It clings to you

Today I read, “... grief didn’t work that way. You couldn’t squash it out or get over it. You just had to get through it, but it was like a spider’s web. It clung to your skin.” So very accurate. It just clings to you and you never know how it may work itself out on a particular day. 

Yesterday was my brother’s birthday. He would have been 53 years old. I am appalled at how much that stumped me yesterday. How much that stopped me in my tracks. I had to take a long day to just grieve. So many lost moments and opportunities and moments of LIFE.  To just understand that I am alive and he is not and just be ... I am unaccustomed to giving myself so much compassion and space to just feel. It is hard to be patient with myself and let me grieve his going, and the hole that presents us in the fabric of life. 

It is not something you get over or around, just through. It clings and bites and hurts and costs and just is. Why does no one ever talk about the price that comes with grief? What it demands and what it takes? There is no calculator that can compute what price it extracts. I am not angry, just more lost than anything else. Just wish I could sleep through it all and wake up from this terrible nightmare.

When I am the first person on an early morning ride up the mountain, I catch all the webs that the spiders have spun across the road. This clings like that, nothing you can do about it but go through. 

pace and luxury

I have noticed something wonderful in the last three weeks, that my pace of work and life has coalesced into the perfect luxury. I can write! That is such a wonderful piece of life! But what I mean is that I am just busy enough that I can still write!!

Did I tell you what a great gift that is for me? It is awesome. It means that I have found the perfect rhythm, the precisely correct amount of work and tasks and activity to be my very best. The exact amount of focus and time and effort to produce the most amazing pieces. Everything has fallen in The Zone.

The best possible synergy of all things balance and life and work. The right amount of emails, video chats, calls and SMS to get done in a day. The right amount of demands and productivity to strike the perfect storm of production every day. This pace is a luxury unrivaled. Of course I am going to Ukraine next week and it will be wrecked once again. Then I am going to the States and staying with my dad and it will be a disaster once again, but this pace does actually exist. It is The Zone, that I can always strive for and toward. It will let me know when I am there, where work feels effortless and freeing and stress-free. Do you know what your right pace feels like?

This means that I say “no” pretty much to everything else that comes my way, regardless how sexy or awesome the opportunity sounds. The decisions you make about your life work and the important pieces of your life (not the urgent or loud pieces) need to be made in the cold abstract of deep thinking, not in the moment when the board is selling you on becoming their next CEO. And for clarity’s sake, I have been offered multiple CEO and other sexy positions of large power and money, and it takes me about 5 seconds to say no, because I have already decided what is important to me and life. This is not a missed opportunity, it is intentionally avoiding a horrible humongous distraction. 

July flies

As I am sitting out on my balcony enjoying a fine Dominican Republic cigar at the end of a 96 degree July day, seeing the mountain ranges to the West, and thinking about what a great month this has been, I remembered the July flies from my youth in rural Georgia. They are better known perhaps as annual cicadas which emerge in late July or early August.

I came around to thinking about those boyhood sounds and insects because I will be heading back to Georgia in a week and will be hearing them again. But that prompted me to reflect on how this month has flown by - July flies indeed. This is significant at the moment, in this cycle of life, as I have had one of the most productive months of the last 15 months, - because of deaths, weddings and the challenges of those life events.

Writing blogs is a great way for me to measure how productive I have been, because it requires time and space and the right mindset in order to write. And I have written more blogs this month, than at any point in the last three years. While they may not have been the best blogs I have written, they have certainly flew off the digital page so to speak. With my return to the States and living in the situation with my dad, this will come to a close.

That is not bad, it just is one of the realities of sharing my dad’s twilight years with him. No full attention to my thoughts and no deep work is possible, and again I state, that is not bad, because I know that I can still produce my best stuff given the right setting and opportunities. Something I was no longer positive was true after all the holes were torn into the fabric of our family these past 15 months. (I in fact wrote quite a few more than I published).

Writing blogs requires two things: the margin in which to order one’s thoughts, and the important work and experiences each day to make putting those events down in writing significant. Both are more complicated than that, yet that simple at the same time.

So yes . . . July flies . . . and has flown.

Missile avoidance??

I have to confess that although I have lived in some hairy places around the world, this was an approach like no other I have ever experienced. We were flying along, descending from cruising altitude like normal, when suddenly the plane drops to about 300 meters off the ground and begins a series of S maneuvers like I have never experienced. Either the pilot was drunk, or, the pilot was a proud Ukrainian and he wanted to give us incredible multi-G-force views of Ukrainian agricultural practices, or, the pilot was hugging the ground avoiding the Russian radar just down the road and taking no chances on meeting an incoming missile since they have already shot down one plane. My bet is on the last option, it is the only one that makes sense given the military action in the region. 

Then there was the end, which far more resembled a crash than a landing. I thought the pregnant woman in my row was gonna give birth immediately. I am not sure I have ever gone through a more painful and sudden landing in my long years of flying (over 40 years). 

Of course no information was given to us, and this is pure speculation, but it was definitely a landing approach I will never forget! 

The problem of no boundaries

Most Americans who grew up in the church will immediately think of moral boundaries or ethical behavior when reading this title, and we absolutely need those. That goes without saying. But I am more addressing the infinite possibilities that the world affords us today. I find this to be one of the most pressing personal challenges of almost every leader I work with in Europe, Asia and North America.

We have almost boundless choices and endless options. The possibilities that this creates for us in our work and life are astonishing. We love having choices. We can live amazing realities with all these choices. But all these exhausting options and flexibility is also The Problem. Because you have to CHOOSE. And if you choose poorly (to quote an Indiana Jones movie) you lose. You lose all the other possibilities and options that the other choices would have afforded you.

This, my friends, is the horrible conundrum of the modern world. So so so many choices . . . this we generally perceive as a great thing . . . but we have to choose, and this we generally perceive to be a bad thing.

There are in fact so many options, that I find ordering food at a restaurant in the States to be an extremely exhausting experience. And those aren’t even important choices! The choices I make about life and love and work and meaning and eternity are the critical ones, they convey all the significance of a life well lived, or all the regrets of one poorly lived.

As Eric Barker says, “You have to make a decision. The world will not draw the line. You must. You need to ask What do I want? Otherwise you’re only going to get what they want.”

OW?

This is my organizational handle. Everyone calls me this! In my previous parent organization, my name could split a room, divide a group, foster a new schism, create anger and chaos faster than Satan himself. In my new (well nine years now is no longer new, but since I spent 23 years with the previous org. this one still feels new) organization, I am the ambassador of peace, the bringer of wisdom, the force of stability and dependability for the entire network.

What changed? Well the pool changed, and my fish looks very different in this pool than in my previous pool. I did change some, but not much. I am still the same old salty dog crusty and unfriendly as ever. But how did I ever obtain the designation of OW - Obi Wan Kenobi? The famed Jedi master from the first Star Wars film? Only Yoda has more swagger than Obi Wan Kenobi! 

It is incredibly important to be in the right pool. As Eric Barker states in his book “Barking up the wrong tree, ” . . . but sometimes an ugly duckling can be a swan if it finds the right pond. The thing that sets you apart, the habits you may have tried to banish, the things you were taunted for in school, may ultimately grant you an unbeatable advantage.” 

Changing ponds/pools did not make me a better missionary or pastor or person. But it did completely and totally change my role within the organization. Maybe after you have tried everything for decades to make it work well, you have to change the pool to be a different fish.  May the Force be with you.

Something fixed something broken

Well it is Saturday and I am working hard at not working. Does that make sense?  Honestly relaxing is hard work, or effort, finding the way to just BE is so . . . seems to take so much energy! Clearly I need more practice and more success. Mostly I just need to chill I guess.

So lets write about it, that has to be good therapy, and good practice. So as I laid out my day to relax and chill, I had planned to take off to the lake for the second half of the day, spend the night, do some serious bike riding and then return tomorrow. But after I finished my sports massage I came out and the car would not crank. Not a happy experience under any circumstances, but especially after the car had been in the shop for 10 days!!

Thank God there was a battery store not too far away and so I had a new one installed and off I go. Thought I should give the old car a good test run before packing up and heading out and low and behold, I had a brake caliper or something start to freeze up and make the most awful moaning sounds and then I could smell the brakes getting hot. Got it to release by pumping the brakes some and headed back to the apartment. Since it is a stick shift, I was able to do most of the braking on the way home by downshifting. And since it was Saturday afternoon, pretty much everything is closed until Monday. So no chance of repair until then. And going out of town is now not an option.

So I made the best of a day with all the plans down the toilet and it has been good. Not perfect, but good. Another great cigar and another great view. Thus I got a new battery, but I need new brakes. And I am blogging! Another day in the hairy armpit.



Undervaluing customers is underperforming

It is the end of a long week and a long day. The Renault Dealership has had my car for the last 10 days and basically did nothing to check the problems that the car has been having. I am a low priority customer, because I have an old old car, and I am a foreigner, and I use the car very little relative to other customers . . . but I am STILL a customer. A customer with cash and a future of business to deliver to you, if you treat me well. More importantly I drive other customers their direction, or not.

Plus I am a relaxed customer not bugging you endlessly to put me at the front of the line. A patient paying customer. At least call me and tell me what is going on with the service challenges that you are facing, or the parts problem that you have, or the lack of mechanics, or whatever the problem is . . . but don’t make me call and call and have you never answer the phone, or worse yet come over there repeatedly to see what and where we are with this process. 

Renault service has always underperformed somewhat, but this one was the straw that broke the future we could have had together. Someone else will get that business from now on.

So I am letting them go. Instead of worrying about it any longer, I am putting this all down on digital paper and out of my mind and enjoying a nice cigar on my balcony.



The threat of rain

It can change every plan. But should it? However it almost always does. I wish it hadn't. Wishing I had press through with my plans, suffered the chance of getting wet and cold, even the highly likely chance, would have been better than the change of plans, by the threat of rain. Life will always have such threats, just need to move ahead and bring the raincoat.

When your policies and procedures hurt you and your bottom line

I recently had an astounding discussion with my travel agent about changing my business class ticket for an upcoming trip. Due to the fluid nature of one of the companies I work with, I need to CANCEL the last two legs of this upcoming flight. In other words, I would have been happy to just get off the trip at the end of the first leg and not fly the last two flights all the way back to Skopje.

The company that I work with, would have then just booked me a separate flight to the board meeting in Malta and then on to Skopje afterwards. I was not asking for a refund or credit (though I gladly would have taken it, had it been offered). This potential change in plans would have saved the airline thousands of dollars by freeing up several business class seats on two different flights.

Instead, Lufthansa insisted that I pay 2500 euros in order to save them money, seats, labor and effort, by ending my return flight with them in Frankfurt!! So of course we are not going to take that option. Thus we set about just changing the flight to a single economy seat flight to Malta from Frankfurt, once again, saving them two business class seats/flights that they then could have sold to another customer. They only wanted 900 euros to effect this particular change!

Needless to say, we took none of these options. Lufthansa lost thousands of dollars by not working with me on this. I am sure this makes sense to someone somewhere, but for the life of me (and my client) we can’t figure it out at all. This makes no business sense in any way for a regular business in the for-profit sector. I understand that they have their policies and procedures, but Lufthansa costs me several grand last year with similar situations, when I was shuffling flights because of my brother’s death and my mom’s death. Made no matter to Lufthansa. This is not my idea of business agility or customer service.

The lesson I need to take away here is that I can choose policies and procedures and have all the SOP I want, but they should never be more important than the person who pays my bills and keeps me in business.

Only here? Probably not.

It is a most unfortunate experience, but one I have repeated over and over these past 23 years of living abroad, that the right hand has no idea what the left hand is doing, and here I am speaking of governments. I got caught today in another one of those political hamster wheels.

Each year we have to renew our visa’s. So each year we receive a new plastic social security card, with our pic on it. Each year they take that card away from us when we apply for a new one. And in-between these plastic card cycles, we get a white piece of paper that tells one and all, that we are completely legit legally here, etc etc. One of the parts of this annual lunacy is that we are required to purchase the national health care, and that is withdrawn from our local bank accounts each month.

This national health care process is super sporadic and unpredictable, with the bills coming sometimes months late, or sometimes months early, but you generally have about 3 days to pay them (i.e. rush to the bank and make sure there is enough money in there, and sign all the forms with a special teller for such matters at the bank). Then you are good. 

So as I mentioned I am in-between plastic cards, but I have the white slip of paper from the police, and this time the cycle is gonna be LONG between plastic social security cards, because the machine that makes them is broken. So what shows up? Right, the national health care forms for the months of Aug-Nov. I have three days in which to pay before the forms “expire”. So I go to the bank to pay them this morning, and guess what? Right again. The bank will not allow me to put money in the account, nor will they allow me to process the forms for the required health insurance without the plastic social security card. And of course I can’t get the plastic social security card without paying these national health care fees. The circle of government not at work.

A great quitter?

A great quitter?

I need to hone my quitting skills. But I need to do it in such a way that it brings more, not less. Let me explain.

In the book "Barking up the wrong tree" author Eric Barker states, "That’s one of the reasons we all feel so rushed, so tired, and like we’re not getting enough done or making enough progress. We all have only twenty-four hours in a day. Every day. If we use an hour for this, we’re not using it for that. But we act like there are no limits. When we choose an extra hour at work, we are, in effect, choosing one less hour with our kids. We can’t do it all and do it well. And there will not be more time later. Time does not equal money, because we can get more money."

So I need to quit sooner, to the things that give or produce less in order to give more to those actions which produce the best stuff. I need to hone my quitting skills. Part of this is realizing that I am a lazy butt canoe at the core, and that most of the things I need to quit quicker are the lazy ass things I fill my life with. 

Barker continues, "We always think we need more: more help, more motivation, more energy. But in our current world the answer is often the exact opposite: we need less. Fewer distractions, fewer goals, fewer responsibilities. Is that so we can watch more TV? No. We need less of those things so we can go all in on our priorities. The question is what are you going to do less of? What are you going to quit or say no to in order to make time for what matters most?"

Enough said.

The super people eater

The super people eater

These last four days have been people packed. For a mild introvert, it has been exhausting. But this is the only way to get the important stuff done in life and work, since I am also in the people business not just in the idea business. Insult to injury is that I have had no internet connection for the last three days and so all my idea work has been set aside completely and I have ONLY had people packed hours with no mitigating idea work along the way. The super people eater.

However this morning, I am sitting here on a beautiful patio in Munich with a fine cup of coffee, and a Bluetooth keyboard and iPhone (and yes the screen is a little small, but this is a travel lite trip) and the three kids haven't yet descended on me, and thus I can make some idea work time, and even have a decent ambience for it, and the minimum tools. I will connect with the World Wide Web all too soon.

So here I sit gnawing on how to help these folks move forward. They have a solid calling, a solid faith, more than decent hard skills, have raised the money and are now in Munich. But who to work with and in what ways? We have no history or network in Munich so we have to build it all from the ground up. They are going to succeed just fine, but I want to go big, and so need to think out how to help them do that well. Suck it up David and make it happen!

New beginnings, really Apple?

This is the first time I have traveled with the Apple keyboard and iPad Pro along with Apple Pencil, rather than my Logitech Keyboard and iPad Pro. The difference is that I had two Apple Bluetooth keyboard’s, but one hasn’t worked (pairing unsuccessful every time) for 3-4 years, and this one I kept as part of my laptop into desktop set up along with a monitor and trackpad, etc, etc. But I love the feel and form of these Bluetooth keyboards, and so on a whim, I decided to take the one that would not pair, to the iStyle store near me and see what it would cost to repair it.

Only with Apple does this kind of experience regularly occur with me and various repairs over the years . . . they are just gonna replace the old Bluetooth keyboard completely, even though it is long long out of warranty and I haven’t used it for at least three years, (since the keyboard I am typing on also has Thai characters on it, that tells me the latest time frame I could have purchased it)!!!!!!!

So the new beginnings are: trying out this new working setup, with this keyboard and pencil with this new iPad Pro, and I also am trying out a new “ebag” on this trip too, and I already have had one very positive experience with that new bag, in that I did not have to take out my iPad Pro during security! That was excellent! The only thing that I miss of the old setup at the moment is the ability to use the same keyboard with three different  devices, with just the press of one button. 

Now I am gonna try to switch to typing on my iPhone with this keyboard. Pretty certain that I have to pair it to the iPhone separately and that will mean it is no longer paired to this iPad Pro. . . . it was worse than that . . . I had to “forget this device” before it would show up on the second device as a possible Bluetooth device, and then once it did, pair it. Then again the whole process to go back to the iPad Pro with the keyboard. 

Other than that, so far this is a really smooth work setup. Will know better after 6 days on the road. Off to Berlin and Munich we go.

Too much of a good thing?

There is a consistent stream of thought in the leadership world, that those who work the smartest are those who take excellent care of themselves so that they can perform at optimum levels for the maximum long haul. That doesn't necessarily mean working more, but it definitely means working better.

These last three days in Malta have been the best days ever. Except for sleep, I gorged on everything - friendships, conversations, working out, meetings, prayer, food and drink, cigars and thinking. The old me would have felt totally guilty for indulging in all these things, the new me understands that this is actually and practically, top of the line, world class PTA - Protecting The Asset - and I am the Asset.

Is there too much of a good thing? I don't know, and honestly am not sure if that is the right question. Perhaps the question is "is there enough of the good things in order to do a proper smash-up job of self-care in a caustic and demanding world?" So yeah, I crammed a bunch of them in over the last 48 hours or so, but seeing how I am feeling energetic, powerful, creative, in the zone, grateful, empowered, hopeful, thankful, and spiritually strong, I would say that there is no such thing as too much of a good thing.

The terrible beauty of it all

Sometimes the most difficult things, the most demanding things, are the best, and cost the most

“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty … I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt

This quote is so potent in the modern world. Roosevelt wrote it a 100 years ago, but it means so much more in an instant gratification world, a world that largely expects so much for so little, and finds itself angry at the slightest obstacle or impediment to that instant gratification. I don't want to be this way.

The average American (over the age of 12) watches over 1700 HOURS of television annually, which is roughly 30% of all their waking hours. The weekends are the real killers for logging those hours. (Got this from Darren Hardy's book "The Compound Effect). Imagine all the lost possibilities in those TV hours! I don't want to be this way.

The most difficult things are saying no to almost everything, so that you can say yes to the few awesome things, and even that requires you to get up at 2:30 AM after changing six times zones just 30 hours before, and catch another flight out. But the rewards are priceless. It would be all too easy to watch TV and be a couch potato, but the better choice is clear . . . and difficult.

So as I watched the sun rise this morning from 38000 feet in the air, after having been up and awake for three hours already, the terrible beauty of having that difficult opportunity is very humbling, but world-changers choose this life over the easy path. I want to be this way.

Shaping how we understand our lives

The more time I spend with my dad in his later years, and hear newly polished stories of his youth and life past, and at the same time endless stories of suspicion and fear about the present, and finally obsession with ever ache and pain and sick friend enemy and relative no matter how far away, the more I am convinced that the stories we tell ourselves. shaped our understanding of how we perceive our lives. My dad is not alone, he is only an example of all of us, as we all tell ourselves stories about the intentions of others, the importance or unimportance of every event, the meaning of all the foci of our lives. This inner chatter may be the single most critical changeable factor in our daily lives.

Or as Leo Babauta stated, "At the end of the day, the questions we ask ourselves determine the type go people we will become." Questions questions questions - the foundations of the stories we tell ourselves. What kind of father will I be or have I been? What type of husband will I be or have I been? If my marriage is less than I desire or expect, what responsibility and actions will I take to make it strong better and richer? Or will I simply lay blame around like poison on the tip of an arrow? How will I make the world a better place? What value will I provide for my circles of relationships or clients? What character will I bring to the challenges of life that I have no control over? Will I be a giver or a taker? And this can, and does, go on until the end of our days.

Now the tricky part is to ask ourselves these questions, not just feel (i.e. react) our way through life. I don't know about you, but my base reactions are far less than I desire when I step back and use some brain power and forecasting in the process of life. I want my inner chatter to come to the place where it reflects the life I chose to live, rather than the feelings of the moment. I want to shape my life, not only have it shape me. I choose to bring my best self into play each and every day.

Directions

Directions

Normally folks ask directions of people who look like they belong right? Well today is the weird anomaly in the sense that three people have asked me for directions today and no one in their right mind would ever mistake me for a local. Hair too long, beard too wild, clothes too young, skin too white, etc etc. Maybe it was the bottle of whiskey I was carrying? Maybe it was the jacket I was wearing? Maybe it was the way I was walking and carrying myself? Who knows . . . 

After some thought, it was mostly just a matter of convenience I bet, in the sense that I was the handiest person to ask? The best part was that I actually knew all three places I was being asked to give directions toward . . . that felt powerful and wonderful. When you can deliver what people need and seek, it gives a great feeling of accomplishment and significance.

It was like after church today, when a Dutch guy came up to me and told me that this was the best worship service he had heard in two years! Followed by another worshipper who communicated how awesome today was for him and how much he enjoyed hearing me play the guitar. Made all the work and effort all the more wonderful and worth it. There is simply nothing as good as knowing where the goal is located and delivering it well. Directions - leadership 101.

There will come a day . . .

There will come a day . . . 

"There will come a day when you would give everything you have left to have what you have right now." As I am coming through one of the most surprisingly difficult weeks of my life, a time of recent family death anniversaries, I was wonderfully blessed that this article resonanted deeply in me today. The bottom line is this, as difficult as today is with all these deep feelings of grief and other things, that I will still soon find myself in a time, where I would give everything to have what I have right now. Of course this is not about material things for me, but rather my work, my life, . . . what I HAVE rather than what I DON'T have. Its about the life I can live today, not the losses that we have experienced these last few years. It is about being grateful and appreciative, rather than consumed with what is gone. Because for the vast majority of people and their experiences toward the end of life, the losses will mount and mount ever higher, and so what I have TODAY may well be the best I can ever look back on.

One year ago today . . .

One year ago today

Today is the one year anniversary of the worse day in my life, when I got a call from my niece telling me that my brother was dead. It has been a really difficult year, and frankly it is unbelievable that a full year has come and gone. And it is funny-sad-weird how angry I am, yet dying is a normal part of living right? What is there to be angry about? All the couch psychologists out there are thinking that this is simply one of the normal cycles and seasons of grieving and they would be right and they would be wrong.

My brother was not a simple person. Life could never measure up to his ideals, and so crushed by the harsh realities, he instead lived life of self medication, on the edge of depression and anger for decades. With the decades of self medication came a host a medical ills and pains and chronic conditions that self-medicating only made worse and worse. I am glad that I spent some good quality time with him in his last years. I am thankful that my wife gave me the freedom to do so.

The most horrible and difficult thing I ever had to do in my life was call my parents one year ago today, and watch them melt before my eyes as I told them their youngest son was gone forever. There is simply a big black hole in the fabric of life that was once him, for all of us. There is no getting it back, there is no fixing it, there are no answers for a life now gone.

As I sit here on the same balcony, where I received the news that he was gone, I can't help but think that he had lots of living left to accomplish, he is missing so many wonderful things in his girls lives, in his granddaughters lives, in my life, in my parents lives. 51 years is not nearly enough to finish this thing we call life. And now the lives of all of us are changed for forever, because he is not here to share it with us.

The Monday blues?

The Monday blues?

There are so many things that we associate with Mondays. One of my favorite songs as a teenager was "Just Another Manic Monday" by the Bangles. Just another Monday-bashing song actually, but sometimes Monday's can be magical and fun and productive. Especially if you take the weekend for what it was meant to be used for, to disconnect, unwind, rest, restore, a digital dotoxification, and no email. Then Monday feels like a great opportunity to jump in and get some important stuff accomplished rather than the continuation of an ongoing grind that you may not enjoy.

And the finish is so important. Me? I did it with a nice dinner on the balcony on this lovely Spring day with my wife, having a conversation about the beautiful sunset and the nice ambience and the perfect temperatures. Snow-capped mountains visible in the distant horizon, good food, and a nice cold dark beer.

Sure there are lots of things to be concerned about and to yet accomplish this week, but we are off to a great start. And yet . . . this week marks the one year anniversary of my brother's passing . . . and that weighs heavy on all of us. We miss him as if it happened yesterday rather than a whole year past. But there is so much living left to be doing, we can't let what we can't change destroy the possibilities of the present and our effects on today and tomorrows.

The best gifts

The slow concentrated present . . . was a great gift

As I said in the previous blog I surround myself with A level people. They never let me rest! They offer so much to me that I would never be able to see on my own. This particular gift of a person, reminded me that the masses are being trained to have "continuous partial attention" and also reminded me of what a disaster that is for our world. Attention is the rarest element in the social universe! Focus is the most difficult skill to foster in the modern world!

Yet if you want to be a change-the-world person, you must give the MIT (most important thing) your deepest attention, your most intense focus, the very best version of yourself! I have found that surrounding yourself with A level people who will never let you rest, who will never settle for less than spectacular, who want you to be the person they hope you are, is the very best way to move in that direction. 

Is it easy? Oh no! Is it comfortable? Are you sh**ting me? But is it incredible? You bet! Yet you can't get there without A level people who demand and expect more of you. People who will send you material that will rock you, who expect you to live it!

Science is not what you thought it was . . .

In my previous blog I mentioned that I very deliberately surround myself with A level people. In this blog today and in the next one I hope to show what I gain from doing so.

One of the A level people I surround myself with, focused me in a brilliant manner last week. He pointed me to a Godin blog (which I had already read) but his take on it blew me away. The blog he redirected my attention toward can be found here, Seth explaining what Science is an and what it isn't . . . as only Seth can do folks. 

As I said, I read Seth's blog each and every day, right after I read the Scriptures, and just as religiously. But it did not resonate with me. I did not save it to Evernote nor did I tag any clients with this bit of wisdom.

But then this A level person texts me while he is on a trip somewhere out there, and he is having his own daily PTA time (Protect The Asset time - read Essentialism by McKeown if you are foolishly ignorant of this critical idea) and he helped me see that what I do each day in The Leadership Development Group is precisely this "Science" it its truest and most real form. A lesser person would have glossed over the article . . . like I did. There are very very good reasons to surround yourself with A level people.

Much better than me?

The leadership adage goes that A people hire B people and B people hire C people and so on and so forth. Pretty soon that leads to certain disappointment and then we find ourselves wondering what happen? How did the ship lose its rudder? How did we fail to achieve all that we are dreaming about? Why is our organization less than we had hoped it would be?

When we lived in Canada many many years ago, we attended a church that was really incredible. Yet the lead pastor was an underwhelming small-minded, uninspiring, less than ideal pastor and leader in almost every respect - except one. He hired A level people. He surrounded himself with people that were better in every way than himself.  He truly sought out and retained the best in the business! That takes either brilliance or an amazing level of self-confidence. I still haven't figured out which one of those Wayne possessed, but I learned an important lesson and it is one I have honed all my life and I continue to sharpen and employ across the board.

I surround myself with the best people. I systematically eliminate whiners and low-potential people from my work and from my social networks. It sounds cold to some of you. It sounds exciting to some of you. Hahaha! The reality is that it is incredibly challenging and overwhelmingly difficult to intentionally choose to be the slowest person in the room. Read that sentence again, because it is truly true. It demands a humility that runs so deep, a self-awareness that is brutally painful and teachable at the same time. A refusal to think for a moment that I am on the same level as these folks. Most folks I meet and know, could not stand the heat in this particular kitchen, and so they don't. Instead they surround themselves with less. Less than they are so that they can shine. Less than they are so that they can be in the spotlight. Less than they are in order to have power and control and so many other things.

But they lose in that process. They lose the opportunity to learn. They lose the opportunity to improve. They lose the chance to grow. They lose chance to impact the next generation of leaders. And most of all, they lose the certainty of becoming much more than they are today.

The slow concentrated present

The slow concentrated present

I had a good friend send me a link today of a great Cal Newport blog about several things that he personally does to improve his deep thinking/deep work ability. He listens to baseball games on the radio - a task that has none of the glamor and BSO (bright shiny objects) that easily distract us and keep our fleeting attention engaged. Listening to a live game requires a unique concentration . . . and yes there are commercial breaks and Mr Newport fills those empty times in with a book.

Since I am no baseball fan, I had to work a bit to find some parallels that I could apply in my life to train myself to listen better, focus longer and train my brain to do something deeper and more significant than Twitter or Facebook.

So at last I settled on a whip-lash speed story audiobook series that forces me to listen carefully or I have to rewind to find the thread where my concentration broke and I lost the storyline or missed some details. So far I have found that . . . that I have to rewind frequently! And I do this while riding my bicycle trainer or outside bike up the mountain near my apartment. It makes the exercise go quickly, while entertaining me too. Hopefully I am making progress in deeper focus and concentration!

Accepting responsibility . . . the key to self-respect?

It is impossibly difficult to get your work done some days, it is so challenging and there are outside forces combining to defeat you at every single turn, to destroy your every effort to fulfill your responsibilities. Focus is fractured. The action never happens. The intensity of the urgency of the immediate consumes all ambition to do the important and change the world for the better. The costs of ignoring the loudest closest clanging blood-relative is so high, as to prohibitively decimate every wish hope and plan to do the amazing. The collaboration of each innocent piece and person clammoring for our limited and ever-so-important attention, overwhelms and drowns our best intentions. Even as I scramble to get all things done, and get out of the hotel within the time frames required, get back on the road, accomplish the next task and event, there are ever higher tasks and events screaming for their accomplishment too. 

But.

But I can make difficult choices. I can make a different set of decisions. I can respond in various ways to this conversation. We can accept responsibility for our own lives, rather than blaming the fiery intensity of too many choices and and options. We can change the world, if we are willing to choose to do so, and pay the prices of those decisions.

"Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.” - Joan Didion

Traveling with the worlds smallest computer

I am on a four day business trip. I make a trip like this several times each month. Travel is the middle name in my life. I basically fly to work, rather than drive, even though I did that too, as I drove myself to the airport and parked my car there for a few days. I am not complaining only explaining so that you understand I travel - a lot. And I have a screen for every length of a trip. In my life, you want to take just enough technology to get by while on the road. Just like you only want to take enough clothes and no more. While I am allowed 32 kilos of baggage on this trip, I am traveling with a small carry on instead. Why in the world would I need 70.4 pounds of baggage for a four day trip?? One pair of jeans (which I am wearing!), one suitcoat, two dress shirts, three socks, three underwears, two sets of work out clothes, sneakers, and two phones and one external keyboard and some cigars to enjoy along the way.

The reality is that the phones constitute the world's smallest computers, and I have both an Android and an Apple device on this trip, which gives me a total of three SIM cards and phone numbers and data plans as I am on this four day trip. Honestly my phone can do every single thing my computer can, and the only constraints are storage and (the worst of course is) the small screen. Otherwise, the upsides, are the diminutive size and weight of the phones, and that you are not required to whip them out as you go through security.

For a short intense face to face business trip which will have limited sit-and-work-from-a-screen time anyways, the trade off is clearly in favor of the worlds smallest computers. I will let you know in another blog on the way home IF, I regret this decision in retrospect and why.

Radiation burn

What a week I had recently, six flights in three days and according to those who know, I am in danger of radiation burn, or over exposure. But that has been the case for a number of years now, although I will admit these last few days have been turbo travel. Business travel is really dangerous the health and well being of the business traveler. However there is no other way to get from A to B in these time frames.

It is a hurry up and wait life. So you need to maximixe all the opportunities and moments along the way to either be very productive or to be very in the moment and just be. Yet it needs to be said that the connections made possible by this turbo travel are not trifling. They are connections and opportunities and high potentials to change the world. The timid don't take these options, too difficult they argue, too taxing they say, too dangerous and the cost too high they posit, and the moments are gone. 

Sometimes you simply have to go big or stay home. I often would like to stay home, but I would rather make the big impact, complete the chance to change everything, to matter. Staying home is overrated.

The seduction

The humble-brag of the modern world is busyness. I have been taught this my entire life it seems. It is how I found myself working insane hours for decades in my previous vocation. There may not be a worse method for measuring your real significance in life.

Dan Rockwell says, "The seduction of feeling important because you’re busy trivializes leaders." I would go further by stating that the seduction of feeling important by the level of your busyness trivializes everyone.

If I am important simply because I am in demand, needed, busy or sought after then I have chosen the metric of activity to be my metric, rather than the importance of what I am doing, or the actual productivity of what I am accomplishing. Activity and productivity are not the same metric. 

Nor do I want to simply be more productive, in order that I can do more. I want to be more productive so that I can do the important in less time or with less effort, in order to have margin and space in life to do the most significant things, like thinking, sharing my life with key people, enjoying the moments, and having less pressure on every deadline of my vocational work - not in order to add more and more to my plate. Think of it as having a properly balanced cycle of enough. Enough work to change the world, only enough tasks to do it well, and enough resources to not have to worry  overly about paying the rent and eating.

I am important and significant because of what I choose to do, not how many pies I have my fingers in, or am needed to complete. Be significant not busy!

A little more permanence in life?

Having lived most of the last 23 years abroad, I am not sure how you would classify us culturally or emotionally any longer. We are such a mix of so many different experiences and countries and cities and languages over the course of our lives. We are Westerners passport-wise, but we live very small and unusual compared to practically anyone we know from the West. 

We drive the oldest cars, have the smallest apartment, live like poor church mice in a poverty stricken part of town, yet we spend and give amazing amounts of resources each year to the work and ministry that we are involved in and enjoy. None of this is said with any pride, because someone gave us all those resources to begin with, and we do not view them as ours to spend on ourselves. And most of the time I am 100% ok with living like this, except when I am not.

Lately I am not. Honestly I have been really weary of eating off the plastic table that we have been using for the last five years. We would have been using it longer than that but the two places we lived previously came with actual tables to eat on. And for some reason, maybe after spilling my coffee a million times did me in, or perhaps it was just how amazingly ugly this picnic table has become, but for some reason, I wanted a real table to eat on. I have to confess, it is the one piece of furniture that my parents have that I am jealous for, a huge beautiful wood table. It has such a sense of permanence to it, longevity to it, and they have had it most of my life!

Of course our apartment is way too small to have a table like the one my parents have, but I have been hankering for a table for a long long while now. One with some weight to it, some "we are gonna stay here a long time" feel to it. Now the first wall I had to climb was to get Brenda to agree to spending a dime on anything for us. That took me over a year. Finally she capitulated as she finally got the sense of how important this was to me, no matter how irrational. But getting us to both agree on which table to get, oh my that was a serious wall to climb. We would go to a furniture showroom and she invariably would want to buy the cheapest one there. That is precisely why we have been eating off a plastic table for years! I would invariably want the most well-made one, regardless of the cost. I was wanting something with some substance!

Well long story short, we finally moved a table into the apartment today and got rid of that horrid old plastic thing. Sometimes, you need a bit of permanence to shed that "I am living out of a suitcase" feeling. Here is a pic of the long negotiated piece of furniture in question.

Getting there before you leave

Arriving 30 minutes before you leave

Only in the Balkans do I think such a thing would ever be possible, but seriously, this happened this morning, as we departed Istanbul at 09:00 o'clock local time and we arrived in Skopje at 08:04 local time on the same day. There are many local factors that contribute to this phenomena, in fact I am surprised that some Balkan president hasn't made an arbitrary decision to just put us on Eastern Standard time!

The photo above shows the scheduled departure time and the scheduled arrival time.

I think too that there are other times we should get there before we leave. 

1. In our spiritual walk. In my 35 years of ministry, I find that most Christians state that they are citizens of heaven, but fully embrace the world and living in the world, and I hate to say it but it is true, living like this is our real home. If indeed we are citizens of heaven, then we most definitely need to behave, live, and experience life as if we are already there. We should get there before we leave. It would change a great deal about our lives I think, were we to have this posture and attitude.
2. In our vocations. Instead of just barely showing up when we eventually arrive, why don't we get there before we leave? Frankly it would make us much better employees. We would be fully engaged in the tasks that we have been charged with, and the value that we have agreed to deliver. It would make us far more valuable to our employers!
3. In our relationships. An ounce of prevention is supposedly worth a pound of cure, and arriving before we depart would be perfect. It is the relational idea of certainty and dependability. I give my lovely bride what she needs even before she realizes that she needs it! That is arriving before you depart! That is looking ahead, so that your relationships can have all that they will need in order to thrive and grow. It is arriving before you depart.

I bet you can think of other areas where this metaphor will be helpful.

Why do we resist?

Why do we delay and resist the most difficult parts of our work lives? I mean apart from the fact that they are the most difficult parts and not easy to accomplish? 

I am usually wonderfully and pleasantly surprised when I finally bite the bullet and do what needs to be done. In fact I would argue that the sheer difficulty can greatly enhance the satisfaction of accomplishment. I mean if it was easy, anyone could do it, right? The fact that YOU find it difficult, can possibly mean that the task is beyond most other people's abilities period and that it would never get done if it depended on someone other than you. It could also be that this task is simply outside of your wheelhouse, but when you get to my stage of life and work, you have largely weeded out those kinds of tasks from your schedule and life and have past them on to someone who can do them better or more easily.

No I am talking about the most excellent parts of your skill set, I am talking about the difficult work that sets you apart from everyone else. I am talking about the type of work that demands your best self fully present and on point, work that few others could effectively do, perhaps because of your training or education, or geographical position in the world, or your position and responsibilities in your organization. This is when you need to hit a home run! 

But I often delay and procrastinate these kinds of tasks, because they are so demanding and cost me so much, or take me far outside of my daily normal schedule which I treasure and with which accomplish so much on a regular basis. These super hard ones, disrupt that flow, and perhaps part of the action of turning these pivotal moments into successes, is to allow the disruption to create something new and wonderful and to relax and permit myself to let my normal routine go, so that upon occasion I can do something spectacular, instead of the simply great work that I strive for each day. I just finished one of these kinds of work events and I am flushed with how awesome it went. So once again, why do we resist?

Like Amelia Earhart said, "The most effective way to do it, is to do it."
What really important and difficult thing are you putting off?

A thinking day

This is the one task that needs a certain ambience. I found the perfect situation for that in my travels today. Through a series of fortunate events, I had a few hours free and unstructured at the Naples Italy airport on a sunny warm afternoon.

I found a place to sit outside and enjoy a nice Honduran while contemplating the universe. Not really . . . the contemplating the universe part, but everything else was planets aligned! I worked on a number of high priority thorny situations and made a few notes, but this afternoon was 95% tech free. I can't focus on the thinking part if I have tech in my hands. It always seem that other work floats to the surface if I have tech in my hands, and this was a strictly amazing opportune moment to do the hardest work - thinking.

Now you can't wait to have such a perfect situation present itself (although I find that you can usually create a potential environment to do some hard thinking), because thinking is too important a task to relegate to pristine moments. Granted pristine moments can make them all the more powerful and productive, but this is a task that needs regular exercise. Like most things in life, if it is not scheduled and practiced it never gets accomplished.

So what were the results today? I resolved an apprentice/internship thorn that had been sticking me in the butt for almost a year. There is now a plan and steps to get to the goal. I made progress on the ongoing dilemma/opportunity (its both) that I have with my dad. After the two deaths in our family this past year, there is just me and him and I need to make more/new space in life for him and his needs and honestly just to enjoy these later years of his life with him and make some great memories.

That is it. But those were two huge buggers that have been gigantic weights on my plate for far too long. Reserve your thinking time for the most important matters. Oh, and I spent a good long wonderful half hour just mentally reviewing and cataloging all the people, relationships, structures and opportunities that I am grateful for, that make all this worth doing. After "the perils of travel" this was the best kind of chance and change. Go think!

The perils of travel

The perils of travel

We were finally all on board the airport shuttle, running a little late but doable. As the doors to the van close I see a Turk standing in the smoking area finishing up a cigarette and watching us! He gets the drivers attention as we were driving away. So we stop, back up, and open the doors to let the latecomer get on.

But wait! He runs back inside the hotel and gets his suitcase. Three times! And finally we have all three of his large bags loaded and he runs back into the hotel and disappears. And we wait and we wait and we wait until they finally unload all his luggage and leave for the airport.

We finally leave! Yet we don't make it out of the parking lot before we turn around! And pick yet a different family of three.

Fast forward an hour and a half after two complete security checks (where I was certain I was going to have to take off my underwear) and I finally get on the plane. Window seat. And then I have an extra large man come and sit in the middle seat! He poured out of his seat into my seat. Long story short I was sitting crooked the entire time to Italy. I am pinched between extra large man and the window!

And of course since we came from Turkey and not Western Europe, and since we had about 25 African men on the plane, security, customs, and passport control were completely anal, to the point that some of the Italian men started fighting each other and the police had to come break it up, it was a madhouse.

All in a normal day at the office. And some people are jealous of this, I kid you not. Not to mention I left out the Italian train station story, the pick pocket, the 12 beggars, and taxi ride from hell.

Constraints 2 Psychic Prisons

This week while I was talking to one of my key clients, he was sharing with me some of the things he has been learning in his PhD studies about organizational development. One of the metaphors used to describe organizations was "psychic prisons". I took that to mean that it is psychic in the sense of mental, not in the sense of psychotic (though if you work for certain kinds of organizations I imagine that it could also be psychotic!). I thought it was an exceptionally rich metaphor.

As I have been headhunting some new employees for The Leadership Development Group, one of the most interesting phenomenon that I come up against, is the inability to find leadership guru's who can think about funding models or salary models that are outside of the traditional employer paid exchange of time for money. They are literally in a mental prison, for all practical purposes incapable of thinking about a different funding model or a different way of receiving compensation for value given.

But this metaphor is also rich when applied to the other areas of our lives. Most of us live in a psychic prison concerning our life work, or the impact that we can make, or the significance of what we can do, or how we might simply change the world with the time, talent and treasures that God has already given us. Many of us live in psychic prisons spiritually as well. The limitations of our understanding, or the boundaries of our theology, or the constraints of our past experiences, become the bars of the cells we find ourselves in. We seem to struggle indefinitely with our lack of imagination, the confines of our narrative that we tell ourselves about ourselves and about our work and about our God.

However, logging the hours does not have to be a part of the psychic prison. Logging the hours is what my language students have to do to speak beautiful Spanish or Russian. Logging the hours is what my pastors have to do, to deliver beautiful sermons on Sunday. Logging the hours is what you and I have to do to hone our crafts and be the best that we can be. Working hard and logging solid hours is not part of the prison, it is a treasured gift, that we might do something magical in the world with the gifts and abilities and resources that God has given us.

The most beautiful thing about being a Christ-follower is that we have been given essentially a get out of jail free card! Don't you think it's time that we got out of our psychic prisons, no matter what they may be, and start to live this one wild beautiful life that we had been given to the full extent of every possibility?

The fastest way forward

"The fastest way to move forward in life is NOT doing more. It starts with STOPPING the behaviors holding you back." Benjamin Hardy

This axiom is stated by many leadership leaders, like Marshall Goldsmith, Michael Hyatt and others. However the very nature of productivity is often about doing more, not less better. That is where Gregg McKeown stands out with his excellent book on Essentialism. But most people, including my clients, want more, not a better less. The majority of people I meet and know, it seems to be almost impossible to overcome FOMO. More is more. 

But it is not. The more I add more, the more I diminish the quality of every single beautiful thing I am working to create or produce. Friends, that is less, not more. Quality and quantity are not the same. If you want to change the world, or create a masterpiece, or provide clarity, or be the best at anything, you have to dial it in, focus, intensify on less and less. Think of it as purifying the finished product, concentrating the final result, strengthening what gets accomplished, and amplifying the outcomes. Most people get stuck eternally at mediocre because they can't stop doing all the things that are sabotaging their stated goals or purposes. And if you can't stop eating french fries, you can't get to and stay at an ideal weight. As Bob Biehl says, "Either you live a life of discipline or your live a life of regret."

Less is more. It is more focused, it is deeper, it is purposeful, it is intentional, it is satisfying in ways more can never be. It is simpler, clearer, cleaner, more pure. It is a design of success. It is a way of organizing everything toward the goal. It is singular, exceptional and remarkable. If you do this, it is the fastest way forward. It is not Facebook or Twitter or TV or Netflix. On Thursday evening a young lady showed up at our door selling TV packages, and it was all about more and more channels. When I finally got her to stop her spiel, I pointed out that we do not have a television in the house. But she did not believe me and pushed her way into the living room to have a look around for herself. Magdalena pointed out that she had never been in a home without a TV.  I am not necessarily prideful about not having a TV, I am frankly much more flabbergasted and appalled that there aren't others who don't! We say no to the intrusion of TV, so that we can say yes to people, events and focused productivity that matters. Honestly people, TV never matters.

Stop. Say no. Frequently. Most of the time. Far more than you ever say yes. It is the fastest way forward.

Constraints?

HBR had a recent blog on their website that matched just what I was experiencing each day here in Eastern Europe. Constraints. Limitations. Scarcity. There is one thing every ex pat knows, if they have ever lived in a resource depleted country, you have to be creative to make do, make things stretch further, and often it just means that you have to work harder period.

It has been that kind of week. Yesterday the front door lock jammed and we could not get our keys in the door, meaning we could only lock the door if one of us were in the apartment. And the toilet continued to not work hardly at all, and the car is in the service center, etc etc. So I have to go by the locksmith shop twice to get someone over here, and then the guy who comes, isn't the guy who is actually qualified to do the repair, so I have to wait until the second guy can come, and what would take a quick trip to Home Depot in the states, is pretty much an all day kind of thing here. 

Been trying to get the car repaired ever since I got back to Eastern Europe three weeks ago, and it was finally supposed to ready to pick up at 12:00 today on the dot. Of course it was not, and after waiting until 13:00 hours, I had to scoot to my next appointment on foot. I must have walked five miles today. But I got it all done. And now, the plumber is putting in a new Throne for us, and may it please work! Please pretty please, may it work. But nothing is certain. 

Scarcity forces us to use our ingenuity, our creative abilities, to expect more of ourselves, and to just get moving, because there is no one to complain to here, who might actually get something done for you. You gotta make your own success man! Set your expectations high and don't let anything or anyone or any "lack" prevent you from being all that you were meant to be.

A better way to make a positive transaction.

There are the marvelous tax laws in Western Europe. If I purchase something here, since I am both a citizen outside of Western Europe and I live outside of Western Europe, I should have all the taxes refunded to me as I leave the country where I made my purchases. I have special receipts for the whole process, which clearly state I will receive such and such amount of euros as I leave the country. This is a great way to get me to spend my money here!

However, they make the process all but impossible at the airport. This stamp that you need is at one end of the airport, the obscure tax office at the other end, and then the final place to actually receive money in your hand can't even be found on the other side of security. The entire process, hidden location of offices, lack of signs and instructions, and multiple steps, are designed to prevent anyone from actually getting a tax refund. I travel 100,000 miles a year all over the world, and I could have navigated the whole process and completed it if . . . if I had had two solid hours to do little else but walk from one end of a very large airport to the other end, several times over.

I value my time too highly to do so, and that is what they are betting on for sure, that the small amount of money will be insufficient to tempt me, once the difficulty of the process becomes clear. This is why I so rarely purchase high price items within Western Europe. While they occasionally get a little bit of extra off of me like they did today, for the most part they lose 10's of thousands of euros of potential purchases because I don't do regular business with bait and switch vendors, even if they are the government.

The question for us leaders is about transparency, delivering at least as much as you promised, and making it easy for those following us to receive what we said they would receive. Otherwise we are doing the same horrible transaction with our clients, team or followers, and we are no better than the impossible-to-find-and-accomplish-tax-refund-offices in every airport in Western Europe. My friends - under-promise and over-deliver. That is the way to build your business and your reputation.

Embracing Halnon’s razor

My dad, can see the worst in everyone. He carefully thinks through the worst possible motivation for each person’s actions, and then deduces the worst possible judgement. He sees intentionality and malice and hurt in almost every person’s deeds. In fact I spend a great deal of mental energy, thinking through all the ways that a person’s actions and deeds could simply be the result of a mistake or misunderstanding or a lack of appropriate information, etc etc. But my dad can find villainous intentions in arguably everyone. Keeping myself out of that trap is plenty taxing as well!

The real world problem this creates for me, is that it can easily be contagious, where I start to attribute the worst possible thoughts toward each person that I meet and interact with around the world. I don’t want to move through life like this, like I did in the past. So I publicly thank my dad, for forcing me to “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity” or “don’t assume bad intentions over neglect and misunderstanding” and “you have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.” All of these quotes are from wikipedia about Hanlon’s razor.

Thinking criminal thoughts about each person you encounter in life is all too easy as my dad proves. Stopping that process once it begins takes monumental effort as I discovered. This has application to other than personal interactions with people as well - it can apply to organizations too. After 23 years of what felt like wrestling and fighting with my previous parent organization, I finally left, and changed gears. I should have done it far sooner! However, in the almost nine years since I did leave, I have come to the conclusion that there was little malice at play.  Big organizations are simply suspect to neglect and misunderstanding. On both sides! Each action fostered more misunderstanding, and soon we came to an impasse. But it did not have to be that way. Back then I had far too much of my dad in me, and far too little generosity in my heart to give the benefit of the doubt.

Do you find yourself caught in a conspiracy theory or devil theory? What steps do you need to take, to bring back a generosity of spirit that will allow you to work Hanlon’s razor to your benefit? 

In a room filled with crazy busy people

I am currently sitting in a room filled with crazy busy people running back and forth all over the place. It's the lobby of a huge downtown London hotel in the business district of Kensington. Having just checked out and waiting for my next appointment to show up, I am watching hundreds of people rush through this lobby. But busy isn't necessarily productive. Speed isn't necessarily progress.

Everyone has the same number of hours in their day, but their accomplishments vary greatly. How about you? How about me? There is a significant difference between important and the urgent. One moves things forward, the other is loud and immediate. Which one do I concentrate my primary energy on each day, each hour of effort?

My first four to five hours in each day are the most critical for me. I have sequential actions and processes that I follow in order to contain the urgent and complete the important. Otherwise I find myself having done the urgent and distracting all day, but not finishing the important actions that move life, work and purpose forward. Example: I don't touch email until three other more critically important actions are finished each day. That usually means I rarely check email before 11:00 am.

Gary Keller states that, "Success is built sequentially. It’s one thing at a time"  That is why I block off the morning and stay with the important routine, before exposing my day to the urgent. It is also why I focus one one thing at a time. Multitasking doesn't work for most folks who are highly productive.

I find that two more critical elements to long success are exercise and sleep. When I make these two a daily priority they pay huge dividends in clarity and focus all through the day. What elements and boundaries do you need to put and keep in place to have consist forward progress on the important? Let's get it done now, because this is both important and urgent.

Fire alarms and other startling moments

As I was peacefully slumbering and trying to recover from my five time zone difference in London this morning, the fire alarm went off in the hotel bringing this blissful process to an instant end. I bolted upright in bed and started to move immediately!

Thankfully it was a "false" alarm, in the sense that the hotel did not burn down with all my gear in it, but it was an astonishingly quick way to get the day started.

Recently I have had other fire alarms go off in my life. This past year my mother and also my only sibling died. The loss of them in my life has had many of the same effects in my life like the fire alarm this morning.

The close relationships in my life have incredible value for me, and they require much more effort than I have been allocating them over the last decade. Losing my mother and brother one after the other made me stop and take stock of how I have been working this garden of relationships in my life.

A garden is the perfect metaphor. Relationships, just like gardens, require a level of regular cultivation and attention that Westerners don't naturally or easily do. We compartmentalize our time and our relationships to the point that we become offended if work relationships overlap into our "family time" or our "personal time." Even those designations are weeds in our garden of relationships! The mutuality of one single solid relationship is worth far more than a cut and dry compartment designated as "personal time" or a "family time."

I for one need far more intentionality in all my relationships, or these amazing flowers in my garden are going to wither and be gone from my life.

Hawthorne?

The Hawthorne effect

There is well-documented social science phenomenon called the Hawthorne effect, whereby people change their behavior as a result of knowing they are being observed. Never has this been more important in my life. Yesterday my mom was admitted to a nursing home. She may never leave this place. How do you know that the people you have entrusted your mother's care to, will do an appropriate job? The Hawthorne effect.

When folks know they are being monitored, their actions are more consistent with stated objectives, than those people who think no one is watching, neither today nor tomorrow.

But who is watching me? Who is watching you? Who are the stakeholders in our lives, the people who benefit from our actions? What do they see? Do you realize that you are being checked, tested and measured all the time? Of course this has spiritual dimensions as well, but honestly, I think you can see this as a blanket covering all that we do that matters. Someone is always observing and taking our measure. What is your grade today? How are you improving the value that you bring to your family, your clients, your stakeholders and yourself? I think I need to keep the Hawthorne effect on my radar screen all the time to remind me to keep moving forward.