The learning curve

Learning curves

I just had a great conversation with my son-in-law and fine Nicaraguan cigar on the balcony last night. He and I both have fully stepped into a venture of Real Estate investing and we are making lots of mistakes. Even though we have been studying this process for years, and dedicate time each day to learning more, we are still making mistakes. We had each other howling last night, as we were trying to out-mistake one another!

Perhaps you might think that we are just bumbling amateurs who really don’t have a clue and should sell all of the assets we are building immediately to stop the bleed? Perhaps you think we are unintelligent and lack diligence or patience, and that we are in over our heads? Out of our depth? And perhaps you might be correct in some minor way with each of those, but we are committed. Committed to making more mistakes. Because this is how we learn. It is also how you learn too, and if you don’t believe me, then you aren’t learning anything at all.

This is called the learning curve. Every new venture, relationship, goal, objective, and pursuit in life has one. You go from being a person who doesn’t even know what they don’t know, to a person making regular mistakes, to a person of high competence. There is no short cut to that process. If you aren’t willing to learn, to make lots of mistakes, to fail regularly, then you will never reach the class of the highly competent. The only way to hone these skills is through messing up and taking chances, and falling down and getting back up every single time. You can become the sharpest blade in any drawer if you are willing to face the learning curve.

Becoming

Becoming. Or as James Clear asked, “Can my current habits carry me to my desired future?” This is a most difficult perspective to grasp when you are younger. The idea that you aren’t fully formed and complete when you graduate from high school is distasteful medicine to drink and few do. But when you have multiple decades of life to reflect upon, and you can see the arc of life, then you get it, becoming is a natural part of getting older if you have practiced the right habits along with way to get where you want to go.

On the other hand, the vast majority of my high school mates, haven’t read a single book since they graduated 40 years ago, and when they look back, they see the same person that they were 40 years ago. The terrifying part of that sentence is that they are perfectly content being that same person that they think they were 40 years ago. If this describes you, then you are reading the wrong blog.

This blog would be for those who can (or want to) see the beautiful arc of what they are becoming and those who are ready to change their habits to become a person that can change the world. These people are always ready to change themselves first, because they understand that they cannot possibly change the world until they become something more. Actually it is more nuanced than that . . . they would not enjoy changing the world nor the changed world, unless they become something more first.

I am in my late 50’s, approaching 60, and I am changing more habits than ever before. I want to become more than ever before. My expectations and hopes are more than ever before. Build those habits that can carry you into a future you really desire!

Impatience

Distractions abound. Impatience is a terrible distraction. It is wanting something without the willingness to commit the necessary time to the process. In other words, most of the time we want it instantly. And most of the time, important stuff takes time. 

My son is brilliant, sweet, wonderful, warm, fun man, but completely incapable of delayed gratification of any type it seems. He is the only one of us who does not have a college degree, which of course is just an exercise in delayed gratification. He can’t save money nor save for retirement, again exercises in delayed gratification, or in other words - impatience. No instant here. Its killing his progress.

But you can’t build wealth or knowledge or skills or a business with impatience. You can’t build credibility without patience and consistency. You can’t build trust being impatient. These stepping stones of progress take time and you may not see the results that you are aiming toward, for a long time. Projects at scale, take time to come to fruition, to produce something world changing, to have results that move us all. The more important your task or goal is, then longer it may take to see it happen. The bigger the project, the more complex the pieces are, and the longer it takes to find alignment. Thus impatience becomes a distraction.

The overpowering need to see results sooner than they are ready to appear, makes many important actions and decisions seem to be overwhelming. It is tempting to quit before success is achieved. It is difficult to keep going if you are impatient for the the results, more than the process. Focus on the right processes, and the results will get here - eventually. But they will get here.

Control or no control?

What you can control and influence and change has limits. There are many things outside of your control and influence. I made an airport run yesterday to pick up my wife, which is a very very common experience in our lives. But unlike the short 30 minute trip this would be in Skopje, it is 90 miles trip to Atlanta, and can take from 1:45 to 3 hours on normal days. If there is an accident somewhere along the way, it can take far longer. There are probably 50,000 cars moving between here and the airport at any given moment, and any one of them can become the bottleneck that changes everything. All beyond my control and influence. And 100 other factors that are similar between here and there that I also cannot control nor influence.

That point made, this chapter is about what I can control and influence and change. Yes there are lots of things that I can’t control, but I don’t have to let that lead me to be AWOL about the things that I can control. You and I have control of our responses. Our responses even to the things we can’t control, and the unexpected events that occur. My wife’s flight landed two and a half hours late yesterday. My response was to find a comfortable chair and read a good book and enjoy a few extra hours of solitude. No fretting, no frustration, no regrets, no churning. 

But better than that is the control we have over our initiatives. We don’t have to wait until things happen, we can make things happen. We can take the initiative, plan for contingencies, look for the possible events that may occur outside of our control and take precautions. This is frankly a far superior decision than just responding well, even though that has its place in the scheme of our lives.

Focus on what you can control and influence and change. Respond well to those you can’t. This is the winning combination of those thrive.

Redirection

How do we turn all of these distractions into something productive, some form of alignment? I have tried many many strategies over the last three years and they mostly have some fashion of mild success. But the only one that has consistently provided real distraction relief has been redirection. Or if that word doesn’t help you mentally picture what I am suggesting, think of it as creating projects to do and to change the endlessly circling monologue.

Yesterday was a prime example. The first redirection of the day was sending my dad out for lunch with a girl, his friend, who isn’t his girlfriend, but is a good companion. However that redirection ran out of gas after lunch. So I then I did a second redirection, I asked him to go with me to look at a property that I was thinking about developing. That kept him talking about all the reasons this property was dangerous for hours. Otherwise, if I don’t do this redirection I get monologues like the worm hole size monologue that I am getting at this moment at 6:44 am.

Worm hole sizes. Yes that is what I said. Unfortunately he is not talking about the Space variety, but rather the vegetable variety, i. e. how big the hole in his squash was yesterday from the worms, and now he has jumped to how many cows are in the pasture across the road . . .. You can easily see why redirection is a necessary tool to have in your arsenal.

One warning here though, redirection has limitations. It will not always free you up to focus and concentrate. Many times the best it can give you, is a better/different monologue/conversation. Who or what do you need to redirection today to get your best opportunity to produce something amazing?

The ants turned off the water

The distractions of the day can also include insects. I kid you not. In fact, though you may find this difficult to believe I swear I am telling you the truth, because I saw it with my own eyes. And I promise you, I did not believe it either until the last second where I could no longer deny the truth of it - the ants turned off the water to the house. Completely. No running water at all in the whole house. Because of ants.

One of the vagrancies of fire ants in particular, besides their vicious bite, is their love of electricity. And in the grass field 200 yards above the house that my dad lives in, where the well is located, the only source of electricity there is the well house and well pump itself. So even though this may be stretching the bounds of believability, the ants piled in there until their mass shorted out the contacts. No electricity, no water.

When I pointed out to my dad that the water was not flowing, I just assumed 1. That the breaker had blown or 2. That the well had run dry. But my dad swore, "those damn ants!" And he hops up off the chair where he was uselessly wasting his life watching what is called "news" in this country, and started issuing instructions for the tools and actions that we would need to defeat the ant empire. At this point I was starting to consider senior citizen homes and remedial therapies for seniors, but I went along with him, because if for no other reason, it made him stop watching the "news".

So we got a tank of compressed air, insect repellant, filters, pliers and a screwdriver. I found the breaker for the well still "on" and flipped it off so that we didn't get accidentally shocked. Fast forward to my dad using the compressed air to blow away all the ants, and then turn the power back on and viola we had water again! Never underestimate the power of a distraction, even if it is an insect. And let me tell you about the guinea wasp nest that we dealt with next. . . . 

The triangle of production

I missed a day. And I did not even know until the following day which uh, I guess is today. Does that mean this is not yet a habit? 11 days does not a habit make. Actually it was Sunday and the flow of a Sunday is different than the flow of other days, and I just hopped from my morning workout routine, into a hustle to get to church, and then the day was gone. So clearly I need focus, even micro-bursts of focus in order to write daily, but I also require commitment to get my butt in this chair.

Ok ok everyone needs a day off, and I will let Sunday's slide into that day's off category, once this habit is solidly formed and the question of weather or not I will write is not one that is under consideration. But commitment or intentionality are the other side of the coin of focus. Without them, I don't need focus because there is nothing to focus on. Commitment and intentionality will make certain that I structure my day week month life in such a fashion that I will complete what I have intended to do. That seems like such an innocuous statement, but there are layers and layers of success or failure tied up there.

I realize as I am writing this, that there is also a third element, which might be required. Call it grit or persistence or even stubbornness but that something other to make sure the commitment or intentionality get structured, and that the focus is actualized. This threesome could be seen as gas, car and motion if you need a different metaphor. Or energy, structure and actualization if you need yet another one. If you haven't caught the whiff of possibilities yet, then you are probably reading the wrong book or blog.

The superpower of silence

Six glorious days of quiet and peace and thinking and margin and space and relaxing and did I mention quiet? Silence. That highly underrated element of the introvert universe, that superpower of those gifted with quiet. In a world that never shuts up, silence is so absent that many have never experienced it ever. It's like those who grow up in big cities with lots of light pollution have never seen the Milky Way except in pics that someone took, somewhere else.

I made an interesting trip across America three years ago on a bicycle over an eight week period, with a group of Americans. There are so so many things I could tell you about that trip, but the one that intersects our chapter this morning is the introvert table. It came about because of the three Earl-like monsters on the trip. The kind that if-their-eyes-are-open-their-mouths-are-moving types. Fred especially. Never a ruder non-stop talker ever existed. I actually ended up bunking with him the very first night I joined this group in Seattle on our way to D.C. Never again. I bunked as far away from Fred as humanly possible and still be indoors after that. 

The introvert group out of sheer despair finally made a sign that we stood on our eating table, especially especially at breakfast. "NO talking allowed at this table." If you are not an introvert, you may find that sign offensive or rude or controlling. But for those of us sitting there, it was heaven. We just wanted a quiet morning, alone with our own thoughts, and NOT anyone else's thoughts, until later in the day, . . . maybe.

I have had six days alone with my thoughts for the most part, and it has been so refreshing. I am gonna need that refreshment because now I will be logging three months with my dad, and he is near-Fred in his need urgency frantic panic to never have any silence. What gives me energy and fills me with life, fills him with dread and fear. At least I imagine this to be true, but I can't be sure, because he has never given silence a try.  

Moments

I wish I could capture for you the vibrancy of this moment, the vividness of the purples and pinks and whites of the flowers near me. The utter beauty of this breeze blowing on this balcony, so breezy in fact I had to put a light jacket on, to capture the raw pleasure and peace and ease this moment is for me. I am not leading anything. I am not the charismatic extroverted master pastor that I had been for decades, orchestrating teams of people to lead, sing, teach, all on a tight timetable. It is a quiet, peaceful, God-filled introvert heavenly moment, that honestly I could not have even imagined in the past.

I don't have to be in charge, I don't have to be busy, I don't have to be humorous or quick to reply, I don't have to manage, I don't have to practice nor decide. I simply can be. Could this have happened in my 40's? Maybe. But in my 30's or 20's no way - I had too much to prove to the world . . . and to myself. No longer. To simply be is the rarest sort of gift. A gift that few people receive it seems, if the turbulence of this world is any measure. Contentment in this moment - the best gift of God on His day.

Willingly I will walk (fly) away from this idyllic moment in a few days, to the endless talking and noise and chatter of my dad, and his world, where a moment of silence is a terrible foe never to be unleashed or allowed. But I need to look after my dad, and this is the price of admission. Moments, will have to be gathered while on a motorcycle, or doing some solitary activity that absolutely prevents him from intruding, but that is in a few days. We should not let the impending future cloud the present.

He would have been 55 today

He would have been 55 today

My brother's birthday is today. I can no more forget him or his birthday than I can my own name. It is still surprising how much his absence costs me in terms of anger and pain. Yet I have never felt more vibrantly alive. This is intentional, the best way I can honor those who have already passed on into eternity. Each family member and friend that goes before me, calls me to bring a better and better version of myself into play each day. These three plus years since he died have been one long roller coaster ride, but I keep breathing and thinking and working and seeking to change this world for the better. To make other's lives better.

The agony has turned to a dull steady ache. The torn fabric of life now has a scar. But I am called to face the challenges of life, of living, to take care of Earl our dad, to look after my brother's girls and his granddaughters. I am left to find a way to keep moving forward, to stand guard, to move this world to where his kids and my kids and our grandkids can have a better life, a more sure footing than we had. This loss can be the fuel to change the world, so my end and your end won't be like his end. To work toward having his death continue to matter, as if he were still with us, because he is.

Happy birthday Roger Dale. Happy double nickel man. I miss you.