One more correction

I am sorry to do this to you, but I had to have the new blog site tweaked and this included changing the address and the RSS feed. Here is the right site

https://www.davidaderholdt.com/

Switching to Squarespace for my blog from here on out. Click below!

So you will need to resubscribe to this blog in order to continue to receive it via RSS feed. Just as soon as i figure it out I will post it here. And here you go. Click this link in your RSS feed aggregator. https://www.davidaderholdt.com

The three F’s

# Chapter 56

There are three things that distract most people according to Bobb Bhiel fog, fatigue and flirtations and according to me (and a great deal of data) alcohol affects all three. You flirt with temptations more easily when drinking. You are definitely more fatigued when drinking. But the one that strikes at me most when drinking is fog. 

It is like the fog on the lake this morning, being created seemingly out of thin air and obscuring your clarity and vision. Lake fog makes for awesome and epic photographs, and it was amazing and I took a ton of pics.  But life fog is frustrating, making you uncertain and doubtful about your next course of action, it makes thinking erratic, cryptic and perplexing. Most of all it makes practically all movement dangerous. You can’t see what is coming, you can’t see where the edge of the pavement is located, you can’t see the deer crossing the road out in front of you. All of these are great metaphors for what fog in your life does to you.

Yes you can can have fog in your life without drinking, but drinking always makes it worse. This was and is one of the primary reasons I have decided to take a break from drinking. I need all the clarity I can muster and then some. There are problems to be solve, challenges to be overcome and solutions to find. Beer will never help me find those things nor accomplish those things. No matter how much I enjoy it, alcohol only takes in the end. It never gives.

At the cemetery

At the cemetery 

It’s quiet. And that is not to be funny. In a world with very little quiet, it’s a beautiful and silent place. I guess that equals peaceful in the modern world. It also feels lonely, missing my mom always makes me feel that way. 

Remembering her from the days of my childhood and youth makes me hurt to have that wonderful warm presence in my life again. She was so much fun and brightness and vivaciousness. Everything can appear to be fairly gray in the post-mom era. I wish I could remember more of the stories that she told, the history that she shared, more of what she taught us. But mainly I remember what I felt. 

Now things feel very different. The noise of the house is non-stop and not nearly as dynamic and conversational. There are no thoughtful moments, no thinking and little consideration about the deeper things of life. Whatever appears in the frontal lobe gets spoken into words that circle endlessly around in the same boring loop. Well I guess it is time to head back to the present. Quiet time is over for today.

Who is driving your life?

In the thousands of miles I have driven across America 

. . . these last 10 days, I have noticed a very interesting leadership phenomena

 . . . other drivers will tailgate you while in the fast lane, driving so close to your car, encouraging you to go ever faster, you can’t even see the front of their car they are so close! And then very often, when you pull over into the slow lane to allow them to pass, they then slow down? 

Let’s extrapolate here. It seems apparent to me that people are willing to go above the speed limit and break the rules as long as someone else is out in front of them and is the primary target. But when left alone in the fast lane, with no one to be the primary target but themselves, they immediately decide the risk is too high and they slow down.

I think many people live their whole lives like this. Especially Westerners. They want someone else to take the lead, shoulder the responsibility, take the initiative, do the hard work, while they benefit safely in the backdraft of someone else’s efforts.

Don’t know about you, but I prefer to choose my risks, choose my path, make my own efforts, take responsibility. You gotta own your life, or someone else will.

Is it a habit yet?

Chapter 60

Is this a habit yet? When is anything a habit? Isn’t a habit simply a dependable decision to choose a consistent action? Well yes and  . . . no I think. I have been working out for over 20 years pretty much every single day. If I am not in an airplane or car or train traveling to some destination, I simply always have some form of a workout, its almost like breathing after so many years. I pack for trips based on workouts. My shoes selection is often based on my hoped for workout plans. My daily schedule revolves in truth around my workouts, not my productivity.

Some might call this obsessive behavior instead of a habit, but I would not. Time has proven over and over and over again, how much better I feel and how much more productive I am throughout the day, when I have a workout. Those are the facts of my life. Your mileage may differ. But this is a habit in my estimation, and writing these 275 words a day are not. Even though this is my 60th consecutive day, I won’t miss this, like I would a workout. Of course writing 275 words does not affect my physical body like exercise, but I have other habits that are mental in nature and they DO give me a kick, albeit a mental one not a physical one. So I am still waiting for this daily writing practice to give me a mental kick that I will miss out on, if I fail to do it, and then I think it will be a habit in the Dr Aderholdt world.

Uncripple your mental clarity

# Chapter 55

Great sleep is only one of the benefits of my 100 plus days without imbibing. Mental clarity is another. Thought I will admit this one is more difficult to track and measure. It does however show itself in a dozen ways. And it comes with an additional bonus - more control.

More control over what you say or don’t. More control over being generous with your thoughts and words and attitude. But the more control over the words you say is the real gain here in my opinion. A night after drinking with the guys, and I find myself saying things better left unsaid, especially to my wife. You can’t undo these things, and they carry a high price tag and it doesn’t get better in the future. So while we aren’t talking about massive amounts more control, every little bit helps when you are me. I will take it. Its enough to be noticed!

The additional mental clarity can be seen in the alternative narratives that you can construct about why something happened. This is probably the most valuable to the general world, that the added control, but these alternative narratives make many things possible. When my dad says, “that SOB Chris the electrician, he had no right to say that to me!” . . . alternative narratives clicking mentally here . . . and I can say, “well maybe Chris had a really bad night staying up all night with his new baby”, or “maybe Chris just received a really bad medical diagnosis this morning” or “did we do something to spark that response in Chris?” And so on and so forth. Easily three alternative narratives that my dad would have never considered otherwise.

Can you see the power in this?? It is awesome. For some reason, and I wish it did not, but alcohol cripples this ability in me.

Quiet or food?

There are many love languages, a concept and a phrase I think made popular by Gary Smalley back in the 70s, but my dad‘s love language is food. 

Food is the very last conversation I ever wanna have. I am committed to destroying food’s power in my life. That is complicated much by the fact that this is my dad‘s love language. While you’re eating and devouring any given meal, he is already planning the next three meals or even the next week worth of meals. So not only can you not just simply be present and enjoy this meal, you also have to be future oriented and planning out the coming days and weeks. Infuriating. Incredibly difficult. Destruction of all my current goals.

But this knife cuts both directions. My love language is quiet, solitude, and silence. These are a complete anathema to my dad. He cannot stand one single second of silence. He will do anything, and say anything, and make any amount of noise necessary, to fill every single moment of silence. So my love language, and his love language, don’t work together so well. It’s not that I can’t plan out what we’re going to eat tomorrow, it’s just that I am past focusing on food 24/7. It’s not that he can’t have a moment of silence here and there, it’s just that if he has a choice he will never allow a moment of silence to occur.

So the thing he wants most and a thing I want most, neither of us ever receive. Hmmmmmm.

Yet we still get on so good. I guess real love can overcome even our primary love languages?

What I think about it

So yeah, I am not drinking any alcohol at all. For months now. Its been easier than I expected actually, and most people have been very supportive and not made a big deal (or any deal at all) about me not drinking with them. This has been huge, because honestly I expected much more push back than I have received. So maybe I don’t have to upgrade my friends and family after all? Many people do when they make a change of course in their lives. On the other hand I am not sure I am making a change of course in life or still experimenting. Will let you know in 10 years.

But it has been really difficult in my own head. And this of course is where most things are truly difficult. The stories we tell ourselves make a great many things more difficult that perhaps they really are in the real world. And likewise, the stories that we tell ourselves could make our lives a great deal more accurate to reflect the possibilities and potentials that are always around, but rarely utilized. These internal narratives are the foundations of our daily experiences in life.

But I digress about the difficulties of not drinking. My internal narrative about myself does not include a version where I never drink alcohol. I have lived in the Slavic world for the last 25 years. In the Slavic world, everything in life revolves around alcohol. I mean everything! But even the social pressure of the country I live in is not the worst. Its what I think about it, that is most difficult. How I perceive it, the values I place on it, what kind of person I think it makes me, how it defines me in my mind, these are the battles of being a non-drinking person - or anything else in life.

The longest run . . .

Chapter 50

Yesterday’s chapter on nonversation may have confused you since book two is about changes and experiments and life hacking toward greater productivity. Nonversation is like the mental version of being physically drunk - that’s how badly nonversation will deconstruct your productivity.

Speaking of being drunk, I am not. But I have noticed over the years that alcohol was having a more and more significant impact on my physical body. Said another was, I love beer - sincerely enjoy it, but it doesn’t like me. It slows me down, physically, mentally and makes me feel like crap often on the following day. It wrecks my sleep about half the time. As Ruby Warrenton says, “You never regret not drinking the following morning” has my bullseye painted squarely in the middle of that statement. I have simply never regretted not drinking . . . the following morning. 

So I am currently on the longest stretched of days weeks and months without drinking that I have ever done in my adult life. 102 days since I last had a beer, and while I really miss beer (especially when there is Mexican food involved or pizza) the outputs have been really great. That doesn’t mean that I won’t drink again. Not at all, but I have been moving in this direction for years. Since no amount of wishing will make the negatives of alcohol consumption go away (if that were possible I would be the poster child) and no amount of rationalization will make the positives of not drinking be explained in any other way,  . . . for now, I will see how far the stretch of no alcohol will run.

Nonversations

Chapter 49

Nonversation. This is a word from Lee Bacon novel. It means a meaningless conversation. When it comes to productivity, nonversations are the ultimate death knell. This has graduated senses of meaning. It could be just avoiding someone you live in close contact with and now you have one word nonversations instead of conversations. It could just be the inane speaking of words which constitutes what passes for most small talk (why don’t we have big talk?). Or it could the mindless vomiting of each and every thought that passes through the frontal lobe of a person in the form of an endless monologue. And there are probably subtle shades in between. I have experienced them all, but the last one is most deadly to production.

It is a constant and unending pointless source of sound. Filling up every sacred moment of silence with nonversation. 94% of nonversation don’t even require a response. It is essentially a modern form of monologue under the guise of conversation. 

You know you are in a nonversation when you break in and try to take this to a conversation, and the person just continues off topic about what they were nonversationing about before you broke in. Or you would know you are in a nonversation when the subject hops irrationally from one unconnected topic to the next with no connector transitions. Or you know you are in a nonversation when hours of spoken words by one person, only require occasional grunts or eye contact from you, to continue. Hell, lets be honest, the nonversation will continue whether you give these fake signs of interests or not.

Escape if you can! Avoid if you can! Run away if you have the opportunity! Do not allow yourself to be cornered here in a nonversation. Because if you do, then prepare yourself to watch your productivity just trickle away into noncomplishment.

Memories

# Chapter 43

As I got the full tour of the devastation here in Paradise California and the surrounding areas, I came to conclusion that it will never return to what it was in the past. It will return, but that future will be something other than what was here before. It has to be. None of us can ever return to the past really. As Seth Godin calls them, “our memories of our memories.”

Here in California, they can’t return to the past because these houses that burned down (1600 of them!!) were built with money from decades and decades ago when land was cheap and so was labor. And currently post-fire land is relatively cheap. I was looking at some of those pieces yesterday. But the labor and building costs have skyrocketed. I can buy the lot for 10 grand maybe (a great deal in this part of the world) but to build the simplest cement block duplex would cost an astronomical (for me) $450,000!! Paradise was destroyed by a random convergence of perfect factors that resulted in a ferocious fire storm. But their past cannot be resurrected up out of the ashes, because things have changed. They always do.

As thus, neither can you or I return to the past. It no longer exists even except as “memories of our memories.” This is driven home over and over for me right now as I am spending all the time with my dad that I can, since both mom and brother are gone, and its just us (thankful so much for Brenda who breaks up the monotony!!) two boys, and my dad reviews his memories of his memories every day multiple times. About half the time those are the memories of memories of his childhood, and the other half of the time of my childhood. Those worlds no longer exist. There is not even a facsimile of those worlds any longer. While we may occupy the same chunk of ground in the same village, town, county, state and country, nothing else the same.

The only solution is to live in the present and aim for the future, whatever that may be. Here in Paradise, half of the people remaining are now living in RV’s on the burned out foundations of their former homes, and it will be years before the legal stuff is cleared up and they can easily move forward and rebuild. But most of them will not have the resources to do so. The present and future are not the past. The past is nevermore and neveragain. So I can either be constantly distracted by the past as I sit at the table and reminisce, or I can get up and live fully in today and reach for tomorrow. Take action. Move. Act. Don’t be penned in and incapacitated and distracted by your memories of your memories.

Too many options

# Chapter 39

The distraction of too many options. When we lived in Russia 25 years ago and we were on the road traveling between cities, which did not happen very often because of the restrictions and hassles of travel there, we would stop with the kids at a roadside building which advertised by picture or words, that food was offered there. We have done this a few times, but it is still the most unique experience ever - you go in and sit down and wait. That’s all. Just wait. 

No one takes your order or asked how you are doing or where you would like to be seated, or what you would like to drink. You just sit down and wait 10-15 minutes and then a Russia grandma would bring you out something. You would eat it. That’s all there was to it. No options. No menu. No choices. She brought you the one thing there was to eat for that day. If you were lucky it was hot.

That likely sounds horrible to my American friends but don’t knock it till you try it. No one was ever in ecstasy about Russian cuisine to begin with in my opinion, so what did it matter that you had no choice about which nasty thing to eat? But the almost complete lack of options, or choices, was unique even for Russia. 

The exact opposite is true here. Too many options. It takes longer to order here, than it did to get food there in Russia. But the stress!! You likely don’t even realize what a huge distraction and stress all your options are, because that is the only normal you have ever known. But live a few years with zero options, and you will run screaming from the Cracker Barrel or most other places.

Looking back on it, there was a great freedom and simplicity in having few options. We should design our days and schedules with less options, so that we can focus and produce something amazing.

Going optimal in a less than ideal world

The distraction and opportunity of being a slave to someone else’s schedule. Its 4:50 am. My dad is up and awake and humming and whistling. He is happy as a bedbug in a mattress. He is excited and cranked. We are taking a road trip to Tennessee to spend the whole day looking at antique cars. His agenda. At 4:50 am. 

I would rather be having a root canal. The whole structure of my day is wrecked. Up too early. Not enough sleep. No workout today (except patience. Is patience a muscle??)  No decent food. No development work. And on and on I could go, this is just the beginning of the list. I don’t even like antique cars very much.

But this isn’t about me. I agreed to go on this trip. You agreed to take that job, marry that person, choose those in-laws, have those children, live in that neighborhood, go to that college, study that degree, make that investment, fail to make that investment, take that posture, have that attitude, and live this life that you have largely chosen. This is also true for me. My dad is hopping and eager for this day trip! Its evident by how early we are up and how energized he is this morning. While the day will be mostly agonizing for me personally, its a dream for him. Why would I not agree to go?

We all make lots of decisions and even deciding to not make a decision is really a decision. We all agree to many things in our lives that are not necessarily our first choice. Ask any mother with a newborn, but we still made the decisions that brought us to this place and once the decision is made and things are in motion, all that you generally have left to work with are attitude and effort.

So how much effort are you gonna put toward make this as good as it can be, whatever it is? What’s your attitude gonna be? Are you going to be sullen and resentful all day because you are doing something less than your ideal day, or are you going to make this the best day that is can be given the parameters it already has? 

Go optimal. Give it your best effort and attitude.

Fuel to be your best self

For the last month I have been writing about distractions, and frankly I thought I would be done long before now. And I wanted to be done by now, because I have other things I want to write about! But there are yet more distractions and they are keeping me on this subject.

Stage or cycle of life can be a huge distraction and keep you from both your best self and your best work. I am closer to 60 years old than I am 50 years old and it is easy to see the shift in how people view me and my advanced years. Finished. Over. Done. Out to pasture. Retirement fodder.

Yet I am stronger than I have ever been. I am very healthy. Weigh the least I have ever weighed. Doing some of my best work ever. How the young people at the store see me and how I see myself is violently different. Some of my favorite Leadership thought-leaders wrote the bulk of their best work when they were even older than me. Why do you think I am writing this stuff every day?  I am practicing!

However, there are specialized distractions that come with each decade, and in the getting-older-decades, they have more than their fair share. When you are in your 20’s you are distracted by the overwhelm of possibilities and fear of making a major mistake. In the your 30’s you are distracted by establishing yourself, starting a family, and the growing burdens of responsibilities, etc etc right on through when you get to your 50’s. The greatest distraction so far in this decade has been the shear number of death’s that we have had to face. Parent’s, uncles, aunties, cousins, siblings, and friends. Today would be a perfect example of this distraction - planning to go to the funeral home this afternoon to see a neighbor who passed away, and then stopping off to see an uncle who has days to live. 

Stay focused, and use this dark and painful distraction and disruption of life as fuel to make every day matter and be your best self. Its not easy, but it is really important.

Foggy mornings

We are spending the weekend on the lake, at an AirB&B and this morning it was so foggy. The air temperature was so much higher than the water temperature, that there was a solid wall of airborne moisture surrounding the lake, the house, the woods, everywhere. And here in rural Virginia, I discovered that these country drivers don’t use their headlights at all in the fog. I almost hit a couple of them!

Fog. Fog is a terrible distraction. This morning was so foggy. It obscured everything. It made my morning bicycle ride down right dangerous. It makes it so difficult to see clearly. It requires warning lights. Flashing lights are barely enough! My biking glasses completely fogged up and I had to ride without them. The moisture was so heavy in the air that helmet become completely wet on the outside and was dripping water in my eyes! My clothes were soaked with air moisture. It was a wet thick heavy distracting dangerous ride. My probability of getting killed or hit and injured was likely 10 times higher than normal, and its pretty high all the time.

All because of fog. All the same metaphors apply in leadership and development. The fog is not moisture in the air, but rather obscure business dealings, problems, employee retention, the VUCA world, volatile currency markets, trade agreements, shifting markets, and unexpected consequences of executive decisions, staff changes, and generally an unlimited amount of other challenges can be your fog. 

Take precautions, all that you can that doesn’t require a debilitating amount of effort. Stay extra vigilant when things are foggy. Have a clear purpose and destination and let it drive you forward steady and carefully, but as my friend Dr Anderson says, “Go and make!”

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.