few days ago and she told me she hadn’t been writing lately. I reminded her then (and now, I suppose), that writers write, every day. It’s the only way to avoid atrophy. It’s why I publish this blog every day, and check a dozen other important boxes every day. We must show up, if only to keep a promise to ourselves. There’s nothing worse than a dysfunctional relationship with our inner voice.

      Easy for me to say, right? I’ve already established the habit. But that’s just one part of a routine that is always a work in progress. We never quite reach excellence (arete), do we? All we can do is try to move closer. The rubber hits the road when we gently put our excuses on the nightstand and rise up to meet the moment.

    • BHAG At It

      “Set goals that are so big, so hairy, they make you gulp. When youre about to fall asleep, your BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) is there by your bed all hairy with glowing eyes. When you wake up its there: ‘Good morning, I am your BHAG. I own your life’. — Jim Collins

      Yesterday I set a goal for myself that was so ridiculous that I laughed. I more than doubled the lofty goal I set for myself a year ago in mileage for the summer, all for a good cause. The thing is, I did it in a calculated way, on a spreadsheet, with a key differentiator from a year ago: I’ve learned what is possible if I simply change the way I arrive.

      The answer to doing more in the same amount of time is to do work with a higher return on time invested. I love a great walk as much as anyone, but they take time. Rowing is far more efficient, and I can cover a lot more mileage in less time. If there’s a red flag in the plan, it’s big blocks of time when I’ll be away from the rowing ergometer for business and personal travel. It’s why I emphasized walking a year ago: because I can do it almost anywhere. By combining the two, but with emphasis on the rowing workouts, I can accomplish 235% more in the same amount of time. That’s what you call a big, hairy, audacious goal.

      The trick is to stop talking about what you’re going to do and get right to doing it. Just because something is possible doesn’t mean it will get done. Just like every other habit in our lives, we must consistently show up and do what we promise ourselves we’re going to do. That’s the only way to make a BHAG our friend. So gulp and get to it already.

    • Coloring Beyond

      “Live life to the fullest. You have to color outside the lines once in a while if you want to make your life a masterpiece. Laugh some every day, keep growing, keep dreaming, keep following your heart. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” — Albert Einstein

      I’m usually suspicious of quotes attributed to famous people but can’t find anything that contradicts the source, so thanks for the advice, uh, Albert. He seemed like the kind of guy who might have actually said it anyway. But I digress…

      I was always a meticulous “color within the lines” kind of wanna-be artist. The lines were there for a reason, weren’t they? Don’t stray beyond, I’d tell myself. It wasn’t until I was older that I started figuring out that the lines were just someone else’s interpretation of where they should be. And I started straying beyond and finding out that that’s where the magic is. So I’d stray a bit farther still.

      When you color outside the lines you begin to notice the other people who color beyond the lines. There’s a whole community of outside the lines people fully enjoying their lives while the inside the lines people grind through their days. Coloring beyond is invigorating and a bit audacious. Following other people’s rules is constricting and subservient. Who do we really want to be, ourselves or someone else’s version of who we ought to be?

      Monday mornings feel a bit different when you stray outside the lines. At the moment, I’m thinking I ought to stray a bit further to see just how audacious I can be today. We can’t make our own masterpiece following someone else’s plan, can we? Carpe diem, friend.