The best version of yourself is a disciplined version of yourself. The best version of yourself can find self-restraint when the future requires it. Don’t focus on what makes the crowds cheer, rather, focus on rightness in the moment. That will bring stability in the future (and maybe some cheers from the crowd, too.)
Keep moving (even when you’re afraid)
Keep moving especially when you're afraid. Standing still is the worst thing you can do.
There is an uncomfortable feeling that comes along with fear. The way fear makes your body feel. The hyperventilation and the coldness that washes over you.
The strange thing is that it’s not just life and safety that people might fear for, it's usually the small stuff. Things which are tiny in the grand scheme of things, yet sometimes we are stricken with a paralyzing fear in the face of these things.
The only chance of overcoming these fears is to genuinely believe that by standing still, we only guarantee that we will fail. We must know that and believe it because it is true.
There is nearly no circumstance into which you will be placed in your life where making the wrong decision means certain death. It simply doesn’t happen in normal life.
Overcome fear by ripping the mask off, examining the thing(s) you fear, and doing something. Do anything. Make a move and get going in some direction. Standing still means you’ve lost by default, so move as if everything depends on it (because it does.)
Opinion: It’s not about how early you wake up
If we have a solid morning, we will have a solid day. A chaotic morning will bleed into a chaotic day. This is the real reason behind the idea that people who get up early are more productive.
It’s not the time, it’s just that at that time, our bodies have been trained to get up and get rolling into our day. Whereas waking up at 11am feels like you’ve lost half the day and we tend to rush through a jumbled mess of rushing to get started with our work to make up for the lost time. Then we have a terrible and unfocused day.
If we agree that we each get eight hours of sleep every night, who cares if you get to bed at 9pm and wake up at 5am and I prefer going to sleep at 2am and waking up at 10am?
Without getting into the science surrounding the circadian rhythm, I tend to believe that it is the solid morning routine that sets you on course for a productive day, NOT the hour at which you awake.
Things I struggle with
I know, I know, the title should say “Things with which I struggle” but I have a hard time writing grammatically correct.
This whole blogging/writing experiment that I began back in 2018 has highlighted to me just how much I think about and know to be the better and right and good way to go about doing things, yet I struggle with so much of what I write about.
The struggle is worth it, to me. If I’m struggling, it means I’m still trying and as long as I’m trying, there is a chance I’ll have some success.
The struggle in pursuit of a seemingly impossible goal also gives depth and meaning to my working life. It motivates and tells me to get up and try again.
I am learning to only promise progress, not perfection. I’ll chase perfection, but be content with my progress in the interim.
Inaction is almost always the wrong choice
Been feeling a little sick the past two days. There's a stomach bug going through my kids and it finally got me for a day or two.
I’ll show up in today’s post with a quote I love from Norman Vincent Peale.
“Action is a greater restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all.”
It seems that the plague of inaction has been a problem that men of all types have struggled with.
Turning creativity on and off
I think the most challenging part of doing creative work is being able to turn the creative part of your mind on and off when needed. The most brilliant artists throughout the history of the world were weird people because the creative mind is weird. It doesn’t take the obvious stuff for granted. Everything is possible and nothing is a guarantee.
I’m content being a moderately good artist and not being seen as that much of a weird person. Moderate creativity will have to do.
Turning my creative mind on is usually as simple as shutting off distractions of life, family, the news, social media, and stress, and taking half an hour to disengage from the world. Forget everything I assume and embrace a world of possibility.
Once you have a good idea, you have to get to work. Time to drink your coffee and become a boring structured adult like everyone else. Boring is stable and efficient. But boring isn’t creative. But boring allows you to make creative ideas become physical.
The creative artist that can travel between creative freedom to the focus and structure of real life is the creative that will have pretty good ideas and get a ton of work done over the course of their life.
Striving is winning
strive: 1.) make great efforts to achieve or obtain something. 2.) struggle or fight vigorously.
It’s hard to talk about being okay with losing when you made a good effort and still lost. Winning is important, but if you let the result be the primary motivator, you will soon lose all motivation.
We must find a way to consider striving for the good result the win in and of itself. If the good thing happens after you have strived, that is just a bonus. The striving after some good thing is the win.
This is advice that goes back to Biblical times. The apostle Paul talks about pressing toward the mark, a high calling. He talks about running in a race where only one will win, but there is good in the man that "striveth for the mastery."
This ancient advice is nearly 2,000 years old! It’s still true to this day. Strive, pursue, make a good effort and be happy with that. To strive is to win. The one who learns to strive toward his goal, and be content with it, is the one who wins every single time. Strive.
The honest man’s crime and the vile hypocrite
When the honest man is caught in some crime, he meekly confesses his part in the matter and (hopefully) turns away from doing the bad thing again.
When the hypocrite is caught in some crime (particularly what they have been so quick to judge in others) they never admit to wrong-doing, but they always clothe their evil and crimes with some honest presence or pretended good reason. So the hypocrite has been regarded throughout history as the vilest person.
Fear, sadness, and anger
Fear prevents us from getting started. So learn to start when you’re afraid.
Sadness stops us in our tracks. So practice containing sadness when it starts to become overwhelming.
Anger sparks in us the propensity to make bad decisions. So work to control anger and never let it simmer for long periods.
Getting better at writing
Lately, I’ve been mailing in my blog posts here. They’ve all been written very last minute and just a shotgun blast of whatever happens to be on my mind that morning.
I try to commit to some improvement in my writing every few months. I’ve talked about building more traditional story structures and making my blog posts shorter. Not only have I not been doing either of those things, but I also have not been investing more than 5-10 minutes each day in my writing.
The writing process is for me to practice getting ideas on paper and sharing my thoughts. Improving my writing itself has become another goal along the way.
Do things the boring way and you’ll be more creative
It might sound strange, but focusing on making the routine things in life boring frees up your cognitive memory to be more relaxed, and therefore, more creative.
Inefficiency is doubly damaging because it wastes your time and forces you to expend more cognitive energy to do simple tasks that need to be done but aren’t all that important to push your business forward.
Developing systems is outlining a specific step of steps that you always take to complete a certain task or part of your day (think a morning routine or a way you process client invoices, etc…)
Efficient people are reliable and consistent and they are sustainably so. They are reliable today and will continue to be reliable tomorrow.
If you want to be efficient, reliable, and more creative about the important things in your business, develop systems to make the boring-but-important things automatic and easy to do without having to think about them.
We still have 1/6th of the year remaining
Just like that, the month of November is upon us. I like to start off the week by taking stock of how the year is going and what I can do to improve. I also write down a couple of general “big” tasks that I’d like to accomplish each month. Here we are with only 1/6th of the year remaining.
If the year hasn’t been a good one, you can accomplish more in these final two months than you did in the first ten months. It’s up to you.
“How can I do that?”
“How can I do that?” and “How can I help” are two of the best questions to keep in your arsenal of communication.
“How can I do that?” is the question to ask when you’ve reached an impasse with a client, co-worker, or family member. It’s the question that both shows your interest in fulfilling their request, but also offloads the pressure on them to consider what they are asking of you.
“How can I help?” is the question to ask when you have the upper hand in any engagement. Maybe you’re the worker who knows the boss is trying to get her schedule cleared out before vacation. You have the time that she needs. Let her tell you how she can help.
“How can I help?” signals that you’re setting aside your preferences for a moment to subjugate them to the wishes of the person you’re offering to help. Not only is it a fantastically kind thing to do, but it can serve you well in life and business, too.
What’s done in love is done well
They say that if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. There is real strength in love, particularly when it comes to the things you do. If you love what you do, you will do lots of it.
If you do lots of something, you’ll get really good at doing it.
If you do lots of something that you love, you do it extraordinarily well because you’ve gotten many more opportunities to practice it and because your love of what you’re doing you will focus that skilled hand.
What’s done in love, is indeed done well.
The tenuous grip we have on the world
One of my grandmothers suffers from dementia. It’s sad to watch her lose her mind and her memory. Her mind seems to live in the year when my father and uncle were little kids. She doesn’t know who I am or who her grandkids are.
Watching her has been somewhat of a lesson to me that I should be careful not to take my connection to reality for granted. It can be gone in a moment. Our grip on the world is tenuous, at best.
So I am reminded to take care of my body and mind to the best of my ability every day. Make things that are common in life easy and introduce sharp challenges that come and go. (Stress isn’t bad for you unless it’s long-term stress. Short-term stress strengthens your body or mind.)
An interesting thought
We judge others by their actions and ourselves by our intentions.
Long-term planning is the worst (but also the best)
A good plan violently executed right now is far better than the perfect plan executed next week. That’s a quote from General George Patton.
You must start now and get the ball rolling. Once you start moving, you’ll be able to make things more perfect and steer the ship. Long-term planning isn’t just a vague idea that might need to happen in the future, it is important.
Too often we get stuff making plans and never starting to execute them. Get the ball rolling first. Clean up your plans and processes second. Work out long-term plans third. Don’t get it backward.
Focus on doing less to do more
When I run into a block of time where I procrastinate (this happens very often to me) I stop trying to do so much.
The trick is to get your mind started like one of those old cars that needed a spinning crank in the front of them.
Start small. Take an hour task and commit to working on it for five minutes. Almost always, that five-minute jump-start turns into a long focused block of work on that project.
Depending on how I am feeling, I will use five-minute or twenty-minute long blocks of time to “jump start” my brain. This helps to put aside the distractions or worries or whatever dumb thing my brain has decided is more important at that moment.
When there is a lot to do, focus on doing less, and somewhat paradoxically, you’ll do more.
I’m still on the road to being the best and most focused version of myself, but this one little trick has helped me along the way to be more effective and efficient in the hours that I work than almost anything else.
The importance of the morning routine
I’ve noticed that it’s nearly impossible to maintain perfect self-discipline throughout the day. But I’ve also noticed that the first hour of the day is the foundation of the day.
If I am lazy and thoughtless about my actions at the beginning of the day, I almost always have pretty bad and unproductive days. That first 60-90 minutes is where I need to focus all of my self-discipline efforts.
When I have my morning routine in order, it’s almost automatic that I have a great day. Instead of expending distracting (and exhausting) efforts to get myself “up” for my work, I can clamp down that first hour or so and ride through a smooth, productive, and satisfying day.
P.S. I’ve been reading a bunch of stuff written by professional writers and it makes me realize how much I stink at writing. I’m trying to break down this stuff I’m reading to find best practices I can use to slowly transform my own writing to be more coherent and more professional.
Blame the world, or don’t blame the world
Most of us know somebody who contributes all their failures to some greater conspiracy or an outside force that is the “real” cause of their problems.
If we’re honest with ourselves, we often do the same thing, but hopefully to a lesser degree. It’s very easy and very enticing to blame the systems around us for our shortcomings.
The things around us don’t hold us back, our perception of those things is what holds us back.
When we focus on the events around us and things that we cannot control, we choose to overlook the flawed aspects of our own lives and things that we can control (and improve!)
The stability and performance of our lives and companies come from paying attention to what can be improved upon within them, not stuff that we don’t like in the world around us.
It’s easy to get angry and blame the world. It’s difficult to look at ourselves and work to get better. However, only one of those methods brings improvement.